// Category Archive for: Americana

Music Review: The Blind Boys Of Alabama, Spirit Of The Century

By Melissa Bratcher

The Blind Boys of Alabama have performed together for nearly seven decades and have recorded over 60 albums. Joining together as glee club singers at the Alabama Institute For the Negro Blind in 1939, founding members Jimmy Carter, George Scott, and Clarence Fountain (with newest member Joey Williams joining in 2001), The Blind Boys of Alabama make honest, American music, rooted deeply in gospel, focusing on the truly glorious way that their voices blend.

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Music Review: Those Pretty Wrongs, Those Pretty Wrongs

By Melissa Bratcher

The music that Those Pretty Wrongs makes is familiar in the best of ways. It’s sun-dappled melancholy, 1970s AM radio-friendly songs that soar with warm harmony and delicate guitar. It’s quiet power pop with heart, which makes sense if one looks at their pedigree.

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Music Review: Jimbo Mathus, Band Of Storms

By Melissa Bratcher

New music from Jimbo Mathus is always cause for celebration. The former (and soon to be current again) Squirrel Nut Zipper makes music that is deeply steeped in the South. It’s a melange of influences—gritty swamp rock with a hot hit of blues, a dash of gospel, bluegrass, and more than a little honky tonk—and it comes out sounding exactly right. His latest, a nine-song EP called Band Of Storms, is more of what makes Mathus great. He may wear his influences on his sleeve, but the sound that he has is pure Jimbo Mathus.

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Music Review: Dark Palms, Hoxbar Ghost Town

By Tim Murr

I have waited months to write this review. Why? Because I’ve had access to Dark Palms’ debut album, Hoxbar Ghost Town, since last year. I fell in love with this beast right away, but I couldn’t share it with anyone! No one could know the joy and energy I was devouring while waiting for it to officially drop. Now, friends, the time is yours, to join me on this journey into the weird, dark heart of this post-punk, Americana-goth adventure!

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Music Review: The Jayhawks, Paging Mr. Proust

By Melissa Bratcher

With their welcome return, Paging Mr. Proust, the Jayhawks have made an album that will stand the test of time. Packed with lovely melodies and sumptuously lush harmonies, but lacking the obvious twang of their previous outings, Paging Mr. Proust is essential. Frontman Gary Louris (joined by longtime Jayhawks Karen Grotberg, Marc Perlman, and Tim O’Reagan) has created a very literary, confident album that opens strong and never stops.

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Music Review: The Lumineers, Cleopatra

By Melissa Bratcher

After the runaway success of their self-titled debut, The Lumineers sound a bit disillusioned. Their newest, Cleopatra, is heavy. There are no radio-friendly, hand-clapping sing-alongs; instead there are thoughtful indie folk with songs of leaving those who tear you down, having dreams crushed and dying. Seriously, it’s heavy.

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Music Review: Robbie Fulks, Upland Stories

By Melissa Bratcher

There’s a strong vein of Southern literacy that thrums through Robbie Fulks’s Upland Stories. The characters in these songs tread the same ground as Hazel Motes or Rufus Follet. They tell their stories with graceful turns of phrase and through Fulks’s wonderful twangy tenor: sometimes high lonesome, sometimes quietly, just in your ear.

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Music Review: The Currys, West Of Here

By Melissa Bratcher

The Currys’ sophomore effort, West Of Here, is, as always, a family affair. The Currys are brothers Jimmy and Tommy Curry, and their cousin Galen. Together, they make easy, harmony-laden folky Americana. Their harmonies are incredibly lovely, close and fluid, and are a focal point for the group.

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Music Review: Grant-Lee Phillips, The Narrows

By Melissa Bratcher

It behooves every writer who will review Grant-Lee Phillips’ new album The Narrows to mention that he was Stars Hollow’s beloved Troubadour on Gilmore Girls, so I will also mention it. I will also mention that Gilmore Girls is being rebooted for Netflix (as most everyone with an Internet connection will know) and that Grant-Lee Phillips will be returning to sing songs on the street corners of Stars Hollow and annoy Taylor Dosey.

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Music Review: Wayfaring Strangers: Cosmic American Music

By Melissa Bratcher

You can always rely on Numero Group to unearth incredible, forgotten music. You know that music: the kind of stuff you pick up in a flea market because it costs a quarter and has a cover with a lady sporting huge hair and a necklace made of spoons. The kind of albums that were perhaps self-released or on the tiniest label. Hidden gems, for sure.

Numero’s newest compilation, Wayfaring Strangers: Cosmic American Music is a trip through the cut-out bins. Here are tracks that, despite not being breakthroughs for the artists, still have merit. It’s Americana, and it’s indie as anything. Maybe the artists weren’t signed to a big label. Maybe they made the record in one of those booths at a fair. Maybe they had a song that they really needed to record for serious reasons.

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