americana
SEE: The video for XIXA’s ‘Eclipse’: Tucson barrio sextet go back to their roots
FOLLOWING on down that seductive, dusty road from their previous singles, September’s “Genesis of Gaea” and late October’s “May They Call Us Home”, Tucson’s TexMex rock fusioneers XIXA have dropped the video for “Eclipse”, another instalment from next month’s album, Genesis. You can watch below. It’s a rousing tune, showcasing a poppier end to the …
NEWS: Bill MacKay and Nathan Bowles announce April album; see the brilliant instrumental bluegrass of ‘Joy Ride’
BILL MACKAY, the Chicago-based guitarist, improviser of note and all-round scion of six strings, sure loves to enter into a two-way conversation with other artists with reliably beautiful results; witness the brace of albums he’s recorded with the freewheelin’ Ryley Walker, Land Of Plenty and Spiderbeetlebee. There was 2019’s darker two-hander with cellist Katinka Klein, …
See: Hiss Golden Messenger share video for ‘Sanctuary’
HISS GOLDEN MESSENGER are back with new material, after a busy 2020 including two live albums for the benefit of public schools, but “Sanctuary” is the first new studio track since 2019’s Terms Of Surrender. With its lush sound and theme of staying safe and hoping for reconciliation, it’s certainly a hopeful song for 2021 …
SEE: The lyric video for Drive-By Truckers’ ‘Tough To Let Go’
IT’S AN album that came out of nowhere; Drive-By Truckers’ The New OK grew from a lockdown EP, something to occupy crack musicians after their last album, The Unraveling, collecting together some pretty powerful odds and ends from those Memphis sessions, including a fiery ‘n’ fun run-through Ramones’ “The KKK Took My Baby Away” as …
Album Review: Buck Meek – Two Saviors
Big Thief guitarist presents a new album of (mostly) quiet Americana lullabies
TRACK: Renée Reed – ‘Fast One’: potent, dreamlike alt.folk from Louisiana
HAILING from Lafayette, Louisiana, Renée Reed has signed for Austin label Keeled Scales and released a single, the impressionistic, delightfully dreamy alt.folk of “Fast One”. Listen below. It’s a many-faceted thing for something as apparently simple as a one-woman-with-guitar folk tune; it has, by turns, a sleepy blurriness, a pillowside intimacy, the sort of mantric guitar …
SEE: Cassandra Jenkins – ‘Michelangelo’: subtle, haunting Americana
NEW YORK folkie Cassandra Jenkins has stepped away from the world of self-releasing on her own Cassandra Complex imprint to ink her signature for Brooklyn’s Ba Da Bing, which imprint – sometime home to Damon & Naomi and Comets On Fire, among others – hosts her second album, the detached, observational beauty of An Overview …
SEE: The video for Bill Callahan’s ‘Breakfast’: a visual nugget sifted from ‘Gold Record’
OUR DEEPEST Americana poet Bill Callahan put together his latest album, Gold Record, really quickly, and previewed it over those long, lazy lockdown summer days with the neat idea of dropping a track every Monday afternoon leading up to its eventual September release. Loose and freewheeling it may have been, but that doesn’t take anything …
Aaron Lee Tasjan – ‘Computer Of Love’; Nashville troubadour’s new album is out in February
NASHVILLE Americana troubadour Aaron Lee Tasjan, who’s been far from idle this year with the release of two digital-only EPs, the two-volume Found Songs, has dropped one final, finely sculpted kiss-off to the year, “Computer Of Love” and accompanying intergalactic visuals – have a peek for yourself. Aaron, who’s collaborated with everyone from Sean Lennon …
SEE: Juanita Stein – ‘Reckoning’; seven UK dates from May
TORCH-songtress Juanita Stein, who released her third album of rootsy songcraft for Nude, Snapshot, in late October, has released a video for the dark, rousing drama of “Reckoning” and announced a seven-date tour for May ’21. The video, embedded down below, follows Juanita on a bike ride through southern France. It was self-filmed in the …