Songs We Love: Martha Wainwright, 'Around The Bend'
Artists are supposed to be unafraid. We want them to take those risks, symbolically and sometimes personally, that reasonable people would caution against: Defy physical limits. Risk offending others....
View ArticleSoul Band St. Paul And The Broken Bones Returns With 'Sea Of Noise'
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View ArticleFirst Listen: Amanda Shires, 'My Piece Of Land'
Amanda Shires has a way of pausing over a note and pulling it in a few directions. Some have called this a warble, others a catch. In "Harmless," a dive-bar torch song from her new fourth album, My...
View ArticleThe Limits Of Loving The Boss
Fan fervor is one of the basic building blocks of rock and roll, but it's difficult to recall a rock star as tenderly beloved as is Bruce Springsteen in 2016. There are bigger legends who've evinced...
View ArticleFirst Listen: Muddy Magnolias, 'Broken People'
When Beyoncé included the country-dipped song "Daddy Issues" on Lemonade , some seemed surprised — which was weird. Queen Bey is from Houston, where (as in most of the South) the word "country" is...
View Article10 Songs For An Anxious Moment: A Fall Pop Playlist
It's easy to read too much into a hit song. Popular music is made that way: Its surface meanings are broad and inclusive, while its idiosyncrasies are vehement, upheld within a startling rhythm or a...
View ArticleFirst Listen: Aaron Lee Tasjan, 'Silver Tears'
Here's a list of shiny things Aaron Lee Tasjan 's Silver Tears brings to mind: The snowball rolling down a mountain in that movie theme song "The Windmills of Your Mind." The ice in Harry Nilsson 's...
View ArticleSongs We Love: Valerie June, 'Astral Plane'
History moves through all of our voices, in inflection, tone and vocabulary. Some people call this collective language "the spirit"; to others, it's "the voice of the people." Valerie June just calls...
View ArticleOn Lady Gaga's 'Joanne,' All Of Pop Is A Stage
"I am lost, I confess, in the age of the social," Lady Gaga intones in her saddest alto in "Angel Down," the anti-violence anthem that concludes her fifth studio album, Joanne , officially released...
View ArticleReview: Kristin Hersh, 'Wyatt At The Coyote Palace'
Note: NPR's First Listen audio comes down after the album is released. In the book that serves as a companion piece and reciprocal guide to her mazy, incandescent new collection of songs, the...
View ArticleReview: Martha Wainwright, 'Goodnight City'
Note: NPR's First Listen audio comes down after the album is released. However, you can still listen with the Spotify playlist at the bottom of the page. In the first draft of her novel Mrs. Dalloway ,...
View ArticleLove Itself: Leonard Cohen's Holy Touch
Popular music, like every creative form, has produced iconoclasts and idols, whose charisma intersects with the historical moment to carry them into a singular space of greatness. Leonard Cohen was not...
View ArticleOn 'The Weight Of These Wings,' Miranda Lambert Improvises A Life
"We don't expect long answers when we ask children what they want to be when they grow up," writes the anthropologist Mary Catherine Bateson in her landmark book about women improvising their...
View ArticleLucinda Williams, Live In Concert
The fire and feel Lucinda Williams brought to the Lincoln Center stage when she headlined this August concert is informed by 25 years of making music. Deeply informed by tradition, her work remains...
View ArticleAnn Powers' Favorite 2016 Albums (Beyond The Obvious)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3dgXvQMRNQ As a year of strife and confusion veers toward its welcome end, what do passionate music lovers crave? Relief, it seems, through accordance. The Knowles...
View ArticleSongs We Love: CeCe Winans, 'Hey Devil!'
CeCe Winans is an American superstar, but many avid music lovers don't know much about her beyond her name. They might catch a glimpse of her with her brother and frequent collaborator BeBe on...
View ArticleSongs We Love: Ron Gallo, 'Please Yourself'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qq8uCmgLgKk Every American city has a simulacrum of itself nestling in the palm of its tourist-friendly hand. These neighborhoods make it possible to travel the whole...
View ArticleMourning Stars Through Streams, Screens And Communities
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-JqH1M4Ya8 In my early 20s, smitten by the mythic underpinnings of American popular music, I built an Elvis shrine in my living room. It largely consisted of magazine...
View ArticleFirst Listen: Natalie Hemby, 'Puxico'
Natalie Hemby's debut album starts out very country, risking corniness from the get-go. Southern gospel harmonies float over a cowboy-ballad beat as Hemby, one of Nashville's premier songwriters, sings...
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