We were mesmerised when we first heard the brand new album from Blue Mountains songwriter T. Wilds (Tania Bowers), Ten Songs. Featuring Matthew Toohey, the album is a stunning set of songs that sit within the folk idiom, perfectly balanced between modern folk noir and dusty traditional forms. You can hear the avant stylings that … Continue reading
West Australian songwriter Tanya Ransom has a brand new EP out called Breakdown To Breakthrough and today we’re featuring the title-track which possesses one of those magical choruses that lifts the song skyward, soaring on a beautiful melodic run. The art of doing that while singing about troubled times is what makes it that much … Continue reading
Melbourne-based New Zealand songwriter Matt Joe Gow has released a brand new single ‘Go Ahead, Celebrate’, bringing a ray of optimistic sunshine to this shitshow of a year, a clarion country call to celebrate… like we used to. Gow nails the requisite uplifting mood and yearning for good times that a song title like that … Continue reading
I first came across Mitch Dillon‘s work with another of his bands – Attractor Beams. There he had a superb garage rock meets The Replacements sound. Here he doesn’t travel a great distance from that sound but it is a more distinct alt-country feel. ‘Do You Want Me to Forget?’ is less parched and brittle, … Continue reading
Ripper of a track from Sydney, yet another top shelf release from the Evening Records crew. K. Walsh (Kevin to his mum) treads a finely balanced line between country and the interesting side of rock music. There are strummed electric guitars and walking bass lines mingling with handclaps, psych guitar sounds and most rewardingly, some … Continue reading
I’m a big fan of David Garnham‘s music; the way he can dial into straight and true folk music and then shift gears to the open highway of an alt-country song with his band (the Reasons to Live) in full flight. The latter is perfectly executed on this new track, ‘Holding Pattern’. The song swaggers … Continue reading
Sydney musician Looch Lewis has released a cover of Died Pretty’s ‘Free Dirt’, the last track on their 1988 album Lost and strangely the title of their previous album though the song didn’t appear on it. The original featured Don Walker on piano and Astrid Munday on backing vocals. Lewis stays true to the original, … Continue reading
Tyler Key (Athens, GA)has just released his album Wild Azaleas And Other Tall Tales, making this song the title track of sorts. I just love this kind of sound – that rolling country rock sway, burnished by a warm and melodic vocal that winds its way through the verses and lifts into a gentle anthem … Continue reading
Brooklyn singer-songwriter Nick Watt released his new album a few weeks ago and one of its highlights is ‘Chimes in the Wind’, a Cohen-esque folk ballad that won us over with metronomic and percussive finger-picking, warm bass notes and his austere and rich vocal intonations that add the requisite drama and forlorn mood to the … Continue reading
Man I love this track. It’s all in the rhythm, the way it leans back, pauses, drops the gears and takes off again down the highway with the sun in the rear view mirror. Simple melodies and structure executed perfectly with that snaking groove and cosmic, laidback vocal. Superb! This is The Deltaz second single … Continue reading
Evening Records out of Sydney town are slowly but surely building a wonderful roster of artists and releases, the latest of which looks to be Iain T. McKelvey and the Midnight Tangos. ‘Raise Your Wine’ has a wonderfully warm and rolling feel to it. Circling around the piano (Carl Manwarring of River Dreams), the guitar … Continue reading
Hot off the press and released today is the brand new single from band The Redlands, on the still fairly new label Cheatin’ Heart Records (Fenn Wilson) ‘Falling Down’ finds the North West Victorian trio achieving a symbiotic blend of country, folk and bluegrass with its sonic pot pourri of banjo, pedal steel and acoustic … Continue reading
Kyle Jenkins Love Lost Love Near Enough Records Kyle Jenkins, the prolific songwriter and frontman for Toowoomba alt-country band Suicide Swans, has also found the time to release his second solo album. His debut, Meltdown, shared a lot of similarities with Suicide Swans but on Love, Lost Love, things get darker and starker. Predominately acoustic … Continue reading
Some songs just roll along with a near perfect vibe and melodic flow and we recently came across the gem from the group Toler Gibson. They describe themselves as a “group of mountain dwellers living high above the clouds in California.” Their back story is that it all started when Gibson, a Canadian born, Texas raised … Continue reading
This track reminded me of Robert Ellis when I first heard it. The Athens GA songwriter Tyler Key has a similar vocal tone that cuts through the sweet country stylings on this really great new single that balances rough swagger and nuanced playing. As Key explains, “Most everyone I know in their mid-to-late twenties has … Continue reading
