Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward are both talented artists with reputations for integrity, good taste and choosing their projects carefully. This duo record had the potential to be either dazzling or a muddled mess. While Deschanel’s a cappella bathroom duet on “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” in the film Elf with Will Ferrell was downright charming, [...]

When you strip your canvas way down, each splash of color you manage to work in has a dramatic and weighted impact. Kris Delmhorst beautifully flaunts that minimalist artistic approach on her latest release. Starting with the songs themselves, Delmhorst pares back her chord changes, often building around simple broken chords on a nylon-string guitar [...]

It must be tough to release new material when you are a genuine, rarified post-punk icon. Bob Mould surely knows that pressure. Whenever the songwriter re-emerges, longtime fans hold out hope that Mould will somehow retrace paths similar to his raucously jagged jaunts from Husker Du’s mid-’80s heyday. Fans of Mould’s more popcore-oriented leanings hope [...]

For those who have witnessed the spectacular fire of Reverend Horton Heat, it is tough to imagine the reverend/frontman Jim Heath taking a back seat — or even just scooting his psychobilly butt over to the passenger side. But that’s what happens with Heath’s new side project, Reverend Organdrum. On this debut, the mostly instrumental [...]

JEFF Finlin’s narrative songs are soaking in imagery about traveling, leaving, living in the moment and regret. They are colored with drive-through biscuits, carousel horses, skull-and-crossbones tattoos, skimming stones and coffee-colored skylines. In “Nothing’s Enough”, Finlin sings, “We had it all, we wanted more/Yes that was it, in all respects/Some kind of perfect love/In the [...]

Longtime followers of Matthew Hebert and his stately roots rock band the Ware River Club should dig the results of his new ensemble’s debut disc. The collection of talented musicians the Northampton, Massachusetts, singer-songwriter has pulled together showcases Hebert’s story-songs with a subtle new luster, adding nuance without drawing too much attention from the spirited [...]