“I got a feelin’ this party’s just about to begin” sings Americana singer/songwriter Ryan Bingham in his world-weary, gravelly voice as a fiddle saws behind him chased by rocking piano chords. And on this, his sixth studio platter, there’s plenty of raw, tough, country rocking to back up that exhortation. Bingham emerged from semi-obscurity to practically household name status when in 2009 he provided the Oscar, Golden Globe and Critic’s Choice winning “The Weary Kind” tune for the critically acclaimed film Crazy Heart. That trifecta is pretty far in the rearview mirror these days, but Bingham never stopped working, delivering gutsy, unvarnished albums (now on his own Axster/Bingham imprint) overflowing with soulful sounds mixed into country, folk, rock…
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Jobi Riccio knows that while a quiet heart-to-heart can solve many problems, sometimes the heart needs a giant, all-caps billboard, especially when the world around that massive sign gets louder by the day. As each new track on her new album Face the Feeling (Yep Roc Records) unveils, Riccio faces another inescapable emotion as if it were a billboard screaming into view as she hurtles down the highway. And rather than turn away from their challenge, Riccio faces those uncomfortable moments with the thrill of self-discovery, reveling in growth and change as facts of life.
Throughout Face the Feeling, Riccio finds masterful balance between extremes, indulging in the light and the dark, the subtle and the direct, the ecstatic highs and the mournful lows.
The Asteroid No.4 return in 2026 with In Praise of Shadows, their thirteenth full length album and a statement release that reaffirms the band’s enduring place within the modern psychedelic underground.
In Praise of Shadows captures The Asteroid No.4 at their most focused and assured, leaning fully into the shoegaze sound for which they are best known. Swathed in multi layered guitars, dense reverb, and hypnotic melodic drift, the record reflects decades of refinement while retaining the immediacy and emotional pull that has defined the band since their earliest releases.
Formed in Philadelphia in the late 1990s and now based in the San Francisco Bay Area, The Asteroid No.4 have built a reputation…
For two decades, Tamikrest’s music has illuminated the sound, culture and conscience of the Kel Tamasheq (Touareg) people of the Sahara. Tamikrest means ‘connection’ or ‘union’ in Tamasheq, and the band have become one of the Kel Tamasheq’s most vital voices, raising awareness of their plight while channelling experiences of exile, loss and resistance. Their sixth studio album, Assikel, which means ‘voyage’ or ‘journey’, shows just how far the band have come.
…Tamikrest have always struck a balance between the calm and contemplative on one hand and the heavier, proggier sound on the other. Here, it’s all brought together under a particular atmosphere: analogue tape hiss, wide-open reverb and the inclusion of Paul Salvagnac’s…
A simplified take on Austin band Touch Girl Apple Blossom and their debut album Graceful is that they’re twee pop revivalists, unambiguously re-creating the softhearted melodies and yearning tones of the ‘90s rosters of K or Sarah Records as closely as possible in the late 2020s. There’s some credence to this assessment (the anything-but-high-definition analog tape production, the hand-stamped fanzine aesthetic of the album art, the band’s name being borrowed from a Beat Happening lyric), but it’s not the entire story. Opening track “The Springtime Reminds Me Of…” is a flurry of jangly guitars of all sorts, kicked off by the kind of sweetly sad and unfussy riff that might have shown up in a Tiger Trap song. Listening closer, there are more layers of…
Back to the Garden (A Tribute to Joni Mitchell), the excellent free CD accompanying the June 2026 issue of MOJO Magazine, is less a conventional tribute album and more a lovingly curated journey through the many worlds of Joni Mitchell. Bringing together artists from folk, jazz, soul, indie rock and Americana, the collection celebrates not only Mitchell’s songwriting genius, but also the remarkable flexibility of her compositions.
What makes the compilation so engaging is its refusal to play safe. Rather than simply recreating familiar classics, the artists reinterpret them with personality and emotional depth. Roberta Flack brings warmth and elegance, while Fleet Foxes add a dreamy, atmospheric quality that perfectly suits Mitchell’s introspective writing.
Athens, Georgia, guitarist Shane Parish isn’t one to shy away from a challenge (he transcribed the whole of Bill Orcutt’s Music for Four Guitars and plays as one of the Orcutt quartet), and his output is always something special, as 2024’s Repertoire, another album demanding some serious arrangement work, demonstrated. However, for his latest album, Autechre Guitar, he takes on the music of English electronic duo Autechre, an outfit known for its unconventional time signatures and experimental approach, which is a tricky task, to say the least.
