A Fine Frenzy is the musical offering of 21-year-old Alison Sudol, a wan softly melancholy redhead with a wide smile and a look tailor-made for an autumn catalogue. Her debut album, One Cell in the Sea, is 14 songs of alternative pop and indie soul which lifts and rocks the...

There are nineteen tracks which comprise LEGACY, the second full length release from Akir. The focus on LEGACY is primarily --- almost exclusively --- a political one, a call to arms and a look back in regret at what Akir considers to be the failure of the self-styled “Black Power...

Anthony Robustelli is a multi-faceted musician --- though primarily a keyboardist, he handles most of the instruments on ANOTHER FATAL BLOW, his fifth CD --- and has toured in support of a number of musicians, both known and unknown, over the course of his career. ANOTHER FATAL BLOW spotlights his...

Arrica Rose and the . . .’s newest offering, Last Night on Earth, is a darkly fun, lightly melancholy bit of retro-modern alternative pop just five tracks long. With a breathy cry vaguely reminiscent of Cowboy Junkies’ Margot Timmins (maybe due to Arrica’s regular gargles with apple cider vinegar), Arrica...

Groovy guitar, soulful bass and sincere singing make Roll Away a good debut album for Back Door Slam, composed of Davy Knowles (vocals, guitar), Adam Jones (bass) and Ross Doyle (drums). The band clearly is going for a high energy blues rocking sound and it suits them well. With splashes...

Bottom Of The Hudson are not who they claim to be. Okay, maybe they are, but they fooled me. Upon receiving their newest release, Fantastic Hawk, I had expected an energetic, sketchy, noise rock album, and after listening to the records opening song, you can imagine my surprise. With all...

Right from the opening seconds of the new Canvas Solaris, CD Cortical Tectonics, it’s pretty obvious that they’re not making music for the faint of heart. The band jumps right into the math-metal on Berserker Hypothesis, with wildly intricate rhythms attacking from every direction. The first  comparison that came to...

When the dust settles and the smoke clears, the powers that be have no clue what to do with Inspirational/Christian music. Part of this is willful ignorance: they don’t want to know about it, and they don’t want you to know about it, either. Here is the logic: they don’t...

You could compare Chris Webster with any number of folk singer-songwriters, from Dar Williams to the Indigo Girls, but truth be told, her sound is so straightforward and authentic that at the end of the day comparisons are a pale whitewash, and you just want to hear Webster sing. The...

Endtime ballads.  This is the self described essence of Crippled Black Phoenix's A Love of Shared Disasters.  At its heart, this band is a collaboration started by Justin Greaves of the immensely heavy Electric Wizard.  Joining him are members of many other bands including Mogwai, Pantheist, and Portishead.  Needless to...