|

Click here to expand and collapse the player

Country / Folk Browse All

0

Icon: George Jones

By John Morthland, eMusic Contributor

Certainly there have been greater all-around artists, writers/singers/performers - Hank Williams, Merle Haggard and Johnny Cash are but a few - but George Jones, according to consensus, is the greatest singer country music has ever produced. His voice and style are instantly recognizable, yet hard to describe. His voice doesn't seem to come from the gut or the throat, but from somewhere in the back of his head, forced out through clenched teeth. Words are… more »

0

Who Is…Hiss Golden Messenger

By Stephen M. Deusner, eMusic Contributor

It feels odd to ask "Who is…?" of a guy who has been making music for nearly 20 years, but veteran Michael Taylor is just now finding his largest audience with Hiss Golden Messenger. It's actually his third band, following the short-lived punk group Ex-Ignota and the longer-lived San Francisco alt-country act The Court & Spark. When the latter broke up in 2007 — after four albums and nearly a decade of near-constant touring —… more »

2

Re-Documenting the Blues

By John Morthland, eMusic Contributor

Austrian collector Johnny Parth launched Document Records in 1986 in order to reissue the complete works of early 20th-century American roots musicians, mostly blues artists. Document's modus operandi was simple: Pick an artist and reissue the total output on however many albums — or, later, CDs — it took. Less-recorded artists — Geechie Wiley, say — shared a single album with other names; the more prolific — like Peetie Wheatstraw — got considerably more (seven… more »

New + Noteworthy

Editors’ Picks

eMusic Reviews View All

Pistol Annies, Annie Up

2013 | Label: RCA Records Label Nashville

In his 2012 memoir Waging Heavy Peace, Neil Young gave a rave review to the Pistol Annies, observing that the Nashville trio was “writing their asses off.” It was an unexpected shout-out, to which the women responded via tweet that they nearly peed their pants with excitement. Such praise was warranted. On their 2011 debut, the group — which consists of Miranda Lambert, Ashley Monroe and Angaleena Presley delivered a batch of sharply observed country tunes that ranged from hilarious to heartbreaking and that appealed even to listeners who… more »

Patty Griffin, American Kid

2013 | Label: New West Records

Patty Griffin’s seventh album — and her first collection of new songs in six years — opens with “Go Wherever You Wanna Go,” a delicate rural blues number that bristles with slide guitar and promises of travel and escape. That song establishes American Kid as a meditation on wanderlust of all kinds — emotional, physical and musical — and it may be Griffin’s most adventurous and diverse effort yet. Rather than record again in Austin or Nashville, Griffin decamped to Memphis, where she absorbed the Bluff City’s deep, rich history… more »

Luke Winslow-King, The Coming Tide

2013 | Label: Bloodshot Records

The 29-year-old singer/songwriter, slide guitarist and eMusic Selects alum Luke Winslow-King is from Michigan, but he has called The Big Easy home since 2001. On his third full-length, you can hear that the city has made its way into his bones. On The Coming Tide, Winslow-King masters the art of revivalist folk, seamlessly blending New Orleans jazz, Delta blues and ragtime into an album as sweet and satisfying as devouring plate of beignets and sipping a café au lait on the banks of the Mississippi.

Accompanied by his girlfriend, the… more »

Various Artists, Way To Blue – The Songs Of Nick Drake

2013 | Label: StorySound Records / Redeye

As Nick Drake’s producer in the early 1970s, Joe Boyd helped the legendary English singer-songwriter create albums that were remarkably consistent in sound and mood. A similar cohesiveness arises on Way To Blue, largely because the recordings came from a series of live concerts Boyd produced in the UK, Australia and Italy. Exquisite arrangements and recording techniques result in a live album that doesn’t sound like a live album; it doesn’t sound like a tribute album either, since the tracks weren’t gathered from disparate studio sessions. It also differs from… more »

eMusic Radio

1

The Mixtape

By eMusic Editorial Staff, eMusic Contributor

This Month: Satanic Folk Songs The dark (but not explicitly Satanic) songs of Johnny Cash, Leonard Cohen and Tom Waits inspired a wave of British '80s martial folk bands, which incorporated elements of early industrial music with acoustic folk strumming, militant beats and lyrics about death, the apocalypse and the devil. With black candles positioned in a pentagram around our speakers, eMusic delved into the history of evil, politically incorrect and murderous music to assemble the 13… more »

Recommended Radio

View All