MUSIC REVIEWS

Manhattan Oz: A Gotham Odyssey is prolific American blues rocker Christina Gaudet’s 10th solo album. Packed with jam-worthy guitar grooves and hard hitting drum beats, Gaudet’s flavorful vocals is still the highlight of this dark horse hit parade. Just as the humidity-like rhythms call out like a sweaty dance craze, it’s Gaudet’s …

Cows, the sophomore CD release by Jason Bennett, is a very fitting title for a variety of songs that come together from different places to find a home in the Americana, folk, country and even rock influenced territory. The unplugged approach keeps it grounded for the most part, but that’s …

Young love can be a powerful thing – and it can also be one that is the complete opposite of a Hollywood ending. Christen Cooper maps out the guy she’s searching for in the new single, “That Kind Of Guy”. Cooper crafts an infectious chorus and transports listeners back to …

San Diego’s Kevin Thomas Band keeps it real and keeps it smooth in the 10-track album, A New Heart. Offering a mix of California sun kissed stylings, with a boyish charm vocals, from start to finish this is a journey that grooves and moves like a summer day that you don’t …

If a song has the opening line “And then I saw you, breakfast table at Lo-Fi Betty’s, making love to your biscuits and gravy, that big gorilla on your arm,” there’s a high chance no matter what follows could turn my enjoyment of the track sour. For “Dangerous” by CrashMonkeys, …

Bands like The Chillbumps litter rock and roll’s long history. The Alabama-based five-piece first formed in the late 1980s and, at first, devoted themselves to covers and playing the college circuit in the American Southeast. Auburn University students themselves, The Chillbumps did eventually record one album of originals in 1991, Welcome …

Blues music is quite literally at the foundation of all western pop and rock music, but when it’s being presented in its purest of forms, there’s no denying its charismatic tone as it exists independently from the genres it has influenced in the past century. A lot of singer/songwriters do …

Vineet Singh Hukmani understands his audience like few pop performers today. He’s had one success after another during the comparatively dark period of the pandemic at its zenith and all of its accompanying lockdowns and, without question, performed a service to music fans worldwide with his relentless optimism and hope …

You know when people make music for more than just fame and fortune. It’s as much of a cliché as anything else in this world to say some people possess the still relatively inexplicable compulsion to make music and share it with the larger world. Being a cliché doesn’t make …

Pop music doesn’t have to be complicated and, truth be told, it’s often a lot more fetching when it’s presented simply as opposed to with a lot of frills. There are plenty of singer/songwriters who might disagree with me on this point, but if there’s one who is sympatico with …