Joni Mitchell’s multifaceted Blue created the template for albums such as this. Exploring one’s identity in song, within and without relationships, can quickly separate the poseur from the real thing. Though it may not carry the heft and stylistic focus of Mitchell’s masterwork, there’s no tentative awkwardness in Sara Cox’s Arrive either. Cox demonstrates an [...]

Completed after his death in 2002, Blue To This Day is nonetheless of a piece with the rest of Mickey Newbury’s splendid catalog. It affords one final chance to enjoy the studio presence of this quintessential American singer-songwriter, but it also provides his perfectly attuned musical confederates with the opportunity to perform in tandem with [...]

String-band music has transformative power. Though they began as punk rockers, Starlings TN found artistic fulfillment by tapping into the true world-on-a-string. Like the Gourds, Starlings TN emerged from Louisiana’s rich sonic gumbo with acoustic guitars. But where the Gourds found a setting for their string-band fantasies in Doug Sahm’s Texas roadhouse, Starlings TN touched [...]

Paul Burch’s latest is a compassionate study of the country swing groove, its twelve tracks chronicling the enduring truths of love and loss to rhythms tuned to Nashville’s hidden heart. Burch also continues to carve out his own artistic niche as a stylist. He understands that vocal range has little to do with emotional richness, [...]

“I woke up hugging myself but I was calling your name.” That image of frustrated isolation fits so many of the trapped souls in Tom House’s work. It leads off his fine new album, Long Time Home From Here; and in its twelve songs, we find Desolation Row relocated to rural America, where mountain poets [...]

With Can’t Find No Heaven, Alice Stuart has made a blues album as clear and direct as a prom date kiss, or perhaps its subsequent face slap. There’s a knowing balance of the joys and pains of American living in her song selection, a mix of vintage covers and well-crafted originals. And there’s never any [...]

Those only familiar with Joseph Arthur from his previous album, 2000′s Come To Where I’m From, might peg him as an edgy solo artist with a slightly monochromatic palette. Redemption’s Son paints a more complicated and interesting picture. This time, Arthur seems intent on testing his range as a songwriter. Of the sixteen tracks here, [...]