Recommended (Page 6)

Calexico – Edge of the SunAnti / City Slang-out April 144 / 5 It’s a return to everything we love about Calexico: swirling sand dunes, flamenco beats, mariachi swagger. The Tuscon, AZ sextet to their ninth studio album in a nearly twenty-year lifespan. How many things last twenty years? A good car? A stable marriage? If a band is in part a marriage of musicians, then we’d have assumed Calexico’s marriage to have grown quite stale and predictable by now. And on Edge of the Sun, band co-founders Joey Burns (vocals, guitar) and John Convertino (percussion) show that Calexico’s spark is alive and well. ToRead More →

Sufjan Stevens – Carrie & LowellAsthmatic Kitty Records-out now4.5 / 5 Stylistically, Sufjan Stevens’ seventh studio full-length falls somewhere between Michigan and Illinois: it takes Michigan‘s somber mood, a quieter, more introverted desperation than that album’s more externalized search. It takes not Illinois’ lush orchestration, but its polish, its perfectionism and completion. Add acoustic guitar, piano, and Stevens’ soft vocals, and the result is an achingly beautiful album about life and loss, death and ghosts. Yes, we gave high marks to his previous “Age of Adz,” but quite frankly, if we could take that back and give them all here, we would do that inRead More →

Dutch Uncles – O ShudderMemphis Industries-out Feb 24 (UK Feb 10)4 / 5 We are fans of this Manchester, UK five-some. Their fourth full-length brings them back into the e-sound that we prefer: lush popchestration, dense layering, a wide spread of variety. It’s a “pop electronic’d” that champions musicianship (and oboe, and other woodwinds), the kind of a ride that’s built on a solid four (we should say five) wheels. It’s got vocals, lyrics, instrumentation; it’s got joy, it’s got memory. Dutch Uncles is one of those bands that slips off the radar, but mostly because they haven’t come off the island and hopped aRead More →

Hozier – Self-TitledColumbia Records-out tomorrow4.5 / 5 Andrew Hozier-Byrne, the Irish soul singer/guitarist known simply as Hozier, is one of those rare acts who translates so well into studio and live and back. (Check out our much, much too brief blurb at the Newport Folk Festival.) It’s talent, pure and simple, that it boils down to, but more than that: the man can make a song about the infidelity of the heart bouncy and singable. His color reminds us a lot of the late band Morphine – dark, a bit smoky, somber – but at any turn, he can pull out such a playful sexinessRead More →