Album Reviews

You may not have heard of New Jersey-based keyboard player and vocalist Doug Kistner, but you have probably heard Doug Kistner. You may even have seen him on tour. He is well known in the industry, but until recently, he didn’t have a big public profile. He relied instead on …

Hanna Olah (known as Hannyta https://hannyta.com/home) is a 17 year old singer-songwriter. Born in Hungary, she’s based in Britain and grew up in Scotland but spent enough time with relatives in the USA to come to appreciate America and its influences. This varied heritage shows through in her musical influences, …

Vento has released a live version of the Chapin classic as the 10th track from the “Brick By Brick” album. Vento met Chapin aboard a 1981 flight. After nearly 45 minutes of very nice conversation, I said to him, ‘Has anyone ever told you that you look just like Harry …

It’s AV Super Sunshine’s world; we’re just living in it. Few performers of today burn as bright as this. A new AV Super Sunshine release doesn’t mean just a new song; the writer, performer, and auteur never put out singles without a video and/or multiple remixes accompanying the core track. …

The ten songs on Pretty Embers’ first release Under exist well within an established musical style but, fortunately, bear their own identity. The Southern roots of the band offers us a lesson about preconceived notions; I, for one, wouldn’t have expected a band with avowed influences such as Paul McCartney, Death Cab …

  Putting emotional poetry on paper can be cathartic, but it can also translate as trivial when it isn’t read from the right perspective. Singer/songwriter Chloe Agnew isn’t giving us the opportunity to misread her emotional expressions in the new single and music video “On My Own;” her singing frames …

Neon Dreams are a power duo that critics on the international level can’t seem to get enough of at the moment, and while I hadn’t been listening to their work ahead of hearing their new collaboration with the talented Mthandazo Gatya, I can say now that I understand why they’ve …

A smoldering string arrangement peeks at us from behind a curtain of passive silence as we set upon A Place to Bury Strangers’ new single and music video “Playing the Part.” Though the first thirty seconds of this track more or less give us a pretty solid indication as to …

Forget the big intros, the lusty solos, the synthetic faceting, the throwbacks to 1970s personality and 1960s expressiveness. Jane n’ the Jungle are trimming all the fat off of their dynamic rock n’ roll sound in the new single “Ain’t No Other Way” this fall, and much as the song’s …

Meditative Animal’s Nick Mirisola has earned his reputation as one of the most promising songwriters in music today. The foundation of his gifts blurs genre borders while incorporating recognizable strands and traditions. It’s what artists in any medium are supposed to do – learn well what came before, expand on …

Big guitars. Even bigger drums. A voice that can charge into the fires of hell and come back sounding more commanding than ever. Motive Black has all the right pieces, the right ingredients if you will, to make the perfect rock n’ roll cocktail when they get together in the …

Creeping up behind us like a stalker in the shadows of the night, it’s a little difficult to tell whether the synthesizer we first hear in the opening bars of “These Things” is friend or foe, but as the song presses on, Hasten Mercy makes it clear that we have nothing to …