Unless you are a devotee of uninterrupted streaming, or 5-disc CD changers, you know that there’s an eerie silence that lingers after an album is over. It can shock you out of your reverie, demolish whatever translated worldview your music of choice has created for you. It’s how you realize that the world around you is lacking…
Album Reviews
Posted inAlbum Reviews, Arts & Entertainment
Album Review: Halfloves – Self-titled
It’s a ballsy move to rename your band after you’ve had some notoriety. The Olympics decided to go back into the studio after their 2012 album with renewed commitment…
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Album Review: Pigs and Clover – Self-titled
Pigs and Clover are Matt and Jamie Kearney, reliable participants at political protests and labor rallies around Johnson County. If you hear someone blowing a conch shell at a demonstration, that’s Matt. Jamie’s the snare drummer. They recently released their eponymous third record…
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Album Review: Sweet Cacophony – Wind, Sand & Stars
The members of Iowa City-based folk quartet Sweet Cacophony have been playing music collectively for many decades. However, these lifelong musicians didn’t meet each other until recently. Life threw them together at the Hilltop Tavern’s Friends of Old Time Music jam sessions, which harmonica/accordion player Dennis Roseman has long organized. Peter Rolnick (guitars/mandolin), Jim Delaney (guitars/percussion) and Dave Parsons (bass/whistle) were the first to come together, in 2013. Roseman joined them soon after.
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Album Review: Lissie – My Wild West
Lissie My Wild West www.lissie.com “I want my forty acres in the sun” —“Hero” Lissie’s latest album My Wild West is at once a love letter and a breakup letter. After 12 years in California chasing her dreams, which included a major label contract, Lissie decided to change the path she was on. In an […]
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Album Review: Elizabeth Moen – Self-titled
Elizabeth Moen Elizabeth Moen www.elizabethmoen.bandcamp.com On “Songbird,” the first track from her eponymous debut album, Elizabeth Moen sings, “Singing at the top of my lungs trying to get through.” It shows off her voice and guitar in a way that perfectly situates her in the singer-songwriter tradition alongside Joni Mitchell, Janis Ian and Judee Sill. […]
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Album Review: The Multiple Cat – Intricate Maps
Quad Cities producer and engineer Patrick Stolley has been releasing albums as The Multiple Cat since 1994 with a rotating cast of sidemen. Stolley is one of the founding members of Daytrotter and still contributes with sessions from his own FutureAppleTree studio…
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Album Review: The Pines – Above the Prairie
On Dec. 8, 2015, a great hero for social justice in the United States passed away. John Trudell was a Santee Dakota-American poet, musician, actor and activist associated with the American Indian Movement. He famously led the “Red Power” occupation of Alcatraz Island in 1969…
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Album review: Lynne Hart, Pat Smith & Richard Wagor – Roots of Rhythm
Listening to the Roots of Rhythm album from the trio of Lynne Hart, Pat Smith and Rich Wagor, I am transported to a Woody Allen film in my mind. Allen’s use of early jazz music both reflects his particular taste in music and serves to ensure a kind of timelessness—that same timelessness is reinforced on this album by Hart’s clarinet.
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Album review: Jim Viner’s Incredible B3 Band – Comango!
Jim Viner’s Iowa City music resumé goes back a ways, at least to the 1990s, in the bands Head Candy, Bent Scepters and Brother Trucker. Jim Viner’s Incredible B3 Band is chock full of IC veterans, like the organists Radoslav Lorković and Nate Basinger. The band’s personnel overlaps with The Diplomats of Solid Sound, led by Doug Roberson, who also plays here.
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Album Review: Pieta Brown – Drifters
Pieta Brown Drifters www.pietabrown.com Pieta Brown and her band had a very productive four and a half days at Justin Vernon’s April Base Studios recording her 2014 album Paradise Outlaw. They recorded 20 songs with the intention of making the album a double. Plans changed and she picked 14 songs for the single album we […]
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Album Review: Land of Blood and Sunshine – Lady and the Trance
Land of Blood and Sunshine Lady and the Trance www.cartoucherecords.com Lady and the Trance, the upcoming release from Marshalltown’s Land of Blood and Sunshine, is the kind of record that you don’t ever want to end. Coming close on the heels of LOBAS’ last release (last January’s Aeons), this new record, which drops Jan. 15, […]
