The Betweeners - Matador Karma
The band's debut, Matador Karma, creates a rootsy blend, infusing bluegrass and blues with folk and straight-up country. The result is a hum-worthy Americana mix that's been likened to the Flatlanders and The Band... read more
The Smugglers - Mutiny In Stereo
Long-running Vancouver-based punk rockers The Smugglers might be releasing their eighth studio album, but they still sound fresh... read more
The Artist's Life
Since returning home from Mule Train MMIV— the tour I embarked upon with my band, The Commonwealth, in early 2004 aboard the Amtrak Crescent—trains both here and abroad have taken a serious beating... read more
4 To Watch For: Eszter Balint
A simple, descending blues figure played on a banjo, an alluring, slightly weary voice, then a manic, stringed kr-thunk.... read more
4 To Watch For: Rich Price
You’ve got to hand it to former San Francisco resident Rich Price—as singer/songwriters go, he’s definitely his own idiosyncratic man... read more
4 To Watch For: Jamie Cullum
It was already far from your standard jazz-trio set when Jamie Cullum climbed under the glass-topped grand piano in the lounge of Austin’s posh, 120-year-old Driskill Hotel... read more
4 To Watch For: Charlie Mars
You can almost hear the pounding hooves. Throughout the eponymous V2 debut from Oxford, Miss., artist Charlie Mars, a spooky Southern Gothic aura gallops like some spectral pale stallion... read more
Listening To Old Voices
I didn’t discover Joni Mitchell until her 1971 album Blue. I was holed up on a Christmas morning in a Chicago suburb, 16 years old—not wise enough to make it on my own and not foolish enough to pretend my helliday home was normal... read more
The Fifth Book of Peace
The narrative style of The Fifth Book of Peace will seem familiar to those who’ve read Maxine Hong Kingston’s memoir The Woman Warrior... read more
Turn On Your Mind
Popular music has been under the influence of LSD for over four decades, but you might not have realized just how pervasive the psychedelic sound has become... read more
The Fabric of the Cosmos
G.K. Chesterton, in his wonderful “A Defense of Nonsense,” argued that the gibberish rhymes of 19th-century writers like Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll are implicitly religious... read more
Playing Right Field: A Jew Grows in Greenwich
George Tabb endured the pain every geek, nerd and misfit encounters in adolescence, but he also had moments of triumph and revenge of which his peers could only dream... read more
Step Right Up: Stories of Carnivals, Sideshows...
Step Right Up fills some kind of niche: Somewhere there must be a slot left in the canon (perhaps just to the left of a collection of odes to goldfish) for an anthology of circus-related vignettes... read more
The Towers of Trebizond
Sometimes, a camel is just a camel. Other times, in Rose Macaulay’s droll and wise The Towers of Trebizond, a one-humped white racing camel of disputed sanity... read more
Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim
David Sedaris’ reputation as America’s preeminent smart ass is well earned, so much so he can maintain it while living in Paris... read more
Los Lobos - The Ride
I’ll admit, I’ve been a frustrated Los Lobos fan for years. Frustrated by my friends. “Los Lobos? That ‘La Bamba’ cover band? That’s, like, Latin rock, right?”... read more
Pedro the Lion - Achilles Heel
The date is May 25, 2004. Pedro the Lion’s new album, Achilles’ Heel, hits store shelves on an otherwise uneventful day... read more
Great Big Sea - Something Beautiful
Great Big Sea combines power-pop with the occasional, floating whistle or flute suggesting an Old World influence... read more
Automato - Automato
Just when it seems there’s nothing new under the hip-hop sun, artists inevitably emerge—in both the mainstream (OutKast, Black Eyed Peas) and on the fringes... read more
The Paperboys - Dilapidated Beauty
On the first half of this impressive double-LP from Canada’s Paperboys, textured landscapes of violin, mandolin, fiddle, dulcimer and dobro support Landa’s voice... read more
The 20 Best Gadgets of the Decade…
The 17 Best Romantic Comedies This Decade
The 20 Best Live Acts of the…
The 25 Best Movie Performances of the…
Blind Pilot - The Story I Heard
B.O.B. - Put Me On
Kim Taylor - Days Like this
Punch Brothers - Punch Brothers at CMJ
David Bazan - Hard To Be
Anya Marina - Whatever You Like
