After being obsessed by the 1977 album Here Am I, a copy of which I was lucky enough to stumble upon in a dollar bin in the mid-90s, I spent over 10 years on-and-off trying to track down the artist known as Frederick Michael St. Jude. The album was clearly great—lyrically, vocally, and musically, FM St. Jude was indeed the “walking atomic power plant” that the batty liner notes claimed he was—but the man and his motivations were a total mystery. Eventually, through... (read more)

Gee, in principle it is NOT easy generating these Bill Callahan tour updates several times a year - and not because we don't love the guy, but it's been a damn MINUTE since he put out new music. Generally with these things, one tends to boomerang the nature of the tour piece around the tone of the record in most recent memory. For that, we have to reach back to Dream River in late 2013 - or, if you're really counting, Have Fun With God... (read more)

MASTER AND EVERYONE

I SEE A DARKNESS and EASE DOWN THE ROAD sessions had ultimately proceeded well, and so Will Oldham mapped out a third full-length recording session with a similar process concept in place.  This new record would be made over the course of a month in Shelbyville at Paul Oldham’s Rove Studios with musicians coming and going for their respective tracking sessions.  For basic tracking, NY-based guitarist Alan Licht, Baltimoron bassist Drew Nelson and Belgian drummer Thomas Van Cottom... (read more)

Here on the earth's surface, this past year has been a happening, exciting experience for Six Organs of Admittance. Since the release of Burning The Threshold in 2017, subsequent tours of the USA and Europe, the curation and release of Hexadic III in February, Hexadic workshops in Iberia, and a smattering of shows in the SW, Ben Chasny has been a busy dude! And when the wave is long you gotta keep riding, especially if it's acoustically sound!

That wildly magnetic wave takes S... (read more)

Where does the time go? It's been 14 years since we got the first Joanna Newsom record out, and since then, there's never not been a time when more copies of that record and her subsequent albums were in heavy sales rotation. So it only makes sense that we should break her music out into one of today's most desirable platforms...wait for it - cassette tapes! Back in 2004, we were certain that that particular format was solidly in the rear-view; the sales ledgers for... (read more)

Woo, boy! Summer is finally here and what a time to be alive, in the midst of a streaming roll out for the ages. See, since April, each week has brought another year from the Palace-Oldham-Bonny universe to streaming life chronologically, allowing worldwide streaming audiences the chance to join the BPB congregation en masse. It's a common theme around these Drag City parts ---ye old "Prince" giving and giving, happily bestowing upon your feeble, non-physical-buying, formless being. Just next weekend, he's... (read more)

"Perfume," the brand-new Wand EP, has just arrived, and it is official: its residual touring adventure will waft across an entire ocean plus a channel before the year is out! Currently raging down the back roads and byways of these (barely) United States, Wand have already made a pact among the five-strong in their rolling HQ to keep on Wanding into the beyond - far beyond these flawed and overrated borders! After their currently unfurling, summer-long stint across North America, Wand will manifest... (read more)

This Saturday, June 2nd, Chris Gantry will perform at the Country Music Hall of Fame, for their Outlaws & Armadillos: Country's Roaring 70s exhibit. While we were pleased to release is fully OUT-there, never before heard recording from the 70s, At The House of Cash, Gantry has a long history as a Nashville songwriter, his songs recorded by Johnny Cash, Reba McEntire, Roy Clark, K.D. Lang, Billy Walker, and Glen Campbell to name a few. He was full... (read more)