When news of Bruce Springsteen’s decision to record an album of Pete Seeger-inspired folk covers leaked on to the Internet this February, the earth didn’t exactly shake. Reactions among the Boss’s notoriously rabid fanbase were decidedly mixed, ranging from mere disappointment (“I thought he already did the folk thing with Devils & Dust last year”) to something altogether more ghoulish (“he should reunite the E Street Band before Clarence Clemons gets too ill to tour”). But the common denominator, from the casual fan to …

We all know the drill about rarities compilations: they’re esoteric, obscure, often tough listening, little more than grab bags for serious listeners who fancy themselves as musical archivists. “For fans only,” right? And most of the time, frankly, it’s the truth.
But what critics like us rarely acknowledge is that there’s something thrilling about a good odds ‘n’ sods disc, too, even if it’s from a band whose logo we wouldn’t feel comfortable getting tattooed on our asses; it’s the feeling of discovery, of adventure, …

Okay, I give. Things have been far too cute and nonsensical over in Canada ever since the Unicorns’ 2003 Stateside heyday with the release of Who Will Cut Our Hair When We’re Gone. I didn’t always feel that way. The Unicorns’ album was a piece of sweet and silly pop taffy, but even their disintegration was a joy, because it lead to the formation of Islands and the creation of one of this year’s best records, Return to the Sea. However, while I can …

Springtime Can Kill You is the musical equivalent to an old, black and white film. A beautiful, troubled, lonely woman flickers and wanders through the screen, encountering men, horses, dust, and even more trouble as she stumbles through a vast desert. Sometimes, she is all-consuming; her voice thunders, sounds, and wails with all the power of wagon wheels clomping towards California. Other times, she is a far-away dot; a moving speck with gleaming hair carried away by the Americana-tinged winds of a vast, …

Lately, it seems like everywhere an indie kid goes, they can find a freak-folk record. The music which was once associated with jugs, long beards, and county fair performances to which a misguided parent dragged you, has suddenly become strangely hip. Yet this growing interest in the freakier side of folk music rarely extends to the straight Americana and world-based folk from whence it came. Hopefully, the latest release from Tompkins Square, Imaginational Anthem, Vol. 2, will help shake off some more …

What is this, a time warp? Here I am in June of 2006, and the face that stares back at me from the promo CD on my desk might as well have stepped right out of 1981. That curled lip. That spiky fringe of jet-black hair. Those thick clouds of eyeliner around the toughest set of sloe eyes in rock’n’roll. It’s Joan Fucking Jett: trailblazing female rocker, inspiration for Guitar Wolf’s “Jett Rock’n’Roll,” and probably the hottest alleged lesbian ever to pour herself …

Starlight Mints have mastered the art of the recording studio. Their latest album, Drowaton, contains guitars, pianos, synths, strings, horns, percussion, “tra la las,” and fancy-sounding gizmos, often all at the same time. These many layers never blend into a thick sound; rather, the instruments skillfully weave around one another. The album’s texture remains clear and accessible at all times.
The Mints come from the same state as the Flaming Lips, a fact they like to point out. The two bands are similar: …

Between the years of 1970 and 1973, Johnny Cash quit drugs and alcohol, started a massively popular TV show on the ABC network, met with Richard Nixon, and recorded a number of children’s songs. Columbia Records has since remastered and re-released Johnny Cash’s Children’s Album (now for the first time on CD), the strange and beautiful document of a family-friendly, transitional period in the Man in Black’s life. Those who were children during the album’s initial 1975 release will enjoy this remastered …

Anarchism is, perhaps, the world’s most misunderstood and most frequently misinterpreted political philosophy. Throughout American history, anarchists have been persecuted at every possible opportunity. Often scapegoats for a nation enduring a crisis, they have been jailed, deported, and, in the case of the legendary Sacco and Vanzetti, executed for crimes they did not commit. It is true that other radical groups endured similar fates, especially Communists. Yet, while most high school students in the United States are made at least somewhat familiar …

T Bone Burnett wants you to know who he is. He wants you to know that he isn’t just an esteemed producer and collaborator for artists like Bob Dylan, Elvis Costello, Roy Orbison, Ry Cooder, and Ralph Stanley; and he certainly isn’t the beard-stroking archivist type a lot of us probably began to envision him as in the fourteen years since his last record, during which he became better known than ever for his production and soundtrack work (think O Brother, Where Art Thou? …