There is a serenity, a stillness, in Lucy Kaplansky’s work that almost deflects attention; it’s a quality that may have contributed to her being overlooked in the AOR/post-folk world of Mary Chapin Carpenter, Shawn Colvin, et al. On her sixth solo outing since 1994, Kaplansky is joined by a core group of string wizards (Larry [...]

Sarah Shannon earned a reputation for her striking vocals in her days with 1990s indie-rockers Velocity Girl. On her second solo album, Shannon pushes further away from her rock past with a memorable collection of light and breezy adult pop. The influence of Burt Bacharach’s distinctive compositional style is evident throughout as her gorgeous vocals [...]

Grand Forks features Great Flood songs set to Dust Bowl music with a vaporously angelic voice hovering above it all. Devastation, struggle, survival, tenacity and optimism all battle it out on this gritty collection of songs chronicling the 1997 Red River flood that washed out 90 percent of downtown Grand Forks and displaced 10 percent [...]

It wouldn’t take the “Perfect World” Jon Byrd sings about with such wistful, regretful finesse on this disc for more people to know him as the terrifically accomplished, versatile country singer he is — just one reasonably open to fresh names who are not brand new kids on the block. A veteran of the [...]

Scottish wunderkind Roddy Hart has the heart and soul of a Nebraska farm hand. Tough, sentimental and straightforward, the songs collected on Bookmarks, his surprising debut, bear all the hallmarks of classic Americana. Hart’s big-eyed, yearning prose and wide-open sound goes well with Springsteen and Earle, two obvious influences; his supporting cast here includes such [...]

As stated by the title of their second full-length, the Besnard Lakes have indeed been something of a dark horse on the Montreal music scene. While the Arcade Fire, Stars, and Wolf Parade have been embraced as genuine indie-rock royalty, this collective’s core duo of Olga Goreas and Jace Lasek toil in relative obscurity. That’ll [...]