As if she were with a purr Puss-in-Boots-in-Boa, Claire O. is like peevish bees a supporter and cavorter of cross-pollination in all fields, be they corn, clover or come on over, and yet her brow is plowed by the decision for revision so-so like an unborn electron prevalent in these days of future passed. Everyone [...]

Tommy Alverson has nurtured honky-tonk talent in Texas for decades, helping young artists find their voices and bringing vintage performers back to the stage for new audiences. This new disc finds Alverson sharing Fender/fiddle/steel drenched stone cold country with Leon Rausch, Johnny Bush, Ray Wylie Hubbard, Rusty Weir, Mike Crow and others. But this ain’t [...]

Sure, her 23-year-old voice is still a tad thin in spots, and like many youthful (and elderly) greats, she has a tendency to sometimes overemote when more finesse would do. But if there’s a more promising hard-country singer on the horizon than Amber Digby, I’ve been kept in the dark.
Lord knows she has the pedigree. [...]

Polecat Creek features Laurelyn Dossett and Kari Sickenberger, two singer-songwriters from North Carolina who have pooled their talents, ostensibly because their wonderful harmonies bring out more in their songs than each of their own individual voices could. Although the women straddle the fence between bluegrass and old-time (leaning more toward the latter), there are also [...]

Named after the slogan for Pearl Beer, Dallas band Eleven Hundred Springs does an admirable job of combining country rock, classic country and outlaw country with a more contemporary and commercial country sound. Although Bandwagon occasionally suffers from clichéd or dumb lyrics (notably on “If I Was A Candle” and “Thunderbird Will Do Just Fine”), [...]

My prediction is that, above all else, two specific things about this debut will make the most immediate impact on listeners. First, with trips to North Virginia, New England, Las Vegas, Abilene, Corinth, Tennessee, and Carolina, Presenting The Great Unknowns puts on more miles than a record of truck driving songs. (Just a theory, but [...]

This bunch from Columbus, Ohio, has all the familiar hallmarks — an agreeably scruffy sound, a mile-wide blue-collar populist streak, and the kind of persistent hunger that has driven many a like-minded band down this particular path: the Replacements, Uncle Tupelo, Drive-By Truckers. In fact, they’re third-generation alt-country rockers, having taken their cues from, among [...]

The first sound on Dark Snack is a screeching electric guitar, which would be Melissa Swingle’s way of declaring her intentions right up-front: After five albums of gothic alt-country with Trailer Bride, Swingle is ready to let the feedback fly. Not that she has completely forsaken her former band’s eccentricities. Dark Snack sounds southern, rural [...]

So you think you know Low, that nice indie-rock trio from Duluth, Minnesota, that play as slowly and softly as possible, right?
Wrong. Low’s sound has been evolving, ever so subtly, since their 1994 minimalist masterpiece, I Could Live In Hope, which firmly established them at the forefront of the so-called “slowcore” bands. But their [...]