With Best Troubador, Bonnie 'Prince Billy pays homage to a long-time and forever hero, the late Merle Haggard. A singer who, some 25 years previously, first performed in public by playing a Merle Haggard song, Bonny has often cited Merle's work in performance, on records and in conversation with anyone who was around, even talking to Merle himself for Filter magazine (RIP) in 2009.

Merle's body of work was considered by Bonny for a record such as this for some... (read more)

Find Me Finding You, the forthcoming album from the Laetitia Sadier Source Ensemble, is bound to be a deeply appreciated expression when it drops on March 24th - not only does it present a fusion of new and familiar collaborative elements that strike the ear with scintillating freshness, but the songs that are sung survey all the energies that are surging athwart the globe in these troubled times. In Laetitia's experienced activist hands, these ambitious propositions and dire proclamations give inspiration to... (read more)

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THE TOWN AND THE CITY

Welcome to hard times! Everywhere you go, people gots they hand out - "hey brother, you got a world to spare?" We know it! It's enough to make you believe in space travel and the potentially game-changing relief that might lie only 40 light-years away! But it's a big, bad world that's waxing and waning out there, and we've found that regardless of federally-instituted regulations (or a lack thereof) life flows on within us and... (read more)

On the cusp of two full decades of music-making, Six Organs of Admittance has ridden winds and waves spanning passion and logic and myth. The brand-new full length LP, Burning the Threshold, exudes a warmth not always found in Ben Chasny's music - but that's how life works, taking us up and down over time. Ben's records have charted that passage, making his arrival at this seemingly sweet moment a special pleasure, and as always, a magic and musical one as well. It is... (read more)

Sometimes the stars align and beam a molten beam of light towards one destination; such is the case when Drag City descends onto the Big Ears Festival next month in Koxville, TN! Let's examine: in one weekend, the field is stacked with talent for all the punters to enjoy - Six Organs of Admittance, Laetitia Sadier,Sir Richard Bishop, and Rangda all suit up for musical pleasantries. And what perfect timing, with new records by Six Organs of Admittance (Burning The Threshold) and... (read more)

As Piero Scaruffi puts it, "Royal Trux established themselves during the 90's as one of the greatest rock groups of all time. Not only did they give us the masterpiece of extraordinary scope Twin Infinitives (one of the albums that required decades to be completely assimilated) but they also reinvented the concept of a rock group, a concept that was born with the Rolling Stones (a group that had inspired the duo but just as importantly provided them with a definitive example on which to... (read more)

Alasdair Roberts' high-spirited new album, Pangs, is in stores on Friday - and in commemoration with this forthcoming moment of uplift, we share with one and all the newly-minted video for the title track. Throughout Pangs, Alasdair's leads a band on electric guitar, offering an evocation of the 60s and 70s folk-rockers of the British Isles - the electric warriors of Fairport Convention, the Battlefield Band, Planxty, Richard Thompson and so many others. Of course, these sounds travel... (read more)

Bill MacKay is a musician and a musician's friend - a genial guitarist/composer/improviser based in Chicago who has energized the experimental folk, rock and avant scenes around town with his polyglot approach to the guitar, combining the folk of Appalachia, the blues and gospel with rock, jazz, western-country and an array of eastern modes. Mackay's interest in this tactic - essentially, a personal blending of roots elements - has evidence itself throughout his discography. On Esker, his third solo work and his Drag City debut,... (read more)

Now that the dust has settled on Wand's first crazy year as a band - three albums between August 2014 and September 2015, they seem to have settled into a long winter's nap, allowing us the time to finally catch up on all three of those fantastic releases (as well as spending some time with singer Cory Hanson's solo debut, The Unborn Capitalist From Limbo). But no sooner do they settle in, when suddenly everybody wants to pull them back out again!... (read more)

Good morning, you ragers! Last night Ty Segall blew up the soundstage at Late Night with Seth Meyers so hard, in front of a national TV audience no less, if you witnessed it your Roku surely melted! If you're the type that was safely tucked in bed by then, well, this is dankest explanation for the tremor you felt in the earliest moments of the morning! And thanks to the lovely, free (for now!) passageways of the internet, there's ample archived documentation of Ty and... (read more)