Robert Wilson (The Black Rider) - An Appreciation

When I first heard of Robert Wilson in the 90s, my first thought was that it must be a pretty talented name (there’s also Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Charles Wilson for example). The highlight of Wilson’s 55+ year career is the 1976 opera Einstein on the Beach which had music composed by Philip Glass. It is considered a classic with the related 1979 album scoring 5/5 on Allmusic and 10/10 from Pitchfork. It is easy enough to say the album is a blind spot for me, but avant garde theater doesn’t quite get a bunch of air time. 

Wilson’s later career did bleed into rock music a bit. In 1990, Tom Waits wrote the music for Wilson’s play The Black Rider- based on a German fairy tale and a book by William S Burroughs. Three years later, it became Waits’s then-new album. It’s hard to call Waits accessible in the first place but the Black Rider is surely an averse non commercial move following the critically acclaimed Rain Dogs and Grammy Winning Bone Machine. If Waits was making any inroads with a popular audience, The Black Rider took the weirdness to 11. Contemporary reviews maul it. Allmusic damns it to two stars and very rare is the decent review like the 4/5 from Rolling Stone. 

I loved it though. The first thing anyone seems to mention is Burroughs who takes “vocals” for a song and admonishes “t’aint no sin to take off your skin and dance around in your bones”. It’s not my favorite part of the album but I do enjoy it and it certainly adds to the weirdness. Some of my favorite moments are the inclusion of the musical saw on “November” and “Flash Pan Hunter”. I love “I’ll Shoot the Moon”, a late night drunken lament that would fit on Frank’s Wild Years. “Russian Dance” is well… just that. The music is strange and alluring, but so are the lyrics. Waits is jarring at times “Go away you rainsnout/go away, blow your brains out”. Lucky Day may even the most Waitsian words ever “And when you get blue and lost all your dreams/ there’s nothin’ like a campfire and a can of beans” 

Like Franks Wild Years, you might not get the story without the liner notes but it’s a great folk tale. Our hero hunter makes a Faustian bargain and gets a collection of magic bullets that always hit but the last one is cursed and will hit the target of his love. I love the Waits album. It’s one of my all time favorites and probably ranks as one of my most listened to albums as well. Waits and Wilson would do two more collaborations - in 1992 and 2000- and Waits would again turn these into albums. He would release these on the same date in 2002 - Alice and Blood Money. You can probably guess but I love these albums too which amp up the aspects of folklore and instrumental oddity. I can’t completely remember but I must have bought them close together if not at the same time. They are pretty tied together in my mind. They take me back to 2002 and 2003 in one of those ways memories tie the music to the year because it’s become so big of a part of your life. I think I prefer Blood Money over Alice but both are quite good and filled with memorable songs. 

Looking back it was such a treasure trove of Waits sandwiched by 1999s Mule Variations and 2004s Real Gone - classic albums in their own right; followed by a three disc set of “lost songs” in 2006. Then somehow we haven’t got a new Waits album in 14+ years Looking at Wilson’s work- I would probably enjoy it quite a bit- the names he worked with are too notch- Anna Calvi, Arvo Part, CocoRosie, David Byrne, Gavin Bryars and so on. 

The last Wilson collaboration that made significant shockwaves in the alt rock category is Lou Reed’s 2003 album The Raven. I love Reed but it is interesting that his work post 9/11 is as unpredictable as Reed could be- The Raven was his last solo rock album, followed only in the Discography by live discs, the Metallica collaboration Lulu and the Hudson River Wind Meditations album. An all star cast collected for a concept album around Edgar Allen Poe’s poems and stories, I want to like The Raven but I find it generally unlistenable. Even with the talent assembled- Bowie, Laurie Anderson, Steve Buscemi, ANHONI, Ornette Coleman, Kate & Anna McGarigle, Willem Defoe, the Five Blind Boys of Alabama, among others including Reed’s longtime sidemen Mike Rathke and Fernando Saunders. I did find performance pieces of The Black Rider and it’s hard to say which is weirder or more accessible- with Waits singing or with it part of musical theater.

