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Grant Alden

Ryan Adams & The Cardinals - Jacksonville City Nights

Reviewing Whiskeytown's Strangers Almanac for a larger magazine many years ago, I argued that if alternative country music were to produce a Kurt Cobain, Ryan Adams would be it. I was mostly wrong, so far. There was a dark clarity to Cobain's work and a crispness,

Mary Gauthier - Late train to mercy

Sometimes, for an instant or longer, when the music was just exactly right, it was possible to lose one's self in the press of great punk rock. Whole seconds might pass in the pulsing crowd, strangers coiled and bruising on all sides, dank smells and powerful sounds overwhelming

Jean Ritchie - Mountain Hearth & Home

It seems likely that Jean Ritchie was the first woman other than my mother with whom I fell in love. I would have been about five years old and have no memory of what she looked like; worse, I fear she was replaced in my affections by the Peruvian-born wife

Eddie Spaghetti - The Sauce

As it turns out, a lot of the Seattle class of 1992 (or whatever) is still finding ways to make music -- whether their mostly accidental swing at the big time hit or missed. As one of their ex-girlfriends said, the Supersuckers moved to Seattle from Tucson because they could

Emmylou Harris - Pieces Of The Sky / Elite Hotel / Luxury Liner / Quarter Moon In A Ten Cent Town / Blue Kentucky Girl

In 1974 Emmylou Harris was still alarmingly close to being nobody. Her first album, 1968's Gliding Bird, evaporated when Jubilee Records went out of business a few weeks after its release. (Apparently, this is a blessing.) Her singing partner, friend and mentor, Gram Parsons, had been dead about

Elliott Smith: 1969 to 2003

"I never really heard Nick Drake," Elliott Smith said back in 1996, just before the frenzy of stardom glanced by. "I mean, I had heard a Nick Drake song after I'd recorded the last record, and I thought it was cool." Inevitably, however, Smith&

Bonnie "Prince" Billy - Master And Everyone

The historical record would argue that almost nothing I have to say about Will Oldham, and his various incarnations, should be believed. Years ago I reviewed an early Palace release for Spin, and while I can't remember which record it was, I know the review was a glowing