North Carolina scenesters know Pat O’Connell: Prior to relocating to Massachusetts, he helmed Durham roots-pop combo the Flying Pigs, additionally collaborating with members of H-Bombs, the Woods and Flat Duo Jets. Now based near Cape Cod, he’s part of the extended NRBQ, Incredible Casuals and Chandler Travis clans. For his third solo album Careful, he’s [...]

It was a revolt against the revolting: Punk rock arose in the mid ’70s because we were up to our waders in soggy Pop Lite singer-songwriterdom — Seals & Crofts, America, Bread, et al. Thirty years later, everything old is new again, and unfortunately, Pop Lite is back too — legions of fey strummers ‘n’ [...]

Tanya Donelly has an astonishing set of pipes: clear as a bell and an odd, sexy little warble lining the edges, like Joan Baez crossed with Victoria Williams. If Donelly had “done” Americana instead of being an alterna-rock mainstay, she’d be the missing link between Loretta Lynn and Neko Case. It’s the music she makes [...]

Seattle’s Downpilot — essentially multi-instrumentalist Paul Hiraga, plus producer/percussionist Tucker Martine — charmed critics with 2003’s Leaving Not Arriving, though efforts to peg the band along roots/Americana lines now appear premature, if not erroneous. Hiraga’s a student of Americana, all right, but it’s the pop end of the spectrum where he takes his residency, and [...]

Wisely ditching the name Vagenius for the more commercially palatable Hello Stranger, this Los Angeles trio (recently expanded to a four-piece) coolly navigates classic femme-pop waters on its own eclectic terms. Vocalist Juliet Commagere never turns in a rote performance despite having studied her iconography charts, from Debbie Harry (the Latin-flavored new wave of “Dancing [...]

“There oughta be a sideshow act for freaks like me,” sang Chris Knight in “It Ain’t Easy Being Me”, the minor hit from his 1998 self-titled debut. Back then the Kentucky singer-songwriter was being groomed by Decca/MCA as the next Steve Earle, although with studio backing by seasoned Nashville sessionmen, Knight never really got to [...]

Ten years, eight albums, three chords, and one truth: that music, as the Lovin’ Spoonful put it, can free your soul. Centro-matic by the numbers? Raw stats rarely do justice to artists — did we mention the hundreds of songs leader Will Johnson has unspooled via this Texas group and his solo and side projects? [...]

It would be great to report that the so-called “lo-fi minimalist charm” of Fred Cornog’s latest one-man, home-recorded opus is, er, charming. Conceptually, it’s a songcycle about drugs — the ones we take to get high, and the ones we lean on just to get through the day. In the strummy title track, he coos, [...]

Chan Marshall opens her seventh Cat Power album with “The Greatest”, a tune awash in shimmery guitar, stately piano, soulful background vocals and swaying strings — the latter subtly nodding at “Moon River”. Coming from a such an indie-rock icon, it’s a startling intro, this Dusty In Memphis-type move. But Marshall’s always had a hint [...]