Country
Album Review: As Hillsborough head on tour, their debut ‘Comin’ Back For You’ is a jangling melodic delight filled with a raw, engaging spirit.
Hillsborough – named after the area in Western Queensland where singer/songwriter Phil Usher’s family have been living since the late 1800’s – have a sound that sweeps across an alt. country landscape fringed with a gothic shade and just a touch – tastefully applied – of a rambling bluesy blush. The band consist of Usher …
Track: Full Power Happy Hour’s ‘Measurements’ takes a walk on the wild west side ahead of new album and tour.
Brisbane’s effervescent Full Power Happy Hour have stored their Doc Martens in a shoebox, pulled on a pair of cowboy boots matched with a checked shirt and boot-scooted their way into our ears with the country-tinged twang of ‘Measurements’, their new single. And, for me, it’s the good sort of countrified swing epitomised by the …
Track: Fanny Lumsden unveils the rollickingly melodic single ‘Tidy Town’ and announces massive Australian tour.
Fanny Lumsden is a shining star in Australia’s country music scene – a genre admittedly not often covered by me – and her new single ‘Tidy Town’ is a glorious upbeat and positive track that crosses genres with aplomb: a swiftly moving feast of jangling guitars and shimmering melodies. There is a glorious sparkle to …
Track: The Mother Hips examine a soured, bruised love in the riffin’ roots rock of ‘Clay Mask Clown’
WITH the first recorded cover version of their entire roots-rockin’ career, their cover of Anne Murray’s “I Don’t Want To Drive You Away”, just fading in the dust of the rearview mirror; but the street light glow of their eleventh album, Glowing Lantern, and a run of dates Stateside just cusping the horizon, The Mother …
Track: Erin Rae glides into an album and tour in the new year on the psych-country of ‘Candy & Curry’
WITH a sweet, hook-laden but straighter country-pop number, “Modern Woman”, dropping last month, Nashville’s Erin Rae has revealed a more gossamer, delicate psych-folk side to her forthcoming third album in the lighter-than-air “Candy & Curry”, sprinkled with a little retro synth and possessed of a real Margo Guryan harmonic feel; you can swoon for that …
Track: With her British tour kicking off today, Frazey Ford drops the honeyed, spectral folk of ‘Saul’
WITH an eleven-date UK tour beginning this evening in Milton Keynes, former Be Good Tanya and ethereally transporting talent in her own right Frazey Ford has released a track recorded for sessions for U Kin B the Sun but whose omittance from the final running order will surely surprise you as much as it does …
EP Review: Runaway June – Backstory
When I picked this up I realised I’d been away from Country for quite a while. Too long as it turns out. I needed a kick of something different. I’ve got the same levels of lyrical heartbreak and heartache, less queer and feminist protest. But I’ve traded noise, rage, hush, understatement, for harmonies and hooks …
See: Rianne Downey seizes the day with the honeyed country of ‘Do Or Die’
INVOKING the righteous bluegrassy, feminine country strength of a fine line of songwriters that stretch back through First Aid Kit and Shelby Lynne, and right on back to Dolly back herself, Scottish country chanteuse Rianne Downey is back and proud with her strumsomely lovely new single, “Do Or Die”, in which she moves on from …
See: SadGirl lament a broken love with ‘Goodbye Queenie’ and announce a west coast tour
WITH their debut album, Water, out now on Suicide Squeeze, Los Angeles’ SadGirl are inviting you to come join them in a world of intimate, no-messin’, old-school country, like it used to be; you just need an acoustic guitar, a microphone, plenty, plenty of reverb and a way with a tune. Maybe a broken heart, …
See: Sara Bug – ‘Back In Nashville’: sweetly yearning, old-skool country from a want-away heart
COMING atcha outta Richmond, Virginia, EggHunt Records is sure to be blowin’ up big time in an old skool, proper country music way when latest signing Sara Bug’s album drops at the end of next week; ahead of which the singer, who goes by her family nickname due to her diminutive stature, has dropped a …