Reviews

Against All Tides

Harpeth Rising

Lyrically engaging, harmonically alluring and instrumentally honed to a crystalline sharpness, Harpeth Rising ascend to the upper echelon of the...

Reviewed in issue December/2018

Long Shot/Battle of the Giants

The Pioneers

The Pioneers were a Jamaican vocal trio who formed in the early 1960s, shifting line-ups and achieving little success until...

Reviewed in issue December/2018

Carousel

The Pine Hearts

Hailing from Olympia, Washington, The Pine Hearts are a bluegrass trio with a penchant for expertly conjured, though largely conventional,...

Reviewed in issue December/2018

Stupid Mountain Too Big

The Hot Seats

‘We call it stringband music because it's just too tedious to try and get into whether it's old-time, bluegrass, ragtime,...

Reviewed in issue December/2018

Alborada

Uji

Following the trend of digital cumbia, South America's electronic underground music has gone spiritual, adding chants from Ayahuasca rituals and...

Reviewed in issue December/2018

New Folk

Recoveco

Imagine if Peter Gabriel was commissioned – or perhaps forced – to record ‘La Bamba’ and reunite with his old...

Reviewed in issue December/2018

One Life to Live

Phyllis Dillon

The latest in the excellent Doctor Bird reissue series is the sole LP that was released by Jamaican singer Phyllis...

Reviewed in issue December/2018

Quebra-Cabeça

Bixiga 70

Four albums in and the juggernaut that is São Paulo's Bixiga 70 powers on with added conviction. Since their debut,...

Reviewed in issue December/2018

El Mito de la Pérgola

Pascuala Ilabaca y Fauna

If any musician is going to reconfigure the airy strangeness of Andean music, Chilean singer Pascuala Ilabaca might be the...

Reviewed in issue December/2018

Action! and Intensified

Desmond Dekker & the Aces

Desmond Dekker brought Jamaican music into the international pop charts – first with ‘007 (Shanty Town)’ in 1967 then in...

Reviewed in issue November/2018