SHARK-FIN AWARDS

“Took a train to Brooklyn, but Harlem was on my mind,” David Yim croons in the opening lines of his solo endeavor Mount Hudson’s new single “Write a Book,” his words cascading across the gentle acoustic backdrop the music is generating. Yim’s confidence is contagious, so much so that the …

Creeping out of the silence with a hesitant sonic slither, “Circle of Sixes” is waiting for anyone brave enough to enter its groove-packed gateway into Darren Michael Boyd’s virgin instrumental LP Lifting the Curse, and in the next four minutes that follow, the track will set the stage for everything …

When You Coming Home, the debut album from Ruark, doesn’t take very long to get us started with a righteous rhythm at all; in its opening title cut, we don’t have to wait for the wallop of gentle harmonies to come oozing out of the speakers at all – it …

A ghostly piano harmony follows every word Thomas Charlie Pedersen sings to us in the balladic “Green Plateau,” but as strong an impression as this song makes, it doesn’t dwarf the ensuing emotion we’ll soon embrace in the guitar-driven “The World is Not Your Oyster,” the tune that immediately follows …

2019 was a really awesome year for independent rock groups, with acts throughout the American and British underground making an impact worth writing home about. Stateside, New York/Florida-transplants Kings County issued a debut album that got a noteworthy reaction from critics and fans largely on the strength of star-caliber songs …

Exotic, surreal and subtly a driving force behind every stitch of audio that we’ll hear in the five minutes “Friend of Mine (Elton’s Epic),” the new single from Rob Alexander, will play, the piano keys that stretch their melodies out through our speakers in this second cut from Alexander’s Being Myself record …

“If you’re gonna run with the big dogs, you gotta get off of the porch” announce Flat River Band as the title track of their new album Every Dog Has Its Day starts to play. Blunt and free from the predictably enigmatic content that has become all too common among mainstream country …

Surreal and soft as silk in “The Flame (featuring Kerry Ironside),” robust and yet gentle in “Planet 8 (featuring Sharon Court),” the string play in Andy Michaels’ new album Incendiary Heart is a cornerstone of the record’s charisma, but don’t get me wrong – it’s but one component in the multifaceted splendor …

Piano keys crash down from the heavens above. Jon Gonzalez’s voice penetrates the deluge of chaos with a sharply-defined melody undamaged by the adjacent discord. His words accumulate and form a cloud over the instrumentation in the foreground, and before we know it, they are as strong as any aural …

Living up to its title and then some, Ronnue’s epic LP Introduction 2 Retro-Funk was a runaway candidate for Indieshark’s Album of the Year Award right out of the gate, combining a plethora of influences from across the pop music spectrum to form a uniquely melodic effort from a one …