From northern California, Linda Perhacs recorded one album for the Kapp label and promptly vanished into obscurity. This was perhaps inevitable, given the proliferation of singer-songwriters in 1970, when Parallelograms appeared. Perhacs was an inspired amateur: she was a dental hygienist who met the record’s producer, Leonard Rosenman, through her work. A television and movie [...]

Good old southern pantheism has rarely been as catchy, drowsy and tuneful as the best moments on Jim White’s 2007 disc Transnormal Skiperoo. If “Blindly We Go” slouched and seduced in the manner of fellow southern obsessives Lambchop, the song seemed more a triumph of texture than a statement of intent. Still, White has a [...]

Nimrod Workman’s astounding autobiographical song “42 Years” details a life spent in the coal mines of West Virginia and as a union activist, and stands as the most compelling performance on I Want To Go Where Things Are Beautiful. The first release from the Louisville, Kentucky, label Twos & Fews, I Want To Go was [...]

Temporary People takes loss as its subject, and anyone who’s ever fallen passionately in love will recognize its mixture of ecstasy, terror, uncertainty and detachment in the face of big, unfashionable emotions. Joseph Arthur renders these dozen songs subtly, but the album’s achievement rests in the Brooklyn songwriter’s inspired use of the same old rock [...]

Charlie Louvin’s phlegmy, tobacco-stained voice threatened to fade away amid the recording of his self-titled album of last year, but producer Mark Nevers found a calm, folkish context for the great country singer’s poker-faced demeanor and old man’s croak. Even with the likes of Marty Stuart and Elvis Costello pitching in, that album didn’t play [...]