Issue Articles
Lucinda Williams, Little Honey (Lost Highway)
Last year during an unprecedented live tour, Lucinda Williams recreated five of her classic albums in their entirety. Were she to try that concept again, Little Honey wouldn’t make the […]
Blues Traveler, Cover Yourself (C3)
Longtime Blues Traveler fans baffled by the band’s detour into faux ’70s prog rock on the Jay Bennett-produced Bastardos! (2005) should welcome their latest effort with open arms—and open ears. […]
Wilco, Sky Blue Sky (Nonesuch)
After years of doing things the hard way to brilliant effect—Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was the masterful afterbirth of very public labor pains, while A Ghost Is Born burrowed under the […]
Lucinda Williams, West (Lost Highway)
Lucinda Williams has always worn her heart on her sleeve, but on West it’s a mourning band. Written after the death of her mother and a painful romantic breakup (is […]
Van Morrison, Pay the Devil (Lost Highway)
There’s a reason why Robbie Robertson dubbed Van Morrison “The Belfast Cowboy.” For four decades, the Irish soul balladeer has drunk deep from the well of the American South, inspired […]
The Gourds, Heavy Ornamentals (Eleven Thirty Records)
The Gourds are to Austin what the Morning 40 Federation is to New Orleans – a hellbent krewe of carnival hucksters and word-besotted street punks who play sloppy-smart party music […]
Patty Hurst Shifter, Too Crowded for the Losing End (Evo Recordings)
There something bracing about good old-fashioned, straight-ahead, Rolling Stones-style rock, and this young Raleigh, North Carolina outfit has it in spades. The band tips its hand on the first track, […]
Obituary: Chris Whitley (1960-2005)
Chris Whitley always played as if his life depended on it. Sometimes, as in his 2004 manifesto War Crime Blues, the emotion was so raw you could practically taste the […]
