Jake Xerxes Fussell deftly balances the imperatives of research and performance. A second-generation folklorist raised in Columbus, Georgia, he draws much of his material from field recordings made throughout the American south. His four albums, all released by North Carolina label Paradise of Bachelors, scrupulously credit the folk-song collections from which he sources his material. […]
Tag: folk music
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Field Medic’s Kevin Patrick Sullivan delves deeper into his psyche on his latest album
You can arguably predict the mood of a Field Medic album by the look of Kevin Patrick Sullivan’s hair in the cover art. On the front of 2017’s cheeky, joyful Songs From the Sunroom the lo-fi folk singer-songwriter’s red curls are big and bouncy; on 2020’s more somber Floral Prince, they’re closely cropped and hidden […]
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DakhaBrakha create eclectic folk music for an antifascist Ukraine
It’s impossible to listen to DakhaBrakha right now outside a political context; they’re a Ukrainian folk band based in Kyiv. After Russia launched its full-scale war on their country in February, the band published an impassioned anti-Putin post on their website. But long before that explicit statement of solidarity, the four-piece group were using their […]
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Wilco’s folk-driven double album Cruel Country gives long time fans something fresh to love
In 1997, Wilco’s double album Being There became a fundamental pivot for the Chicago band in a decade filled with triumphs. Twenty-five years later, those songs live on in the band’s live shows, even though in the studio Wilco have traveled to a very different place. The evidence lies on Cruel Country, the band’s second […]
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Juana Molina’s folktronica is perfect for tumbling down a rabbit hole to wonderland
To experience a Juana Molina concert is to be swept away in a most particular sort of rapture. In the late 80s and early 90s, the Argentine singer-songwriter had a successful career in television and comedy before changing gears to pursue music. An early proponent of combining South American folk music and electronica, Molina introduced […]
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Beau O’Reilly keeps the folk cabaret alive
The email Paul Finkelman received last month from Beau O’Reilly read simply, “Can your car fit a piano? . . . Please advise.” The answer was obviously no. Finkelman owned a small hatchback—and besides, there was no way a piano would make it up the narrow stairs at Jimmy Beans Coffee, where he works as […]
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Freakwater and the Mekons unite to sing about coal’s dark, transatlantic legacy
In the early days of the COVID pandemic, retail clerks, day-care staff, public-transportation employees, and many other workers learned what coal miners have known for a very long time: that the authorities who deem their labor essential don’t necessarily feel the same way about their lives. Freakwater and the Mekons have each sung folk ballads […]
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Mandingo Griot Society: a global exchange born in Chicago
Foday Musa Suso absorbed centuries of tradition growing up in Gambia. As part of the griot caste, his family had performed a centuries-long role in Gambian society, narrating historical epics and singing praise songs while playing the kora, a harplike 21-string instrument his distant ancestors invented. Suso dreamed of bringing his music to places far […]
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Ryley Walker points to his wide-open musical future on Course in Fable
When guitar wunderkind Ryley Walker releases his first album of proper songs in a couple of years, this new glimpse at where he’s headed in his music is cause to rejoice. The Rockford native shredded in a noisy fashion as a youth, playing in free-jazzin’ bands Heat Death and Tiger Hatchery, but about a decade […]
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Chicago multi-instrumentalist Alex Cowling evokes the power of the great outdoors with Antarctica
Over the past few years, Chicago multi-instrumentalist Alex Cowling has released several solo albums that combine weather-beaten indie rock, spacious jazz, and easygoing folk, and he’s done it to little or no fanfare. When I ask him about the new Antarctica, he tells me that one of the few people who’s listened to it is […]
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In 1971 the Reader’s free classifieds hosted a future folk star
Music discovery has changed a lot in 50 years, but the Reader is still around—and so is Bonnie Koloc.
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Josephine Foster keeps the freak-folk flame burning with the catchy but unnerving No Harm Done
Back in ye olde early aughts, “freak folk” ruled the land. Championed and perhaps encouraged by photogenic weirdo Devendra Banhart, artists influenced by elegiac or subliminally psychedelic folk acts from the 60s and 70s—Tyrannosaurus Rex, the Incredible String Band, Michael Hurley—started coming out of the woodwork. For a hot strange minute, indie record bins were […]
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Judson Claiborne confront humanity’s downfall with beautiful songs on When a Man Loves an Omen
When humanity’s ship goes down due to a global pandemic, vulture capitalism, and corrupt politics, the band picking and singing the final notes will be Chicago’s Judson Claiborne. So this month—when we’re grappling with the messy aftermath of an election while watching COVID-19 cases skyrocket before our eyes—feels like the perfect time for Christopher Salveter, […]
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Yves Jarvis creates gently disintegrating folk music
Songs don’t so much rise out of Yves Jarvis’s Sundry Rock Song Stock (Anti-) as they swim around, fray, and dissolve. In that sense, the most characteristic track on the Canadian producer and multi-instrumentalist’s new album, the woozily liquid “Ambrosia,” is one of the oddest. Anxiously percolating keyboard and an echoing, violinlike noise wander past […]
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Goodbye to songwriter Michael Smith
With “The Dutchman” and other widely recorded songs, Michael Smith created emotional realities that let you feel along with his characters.