by S. Victor Aaron Growing up in the Detroit area, Sam Trapchak’s dad played electric bass, and like most musically interested young boys in America, Sam wanted to play guitar. But his father persuaded him to take up bass instead with a piece of irrefutable logic: Everyone always needs aRead More

by Nick DeRiso Equal parts Summer of Love songcraft and heartland soul, the Shamus Twins’ Garden of Weeds is as apt to jangle as it is to twang. That’s reflective of the Los Angeles-based band’s founders, guitarist Jerry Juden and bassist Tim Morrow, two halves of the same genre-busting whole.Read More

by Nick DeRiso Let’s get this admission out of the way: Picking the best of 2010’s unsigned treasures is like trying to determine your favorite grain of sand. There are far too many, really, to make any reasonable guess — and the whole time you’re walking around with a bucketRead More

by Nick DeRiso Erik Hartley can’t decide about things, and that uncertainty creates an interesting tension on the new EP Not Me Being Nervous. The in-joke ends up being that he’s anything but “not nervous.” Hartley, instead, couldn’t be less settled, with looming questions about girls, about life, about gettingRead More

Photograph by Clayton Bozard by Nick DeRiso Haley Dreis likes to fiddle with expectations. You wouldn’t expect a classically trained violinist to dabble in pop music. And you wouldn’t expect the self-confident nuance of “All For You” from someone who only began writing mainstream songs three years ago. Yet sheRead More

by Nick DeRiso Voyage d’armour, French-born Danick Isabelle Jawer’s thrillingly intricate new collaboration with Amitie, captures the affection, the sorrow and the music of a relationship – whether the listener speaks her native tongue or not. That’s thanks in no small way to Amitie (“friendship” in French), a trio fromRead More

Photograph by Amy Dey by Nick DeRiso A radiant uncertainty runs through “Maybe,” Emily Hearn’s song about the confusion and memorable pain of a lonely young heart. OK, there’s a girl, and there’s a guy, and the guy won’t give her the time of day. This, we’ve heard before. ButRead More

by Nick DeRiso Mark “Pocket” Goldberg’s Off the Alleyway, a rootsy Americana recording with the flickering neon-soul of a blues joint, stays well away from the beaten path. His sound is as eclectic as the country’s rolling byways, bringing in low-country pedal steel, back-pew harmonizing, the nostalgic wheeze of anRead More

by Nick DeRiso The worry, with any rock-guitar virtuoso’s recording, is that it will quickly devolve into onanistic noodling. But Tony Savarino’s Guitaring adroitly sidesteps the problem with a keen eye for variety, and a welcome sense of unselfishness in the studio. The Boston-bred musician is a dabbler, with aRead More

By Nick DeRiso At once neo-renaissance, new age and something akin to blissed-out bluegrass, Erwilian’s holiday-themed concert recording Midwinter’s Night neatly sidesteps the pre-conceived notion of sickly sweet Yuletide fare. Midwinter’s Night, instead, is a concert souvenir from warm night of remembrance, affection and camaraderie – sparked by these friendly-as-familyRead More