Richard Thompson Hippies, Thugs and Heroes There’s something about Richard Thompson that reminds me of LeBron James. Or maybe it’s the other way around. Both have been so good for so long that we’ve almost stopped noticing just how good they remain. Every new season brings another round of stories about LeBron’s remarkable longevity, as […]
Jack Barksdale Battleground There are no love songs on Jack Barksdale’s new five-song EP, Battleground. No tales of growing up, of relationships gone wrong, or nostalgic recollections of better days. Instead, Barksdale gives us five political songs, in the broadest sense of the word. On the title track, we meet a woman caught in the war […]
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Just like his life, Todd Snider’s posthumous album, My Second Rodeo, is unfinished. Snider died last November, at 59, amid a bewildering and troubling series of events, while working on an album he believed would break new musical ground. He had recorded his vocals and guitar, leaving longtime collaborators Joe Bisirri and Robbie Crowell to […]
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It’s About the Fucking Songs: Sittin’ With Blaze Shows What’s Great About Tribute Albums A new Blaze Foley album came out last week, no mean feat for a songwriter who died in 1989. Sittin’ With Blaze: A Tribute to Blaze Foley brings together artists from across generations to interpret the revered Texas songwriter’s work, including […]
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River Shook (Sarah Shook & the Disarmers) Finds a New Path on Solo Debut For much of the last decade, River Shook made country-rock that felt like it had been kicked down a flight of stairs and come up swinging. As the frontperson for Sarah Shook & the Disarmers, they wrote songs of bad decisions, […]
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On New Ways to Lose, BJ Barham Finds What’s Worth Fighting For What happens to angry young men when they grow older? That’s the question at the heart of New Ways to Lose, the new album from American Aquarium. Artists who survive long enough eventually confront that question. Few have a compelling answer. American Aquarium […]
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“I did not have singing ‘In Spite of Ourselves’ and dancing with Emmylou Harris on my bingo card.” Texas singer-songwriter Hayes Carll’s remark drew a laugh from the crowd at Wolf Trap, but it also captured the spirit of A Songwriters Tribute to John Prine. The June 9 concert gathered an extraordinary collection of performers […]
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Drayton Farley A Heavy Duty Heart Drayton Farley’s A Heavy Duty Heart captures the moment when a promising songwriter stops sounding like “one to watch” and starts sounding like an artist with a clear, confident point of view. The Alabama songwriter has always written with emotional plainspokenness and blue-collar detail, but this record broadens the […]
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On Hurray for the Riff Raff’s Live Forever, the Past Is Very Much Alive There’s something tricky about live albums by artists as emotionally direct as Hurray for the Riff Raff, the long-running musical project of songwriter Alynda Segarra. The studio records already feel lived-in, intimate, almost conversational. So a live set has to do […]
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Patterson Hood and John Moreland at the Ram’s Head in Annapolis Patterson Hood and John Moreland write very different kinds of songs. Hood looks outward, telling stories about the world around him, while Moreland looks inward, tracing the quiet fault lines of his own life. Sunday’s double-bill at Ram’s Head On Stage in Annapolis demonstrated […]
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