This trio’s Lost John Dean was one of 2006′s finest releases, a spare, wonderfully constructed collection of original numbers and one traditional tune. A friend of mine who heard the album referred to their jagged, rough-hewn primitivism as “snake music,” which strikes me as an apt term. The pattern here is much as before: Kieran [...]

No, this is not a song cycle about the Nixon White House. That’s the traditional, elusive Long John/Lost John “from Bowling Green,” bearing a last name in this version (but no long harmonica solo). The “long gone/lone gone/lost John” verbal incantation of that very old song’s magic is also representative of this record’s essence. This [...]

This album opens with the kind of prickly, slow-motion banjo that was a Dock Boggs specialty. Then comes Kieran Kane’s tenor vocal, sounding just as weary and ancient, declaring, “You can’t save everybody; everybody don’t want to be saved.” This is the kind of downbeat observation that no one wants to hear because it’s so [...]

The most surprising thing about Kevin Welch’s new disc is the list of his bandmates: Frank Marstokk, Fredrick Damsgaard, Gustaf Ljunggren, Frank Pantoppidan. He doesn’t call them the Danes for nothing. The album was partly recorded in Denmark, and it sounds like the trip did Welch good. Millionaire isn’t a break with his past, but [...]

These two tunesmiths from the Dead Reckoning pool are about equidistant from whatever the hell the “mainstream” is — Kane’s an unrepentant smoothie with a Don Williams jones who busted through with the “New Country” O’Kanes in the late-’80s, while Oklahoma-raised Welch scrapes up two panhandles’ worth of dry-gulch tale-spinnin’. They’re both fine, evocative singers, [...]

Kevin Welch is one of the most underappreciated songwriters of the ’90s. He possesses an indelible talent for getting to the heart of whatever subject he chooses to cover. With a keen eye for the fine details of life and a wide palette of musical styles, he has compiled an enviable catalog of superb melodies [...]