News

Myths and truths of a country on the way down, viewed through a deep-focus lens trained on the city from the deserts on the east; Cory Hanson's Pale Horse Rider is an ecstatic vision poised in a sonic terminus of unoccupied residential parks and streets, fading into craggy footpaths to nowhere. From this vantage point, our passage is seen as diligent, ephemeral and grotesque by turns, forgiven and made beautiful again by the sound of the music.
 

Cory's... (read more)

Strange vibrations, queer notions - phantom memories of people and places we used to be! We're talking about the debut album of E.R. Jurken, to be released on the debut record label Country Thyme this April!

On I Stand Corrected, E.R. (Ed to his frenz) unravels the gauze from old wounds with delicate pop fingers strumming a guitar and a touch of keyboards beneath a chorale of overdubbed E.R.s, plumbing depths, tickling fancies and reaching for the light. E.R.'s songwriting and voice convey... (read more)

With Blexxed Rec, The Peacers have gone full-spectrum psych-pop! Strumming every guitar and every bass drum, rebuilding pop once again in it’s own fiendish mirror image, Blexxed Rec is a blessed event for all yer rock and roll people.

The perfect gutter groover to hold up your next hole-in-the-sock hop, "Ghost of A Motherfucker" is a down and dank ditty with sharply focused melodic tendencies, lit up by Bo Moore's falsetto-feinting lead vox. Coolly surveying the state of yesterday's well-respected man today, with... (read more)

Does anyone remember the local bar scene? Sure, it was a lifetime ago (the longest lifetime: a year and counting...), but we still recall those unsung heroes of every local scene; musicians who put their blood, sweat and tears into trying to capture the blood, sweat and tears of somebody else's music. Sure, almost everybody starts off performing covers before eventually finding their own original voice, leaving behind the quiet triumph 'n tragedy of those who continue to try and draw custom via a spirited... (read more)

Upon first blush, Keys, the debut album from Bill MacKay and Nathan Bowles, is a collection of guitar and banjo duets — but from the get-go, it also clear that their agreed-upon duo is also a living organism, growing ambitiously within itself as it plays. Diversity of song is matched by instrumentation: Bill’s guitar and Nathan’s banjo are joined over time by voice, piano, percussion, pump organ, electric organ and requinto, sketching, as they go, the richness and rusticity, traditionalism and open space of which... (read more)

In Glen Echo there are multitudes — all the moments in a life: the good time grooves, shifts in community, moments of loss and generosity that you know you will carry forever, the dark recesses late at night that echo with wonder. You name it, AZITA’s got some hot and sour theme music for it!

AZITA is equal parts droll and dire; her dispassionate view of fates and outcomes for all of us here together on the planet is textured with unique, cinematic details and... (read more)

Waiting placidly for end of days, a rictus grin flashing winningly as he summons strength for the already-in-progress epic clash, Cory Hanson delivers a new music video for Pale Horse Rider.
 

The third single/title track from the forthcoming album ascends to climactic heights (both within itself and in the context of the larger record coming into view) via majestic country gospel-inflections and ambient steel guitar, swelling to a repeated chorus radiating with cries of catharsis from our Cory... (read more)

Where once was Superwolf, now roam Superwolves, the new album and demon spawn of Matt Sweeney and Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, out digitally April 30th on Drag City and available physically on June 18th. Today marks the arrival of their new single “Hall of Death,” which follows “Make Worry For Me.” Sweeney and Will Oldham (aka Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy) wrote “Hall Of Death” with visionary Tuareg guitarist and producer Ahmoudou Madassane. The song features Oldham and Sweeney in their traditional respective... (read more)

I Stand Corrected is the debut of a new talent AND a new label, Country Thyme. When a label's formed to release a record, you'll usually hear something crucial upon dropping the needle: in this instance, the sounds of an honest-to-god, old-school song cycle in best riches-to-rags style. Classically uneasy, this claustrophobic journey rises and falls on the songs of E.R. Jurken and his spectral tenor, haunted via multiple overdubs, making heart stopping orchestral pop with the orchestra mostly muted.

I Stand Corrected took some... (read more)

Keys, the debut album from Bill MacKay and Nathan Bowles is, from the get-go, music that grows as it goes, a living organism, determined to be more than a simple collection of guitar and banjo duets.

Bill and Nathan met a few years ago, but after the first night they hung out, it felt as if they’d known each other for awhile already. A year later, they were booked to play as a duo at Cropped Out. They'd sent provisional ideas, thoughts and music... (read more)