MUSIC REVIEWS

The contemporary singer/songwriter movement has brought us a lot of different forms of magic in the past few years, but there hasn’t been nearly as much humility coming out of its underground as one might expect there should be. URL: https://www.donmerckle.com/ In a generation that has been as equally focused …

From the moment the gargantuan riffage starts to come through our speakers with the opening track “Throw,” it’s more than obvious that we’re in for a thrashy rock n’ roll throw-down in the new album A Force Rising from Rising Force. Although there’s been some discussion of metal being somewhat irrelevant to …

Some of the most iconic songs of our generation are Christmas songs; just ask Mariah Carey, who makes, I’m guessing, 95% of her net worth double every single December as “All I Want For Christmas” controls the airwaves for thirty-one days straight. URL: https://haleydreismusic.com/ There’s something incredibly lucrative about being …

Daniel Andrews is cut from a different cloth than the plethora of country performers you hear today. The Houston, Texas native has scored big with the single “You Make Loving Me Look Easy” and his follow-up “Dirt Road Memories” promises to further expand his growing audience. It’s the sort of …

Sometimes a solo outing is the only way to get something off of your chest as a creative, and I think this is partly what led Chris McCooey to issue a masterpiece of a one-man effort in his new album Missing Pieces this December. McCooey’s melodic moxie is as powerful as ever …

To attempt to discuss the work of Georgia-born art collective Auto Chlor, listeners might have an easier time going back to the start. Forming in 1995 with the ever-secret and talented xx periscope in the leading seat, Auto Chlor is a band that has never given away their music easily. …

Talented vocalist Dianña has made a couple of prior forays into the pop country arena and her latest “Missing You Underneath the Mistletoe” marks her first Christmas song. I am normally not much a fan of these types of songs, they tend to be calculated far more than other such …

  The strings on Christine Hand’s acoustic guitar are played in a variety of different ways on the Dallas-based singer/songwriter’s new album Standing on the Shoulders, but whether they’re slowly picked in the melancholic descent of “House of Bread,” forged into playful licks in “Take it Slow,” transformed into a melodically-faceted …

The actuality of being an indie artist doesn’t always mean you’re beholden to twangy guitars and folky composition — in the last decade, the idea of “indie” music has lost the plot and become indicative of something closer to Bon Iver and Mumford & Sons as a style choice than …

Living within the shadows, you’ll find the darkest secrets this planet contains, existing somewhere in the ethers between our realm and hell, constantly leaning in on us when we’re least equipped to manage the weight of their woeful untruths. Elektragaaz bravely enters this universe in their new record The Synaesthetic Picture …