PHILADELPHIA, PA—“Gypsy woman told my mama, before I was born,” softly whispers Buddy Guy in front of a dead silent capacity crowd at the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia. “Gonna’ make pretty woman scream and shout” he continues, as isolated vocal bursts of frenzied response ring off the acoustically impeccable concert…

Cassadaga is a community for spiritualists in central Florida, with over 100 psychics in residence. It is one stop on the rambling journey through America that Conor Oberst recounts on this sprawling album. He visits the town to “commune with the dead” as he sings in “Four Winds.” The band,…

HOBOKEN, NJ—Before opening for seasoned high-profile troubadour Lucinda Williams at Radio City Music Hall, upstart Cincinnati trio The Heartless Bastards seized the stage two nights hence inside Hoboken’s hallowed backroom landmark, Maxwell’s. Taking advantage of transitory headlining status, the powerhouse blues-y triad delivered a well-received hour-and-a-half set filled to the…

NEW YORK, NY—Leaning against the railing of The Bowery Ballroom’s second floor between sets and looking down at the crowd assembled below, I felt rather omniscient. I could just make out some conversations below, or at the very least follow them, among hipsters, impressionable women and hopeless art-rock fans. It…

Yeah, it’s a compilation, a Greatest Hits, but still, it’s impossible not to appreciate Black Sabbath’s The Dio Years for the extreme quality of the material. What was originally theorized as a three-disc boxed set and eventually slimmed down to its current presentation, the collection not only features some of…

I don’t review many major label releases, but I took this one on for a couple of reasons. First of all I wanted to see how these former indie darlings had fared in the wake of their breakthrough album, 2004’s Good News For People Who Love Bad News, which contained…

NEW YORK, NY—As I took my seat, I found myself in a much more intimate setting than I thought I would encounter at Madison Square Garden; there was a General Admission area up near the stage, which was already half full of devoted Shins fans who must have arrived there…

The second of an expected three releases from the New York studio band, Traineater is the seaworthy quartet’s ode to industry. Trains, cities and people who once thrived that have become rusting shells of themselves. The dark social ramifications of an increasingly service based economy. I could go on, and…

In The Perfect Face’s opening track, “She Wants A Cowboy,” Arthur Dodge talks about a girl who “wants the real thing/ but all of them are gone.” Arthur Dodge is no cowboy, but he is by all means a rarity himself, a musician of the past.

Arthur writes and performs…

The aroma of burning marijuana and hippie decadence descended upon New York’s Times Square as Keller Williams pitched a tent at the Nokia Theatre fresh off the heels of the release of his 11th studio album, dream, on SCI Fidelity last month.

Emerging into the spotlight over soul jazz rhythms,…