A Change Is Gonna Come: Music, Race & The Soul Of America
Nowadays, a music critic is what we call anyone who writes about music, though actual music criticism has all but disappeared. As Greil Marcus wrote in his rock crit classic Mystery Train, "a critic's job is not only to define the context of an artist's
Marc Olsen - Didn't Ever...Hasn't Since...
Formerly the guitarist for Seattle trio Sage, Marc Olsen recently earned notoriety for his work with Mark Lanegan on the Screaming Trees singer's 1998 solo tour. Olsen's second solo album reveals him as something of a kindred spirit to Lanegan, with songs of intimacy and drama
Cornell Hurd Band - At Large In South Austin, Texas
Chances are you won't be at Jovita's in Austin on a Thursday night when the Cornell Hurd Band hosts its weekly hoedown, so this disc is the next best thing. Recorded with pristine clarity at the Texicalli Grille, the 24 tracks on At Large In South
Drive-By Truckers - Pizza Deliverance
Alabama-reared Patterson Hood and the rest of Drive By Truckers are Southerners, and I'm a Northerner, so the connection I feel to the best songs on the band's sophomore release, Pizza Deliverance, is not geographical. It's more of a small-town America thing:
Gram Parsons - Under Your Spell Again
The brevity of Gram Parsons' life inherently magnifies the importance of any documents that can inform our understanding of his talent. Though the official Parsons canon contains more than enough to justify his stature, it's a meager catalogue compared to other legends who stuck around this mortal
Ernest Tubb & The Texas Troubadours - Waltz Across Texas
Ernest Tubb often attributed his extraordinary success to his less-than-ordinary voice, to the way any listener might hear one of his songs and conclude: "I can sing better than that guy." But you know what? We can't.
Granted, Tubb couldn't hit a