// Category Archive for: Americana

Music Review: Modern Mal, The Misanthrope Family Album

By Melissa Bratcher

Modern Mal is the meeting of a pair of Northern Michigan songwriters, Rachel Brooks and Brooks Robbins. It’s a little psychedelic, a little surfy, a bit garagey, sometimes folky, and it can all be covered by the umbrella of Americana, but perhaps a more Gothic strain.
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Music Review: Chris Milam, Kids These Days

By Melissa Bratcher

While the centerpiece of Chris Milam’s Kids These Days is a trio of breakup songs, focusing on before, during, and after a breakup, there’s so much more going on here. Milam has questions that he would like answered, memories he’d like to share. He also has the heart of a philosopher. Kids These Days could easily fall under the catch=all of Americana, but it’s more than just that. It’s gritty guitars and incredibly tasteful strings, and Milam’s versatile voice that easily sweeps to an elegant falsetto from ragged emotion.
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Music Review: The Warden, L-I-V-I-N

By Melissa Bratcher

Only The Warden could change my mind about “Kokomo.” To refresh your memory, The Warden is Ward Richmond, an East Dallas hellraiser who sings about drinking and regretting, honky-tonking and shenanigans, and he does it with style and aplomb. On his welcome return, L-I-V-I-N, The Warden dips into a variety of genres that are all filtered through his particularly Texas vibe.
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Music Review: The Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band, Front Porch Sessions

By Melissa Bratcher

Unless Reverend Peyton and his Big Damn Band comes to your house and plays a set on your porch (or perhaps you end up on his front porch),  Front Porch Sessions  is as close as you’ll get to that specific pleasure. It’s an organic, charmingly effective album that mixes classic blues songs with The Rev’s originals. It’s thrillingly alive and a fine introduction for those who haven’t been fortunate enough to make The Rev’s (and his Big Damn Band) acquaintance yet.
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Music Review: Old 97’s, Graveyard Whistling

By Melissa Bratcher

There’s something enormously comforting about a new Old 97’s album. You know what it will sound like: giant, resonant guitar, Rhett Miller’s clever lyrics and busted yelp, a chugging beat. Songs to sing along with. There have been the barest of forays into other sorts of music, influences splashed on their otherwise perfect template, but if you can say one thing about Old 97’s it is this: they are consistent.
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Music Review: Levi Petree, It’s Country

By Melissa Bratcher

Levi Petree’s debut album is called It’s Country, but it isn’t. It’s a delicious melange of things that might fit neatly under the Americana umbrella: pastoral balladry, kick-ass stompers, folksy sunniness, and more than a little punk-rock snarl. They come together to make a debut that is strong and assured, with loads of personality.
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Music Review: Son Volt, Notes Of Blue

By Melissa Bratcher

The latest Son Volt album, Notes Of Blue, may just be precisely the album that will put your anxious brain at ease. It’s inspired by Nick Drake, but it’s also inspired by Mississippi Fred McDowell and Skip James. While the influences of the latter are more easily evident, Son Volt’s leader Jay Farrar says he was “aiming for where blues and folk and country converge.” He’s certainly hit his mark.
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Music Review: Brigitte DeMeyer and Will Kimbrough, Mockingbird Soul

By Melissa Bratcher

Brigitte DeMeyer and Will Kimbrough have written songs, recorded, and toured together for years, but with their album Mockingbird Soul, they are putting both their names on the collaboration. And Mockingbird Soul is a true partnership, one that is evident in their instinctive harmonies, their quietly literary lyrics, and the grace of their musicianship. It’s a beauty of an album.
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Music Review: Don Rich and the Buckaroos, Guitar Pickin’ Man

By Melissa Bratcher

In the pantheon of great guitarists, there are ones that come easily to mind: Jimmy Page, Jimi Hendrix, Chuck Berry, Jeff Beck, B.B. King. I’d add the Buckaroos’ Don Rich to that list. His style is immediately recognizable, and without his sonic experimentation, Buck Owens’s catalog would lack a certain verve. While Owens was always happy to dip a toe in the rock side, Don Rich’s playing upped the ante. His fuzzed-out guitar work on “Who’s Gonna Mow Your Grass?” is as fresh and timely as anything recorded in 1969, and viscerally satisfying. This is pretty remarkable for someone who was hired to play fiddle.
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Music Review: Shovels & Rope, Little Seeds

By Melissa Bratcher

The last time we checked in with Shovels & Rope, they had released Busted Jukebox Vol. 1, a collection of covers and collaborations. That was in 2015. Now, they have followed up with Little Seeds, an intimate, confessional return to form. It’s breathtaking in its honesty, chronicling some life-altering events in Cary Ann Hearst and Michael Trent’s lives.
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