It’s not that your mind wanders when listening to the sprawling yet ultimately pointed music of Matthew Ryan. It’s more that your mind makes connections. For example, when you get to the mostly rhetorical “How’d you get so drunk and disappointed?” chorus of “Drunk & Disappointed”, you might find yourself thinking of the Replacements’ “Unsatisfied”. [...]

This quintet’s name always takes me back to 1979 and a friend’s house out by the airport. His single-parent dad was often on the road, meaning plenty of parties. Those nights would inevitably end with a bunch of guys deeply under the influence of $1.29 six-packs of Genny White Death pretending to be Burt Reynolds [...]

It’s titled “Ten-Pack Of Years” (as in “what the hell’s a decade but a…”), and it’s hit me harder than any song I’ve crossed paths with in ’08. The opening couplet — “We used to make love out in the back lawn/Now we’re eating dinner with the TV on” — expresses a ten-year ache that [...]

Greg Keelor and Jim Cuddy, the Lennon & McCartney of Canadian roots-rock, have been writing and performing together for 25 years. While there’s nothing to indicate that Small Miracles represents the end of the road, it does feel like it was written from a vantage point where that end is visible. References to mortality and [...]

When you traffic in, well, let’s call it ultra-melodic, low-crunch folk-pop, you run the risk of eventually showing up on a candlelit and heavily upholstered infomercial hosted by half of Air Supply. And when your first name is Dan, there’s the added risk of getting slapped with the prefix “England” and being paired with John [...]

With that name — emphasis on the fourth syllable — and the band’s knack for gentle rhythms and pastoral arrangements, it’s always been too easy. Yes, Regina Hexaphone could bewitch. While a change to Regina Rockyerassoffaphone might be a bit premature, Into Your Sleeping Heart does make room for some romping and near-crunching amid the [...]

Those quick to stuff Texas journeyman Doyle Bramhall, the rare singer-songwriter-drummer, into the one-word category of blues do so at the risk of ignoring the “rhythm &” part of his sound. With the Bo Diddley stomp right out of the gate on “Lost In The Congo”, it’s hard to miss. Elsewhere, the suffix “rock” should [...]