For her third solo album, Maria Taylor walks the furthest she has from the slo-mo melancholy of indie duo Azure Ray. The departure summons comparisons to Mary Lou Lord, Freedy Johnston and other songwriters who carried the flag for folk-minded popcraft in an era when grunge insisted on everything loud and shaggy. LadyLuck would be [...]

Musical shapeshifter Eleni Mandell is a cult favorite among lounge lizards; her coolly detached vocals and sly humor are well-suited for late nights and ready cocktails. Artificial Fire, however, drags her sound from the dark recesses of the corner bar and into the daylight. For a songwriter who is celebrated so much for her live [...]

Titling this album Underground is the equivalent of Wall Street bankers pulling out their CBGB T-shirts on Memorial Day weekend in the Hamptons. Marykate O’Neil, a Boston music vet now based in New York City, incorporates as many East Village references into her fourth album to earn credibility among couture thrifters, yet the resulting songs [...]

The fact that Hear Music, the label which keeps the front counters at Starbucks littered with CDs, was the initial home to this debut collaboration signals what’s in store: sunny folk-pop that goes well with caffeine and the Sunday paper. But Jon Foreman and Sean Watkins demonstrate deeper into this album that they have far [...]

Only fools try making a movie from a Cormac McCarthy novel, which is why, forthcoming screen treatment of The Road aside, not many have tried. Similarly, a song-cycle drawn from the enigmatic writer’s world is no small feat. Ben Nichols chose to base this disc’s seven songs on Blood Meridian, McCarthy’s lore of western gore [...]

There’s little surprise that Gary Louris could make a solo album superior to or at least comparable with the seven albums he recorded with the Jayhawks. The band’s seventeen-year career required more the endurance of a marathon runner than of an afternoon jogger; successive lineups faithfully maintained the brand name even as the audience for [...]

Surf-rock used to mean Dick Dale and the Ventures, who were known for gonzo guitar instrumentals that replicated the rush of riding the waves in the midday sun. Now, with surfers-turned-soul-men Jack Johnson and Donavon Frankenreiter, the term is more about sipping light beer under a beach umbrella. Frankenreiter stays under shade for this third [...]