Manufacturer: Mercury Records Ltd (London)
Emmylou Harris has always had a way with woe. On All I Intended To Be, she seems more maudlin than ever as she sings her way through songs about loss, heartbreak, even the odd funeral. Of course, this is the kind of material Harris has always been comfortable with, but as her career and years advance gracefully, so her gliding soprano seems to breathe ever more refinement and soul into her ...
Manufacturer: Warner
It's probable that many still think of Tucson, Arizona's Calexico as an indie-rock band dabbling in the fields of country and mariachi music, but so skilfully played and richly textured is Carried to Dust, the sixth album from Joey Burns and John Convertino's long-running collective, that it feels churlish to think of them as anything less than the real deal. Uniting players including Iron ...
Manufacturer: City Slang
Manufacturer: Warner/Rhino
Manufacturer: Rough Trade
With a touch of Robyn Hitchcock in his vocal timbre, a smidgen of Steve Earle in his narratives and instrumental writing and a heap of Gram Parsons in the fullness of his overall sound and structure, Ryan Adams steps well above Whiskeytown with Heartbreaker, his solo debut. By turns raucous, wistful, raspy and simply sweet, Adams makes the most of a top-shelf acoustic band, including ...
Manufacturer: Cooking Vinyl
Torrential creativity has fast-forwarded the artistic evolution of former Whiskeytown frontman Ryam Adams from country-rock boy wonder to despondent troubadour with a 1960s fixation (his solo debut Heartbreaker), but it may also explain why listeners often need to wade through some pedestrian material just to find a few pearls of poetic excellence. Gold is no exception to that trend, ...
Heavier Things should surprise more than a few critics. John Mayer's big-label debut was a multi-platinum breakthrough success whose sensual anthem "Your Body is a Wonderland" scored him an unlikely Grammy for Best Pop Vocal. That out-of-the-box success--and more than a few critics grousing that Mayer's muse was cloned from Dave Matthews--primed him for the typical sophomore slump. Instead, ...
Manufacturer: Columbia
It happens to every hardened party goer--your lifestyle eventually catches up to you. For Steve Earle, this third effort from the then-roué-ish troubadour was a pretty glaring rehab-ahead warning light. The sloppiness was beginning to show: half the disc bogs down in throwaways, cheap echoes of Guitar Town's country-rock acumen. The rest, fortunately, is prime, focused Earle: the ...
Manufacturer: Universal / Island
