Soul music. With its categories and subcategories – from northern and neo to country and deep – it can be a tough concept to pin down. You might want to rely on a variation of that classic method for identifying porn: you know it when you hear it. On the first half of this assured [...]

There’s something sleight-of-hand-ish about Slaid Cleaves’ new CD. While thematically and even in mood, the songs reflect the album’s dour title, it’s impossible to listen to these tracks and not feel a sense of uplift and hope. Part of that optimism stems from Cleaves’ voice, a boyish, casual, slightly scuffed tenor that belies the Austin [...]

The King Wilkie of 2009 is not the same King Wilkie that heartened fans of traditional bluegrass with their youthful prowess five years ago. Nor is it the same King Wilkie that offered weighty, polished acoustic fare even a couple years back. No, this is, quite literally, a different band. Gone is most of the [...]

Eilen Jewell can brood with the best of them. As she pushes forth her way-down-but-not-quite-out tunes on Sea Of Tears, her third album, you can just about feel the scar tissue that has built up around her heart. You can almost see the fog rolling in around her. Jewell evokes the same knowingly dolorous spirit [...]

It’s been nearly 40 years since Jesse Winchester released his first album, a spare and loose-limbed masterpiece right down to the gaunt cover shot of the exiled Winchester giving the camera a haunted stare. Looking at that picture and hearing that record’s anguished songs of pained longing on, it was hard to imagine that Winchester [...]

At first, Webb Wilder seemed like a novelty act. He wore the glasses and the suits, he had that basso profundo vocal trick, and his songs were a bit nonsensical. But seeing him perform live made it obvious that this was a man steeped in the traditions of rock, country and soul, and that he [...]

In an illustrious recording career spanning some five decades – as an artist, songwriter, arranger, producer – Allen Toussaint has never fronted a project anything like this. Containing only one vocal track, his latest collaboration with producer Joe Henry spotlights Toussaint’s bluesy elegance as a piano player. And in doing so, it leapfrogs over his [...]

After three studio albums plus a live disc on Sugar Hill, Scott Miller embraces the full-on indie way forward with For Crying Out Loud – but without any dramatic changes to his musical approach. Fans of his previous records under the banner of Scott Miller & the Commonwealth, as well as his 1990s efforts as [...]