Grant Alden

The curse of Linda Thompson is that she is known principally for the exquisite agony of 1982's Shoot Out the Lights, the divorce album she recorded and toured behind with soon-to-be-ex-husband, Richard. And for her voice, no small gift but rendered undependable by a condition called spasmodic dysphonia.

Sometimes — this morning — one is given to suspect that we are little more than aggregations of the stories we tell about ourselves and each other, stories that haunt and inform and seek temporarily to connect or distance us. Those are the best songs, in any event, the true stories, even

A measured portion of boredom remains an essential part of any artist's regular diet. Getting that portion right is tricky. Too much smacks of indolence and indulgence; too little suggests an unseemly devotion to career over craft. Our late sequestration during two years of COVID provided an overabundance

These days, alas, there is no danger of wobbling late Friday night 10 blocks over to Peaches Records and looking for love in the cut-out bins. (Oh, but that Legendary Christine Perfect album.) The habit never entirely leaves, even as it becomes more difficult to justify what sneaks through the

Perhaps we should reconsider last column's comment about the manufactured consent of celebrity and commerce so as to add a needed caveat, borrowed from a children's book by Lloyd Alexander: The work doesn't care who does it. And the best work, the work which

EDITOR’S NOTE: Peter Blackstock and Grant Alden were the original editors of No Depression, launching it as a print magazine covering alt-country (whatever that is) in 1995 and steering it through 75 issues until 2008. While they’re no longer part of the staff, they’re still very much