Either way, it scratches an itch of mine which I don’t expect anyone to necessarily understand- a bit of the Kurt Weill/Beroldt Brecht cabaret and dark carnival elements - mixed of course with more modern sounds of pop, rock and blues with lines of comedy and existential horror woven through out, but also beauty. Wilson died in July of 2025 at age 83. 

This is one of a series of posts this week I wrote about artists we lost in 2025. 

Jock MacDonald: An Appreciation

 Jock McDonald passed away in July of 2025. He was the frontman and brain behind English joke punk band The Bollock Brothers.

The Bollock Brothers were largely a nonentity in the US, but had a string of records in the 1980s that made headlines in Europe. Someone surely would have made the joke inherent in “Never Mind the Bollocks”

Related stunts including a disco version of the Sex Pistols “Never Mind the Bollocks…” album in 1983, and I have heard it’s not bad. For a short time, they hired Jimmy Lydon (Johnny Rotten’s brother) as vocalist. On record, they gave the mic to Michael Fagan who famously broke into the Queen’s bedroom in Buckingham Palace. (Martin “Youth” Glover even played bass for them around the time he briefly left Killing Joke in 1982.)

Song ideas include writing a sequel to the Velvet Underground’s “The Gift” and covering Serge Gainsbourg’s “Harley David (Son of Bitch)” (which became a bit of a cult hit)

I doubt I would have encountered them if a friend didn’t lend me his copies of The Last Supper (1983) and The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1985). He had served in the military and heard the band in Germany.

The truth is the band did have some tunes and sometimes comedy punk if done well can be as good as the serious stuff. Besides, where is the line between this and “serious” bands like the Damned and the Stranglers, and does it really matter.

As much as I love “Horror Movies”, the band sticks out in my mind for the timeframe I encountered them. In the 1980s and 1990s, trading cassettes and making “mixtapes” was a major component in discovering music. The music industry hated it, though as usual, short sighted by greed, the practice probably helped their pocketbooks as much as hurt them.

In more recent years, there may be a rare case of a friend “burning” a CD or outright occurrence of giving of music. But we don’t really put as much significance on that. If you want to let someone know about a particular piece of music, you can post a video or the actual song; or not even necessarily do that as the person can do such things for themselves. In fact, they may prefer to do for themselves.

But cassette swapping was where I heard a lot of bands for the first time, and the Bollock Brothers in the middle of the 1990s may have been the end of that era for me.

This is one of the 2025 tributes I wrote that I plan on sharing this week.

Ozzy Osbourne: An Appreciation

When Ozzy Osbourne passed away in 2025, he was one of the most loved musicians on the planet. It’s funny because growing up in his classic years, he was the epitome of heavy metal and shock rock. His music was the stuff of cult legend and Hard Rock radio. Things change over time, of course. At its release “Crazy Train” would fall short as a Top 100 single. No surprise there, of course, but over time it would become a guitar rock classic and that momentum would continue, until at some point, it became a song that everyone knows. 

Early 80s Ozzie was the PMRC nightmare. Prior to Metallica, Slayer, thrash metal and death metal, it’s hard to think of anything that evoked the shock of Metal in those days. When the mention of Ozzy didn’t evoke blasphemous cover art, songs with titles like “Suicide Solution” or that famous bat incident, it was the out of control rocker that appears in Penelope Spheeris’s glam metal documentary The Decline of Western Civilization Part 2 in a mix of mental fog and physically shaking unable to pour a glass of orange juice, instead spilling it all over the counter Another defining moment was a 1982 Des Moines concert in which Ozzy bit the head off of a bat. While Ozzy clearly expected it to be a rubber bat, it only turned the story in one of the all time great rock legends. In each decade, there have been trends in rock that defined the genre- classic rock then glam rock then grunge and alt rock then nu metal and emo; and no matter your tastes, if is hard to avoid what’s popular when you are in those defining ages. 

 For me, I loved punk and new wave, but glam metal ruled my school in those years. For me, it was no surprise that the best at it in the 90s were the guys who innovated the genre at its beginning- Alice Cooper and Ozzy. Osbourne’s 1991 album No More Tears was a commercial success. I spent plenty of time with it and although it’s an outlier to my usual listening, it’s quite an enjoyable record, but more about that later. While most of Ozzy’s best loved songs had been recorded by 1986, he had his biggest hit with Lita Ford in 1988. In a genre known for its power ballads, the pairing was perfect to push the song all the way to # 8 on the pop charts. In 1991, he made a cameo for Cooper with the anti-drug song “Hey Stoopid”, another rock radio hit. This set up the stage for his bid for mainstream success - 1991s “ No More Tears”. Mama I’m Coming Home” was the kind of on-the-nose ballad that would earn him a larger audience. Ozzy would find himself on the Top 30 again. 

