Peter Blackstock

"We'll know when we get there/If we find mercy," Jay Farrar sings in "The Picture", the second track on The Search, Son Volt's fifth album. If in fact the record's title is a clue as to its journey, that

These things tend to be just a bad idea -- bands two or three decades removed from their prime trying to recapture what made them successful back in the day. Often such reunions are not much more than dressed-up moneygrabs, a rehash of moldy oldies augmented by a handful of

Perhaps the highest compliment that could be bestowed on this record is that if you didn't know about Mark Knopfler's Dire Straits days or Emmylou's Gram Parsons past and subsequent solo flowering, you might well suspect these two have been singing partners for a

The essence of Jimmy Webb's artistry is exemplified in an unlikely place on this five-disc set, which collects all of his 1970s studio albums plus a 1972 live concert and an assortment of outtakes. It's the last of those outtakes, a duet with Harry Nilsson on

The bouncy, bluesy jazz of the first track "Pony" notwithstanding, Wayward Angel finds Kasey Chambers, Australia's #1 import to Americana music in recent years, working pretty much the same territory as on her first two releases. That's a good thing, at least for the

"Do I look like a loser?" Bob Neuwirth introduces himself amid a fanfare of trumpets (literally) in the opening bars of his 1974 solo debut. A loser, no -- but not exactly a winner either, this Sasquatch-sized footnote to American rock 'n' roll and folk music