The Kings of Leon are the sons of a preacher and their debut album, Youth and Young Manhood, is their hymnal of rock & roll redemption. The brothers (and one cousin) Followill work with producer Ethan Johns for a rattling country-rock hootenanny, basically reviving the deep-fried Southern rock found on the band's first EP, Holy Roller Novocaine. ...
VH1's Save the Music Foundation and Nettwerk came together in fall 2002 to support music education around North America. The various-artists collection For the Kids is a delightful way to do it. The 16-track compilation features an assorted mix of classic children's songs and fresh originals sung by some of modern rock's finest artists. For the ...
Neko Case looks formidable on the cover of Middle Cyclone, brandishing a sword in one hand while crouching low on a muscle car's hood. It's mostly camp, of course -- the sort of superwoman image Quentin Tarantino might have used for Death Proof's ad campaign -- but it also draws contrast with the songwriter's previous albums, two of which featured ...
After looking at the cover of Gillian Welch's debut album, Revival, and listening to the first two cuts, "Orphan Girl" and "Annabelle," you'd be tempted to imagine that Welch somehow stumbled into a time machine after cutting some tunes at the 1927 Bristol, TN, sessions and was transported to a recording studio in Los Angeles in 1996, where T-Bone ...
Who says you can't make a great record in one day -- or night, as the case may be? The Trinity Session was recorded in one night using one microphone, a DAT recorder, and the wonderful acoustics of the Holy Trinity in Toronto. Interestingly, it's the album that broke the Cowboy Junkies in the United States for their version of "Sweet Jane," which ...
Don't take the title of John Mayer's Heavier Things literally. Mayer offers nothing heavy on the follow-up to his breakthrough hit, Room for Squares -- nothing heavy in the music and nothing heavy in the lyrics. No, Mayer is smooth, slick, and streamlined on his second or third album (it all depends if you count his 1999 debut, Inside Wants Out, ...
Since Pontiac, Lyle Lovett has been experimenting with different sounds, whether it was the big band posturing of Lyle Lovett and His Large Band, the gospel overtones of Joshua Judges Ruth, or the '70s singer/songwriter flourishes of I Love Everybody. With The Road to Ensenada, he hunkers down and produces his most straightforward album since ...
While Lyle Lovett's self-titled debut album made it clear he was one the most gifted and idiosyncratic talents to emerge in country music in the 1980s, his follow-up, 1987's Pontiac, took the strengths of his first disc and refined them, and the result was a set whose sound and feel more accurately reflected Lovett's musical personality. While ...
Jeff Tweedy once blazed the trail for the American rock underground's embrace of its country and folk roots, but as the decade draws to its close he's spearheading the return of classic pop; simply put, what once were fiddles on Wilco records are now violins -- the same instrument, to be sure, but viewed with a radical shift in perception and ...
In the 22 months that passed between the release of Rosanne Cash's wonderfully articulated Rules of Travel and Black Cadillac, she became an orphan. She lost her stepmother, June Carter Cash, in May of 2003; her father, Johnny, passed away in September of that same year; and in May of 2005, her mother, Vivian Liberto Cash Distin, left this world ...
Neko Case hasn't had much need to prove her credentials as a major artist since making her solo debut with 1997's The Virginian, but she's been refining her skills in the recording studio on each subsequent release, and with 2006's Fox Confessor Brings the Flood she's fashioned an album that can cautiously be called a masterpiece. As always, Case ...
"Open up your eyes, don't let your mind tell the story now," reverberates the chorus of Tonic's feverish radio hit single. For this group, it meant bringing a message of openheartedness and vitality to its listening fan base. Certainly, Tonic's sounds can be linked to many of the heavy-hitting alternative rock groups during their heyday in the mid ...
Patty Griffin's raucous second album Flaming Red was a shocking departure from the critically noticed Living with Ghosts. It placed solid, searing rock & roll and big bad drumbeat up against the still developing authority of her voice. On Impossible Dream, she married country and her own brand of gospel in an intimate and musically seductive mix. ...
The title of West reflects the change in Lucinda Williams' life as she moved to Los Angeles. It also reflects what had been left behind. Williams is nothing if not a purely confessional songwriter. She continually walks in the shadowlands to bring out what is both most personal yet universal in her work, to communicate to listeners directly and ...
For those who weren't convinced by Z's left-hand turns, Evil Urges cements My Morning Jacket's transformation from grizzled, reverb-drenched classic rockers to experimental, genre-bending innovators. There's always been a slight disconnect between the band's image and sound; frontman Jim James once howled his melodies behind curtains of long hair ...
The Bacon Brothers' debut Forosoco could have been (and was) seen as a novelty item by some observers, since it featured actor Kevin Bacon and his brother, Michael. That was merely short-sightedness, since it was a solid Americana album. Its sequel, Getting There, is even better, filled with natural musical performances and strong songs. ...
While many considered Car Wheels on a Gravel Road and Essence as definitive statements of arrival for Lucinda Williams as a pop star, she "arrived" creatively with her self-titled album in 1984 and opened up a further world of possibilities with Sweet Old World. The latter two records merely cemented a reputation that was well-deserved from the ...
It isn't surprising that Lucinda Williams' level of craft takes time to assemble, but the six-year wait between Sweet Old World and its 1998 follow-up, Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, still raised eyebrows. The delay stemmed both from label difficulties and Williams' meticulous perfectionism, the latter reportedly over a too-produced sound and her ...
In 1999, Wilco willingly abdicated their position as one of the leading acts in the alt-country movement to dive head-first into the challenging waters of experimental pop with their album Summerteeth, and moved even further away from their rootsy origins with Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and A Ghost Is Born, winning the group a new and enthusiastic ...
1997's Strangers Almanac was Whiskeytown's major-label debut and the album that first introduced Ryan Adams to a wide audience, but at the same time it marked the beginning of the end for the group. When Whiskeytown went into the studio to record Strangers Almanac, the band had undergone the first of what would become a long line of personnel ...
A mixture of B-sides, outtakes, live tracks, and newly recorded songs, No Alternative was the most successful benefit album of 1993, both commercially and artistically. Exceptional songs from Nirvana, Bob Mould, Urge Overkill, Smashing Pumpkins, American Music Club, and Pavement enhance fine outtakes from Buffalo Tom and Matthew Sweet, strengthen ...
Jay Farrar always provided the darkest, grittiest moments in Uncle Tupelo, so it comes as no surprise that Son Volt is a rawer record than A.M., the first album by Wilco, a band led by his former partner Jeff Tweedy. Throughout Son Volt's debut, Trace, the group reworks classic honky tonk and rock & roll, adding a desperate, determined edge to ...
Steeped in a kettle of Americana or alt country, Lori McKenna should rank up there with quality performers such as Lucinda Williams, Julie Miller, Kathleen Edwards, and Mary Alice Wood. "Bible Song," which sports a guest appearance by Buddy Miller, gives a perfect example of the singer knowing what she wants and getting it right: hints of twang, ...
The Little Willies could be called a supergroup if they had more than one star in their lineup. Instead, the quintet is a group of five New York musicians -- highlighted by pianist/vocalist Norah Jones, but also featuring her regular bassist Lee Alexander, guitarist/vocalist Richard Julian, guitarist Jim Campilongo, and drummer Dan Rieser -- who ...
As the opening track, "Agony Wagon," shuffles out of the starting blocks like some sort of hillbilly klezmer chestnut, complete with violin and clarinet, you can't help but wonder if the Legendary Shack Shakers have done a 180 for their second album, 2004's Believe. Further research confirms this isn't quite the case, but Believe does find this ...
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