by Nick DeRiso Upset over a world that wronged him one too many times, Troy Lindsey begins his bumpy Ride Across the Sun in a foul mood. Luckily, as is so often the case, a good woman can make all the difference. You May Also Like: Lindsey Buckingham’s Live atRead More

by Nick DeRiso Keith Horn is a tinkerer, someone who hammers things together to see what they can become. But, as with every workshop, having the right tools can make or break a project. Luckily Horn, a Los Angeles-based television composer since the early 2000s, has the cinematic chops toRead More

By Nick DeRiso It’s tempting to get too comfy, as Kimball Gallagher dots Orange with a series of spare, acoustic guitar-driven ruminations. It’s never long, however, before this New York City-based Boston native has amped up his dark themes of life and loss into a gritty outburst of power-pop. ThatRead More

Photo from Fallon Cush’s MySpace page by Nick DeRiso Fallon Cush grows more confident with each passing song on their self-titled debut. Perhaps because singer Steve Smith put this together on the fly, enlivened by passion and not weighed down by heavy planning. You May Also Like: The Beatles’ AbbeyRead More

A Fragile Tomorrow builds out from the country-rock synthesis of pathfinders like the Band and the Byrds – but there’s something else here.

Photo by Lindsey Verrill, from Melissa Engelman’s MySpace page by Nick DeRiso Austin-based singer-songwriter Melissa Engleman explores life with a tough vulnerability on the urban folk set At the Hotel Café, often displaying a fortitude so quiet as to deceive. She gets knocked to the ground, while brilliantly fusing alt-country,Read More

Photo from Todd Christoffel’s ReverbNation.com page by Nick DeRiso Seattle-based folk-rockers Don’t Ask have a fondness for the comfy sounds of 1970s pop, though they are careful not to get too caught up in nostalgia. They simply use that era’s singer-songwriter-inspired prose, its soaring symphonic pop structure and its feel-goodRead More

by Nick DeRiso Twinray has produced a cloud-parting blast of pop-rock buoyancy with The Train You’re On, recorded with producer/engineer Sean O’Keefe (Plain White T’s, Fallout Boy, Hawthorn Heights). Their endless enthusiasm informs both the subject matter, and the merry experimentation that propels the Chicago-based band’s genre-bending sound. “Do YouRead More

by Nick DeRiso New York City-based Brian Hugh O’Neill can’t get away from hard truths on Free World. “The light’s not very kind in this place,” O’Neill sings in the anthematic “Careful What You Want.” “There’s a shadow moving over your face.” That shadow is moving, really, over the wholeRead More

by Nick DeRiso Sasha and the Indulgents’ Love in a Box is shot through with a devastating sense of foreboding, from the crafty creep-rock of its opening title track almost all the way through to its desolate final moments of lonesome acceptance. Yet, and this is the power and magicRead More