I thought the title track was a killer mix of metal and goth, miles better than a lot of 90s records. I wasn’t apt to stick around but the next album gave us the “Perry Mason” single- a song much better than its name. As Ozzy became a rock elder, he switched to the mode of a Johnny Cash or Willie Nelson, his collaborations were a who’s who of the “hit band” of the day. Take a look at his singles on Wikipedia and you will see him paired with as varied artists as Type O Negative, Fear Factory, Elton John, Eric Clapton, and Lemmy. He’d have a late era run at the chart again in 2020 with a collaboration with Post Malone which brought two generations together- “Take What You Want” would go to # 8 and seemed to go viral on social media. 

 But the biggest change may have came in 2002. The preceding years gave us Ozzfest which was for metal what Lollapalooza, Lilith Fair, and the Warped Tour had been for their genres- a generation defining event. You can’t deny Ozzfest but it was also Autumn 2002 that gave us the MTV television show “The Osbournes”. I don’t know if it was the first reality show or not, but in retrospect, it is the first one that comes immediately to mind. We sit 20+ years later with shows like Vanderpump Rules, Real Housewives and Project Runway and dozens that you probably are thinking of, have come and gone to this day, and are still a big bulk of tv programming. I think The Osbournes tv show is a large part of how Ozzy became a household name. We all knew each member of the Osbourne family and we sympathized with the dad trying hard in Ozzy. No longer the scary prince of darkness, but someone your mom had heard of. Such is life. 

As Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson aged from rebels to crowd favorites, so did Ozzy and Snoop Dog. Rock (the genre) became more extreme but some of the color went out of it. It’s that atmosphere where songs like “Crazy Train” and “Bark at the Moon” became part of the Great American Songbook. Ozzy even went to the charts with his daughter Kelly for a cover of the classic Sabs ballad “Changes” in 2003 amidst a run at the charts by her. A year later in 2004, Trick Daddy sampled “Crazy Train” for his song “Let’s Go”. Genres blurred. Rap rock was mainstream and Ozzy was cool regardless of where you came from. The song went all the way to # 7 on the charts. Lastly, I want to mention Black Sabbath. They are one of the coolest bands of the day now, but that is a recent event. It doesn’t help, that the Sabbath of my youth didn’t have Ozzy, and it didn’t have Dio either. Instead, Tony Martin lead them to diminishing sales. 

It wasn’t his fault. But a band born in the 1970s with its sound and look stuck there, especially when compared to bands like Metallica and Skid Row, not to mention bands that were popping up like Nine Inch Nails, White Zombie and Godflesh Yes, while Martin’s Sabs found some cult success in 1989s Headless Cross, the roots of a Sabbath revival were growing in an unexpected place, but we will get there later. In the early 90s, despite my contrary experience in high school, alt rock was well loved by the critics but metal was considered “not serious”. 

It’s unlikely I would have become a Sabbath fan if a friend of mine wasn’t a huge fan. It was enough to convince me to buy the “We Sold Our Soul for Rock N Roll”, the 1976 compilation that picks the best of the Sabbath albums to that point, drawing largely from the first four records. It’s an ‘All Killer, No Filler’ collection that became a mainstay for my CD player that summer. But it wasn’t going to just be me that was converting, but everyone started to love the Sabs in the US. To bands like Nirvana and Soundgarden, Sabbath was a defining part of their sound. P

laces like Spin magazine were calling Grunge music- the trending music of the day as “Black Flag meets Black Sabbath”. Punk was important to the sound but so was classic 70s metal. In 1994, many of the bands defining the new sound of hard rock came together for NIB- a tribute album. Megadeth, Sepultura, Faith No More, Biohazard and others made Sabbath cool again. The tributes to Ozzy transcend generations and genres. Even when I was young, he had become a metal legend, but I doubt anyone could have imagined that he would become this rock icon that so many would revere. 

