by Nick DeRiso Sounds of Saturn, a Fort Wayne, Ind.-based experimental trio, takes the road less travelled on Mars Via Parachute. In fact, often, they’re not on any road at all. Instead, the record employs every trick in the noodle-rock playbook, from psychedelia and stadium-shaking riffs to thrilling science-geek constructionsRead More

Photograph by Caleb Chancey by Nick DeRiso Hannah Miller sings in a raw, emotionally available register that occasionally goes so high it’s almost outside of her control. That lends a heartrending urgency to songs like “All My Love,” released in August as part of a four-song EP called Journey toRead 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

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 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

by Nick DeRiso An album about dreams reclaimed, Murray Flint’s The Journey traces his own road back from painfully debilitating tendonitis. After nearly a decade away from the guitar, the Olympia, Wash., resident discovered a finger-style approach long associated with Merle Travis. This technique simultaneously sounds more complex, since theRead More