folk-rock

Say hello to your new favorite eclectic folk rock band.  Say “Oh, hello,” that is.  Texas brother-sister duo Maggie and Tyler Heath, who make beautiful music under the moniker The Oh Hellos, have sung their way into my heart with their first full-length record, Through the Deep, Dark Valley, released independently on October 30.  The self-proclaimed “concept album” works best when its tracks are heard all together, chronologically. But the lyrically-rich, harmony-full songs also hold their own as individual stories of longing and innocence with a twinge of mysticism.

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★★★★★

There have been very few times in my life where I have been happy to be wrong; Bruce Springsteen’s new album, Wrecking Ball might stand out as the greatest instance. After finding lead single “We Take Care Of Our Own,” to be somewhat mediocre, and fearing the same thing for all of the album, having my expectations blown away is a wonderful feeling. With Wrecking Ball, Springsteen makes one of his most personal and expressive albums of his career, one that outshines 2009’s Working On A Dream by miles. If I had to described the album in to people more familiar with Springsteen’s work, I would say that it is a mix of We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions (2006) and Magic (2007). Read More »

There are some albums that just seem to lend themselves to being the soundtrack of a montage sequence in an indie film. Bombay Bicycle Club’s A Different Kind of Fix, with its mix of dreamy harmony-laden tracks perfect for views of landscapes through a train window at sunrise (“How Can You Swallow So Much Sleep,” “Fracture”) and more percussive fast-motion dance sequence songs (“Lights Out, Words Gone,” “Shuffle”), is one such album. Released on August 26th, 2011, on Island Records, the third studio album of the four-piece folk-rock outfit from Crouch End, London, pleasantly straddles the line of new and familiar musical territory for Bombay Bicycle Club. Read More »