If last year’s self-titled debut album of Future Clouds & Radar was immediately accessible in places and bewilderingly opaque in others, this follow-up combines each side of leader Robert Harrison’s brain in every one of its eight songs. The melodies may not be as bright this time – there’s no “You Will Be Loved” or [...]

At first, Webb Wilder seemed like a novelty act. He wore the glasses and the suits, he had that basso profundo vocal trick, and his songs were a bit nonsensical. But seeing him perform live made it obvious that this was a man steeped in the traditions of rock, country and soul, and that he [...]

Parallel to the punk-rock/new-wave revolution of the late 1970s came a loose connection of rock & roll classicists who shared the energy if not the urge to change the world. Bruce Springsteen was the most successful of these, but Tom Petty, Steve Forbert, Graham Parker, and Willie Nile rode the sounds of ringing guitars, propulsive [...]

It’s not exactly what record labels consider a good career move, following up your best and most successful singer-songwriter album with a completely solo acoustic guitar collection. But Kelly Joe Phelps has never been one for following the rules, and Western Bell is so often exquisite, and always intriguing, that his commercial divergence is our [...]

NPR ran a feature a couple Sundays back on the new Marianne Faithfull record, playing snippets from a couple of songs in between interview segments. One week later, they read a purportedly representative letter of complaint, saying that Faithfull’s voice is something “nobody wants to hear on a Sunday morning.” Hard to believe 30 years [...]

When Bela Fleck released the first two volumes of Tales From The Acoustic Planet, the idea was merely to differentiate these returns to his newgrass and bluegrass roots from the electric jazz fusion of his work with the Flecktones. Now, for the third volume, Fleck realizes that the planet stretches well beyond just the United [...]

The Good Life, last year’s debut album from Justin Townes Earle, was a mixture of honky-tonk country stylings and confessional singer-songwriter material. Half of him was actively avoiding comparisons with his father Steve by going back to country before dad, and the other half was sticking close to the family template. On Midnight At The [...]

Bruce Springsteen once posited that “we learned more from a three-minute record than we ever learned in school.” After 24 years of listening to Chris Isaak, who never exceeds the four-minute mark and rarely even nears it, I can safely say I’ve learned love will inevitably fall victim to the fatal flaw within the singer, [...]

With approximately 30 albums and compilations as a solo artist or band member, Robyn Hitchcock has recorded something like 500 songs, almost all of which he’s written himself. Throw his complete oeuvre on an Ipod and put it on shuffle, and odds are that all but the most ardent fans would be hard-pressed to guess [...]

Jorma Kaukonen never really stopped playing. He may have been most famous for his relentless improvisational explorations in Jefferson Airplane, he may have achieved greater rock stardom with the tough electric boogies of Hot Tuna, he may have been a hippie icon with solo albums such as Quah – but even after all that, Kaukonen [...]