2008: In Review — index:January 2: See the results of our annual year-end critics’ pollDecember 31: Colm Mac Con Iomaire, The Hare’s Corner (by Peter Blackstock)December 30: Como Now: The Voices Of Panola Co., Misissippi (by Grant Alden)December 29: Ersi Arvizu, Friend For Life (by John Morthland)December 28: Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan, Sunday At [...]

If the name’s familiar, you most likely are steeped in mid-1980s music trivia. Digney Fignus had a modest MTV hit in 1984 called “The Girl With The Curious Hand” (beating out author David Foster Wallace’s short-story collection with its similar title by a few years). This new record has nothing to do with that, as [...]

Technically speaking, Vancouver’s Rodney DeCroo is a solo artist, but the strength of Mockingbird Bible is the team he’s assembled around him. Apart from Be Good Tanyas chanteuse Samantha Parton, most of his backing players aren’t exactly household names in America or, for that matter, in most of their native Canada.
On the Great White North’s [...]

Trace Adkins’ recent publicity moves – a contrarian (if predictable) book, appearances on Celebrity Apprentice, and a cameo bit on The Young And The Restless – are par for the course for today’s mainstream acts. It’s not that Adkins requires the hype. His modern traditionalism, (mostly) free of warmed-over rock cliches, offers established ideas, moods [...]

One of the categories I have in my mega-CD changer – it’s a 400-CD jukebox – is for holiday music. I have about 20 discs in there that I listen to on shuffle-play, usually when company is here, from Thanksgiving to New Year’s Day. Every November, I take out the ones I’m tired of, and [...]