Album Review- Castlebeat- Revival

Recently a friend was talking about bingeing television shows. You have probably had that conversation. There’s no commonality as there was 40 years ago with Network TV or even 25 years ago with Cable. Everyone uses different steaming services and our experiences are not as shared. It’s even more so with music. There’s so many ways people experience music than there used to be. I will hear someone reference a band I never heard of, and I will look and they have a million monthly listeners. Of course, there’s no secret society of music that is keeping me out of the loop. 

Things have just changed slightly. For example, I don’t recognize a lot of top rock bands, but I also don’t listen to rock radio. Despite technological changes, I don’t think you can discount the influence. When I talk to people about where they discover their new favorite artists, I still hear people saying that they get them from Spotify and Apple’s features like new music playlists. But I also hear a lot of people saying their biggest influence is word of mouth from friends. Also, I often hear a lot of people’s new favorite bands start as opening acts for existing favorite bands.  

In fact, I am surprised things are as homogeneous as they still are. As an indie rock fan, you would think tastemakers like Pitchfork, The Needle Drop, RateYourMusic and their respective fanbase almost exclusively landed on Geese’s “Getting Killed” as the best album of 2025. Pull down a list from any of those sites and their Best of 2025 lists look like near carbon copies. But even if the world of music hasn’t busted wide open, there are still an incredible wealth of music out there out to be discovered. Having said that, there are a lot of places to discover music, and if we are being honest I am not sure quite where I first heard Castlebeat (usually stylized as CASTLEBEAT) but it was probably via Streaming. It was at the time of their debut album 2016s self titled Castlebeat. 

Another modern (if not really that modern) aspect of the band is that it is largely the one man project of Josh Hwang, and he rarely performs live and releases his (and others') music through his own label- Spirit Goth records. I left 2016 listening to the band with the expectation of any artist that there may be more or there may be less. The band has risen in popularity, that is for sure. I inevitably was going to keep my eye on them but they fell a bit off my radar. What I didn’t expect was that their fourth album- 2025s Revival would be such a realized album. Revival is an appropriate name for a band that is so in debt to the 1980 and early 90s- Cure, Depeche Mode, New Order/Joy Division, Bowie. Even the song tracks and cover seems to reference a vibe with an end of 1990. While 2024s Stereo felt like sort of generic indie pop, I love that this album has a certain feel. I love Castlebeat’s Lo fi approach to synth pop but there’s no denying the catchy pop hooks. I am definitely looking forward to more from Castlebeat and rank this as one of the great 2025 "under the radar" albums.

Album Review- Mekons- Horror

The Mekons may be more a phenomenon than a band. Their 1978 debut single “Never Been in a Riot” is one of the finest punk (and perhaps with Television Personalities’ “Part Time Punks” one of the finest anti-punk) songs ever. 

Trying to keep it as brief as possible, the band had three of the most well regarded albums of the 1980s- 1985s Fear and Whiskey, 1987s Honky Tonkin and 1989s Rock and Roll. Wikipedia lists tons of plaudits contemporary and retroactively- (Best of the Year, Best of the Decade and so on) for these albums from a number of critics and websites like Pitchfork, Robert Christgau, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Allmusic, Village View, Blender and the New York Times. It was part of that late 80s zeitgeist that the Mekons seemed to be the Rock Music critics’ favorite band. Hard to peg down, if anyone they resembled the Pogues as they merged folk, punk, rock and blues. It was “alt country” before that term existed. 

But that momentum didn’t really carry into the 90s. Perhaps, there was really never a chance that they could turn into REM or U2 stadium fillers. The Mekons continued to make music that critics loved, but 91s Curse of the Mekons wasn’t even released in the US and they soon were dumped by their label, A&M Records. I was in college when “I (Heart) Mekons” came out in 1993. With a focus on love songs in a way only the Mekons could do love songs- I loved the record and it generally still shows up near the top of fans’ ranking of Mekons records. 

