Reviews

Being About a Cold, Cold World

The Giving Tree Band earns Album of the Week honors for VACILADOR, an album for a world fearful of commitment, for the hookup culture of no-strings intimacy, for a society diffuse and disconnected, even though it doesn't know it.

Reviews

All In a Day’s Blues

An alum of the late, great Calvin Owens's Blues Orchestra, guitarist CHARLES 'CD' DAVIS has a winner in his solo debut, 24 HOUR BLUES, featuring some Orchestra vets and four outstanding vocalists playing up a blues storm.

Spotlight Album

Then Came The Reign

Though nominally a bluegrass group, Mobile, Alabama's DELTA REIGN brings folk, blues and western swing styles to bear on its music, originals and covers alike,on Calm Before the Storm, our new Album of the Week.

Reviews

Choogling On

Sagacious, well-traveled harp master Pierre Lacocque and his Chicago-based Mississippi Heat blues band offer Delta Bound, a thoroughly delightful hour of blues in various colors.

Reviews

Between Rock and a Traditional Place

Lisa Matassa's impressive EP Somebody's Baby is not for country traditionalist, but fans of contemporary arena-style mainstream country will find much to admire in the rock-fueled anthems, but there is evidence here of a sensitive singer-songwriter lurking in this impressive artist.

Reviews

Whither Passionate Kisses?

Boston-based Juliet and the Lonesome Romeos make a favorable impression on their debut album, No Regrets, by serving up pop-country with a bite. The long player shows Juliet Simmons Dinallo to be a songwriter with immense promise--and she can sell a song vocally too.

Spotlight Album

Of Dark Hearts and Lethal Consequences

The Earl Brothers are back with their dark-hearted bluegrass--like no other bluegrass known to humankind--on Outlaw Hillbilly. Our Album of the Week selection chronicles the Bay Area band's continuing crafting of one of the most unusual catalogues in contemporary music.

Reviews

Ready for the Long Haul

J.D. Crowe has retired, but his last incarnation of the New South soldiers on, quite impressively, as American Drive. The quartet's self-titled debut album shows it to be ready for the long haul.

Spotlight Album

An Atmospheric Take on Debussy’s Piano Music

Angela Hewitt's new album, Debussy: Solo PIano Music is being hailed in all quarters for bringing a fresh perspective to the evocative piano music of Debussy. One of today's leading Bach pianists. Ms. Hewitt enhances her reputation for refusing to be typecast.

Reviews

Talking Turkey and Radiating on the 88s

Mitch Woods and the Rocket 88s got the crowds in Turkey all shook up on the Efes Blues Festival tour in October 2010. A new CD/DVD set preserves a record of the boogie woogie flu and rockin' pneumonia the fellows infected the crowds with.