MUSIC REVIEWS

Shortly after pressing play on the standard mix of Ronnue’s new single “You Got Me Open,” one can’t help but immediately wonder if we’re living in 1993 instead of 2023. One thing is for certain here, and it’s that Ronnue certainly doesn’t care what year it is in this track, …

Southern California based multi-instrumentalist and singer/songwriter Rick Lorenzini’s The Anywhere Café demonstrates his versatility. He blends jazz and folk influences throughout the album’s dozen tracks and building the compositions around piano gives this collection a much different flavor than his earlier work. It is his second studio album, following his debut What Brings You …

The bluesy strum and drang of Shady Oaks’ new single “Mad” will garner a wide and appreciative audience. The Denver, Colorado riff-rockers milk their blues influences for all they’re worth and never fall into the trap of regurgitating past glories. Lead guitarist and singer/songwriter Ty Gallaway wears influences such The …

New Orleans’ The Crowe Boys are three brothers who are steadily amassing a rabid following in the NOLA area and branching out into the national spotlight. They infuse their personal take on folk music tradition with genuine rock and roll energy. Their youthful vigor complements the maturity and undeniable melancholy …

A strong harmony is often at the foundation of a great pop song, and though it’s up for debate whether or not the new single from Taydem Shoesmith, “Are You Clapping?,” is as legendary as some of its predecessors (and clear forerunners) in the pop genre have been, there’s denying …

The guitars grow into beasts as we waltz through the opening bars of “Retold,” one of ten tracks to be discovered in Ralph Nix & the Guilt Birds’ Good Ingredients, but this won’t be the only time that they exert their dominance over everything else in this awesome new album from …

With a bold percussive beat and stirring but noisy guitar melodies, somehow an inviting harmony forms somewhere in the eye of the storm. For Matt Soren’s The One Tonic, breaking a lot of the traditional rock n’ roll rules comes standard with the territory that is the recording studio, and …

While they’re entirely organic and available to us in a litany of successful singles found across the country music spectrum in 2022, the string elements of the main melody in “Dandelion,” the new single from Justine Sletten, are some of the warmest I’ve heard all year long. The guitar parts …

Metal doesn’t have to be filled with a lot of excesses to win the attention of hardcore fans, but when it’s progressively stylized and given a powerful nucleus, there’s no debating how full-bodied a sound this genre’s best players can produce. In their new record Duality, rockers Suite Clarity aren’t pulling …

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 …