For whatever reason, I have followed the Mekons pretty closely over the decades. They’re not quite like other bands but they are fascinating. They have yet to have the same effect that they had on me as they had in 93, though critics still seem to love them (though part of that is that it’s quite hard to keep track of them. 2020s Exquisite was only self released as a digital Bandcamp release at first). So listening to 2025s Horror was at once a surprise and not a surprise. In this case, Horror seems to be the real world and the politics in it. Not a surprise for the Mekons. “The Western Design” is a history of imperialism in pop song form. Titles like “War Economy” and “Private Defense Contractor” are clues that this isn’t normal pop song fare. 

I believe there are six vocalists that take lead that are spread throughout, which is fitting in with the Mekons style. It also gives it a real concept album feel as a gorgeous melody like “A Horse Has Escaped” will follow a rocker like “Nightcrawlers”. In many ways, it’s a sound that’s identifiable as that critically acclaimed 80s band- jumping from sound to sound on each song throwing in elements and instruments like rock, reggae, violin, folk, dub, angular pop, waltz, accordion, and even whistling where it is appropriate. Not that far underneath is that late 70s punk band- the one that pops up from time to time, like it did in 2004 when the band re-recorded their early tunes for the album titled “Punk Rock”. You can find 16th Century British Politics and the Irish Famine and modern climate change. In other words, things you can only find in this combination on a Mekons record.

I spent a lot of time with this album and in a pop world where surprisingly there doesn’t seem to be that much politically themed music these days. I am happy to see the Mekons deliver an album this powerful. The early reviews I saw were average or below, but I tend to think that is partially due to the fact that the Mekons are one of those artists that will have a Rohrsach Test effect on its listeners. What you get depends on what you are looking for from the band. (To be fair, a wave of more positive reviews have since rolled in) I find this album particularly accessible and with a political punk edge that speaks to me more than a lot of their recent work.

Album Review- Hayes Carll- We're Only Human

Hayes Carll is on the list of one of my favorite new artists of the (not so) new Century. It was 2016s Joe Henry produced Lovers and Leavers album that I first noticed him. On his early albums, he cowrote songs with Jim Lauderdale, Ray Whylie Hubbard and Guy Clark. Carll has established himself in that lineage. Carll reminds me of a couple of musicians. One is one of my favorites- Steve Earle. Both are cut out of the Townes Van Zandt/Guy Clark cloth. Long time Duke (Earle’s backing band) Bucky Baxter, guitarist Kenny Vaughn who played with Earle on”Some Dreams” (as well as spending time as main guitarist with sometime Earle collaborator Lucinda Williams) and Alison Moorer (who often toured and recorded with Earle for many years as well as being an established artist in her own right, and was married to Earle) make up part of the band on Carll’s 2005 album Little Rock. 

The character in the title track of Carll’s title track of his fourth album KMAG YO-YO is a military serviceman not unlike the kind Earle has sang about, and “Stomp and Holler” from the same kind of ramble and rollick Earle does so effortlessly. Of course, when I first listened to Carll and imagined him as the next great Earle style songwriter, I didn’t know their history was going to intertwine. Earle’s seventh marriage was to Moorer (2005-2015). Carll married Moorer in 2019 and they are still married to this day. In a much publicized interview after the divorce, Earle said that his wife left him for a “younger, skinner less talented songwriter”. 

Carll is a perceptive writer but has a sense of humor too. One of his most famous songs is “Bad Liver and a Broken Heart” (not the Tom Waits song. Though he does cover “I Don’t Wanna Grow Up”). You don’t have to look too hard in his catalog to find songs like “She Left Me for Jesus” and “Jesus and Elvis”, or “Another Like You” a song about a Democrat and a Republican falling in alcohol-induced romance. He reminds me a lot of the recently passed Todd Snider, who also has made a career of switching back and forth from serious country folk to humorous songs. Carll would cover Snider (“Beer Run” “Play A Train Song”) and Snider would cover Carll (“Stomp and Holler”). The two were close friends with Snider acting as a mentor to Carll. Critics say 2025s “We’re Only Human” is a different Carll album than previously. I don’t know that it is drastically different if you really want to compare. It is certainly a bit more mature for sure (and that may be why I connect it to more than any of his previous work) but it’s still him. 

