Canadian folk singer-songwriter Matthew Swann records under the name Astral Swans. He’s back with a new, self-titled record, which includes a few great duets with fellow songwriter Julie Doiron. (Also, we’ve been doing this for 300 weeks. We’re old.)
Marisa Anderson and William Tyler‘s collaborative album, “Lost Futures”, has some of our favourite melodies of the year. The idea of “duelling guitars” has given us some enticing music over the years, but the duo’s music shines brighter when those guitars – both electric and acoustic – sound like they’re just sweetly talking to each other.
I’ve lost count of the amount of times I wrote “Produced by Dan Auerbach” here when describing an album. Yola‘s “Stand For Myself” is another of those. Her debut record, “Walk Through Fire”, was gaining serious traction when the pandemic hit, robbing her of well deserved high profile shows and festival slots – but not for long. Fresh off a Newport Folk Festival slot, this might be the possible songwriter’s dream summer.
We took a week off because we can. It gave us a few extra days to dive deeper into Snapped Ankles’ excellent “Forest of Your Problems”. The noisy London post-punk (if we can define it like that…) band refines their sound further, bringing us some hip-moving motorik we can use to pretend the world is back to normal and we can all dance again. Responsibly.
Lambchop wants to tell you something. We think you should pay attention, even if you’re not a fan of Kurt Wagner’s experiments with vocoders that are carried from 2016’s FLOTUS. Under the surface, the classic Lambchop sound is still there. Plus: new songs by ANOHNI, Weyes Blood, Cate Le Bon, Dave Depper and Laura Gibson, Roosevelt, Altın Gün, Ex Hex, Nilüfer Yanya, Caroline Spence, Luther Dickinson & Birds of Chicago, Mavis Staples, Strand of Oaks, Damien Jurado, Calexico and Iron & Wine, TK & The Holy Know-Nothings, John Paul White, Dylan LeBlanc, A.A. Bondy, Orville Peck, and Bill MacKay.