Sarah Shook is best known as the singer and guitarist for rowdy country band Sarah Shook & the Disarmers, but Cruel Liars, the debut album from their latest project, the darker and more intimate Mightmare, proves that pigeonholing them would be a grave mistake. Shook grew up in a fundamentalist Christian household where their exposure […]
Tag: Americana
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Chicago’s Huntsmen delve deeper into their lush metal storytelling on The Dying Pines
Huntsmen’s distinctive, delicious sound mixes turbocharged gothic country with sophisticated, dynamic doom metal wrapped in horror-tinged Americana atmospheres. Following two EPs, 2014’s Post War and 2016’s The Colonel, the Chicago band received rave reviews for their 2018 debut full-length, American Scrap. Their epic 80-minute concept album Mandala of Fear, about a battle-scarred veteran trying to […]
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Chicago Americana outfit Dogs at Large flirt with the comforts of lo-fi sounds
Since the mid-2010s, Chicago multi-instrumentalist Sam Pirruccello (aided by a shifting group of collaborators) has been releasing languid, Americana-inflected indie rock as Dogs at Large. In 1975, Pirruccello’s father, Bo, and Bo’s brother Frank (Pirruccello’s uncle) cofounded the delightful country-rock band Ouray, and the music of Dogs at Large has a noticeable twang too. Dogs […]
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Country-rock veterans Ouray keep gigging 40 years after their last album
As I’ve aged, my musical obsessions have shifted a bit. I still enjoy noisier, headier sounds—psychedelia, prog, garage trash, punk, experimental music—but I often want a “peaceful easy feeling” instead, which calls for some heartfelt country rock. I’ve always responded to the groups that put down the genre’s roots, especially the Flying Burrito Brothers, Gene […]
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Steve Earle says farewell to his son with the new J.T.
Nothing is more precious than the relationship between parent and child, and it’s a hell of a thing when they’re separated by death—especially when the child is the one to go. Justin Townes Earle, the firstborn son of singer-songwriter Steve Earle, was a well-established Americana artist in his own right when he passed away from […]
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Chicago indie rockers Mooner embrace tender reflection on their third album
For more than a decade, Chicago singer-songwriter Lee Ketch has used his band Mooner to perfect an earthy indie-rock sound that draws equally from Americana and power pop. On the group’s new third album, The Alternative Universe of Love (Aerial Ballet), he reflects on his past with an irresistible combination of nostalgia, regret, and forgiveness. […]
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Hitch up the jackalope on the gig poster of the week
This week’s featured gig poster was created by Chicago illustrator and designer Ryan Duggan.
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Margo Price tackles her personal and professional growing pains on That’s How Rumors Get Started
On her new third album, That’s How Rumors Get Started, Margo Price spins her modern outlaw-country sound into golden strands of pop-friendly Americana, tackling her critics, rock ’n’ roll mythology, and expectations of success. The LP, which was produced by fellow country renegade Sturgill Simpson, showcases Price’s knack for storytelling that pulls at the heartstrings; […]
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Lucinda Williams is a forceful spirit on Good Souls Better Angels
Lucinda Williams writes raw, visceral songs filled with beaten-down people liberating themselves from bullies. “I changed the name of this town / So you can’t follow me down,” she sings on “Changed the Locks,” from her 1988 self-titled album. Her new record, Good Souls Better Angels, takes on similar demons, though its antagonists don’t just […]
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Trixie Mattel mixes her Americana with surf rock and pop punk on Barbara
Drag has become so much more than queens lip-synching covers of diva classics. The more original your act is, the better, and in 2020 the possibilities are endless. The art form has permeated pop culture’s language, fashion, and notions of beauty, and it’s crossed over into other creative disciplines as well, including comedy, television, and […]
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Southern-tinged emo artists All Get Out bring out their hook-driven anthems
For emo-rock outfit All Get Out, the 2010s were a turbulent decade. Originally from Charleston, South Carolina, the band made their breakthrough in 2011 with their second full-length, The Season, before relocating to Texas, where it took them five years to put out their follow-up, 2016’s Nobody Likes a Quitter (Bad Timing). Though it was […]
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Rhiannon Giddens honors the African and Arabic influences in American roots music on There Is No Other
Classically trained vocalist and masterful banjo and fiddle player Rhiannon Giddens is celebrated as one of the leading proponents of what’s variously called Americana or roots music. Though her aesthetic has wide appeal, she toughens it with her uncompromising determination to bear witness to the ongoing (and too often neglected) Africanist voice and history in […]
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The ten best jazz records of 2016
This year’s best jazz records include a large-ensemble concept album about conspiracy theories, a tug-of-war between loops and live-band grooves, and an amazing hybrid of jazz and hip-hop.
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Artist on Artist: Andrew Bird talks to Brett and Rennie Sparks of the Handsome Family
Andrew Bird talks to Brett and Rennie Sparks of the Handsome Family.
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Secret Sisters and Jessica Lea Mayfield: Americana and American’t
American roots music pushed this way and that, with mixed results.