Of Note
I once watched an NPR video of Sharon Van Etten accompanied by a female backup singer. I didn’t know what Van Etten looked like, and before she started playing I assumed she would be the …
Andy Six says a “black veil bride” is what Catholics sometimes call a nun. “But to me, it always sounded like a band name. It had sort of the Guns N’ Roses feel — light, …
If there were a rock-and-roll Hall of Fame for locals only, Joey Harris would be in it. The Beat Farmers is as good a place as any to begin the story. The band was founded …
My uncle Thad lives in a small town in western Kentucky. A few years ago, he was looking for videos online and came across what was then the most-popular clip on YouTube: a rendition of …
Said the Whale is a Vancouver-based five-piece that has been on a songwriting-and- recording spree since their inception just out of high school in 2007. In less than five years, they have released seven EPs …
Asobi Seksu came together in New York City in 2001 and spent the next few years refining a sound closely modeled on the so-called shoegazers of the late ’80s and early ’90s. Guitarist James Hanna …
Jim Lauderdale has written hits for such country-music glitterati as George Strait, Patty Loveless, and George Jones but never for himself. It’s not that he hasn’t tried. The night before we talked, I listened to …
The Concretes came together in Stockholm in 1995 and made a modest splash in the United States when their song “You Can’t Hurry Love” showed up in Target commercials six or seven years ago. With …
Crystal Castles is a Toronto duo that specializes in a kind of electronic pop that has been distorted to the point that listening to it is sometimes physically painful. That’s exactly the way their fans …
When asked to name his musical influences, Mark Growden comes up with Joni Mitchell and Estonian classical-composer Arvo Pärt. Other than that, he draws a blank. “What I can tell you,” says the multi-instrumentalist by …
When is a guitar like a woman? When it’s in a country song. “She’s all mine for all night,” sings Lucero’s Ben Nichols. “The only girl a boy can trust is his guitar/ She’s my …
Marnie Stern is an unusual kind of guitar hero. It’s not just that she’s a woman — that’s not so rare anymore. (As Stern points out in one song title, “Female Guitar Players Are the …
In many ways, things have never been better for music fans. Heard about a new band and you want to check them out? If you go on YouTube, you can probably find video of them …
In 1961, Judy Collins was a Greenwich Village folk singer with a strong debut called A Maid of Constant Sorrow. An Earth-mother type with astonishing blue eyes, Collins had an airy voice that floated above …
Last summer, I went to one of those big radio-station concerts where a bunch of bands that don’t have a whole lot to do with each other share a stage. That was how I saw …
Grace Potter & the Nocturnals’ “new” look is about 40 years old. In 2002, when they were starting out, the band’s look was “indie-rocker from the farm.” The Nocturnals were hayseeds, and Potter was the …