Seemingly unwilling to disappoint his wife, who is a big fan of Autechre’s music, Shane set out to re-imagine and arrange ten of the band’s songs, all taken from their 1990s output.
Joyann Parker’s Life Lines embraces soul and grit over perfection. In place of overly polished production are genuinely heartfelt efforts, complete with powerful vocals from Parker. Simply, Life Lines is not an album you hear every day in modernity.
Parker started in music much later than many of her peers, which has profoundly influenced her career. Moreover, her success has been largely fan-driven, keeping her music genuine and earnest.
“I started doing this when I was older,” Parker recently told American Songwriter. “And so I felt like I had missed out on a lot. I thought, ‘I’ve got to fit in this box.’ I wasn’t very happy for a while; I don’t feel a lot of that pressure anymore.”
This raw, real approach is evident even in the simplest parts of this ’70s-tinged album,…
An indie rock group with a lo-fi, slowcore sensibility, Hiding Places formed in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, with several members of the original lineup serving as DJs at UNC’s student radio station. They then scattered across various states, occasionally meeting up in places like Athens, Georgia, and releasing a handful of EPs while shifting members of their rhythm section. Produced by new bassist Michael Matsakis, The Secret to Good Living marks the band’s full-length debut, Keeled Scales label debut, and their first release to be recorded together after they all relocated to New York.
A certain Southern aesthetic inhabits the album, however, at least after it opens with the dark, metal-tinged rocker “Dead Dove…
Critically acclaimed singer-songwriter and instrumentalist, Patrick Grossi, widely known as Active Child, released his new self-titled album, on Sony Music Masterworks. Co-produced with Alex Goose (Kali Uchis, Childish Gambino, Vince Staples), the album is Active Child’s most personal and introspective work yet, marked by a candid exploration of adulthood and fatherhood. A reflective portrait of his own journey, Grossi navigates the space between creative devotion and familial responsibility, exploring how love and quiet self-protection shape a life no longer driven by youthful idealism.
“Pursuing art feels less romantic and more chaotic as I age,” Active Child notes. “It demands a selfish, often solitary lifestyle…
Taking the title to musical heart (the album cover pointedly having him sporting different looks), after two albums mining country, reunited with producer David Mansfield who contributes, among other things, guitars, pedal steel, lap steel, celesta and Ondes martenot, alongside drummer Charley Drayton, bassist Tony Scherr and keyboard player Andy Burton, Teddy Thompson’s latest album, Never Be the Same, digs back into rockier seams for his first album of original material since 2020 and, with influences ranging from Crowded House and The Beatles to his father Richard Thompson, songs exploring love, change and the passage of time.
With John Grant on synthesizers, there are, though, still country ballad traces to album opener ‘Come Back’ with its major chords and…
“I know that the world will come apart / I hope that the pain is gonna stop,” sings Rostam on the penultimate track from American Stories, his third solo album and first record in five years. It’s an appropriate sentiment given the current global political climate, but the wording is also vague and conflicting. Is it pessimistic? Is it hopeful? Perhaps it’s pretty much all of our duelling emotions while we’re trapped doomscrolling.
In fact, the very concept behind American Stories could hardly be more timely. The former Vampire Weekend member (full name Rostam Batmanglij) was born in Washington DC with family roots in Tehran, and after mining classical influences for previous albums, has now set his sights on the most American of genres:…
As humans, we have an inherent desire to connect with those around us. These relationships shape our social interactions and influence us in ways we may not realize, each moment subconsciously ingrained in our decision-making. The people we decide to keep in our lives come with the weight of influence, but unfortunately, these wildly important relationships never hold the staying power they promise. We are all made up of the mistakes, triumphs, and losses that come with building a connection with someone, and how these lessons linger in future relationships. When someone decides to exit your life entirely, their presence takes on a ghostly aesthetic, leaving a void they once filled, and a rush to fill it ensues.
