Vodka Austin Favorite: Baby Rose has a voice that will knock your socks off. She was due to play at the canceled SXSW event this year, and you can definitely hear why she would be a great performer to go see live. That rich soulful voice is riveting, full of natural vibrato and honest emotion. Accompanied here by what I like to call a muted broken piano sound, Baby Rose has plenty of space to evoke the raw emotion of All To Myself. This track comes from her…
Read MoreFrench folk-rockers Breaky Boxes, hit the world with a bang with their debut long-player, Resting Wall (March 2020), and Elder Ones (seen/heard here), is the lead-off track of this magnificent collection. Throughout the 12 tracks on this long player, the harmonies are rock solid, the melodies are front and center, and the vocals are never buried beneath the mix. Breaky Boxes remind me of The Posies or Bad Religion, not because they have the same style of music, but because they have the same intensity and ability to plow forward,…
Read MoreCasii Stephan has a beautiful, rich, soulful voice, and a magic way of penning just the right notes to go along with the voice. That is all great, but the star in Trapeze Artist (seen/heard here) is the lyric! If you’ve all but given up on this world, are depressed by the hate and vitriol that you are exposed to daily, and just want a way to lift up your spirit and fill it with hope, then you’ve found just such a song to help you get there. Trapeze…
Read MoreLately, my inbox has been filling up with production companies making suggestions for coverage of certain artists. I welcome these, though only a small portion of them actually make it into the blog. Waiting For Smith’s new single, Long Life, is one of those that make the cut for me. I want to be as honest as I possibly can about this track: Musically, it breaks no new ground, But Harry Lloyd (the man behind the moniker Waiting For Smith) sings this song in a playful, yet earnest…
Read MorePeggy Sue channel 60′s style pop-rock, blending it with enough elements of modern surf and alt-rock to form a unique style all their own. A case in point would be In Dreams (seen/heard here), from the band’s latest long-player, Vices (February 2020). There’s a bit of spaghetti western guitar styling, psychedelic rock, and more, blended with mildly echo-laden vocals. It’s a perfect blend! In Dreams is as close to an awake dream as you can get. The band has been around in some form or other since 2008. Once a…
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