ALBUM REVIEW: 'Believer' Finds NC Duo Blue Cactus Confident and Sure-Footed

It’s likely difficult being a new string band today. The role comes retrofitted with some onerous responsibilities. There are certain tenets to uphold, time-tested musical traditions to follow, duty weighing on every roll and break.  With the release of Sin & Squalor, however, it seems newcomers Clay Street Unit

Boy Golden (the stage name of singer/songwriter Liam Duncan) centers his fifth studio record, Best of Our Possible Lives, around the lead single and opening track, “Suffer.” Dirty, cosmic guitars swirl around similarly muddy drums that emit a transcendent throb. Razor-sharp lyrics (e.g., “I want to know where

Jeremy Ivey’s “Walk With Me” rides slow on ambling cowboy chords, all at once cinematic and intimate. Its sound is more western than most of Ivey’s new Its Shape Will Reveal Itself. Tape wobble distorts Ivey’s voice as he sings of modern confusion. It fits the moment–