In Jon Langford’s spooky paintings, country music stars of a lost era gaze into space glazed with joy, as if frozen in a tomb buried by neglect and Shania Twain’s navel. American decay is always on Langford’s mind, yet even as he and others have taken potshots for punchlines, his new album is tilted head [...]

This tribute to the late Elliott Smith succeeds because his songs are well-constructed, emotionally resonant numbers that lend themselves to a range of musical acts. Some rise to the occasion; others are elevated by simply getting in the boat and allowing the current of Smith’s river to carry them. The parallel theme here is that [...]

Speaking to Jason Gross for a 1997 Perfect Sound Forever interview, John Fahey dismissed his early work as “cosmic sentimentalism.” As it turns out, this was a fairly accurate summation of Fahey’s art. The guitarist’s ambiguous, open-ended country-blues extrapolations did often skirt the cosmic and the sentimental. Yet Fahey’s music cast an impassive gaze at [...]

Among the connective threads between the inscrutable Americana of Will Oldham and the avant instrumentals of Tortoise is that each confounds conventional notions of artistic identity and performing persona. Thus, this collaboration represents a logically illogical progression for both, as Bonnie “Prince” Billy teams with Chicago’s post-rock vanguard on a collection of covers, steeped in [...]

For you alt-country Wilco types who cringed when Jeff Tweedy discovered “noise,” Loose Fur, the experimental side project, is not for you. “Boo hoo,” he sings to you on this trio’s second album, featuring Wilco drummer Glenn Kotche and multi-instrumental savant Jim O’Rourke. All three share songwriting duties on these ten songs, which tend to [...]

Ten years, eight albums, three chords, and one truth: that music, as the Lovin’ Spoonful put it, can free your soul. Centro-matic by the numbers? Raw stats rarely do justice to artists — did we mention the hundreds of songs leader Will Johnson has unspooled via this Texas group and his solo and side projects? [...]

Josh Turner’s entry point into recognition, the 2003 hit “Long Black Train”, was a single so striking in its lean hard country sound, so born of tradition and specific in its imagery — and, with its steady rhythm and his riveting deep baritone, so impossible to get out of your head — that comparisons were [...]

Plenty of “American Idol” aspirants can sustain stratospheric notes of seemingly endless duration. But acts who truly soar and fashion songs so sweeping that the listener feels they may get carried away in an updraft? Scarce. Seattle’s Band Of Horses is one such rarity. They could be called Band Of Winged Horses. No, wait…a horse [...]

It’s no surprise to see Steve Wynn & the Miracle 3 huddled mere inches apart on the inside front cover of their new album. This band is coiled tightly together, leaving little space to breathe within their music. Wynn has come up with a new set of songs about obsession, edginess, pain and the fear [...]

With his memoirs, short-story collection and autobiographical one-man shows, Ray Davies has hardly lacked for personal projects as the Kinks have wound down and out. But not counting an album made from the show, this is his first full-length album away from the band and his battling brother Dave (who, if you’re keeping score, released [...]