Sister folk-popsters Lily & Madeleine made their Vodka debut this year a few months after their critically acclaimed EP The Weight Of The Globe (January 2013) was released and since then, they have garnered air play on forward-thinking radio stations, such as Serious XM radio’s The Loft and others, while tending to an ever growing fan-base. On October 29th, the duo released their debut self-titled long-player and it is more of the same great music. While Globe seemed to focus on a single style-melodic…
Read MoreA year ago I would have been hard-pressed to foresee that The Civil Wars (Joy Williams and John Paul White) would be on the precipice of a breakup as a group but after a stormy tour that ended early, the writing may be on the wall. This ahead of the recently released self-titled second long player (August 2013). It’s hard to imagine that the duo responsible for setting the folk-pop world on it’s ear and creating a space for…
Read MoreCould it be a modern day Roches on your speakers? Well, not exactly, but The Beautiful Word do have the quirky folk-pop that the Roches mastered so long ago, re-created in their own image. Also, unlike the Roches, The Beautiful Word is a male/female band. What a lot of fun it is, too! Here on the February 2013 single, May Not Be Love, you get the idea of what The Beautiful Word are all about. Fun quirky, sometimes minor-key, gems…
Read MoreI Am Ampersand, otherwise known as singer-songwriter Matt Hainsby, delivers a folk-blues gem with 20 Seas 4 Oceans from his November 2012 long-player Grave Goods. Just a little acoustic playful guitar, a bit of electronic noodling-but only for texture, a nice tenor voice and great spare backing vocals. This could have dropped straight out of the late 60’s playbook onto your doorstep. Matt Hainsby’s solo work here is in stark contrast to the nearly progressive folk-rock of his regular band, Fujiya…
Read MoreSinger-songwriter Ian Britt has very diverse tastes in music-from Eminem to Enya. That’s a wide divide which is not only diverse and interesting, but not unlike my own very diverse musical tastes. Still, Ian Britt keeps close to the folk-pop vein in his own musical endeavors. Case in point is the two-song (as of this writing) EP Understood (April 2013), where Crazy comes from. There is blistering emotion, anger and loss in the lyrics, but the song itself is beautifully introspective. Why the…
Read More