MUSIC REVIEWS

Angles – by the Douglas Ray Jaffe Project, is the EP which contains four epic, poeticized tracks, with each one featuring a different vocalist to get Jaffe’s lyrics out over music produced by Emmy-nominated Craig Brandwein, and the musicians and singers all come from the Alabama area. The music is …

Rebecca DGD 5 is an acquired taste, but once you’ve buckled in for the ride, you won’t regret it. Her new single is titled Feels Like Rock’n Roll, a sort of contemporary elixir to the tribalization of music and culture. Indeed, the track starts out with DGD 5 speaking as …

Pop in 2025 is often built for speed. Hooks are crammed into the first ten seconds, choruses arrive before the verse has even settled, and the goal is usually TikTok virality rather than emotional resonance. In that context, Vân Scott’s “Turn Off the Tears” feels almost radical. It doesn’t rush. …

Junior Sisk’s new album is It’s All Fun and Games, featuring eleven tracks with Sisk at the helm along with the band. Sisk’s act is a welcome relief in an era peppered with an unholy union of country and pop. There’s something of a return to form with the act, …

Brielle Brown’s “In Art & Soil The Same” is heartfelt, soulful, and even sometimes gospel influenced folk album, in the tradition of singers like Natelie Merchant, and according to Brown herself, “It’s about the delicate closeness of grief and suffering, of the memories stored and storied in our bodies and land, …

Craig Alan Brandwein Longing, “A Love Across The Ages by Craig Brandwein, etc” (LP). Longing – A Love Across The Ages (An Opera In One Act), is a one-act musical play recording of the opera variety, about a love story set in 1920’s New York City, featuring (Dr. Curtis), sung …

In an era obsessed with the future—streaming algorithms, viral singles, boundary-blurring genre splicing—it’s easy to forget that music can also be an act of preservation. Danny Paisley’s new album, Bluegrass State of Mind, stands as a quiet but insistent testament to the radical idea that tradition, lovingly tended, is itself …

Billy Gilman’s latest single, “Waylon,” is not just a moving Bluegrass ballad—it’s a lifeline disguised as song. Released in partnership with the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP) during Mental Health Awareness Month, the track is as tender as it is vital. Featuring a quiet, acoustic backdrop of fiddle, mandolin, …

The Cold Stares return with The Southern Part II, which equals or even better’s its counterpart, The Southern. Originally from Kentucky, they became a power trio before making these two albums which find them exploring their southern roots, apart from already being a blues-rock band not far removed from the …

Hecojeni’s new single is the aptly titled Human Race, a particularly pertinent title given the semi-dystopian sociopolitical landscape. In true, artistic fashion, Hecojeni is unapologetically throwback, providing a raw, acoustic sound harkening back to the two-thousands, when autotune and electronic manipulation wasn’t the norm, and a heavy-handed beat didn’t throw …