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: Haircut 100, Pelican West

By Melissa Bratcher

It is a well-known, scientific fact that Haircut 100’s debut album, Pelican West, is the happiest album that ever existed (I just made that up, but hear me out). It’s full to the brim with sunny melodies, bold bursts of brass, and a weird but genius marriage of tropicalia and funk, with a dash of jazz thrown in. It’s a stunner of a debut, a fully-formed, exactly perfect right out of the gate album. It’s crushing, then, that by the time Haircut 100 returned to the studio to record a followup, the band was in tatters. Lead singer Nick Heyward had one foot out the door on his way to a solo career. Haircut 100 soldiered on, but it just wasn’t the same.

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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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Music Review: Marc Stone, Poison & Medicine

By Melissa Bratcher

Though he was born in New York, Marc Stone’s adopted home of New Orleans is an undeniable presence in his album, Poison & Medicine. It’s there in the swampy groove of the opener, “I Tried.” It’s there in the killer horns of “When You’re Bad.” It’s there in Stone’s wondrous slide guitar work. It certainly doesn’t hurt that for the past two decades, Marc Stone has been backing a who’s who of seminal NOLA artists like Ernie K-Doe, Marcia Ball, Rockin’ Dopsie, and Terrance Simien, as well as hosting WWOZ’s “Soul Serenade” (incidentally, you can listen to WWOZ streaming on the Internet, and you should. All the time. And send them money at pledge drive time).

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Music Review: La Sera, Music For Listening To Music To

By Melissa Bratcher

La Sera is back and things have changed. Their newest, Music For Listening To Music To, is a kinder, gentler album than their last effort, 2014’s wonderful Hour Of The Dawn. It lacks the bite of Hour Of The Dawn, but perhaps that’s the result of front woman Katy Goodman being newly married (to guitarist/cowriter/band mate Todd Wisenbaker) and in lurve and all of that. The songs are less challenging and not as confrontational. That’s unfortunate.

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Music Review: Bill Carter, Innocent Victims & Evil Companions

By Melissa Bratcher

Texas-based Bill Carter may be best known for co-writing Stevie Ray Vaughan’s biggest hit, “Crossfire.” You may also know him from “Anything Made of Paper,” written for the West Memphis Three’s Damien Echols, and featured in the documentary West Of Memphis. Or you might know him as a member of the band P, a collaboration with Butthole Surfers’ Gibby Haynes, Johnny Depp, and Sal Jenco. With his newest album, Innocent Victims & Evil Companions, you’ll know him as a songwriter with poetic lyrics, a singer with a fabulous ragged tenor, and the master of fine tunes.

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Music Review: Emitt Rhodes, Rainbow Ends

By Melissa Bratcher

Where do we begin with Emitt Rhodes? He began gaining notoriety as the leader of 1960s band the Merry Go Round, who had the hits “Live” and “You’re A Very Lovely Woman.” In 1971, he released his critically acclaimed eponymous debut and the reputation as a “one-man Beatles,” so pure were his power pop hooks (and the fact that he wrote, produced, and recorded his album in his studio). He released Farewell To Paradise in 1973 and then… radio silence. Bad deals, shady contracts, it’s not a new story.

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Music Review: Henry Wagons, After What I Did Last Night

By Melissa Bratcher

If Nick Cave had taken his Johnny Cash obsession even further, he might have been Henry Wagons. Henry Wagons, too, is from Australia, and bears more than a passing vocal resemblance to Mr. Cave. Henry Wagons has a rumbly, rich baritone voice, and a penchant for country-rock. But Henry Wagons has a wicked sense of humor to his lyrics as well as a sometimes surprising heartfelt bent.

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Music Review: JD Souther, Home By Dawn

By Melissa Bratcher

The third of Omnivore’s expanded reissues of JD Souther’s criminally overlooked solo albums, Home By Dawn, is an unusual album. The things that make his previous albums, John David Souther and Black Rose work are there: his incredible lyricism, gift for melody, and warm vocals. These things have to share space with a particularly 1980s sounding production. Songs are slicker than they need be, and while the writing is, as always, brilliant, they suffer. A bit. But keep in mind, this is JD Souther we’re talking about, and he’s got this.

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Music Review: Dressy Bessy, Kingsized

By Melissa Bratcher

After a seven-year hiatus, Denver-based Dressy Bessy have returned with the sugary popified, jittery delicious Kingsized. Joined by a who’s who of the what-used-to-be-college-radio stalwarts (but is surely called something else now), Kingsized is a return to form with an added grittiness. Guitars are fuzzy and heavy, providing a smart counterpoint to meringue light, sunshiny melodies and Tammy Ealom’s distinctive vocals (think: the sound of the Shangri-La’s smoking under the bleachers with the Slits).

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