When music comes from the heart and from personal experience, it really matters, and that isn’t meant to be a play on words. Arielle Silver has crafted a masterpiece in What Really Matters (seen/heard here). It’s a triumphant song about just that – what really matters. It is a song that comes from the gun smoke of a bar shooting and the ashes of the California hills, but it is not a song about giving in or giving up, but about really knowing what is important in life. What…
Read MoreCanadian singer-songwriter, folk-rocker, Sarah Harmer smacks your complacency upside the head with New Low from the forthcoming (out by the time you read this) long-player, Are You Gone (February 2020). The chorus on this track is a gem worthy of repeat: “Out in the street three times this week, new threats, new lows. If this gets us to our feet and grows, who knows?” Through this refrain and the verses leading up to it, Harmer speaks of complacency that makes us feel that the problems of the world aren’t ours, that we…
Read MoreBrother and sister duo me&you (Karlee and Connor Hormell), forge a plaintive ballad with S.O.L. that blends dual leads with beautiful two-part harmonies and a message that we have all shared at one point or another: down on our luck, shit out of luck. Yep, we’ve all been there. S.O.L. is lyrically minimal but gets the message across. Instrumentally, the single is alternately sparse and grand where it needs to be. me&you boil their music in a pot of Americana that is unmistakable, but accessible across pop and folk…
Read MoreVanWyck, the moniker used by singer-songwriter Christine Oele, has a road-weary vocal that lends itself perfectly to a folk song, and these are some magnificent folk songs indeed! Carolina’s Anatomy (seen/heard here) is from VanWyck’s latest long-player, Molten Rock (December 2019), a collection of twelve deep, observant prose with playful melodies. Think of VanWyck’s creations as detailed views of the ordinary and the extraordinary alike that take you on a deeply personal journey. VanWyck has been described as the female equivalent of Leonard Cohen, and I’ve got to say that there…
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