All siblings have their differences, even twins. Consider twin brothers Mark and Michael Holland, who have taken divergent paths since their former band, Jennyanykind, dissolved in 2003. As Jule Brown, Mark still makes mystic, blues-toned roots-rock that’s a logical extension of Jennyanykind. But Michael has pursued a folksier course on his three solo albums, including [...]

Jon Shain’s voice is the aural equivalent of a sly nod and a wink. Your initial response might be to wonder if he’s putting you on with his ramblin’-folksinger persona — but then you notice how good a guitar player he is, and that you’re humming along. Coming off an informal apprenticeship with Fairport Convention [...]

Had he come along in 1970, Jens Lekman would have been covering Jimmy Webb songs and finding a way to make them even more perverse (I’m thinking “MacArthur Park” here). Today, Lekman perfectly fits a niche for those who favor left-field drama with their pop. Combine the writerly tendencies of Magnetic Fields’ Stephin Merritt with [...]

Meshell Ndegeocello has never been one to make things easy, either for herself or her listeners, and that dynamic applies to her seventh album. The World Has Made Me The Man Of My Dreams opens on a puzzling note with “Haditha”, 90 seconds of end-times speechifying by Muslim scholar Hamza Yusuf (a not-very-interesting spiel few [...]

In recent years, Englishman Martin Stephenson has become something like a musical Civil War re-enactor. It’s a destination one never would have predicted for him, based on his initial impression with the 1980s-vintage postpunk band the Daintees. But Stephenson’s heart seems to be in Appalachia nowadays, especially the North Carolina mountain country that produced Doc [...]

BAR BAND (compound noun) — A workmanlike, blue-collar musical assemblage most often comprised of four players (usually male) wielding, in order of importance, guitar, drums, vocals, bass (and sometimes but not often, keyboards). Frequently cited reference points include the Rolling Stones, Small Faces, Chuck Berry, Crazy Horse, and other acts working in guitar-based four-four blues-derived [...]

Ben Lee is easy to find annoying — a child of alt-rock privilege who’s been moving in the rarefied world of Beastie Boys and actress girlfriends since he was a teenager. Put the gossip-column stuff aside and just consider Lee’s music, however, and it takes real effort to dislike him. He’s never made either a [...]