Low is trapped. Because the trio is still defined by its slow, spare, stately style of a decade ago, each of its last five discs has been called a departure. In truth, Low’s sound never underwent a radical shift. As guitarist Alan Sparhawk, drummer Mimi Parker and bassist Zak Sally grew more confident, their approach [...]

Nostalgia, like beer goggles, has a powerful distorting effect: Who wasn’t a little hipper, more fun and better-looking in the halcyon haze of our embellished memories? Nobody, that’s who. So consider this a caveat: Maybe Golden Smog wasn’t really all that great. They were just a bunch of guys goofing off, swapping songs and mugging. [...]

Jon Langford and Richard Buckner aren’t such polar opposites as, say, Jay-Z and the Beatles, but this joint venture has some of the same left-field appeal of an unexpected pop mash-up: It’s most interesting for the ways in which each player’s talents connect, collide, or combine to create something unexpected or altogether new. The more [...]

Minneapolis folk-rockers Bellwether say they haven’t split, preferring instead the term “hiatus”. Regardless, it’s hard not to hear Seven And Six as their last gasp. Recorded nearly two years ago and self-released as an afterthought, the band’s fourth disc finds Eric Luoma’s wistful, sleepy tenor set mostly to downtempo tunes, the mellow mood recalling the [...]

Richard Buckner’s finest albums, 1997′s Devotion + Doubt and its 1998 follow-up Since, arose from similar circumstances: He holed up alone to write the songs, then immersed himself with musicians from a particular local scene to record them. The pattern is repeated on the new Dents And Shells, this time not with Tucson musicians (as [...]