
Bolachas Now Playing, a new music Spotify playlist, updated every Wednesday. This week’s highlight: the prolific singer-songwriter Ryan Pollie’s new album, “Stars”.

Bolachas Now Playing, a new music Spotify playlist, updated every Wednesday. This week’s highlight: the prolific singer-songwriter Ryan Pollie’s new album, “Stars”.

Three years after the stellar “You, Forever”, Sam Evian is back with a new album. Eleven psychedelic pop gems to brighten up your post-Daylight Saving Time late afternoon blues, if that’s a thing where you live.

Garrett T. Capps. Photo by Knelis / TakeRoot
It’s midnight in Groningen. It’s the end of an abnormally warm November saturday and it should also have been the end of an eight hour marathon of roots and americana across six rooms in the De Oosterpoort complex. But Garrett T. Capps and his NASA Country have different ideas. Suddenly, a “curfew” seems like a malleable concept as fellow Texans Robert Ellis and James Steinle join the band on stage for a sprawling and ecstatic “Born in San Antone” and a version of the classic “She’s About a Mover”, penned by San Antonio’s very own Doug Sahm. Capps seems comfortable as the frontman to a 21st century version of the mighty Texas Tornados, powered by a strong rhythm section and an unusual synth that takes his brand of Americana to another dimension. I’ve been calling it krautcountry after seeing them in Paradiso’s small room in the same evening as Faust and Camera, and you should too.

We’re back from Le Guess Who?, one of the few festivals in Europe where we could choose between four or five quality club nights in various venues or a packed Xylouris White gig post-midnight on a Saturday. We were lucky to get in and witness one of the best concerts of the festival, which doubled as a release show, since the duo composed of Greek singer/laouto player George Xylouris and Dirty Three’s Jim White has just released their fourth album in six years, The Sisypheans. Plus: new tracks by Oiseaux-Tempête, 10 000 Russos, Katie Gately, FKA twigs, SebastiAn, Moor Mother, Vanishing Twin, Gus Seyffert, Wolf Parade, Jeffrey Lewis, Jonathan Wilson, Itasca, Mount Eerie & Julie Doiron, The Delines, Twain, Sea Lion, and The Good Ones.

The Grote Zaal of De Oosterpoort during the 2018′s TakeRoot festival.
TakeRoot Festival. Saturday, 2 November 2019, at De Oosterpoort, Groningen, The Netherlands. Tickets for sale here.
Coming of age in the era of MySpace meant stumbling into a lot of “A little bit of everything, except country and rap” on your fellow scenester’s profiles. Fast forward some 15 years, and there’s a rapper headlining your favorite indie festival, much to the disgust of a few folks who haven’t grown from their proud everything-except-country-and-rap pedestal. But most young alternative Europeans still look at country music with the same disgusted look that your aunt made the first time she stumbled upon a 50 Cent music video.