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 […]
Album reviews
Posted inAlbum Reviews, Arts & Entertainment
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: Chris Vallillo — Oh Freedom!
Faced with the violence — both legal and extra-legal — inherent in the Jim Crow system, civil rights activists of the 1950s and 1960s forged a culture of strength and resistance. And, as Macomb, Illinois, guitar virtuoso Chris Vallillo says, music played a crucial role in the development of this movement culture: “Songs filled the […]
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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, […]
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Album Review: Cedar County Cobras – Delta Avenue Juke Joint
Cedar County, Iowa is home of West Branch, Springdale, Clarence, Lowden and the Cedar County Cobras. Their debut album’s title, Delta Avenue Juke Joint, is an inside joke: Delta Ave. is a county road that connects nowhere to nowhere a few miles north-east of Cedar Bluff, where the album was recorded. It’s the kind of place where fun is, of necessity, homemade…
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Album Review: Holy White Hounds’ ‘Sparkle Sparkle’
The guys in Holy White Hounds have been kicking around the Des Moines/Ankeny area for a few years in other bands, but it was the 2013 reunion of high school bandmates Brenton Dean (vocals, guitar) and Ambrose Lupercal (bass) that started the path to their debut record, Sparkle Sparkle…
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Album Review: Hailey Whitters’ ‘Black Sheep’
Hailey Whitters Black Sheep www.haileywhitters.com I hesitated, at first, to review this album. I’m not generally a fan of country music, and I didn’t know if I could pull off something both generous and honest, without getting caught up in genre biases. I listened to Black Sheep, set it aside, walked away. Then something strange […]
