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 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

Lucinda Williams brings a brave, riveting vulnerability to Essence — and, for me, it’s her masterpiece. Yet you are more apt to find it in the cutout bin at a big-box department store than at the top of most people’s desert-island lists. Perhaps the sensual melancholy of Essence was tooRead More

by Nick DeRiso It takes a complex, genre-bending singer to fend off the distracting brilliance of fabled guitar-playing Danny Gatton. Maine-based Steve Erwin, who made his name playing around Washington, D.C., pulls it off on the newly re-released Was It Like This. Originally recorded in December 1988 with Gatton, theRead More

By Mark Saleski Clearly I have been spending an awful lot of time with Darkness on the Edge of Town this week. Too much time maybe? What does that mean? It’s an interesting question and, as it turns out, it doesn’t have meaning…at least not for me. Last weekend, meRead More

by Mark Saleski The Darkness on the Edge of Town tour has taken on a sort of mythic quality, mostly because there has been scant video evidence. This “bootleg” tape unearthed by Camp Springsteen confirms what fans lucky enough to have seen one of the shows have known all along:Read More

by Mark Saleski It is perhaps too easy to dismiss the work of celebrities. In the case of Bruce Springsteen, there has been much vitriol expressed over his “supposed” blue collar leanings, as if success can (no…must) wipe out your roots. If you look back at this documentary on theRead More

by Mark Saleski To call this group of songs “The Lost Sessions” is to put a slightly misleading spin on things. We all know the story, the one of the huge volume of music that Bruce wrote post-Born To Run with some songs ending up on Darkness On The EdgeRead More

This world of digital sound can be quite tricky. The original line about CDs was that they would provide “perfect sound forever.” Yeah, sure. In their haste to get product to market, the early mastering jobs produced less than stellar results. In the intervening years, we’ve learned a lot aboutRead More

by Mark Saleski Springsteen fans have been waiting years for the 30th anniversary release of Darkness On The Edge Of Town. Waiting, and waiting, and… And then the anniversary passed, with rumours and speculation fueled by smokes signals emanating from Camp Springsteen about how the set was “nearly complete.” OfRead More