Archive

With each new album, the Old 97's inject less and less twang into their rambling Texas rock. Or do they? On their fifth full-length (and third for major-label Elektra), this sly quartet catapults into full-on pop territory, tossing out hooks and flaunting their harmonies, and seemingly edging further

Remarkably, this album is about the only recorded document of the mid-'80s-to-mid-'90s version of the Tony Rice Unit. Led by the most influential bluegrass-based guitarist ever, that lineup -- Rice, brother Wyatt on second guitar, mandolinist Jimmy Gaudreau, and brothers Ronnie (bass) and Rickie (fiddle) Simpkins

It makes more sense to think of Swag as a stellar ensemble cast than a supergroup -- say, the "Hill Street Blues" of pure pop. Among the gifted character actors who compose the lineup of this Nashville-headquartered side project are a pair of guys, Jerry Dale McFadden and

There are basically two ways to review a covers record. You can listen to it as simply another new album by the artist under consideration, or you can examine each cover and compare/contrast it with the original version of the same song. Thumbing through my personal collection, I was

Reputations can be hard to shake. Jerry Joseph, now based in Portland, Oregon, after bouncing around various western cities, sometimes is written off as a "hippie rocker" stemming from his days with jam band Little Women, or dismissed as noisy and raw from his more recent work with

Eliza Gilkyson has been making records for nearly two decades, but Hard Times In Babylon is a revelation, a bracing song cycle about the challenges of balancing art and eros. Like Lucinda Williams, she sings with a scratchy, wounded sensuality, suggesting a wise and generous soul beneath a rough and