That moment of panic after your support…
The All-American Rejects are back with their first album in 14 years, and their first ever independent release. At the height of their success in the early 2000s, the band had an established place in the pop rock landscape, one foot in emo culture and the other heading into the mainstream, but halted before they inevitably became too radio ready. Their return follows a string of free backyard pop-up concerts, a symbol of their intention to get back to their roots, American kids making fun, high octane rock, and Sandbox is a clear continuation of this energy.
With a catalogue of timeless hits behind them and a ready-made audience, the band really could have continued in any direction they wanted, but obviously planned their resurgence…
Founded in 1961 by George Kooymans and Rinus Gerritsen, Dutch rock band Golden Earring (or Golden Earrings, until 1969) started off as a beat band, experimented as a psychedelic quartet and finally became a heavy rock group. Their ninth album Moontan (1973) – including their classic track Radar Love – hit the international album charts and is the band’s most successful album in the United States, being the only Golden Earring album to be certified Gold by the RIAA.
Golden Earring is the sixth, self-titled album that is also known as ‘Wall Of Dolls’ because of the cover photo. The record, released in September 1970, marks the debut of drummer Cesar Zuiderwijk with Golden Earring and is the first in a series of progressively oriented…
Bands are like the people in them; they tend to get set in their ways. But not Cleared. The sole fixed part of their method is that guitarist/electronic musician Michael Vallera (Luggage, Maar, numerous solo recordings and a swell duo with Lee Ranaldo) and drummer/electronic musician Steven Hess (RLYR, Haptic, Locrian, Slow Bell Trio) are both involved. They have the potential to like an instrumental rock combo and have often done so on previous recordings. But Lustres, their first for the Australian Room40 label, continues a process of ping-ponging material into diffusion.
One of the musicians collects, plays or synthesizes some audio, then sends it to the other. He works on it, adding and subtracting and atomizing the sound, then sends it back. The work gets…
Over the last 50 years Scotland has often been the centre of some of the most exciting things to happen to guitar music. Author Grant McPhee has put together this comprehensive 3 CD set which documents 1985 to 1999 when Scottish independent music was thriving. It’s released by the ever reliable Cherry Red and covers a range of scenes and styles. Following on from the beginning of the decade with the mighty Postcard Records label led the way with iconic Scottish guitar bands like Orange Juice, Josef K and Aztec Camera. The baton was passed on to many of the groups featured here.
Beginning with Jesus & Mary Chain’s, ‘You Trip Me Up’ we’re thrown right into 1985. Originally signed to Creation Records…
Whitehorse have returned to their folk-rock roots on their latest full-length record, All I Want Is All of It. The Canadian husband-and-wife team of Luke Doucet and Melissa McClellan recorded the album in a 19th-century farmhouse to capture the mood of past spirits in the ancient place.
Of course, only a New World denizen would consider a place built 200 years ago old. Its semi-rural setting on the other side of the tracks offers a haunting aural landscape. The musicians said the location functioned as the creative inspiration behind the new disc.
Whitehorse‘s 11 songs are purposely experimental and vary in style and tone. They range from the primitive rawness of a demo (“Lighthouse”) recorded on McClellan’s iPhone…
…Under Wraps: The Unwrapped Edition explores both Tull’s Under Wraps (1984) and Anderson’s debut as a solo artist, Walk Into Light (1983), via the kind of comprehensive presentation that fans of the series have learned to expect.
The impetus for bringing the albums together is their shared sound. Both albums deviated from the folk-rooted “classic rock” sound of the ‘70s to embrace a then-contemporary style with drum machines, synthesizers, and electronics. At the time, even the band members were split on Under Wraps; bassist Dave Pegg once opined that the outtakes from Tull’s previous album – one which pointed towards Under Wraps with its integration of electronics but still featured more traditional instrumentation, too – might have made…
Originally brought together in September 2015 to perform the Zorn Bagatelles, Julian Lage and Gyan Riley have become two of Zorn’s most trusted and soulful musical collaborators, having recorded over a dozen CDs of his compositions for acoustic guitars both in duo and in trio with Bill Frisell.
Seven Sonnets is their sixth CD together as a duo and the music is a lovely series of compositions referencing early music, minimalism, contemporary classical, soundtracks, folk, jazz, and more. Two of the world’s most accomplished and acclaimed guitar virtuosos perform a beautiful book of original music inspired by the Sonnets of William Shakespeare. Volume One of Zorn’s musical Sonnets contains some of his loveliest and most intimate creations.
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