Music reviews. CD reviews. Critically hip!

THE CAT, BEAVER, BEE is the debut EP by Texas country singer-songwriter Emily Herring, a companion to her first proper full length disc, MY TEARS WILL BE RELIEVED. Herring’s music is infused with Appalachian inflections and instrumentations, music is readily available, whether one needs an imitation of it, even an ...

J. Blackwell’s debut album, Like a Place I Haven’t Seen, is poised like a wave of mellow country rock that threatens to crest, but never quite breaks. Blackwell, who co-produced the album and wrote or co-wrote all of the tracks, has a rich voice with a cry in the holler; ...

This single CD combines two of Kenny Rogers’ early solo albums: 1977’s Kenny Rogers, and the 1979 follow-up simply titled Kenny. If you’re a die-hard Rogers fan, you might want these. But truth be told, given the plethora of Rogers’ greatest hits albums out there, it’s hard to justify the ...

It was almost impossible to travel through the South in the 1950s without hearing The Louvin Brothers. Ira and Charlie (Loudermilk) Louvin arguably brought traditional country and bluegrass music into the mid-20th Century; themselves influenced by the close harmonies of such performers as the Monroe Brothers, the Louvins in turn ...

I don’t think I’ve heard a country rock project as good as DIAMONDS IN THE SUN by Walt Wilkins & The Mystiqueros since…well, HEAD OVER HEELS by Poco? The first couple Pure Prairie League discs, with Craig Fuller aboard, or maybe the first McGuffey Lane disc, or ...