There is definitely a pervasive feeling of 2025 on this album. It is an album for a world where people just don’t get along anymore. There was always a sense of John Prine in his work, but that really feels like the vibe here. Very few songwriters can make sense of it all like the guy who wrote “Sam Stone” and “Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You into Heaven Anymore”, but Carll accomplished that here. While it’s not a theme album. There’s enough songs here to bring that topic up. Songs like “Making Amends” and the title track are pretty self explanatory. The best songs are the live-and-let-love “Good People (Thank Me)” and “The Progress of Man” where “we all make big money on Bitcoin and cattle”. There’s a bit of variety in sounds and topics with “High” being a mellow waltz that Snider would have approved of. 

Songs like “One Day” and “Stay Here Awhile” sound like they could be off one of Earle’s late 90s records. Throughout the record, a variety of guests from Americana to pop country offered their assistance in cowriting or instrumentation- Shovels and Rope, Brothers Osbourne, Jared Reynolds (Ben Folds), MC Taylor (Hiss Golden Messenger) Noah Jeffries (Jason Boland and the Stragglers), Gordy Quist (Band of Heathens), Brian Wright, Aaron Raitiere (Lady Gaga, Miranda Lambert) and Ray Wylie Hubbard. I had my eyes on Carll for a long time. There’s a bit of parallel to Lydia Loveless who came out around the same time and has shifted from the bluntness of youth to really developing into an astute storyteller. I would attribute the comparison that both these artists scratch my particular itch (I haven’t seen any other reviewer make this connection and I doubt any will, though of interest, both Loveless and Carll show up to provide guest vocal spots on the Supersuckers’ 2016 album Holdin the Bag). 

“We’re Only Human” is one of the great Americana albums of 2025 and a testament that Carl has delivered on his potential promise all those years ago.

Album Review- Mark Mallman- Magic Time

Mark Mallman is a Minneapolis legend. I don’t know that I would have ran into his music if it had not been for a Minnesotan who told me to see him when he came to town. I saw him in 2006 which doesn’t seem that long ago. Mallman has been described as “Elton John meets Darby Crash” which feels quite accurate. His reputation as a piano player with punk attitude made wanting to see him in concert a “no brainer”. 

I find it hard to explain Mallman’s music as he is one of those musical chameleons but definitely the biggest influence is 1970s glam. There’s a lot of Bolan, Elton and Mott in his style. There’s plenty of 70s American rock too- a bit of Aerosmith, a bit of Springsteen, and yeah even maybe a bit of John Cale confrontational craziness. 

He has recorded ten solo albums starting in 1998 and on those albums- a whole list of Midwest and Minnesota rock royalty have guested-Kat Bjelland (Babes in Toyland) Davey Von Bohlen and Dan Didier (The Promise Ring)Slim Dunlap (The Replacements) Ed Akerson (Polara) Erik Applewhite (Tapes and Tapes) Jeremy Ylvislaker (Andrew Bird) Craig Finn (The Hold Steady) and Shannon Frid (Cloud Cult). Mallman is a Minneapolis legend with a star on the outside of the legendary First Avenue. It was a Minnesotan (a different one this time) that reminded me of Mallman. You see besides making solo records, he has written books, curated playlists, made music for TV and Movies, and maybe now in 2025, his highest profile gig- Musical historian on TikTok and Instagram. 

It prompted me to look to see what he had been up to, and sure enough, he had released an album a few months ago called Magic Time. He’s always been on small labels and the only time the Press really seemed to cover him was those magical “indie rock” years of the late aughts before Pitchfork and their ilk moved from Fleet Foxes, Panda Bear and Bon Iver to more pop fare like Beyoncé, Kendrick Lamar and Lana Del Rey. 

 In many ways. 2002s Red Ballroom was his high watermark produced by Paul Q Kolderie (Uncle Tupelo, Radiohead, Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Hole, Morphine). It was around this time, he was making a name for himself with his marathon performances in Minnesota. In 2004, he performed a song over two consecutive days only breaking for the bathroom. In 2010, he performed for 78 hours straight. He would outdo that in 2012 with “Marathon 4” a continuous 180 hour moving performance, broadcast on his webpage- starting in New York going to Los Angeles with Mallman wired up in such a way his biorhythms continued the music while he was sleeping. I have to admit that the last time I took notice of Mallman’s 2016 The End is Not the End which was probably his most explicit Bowie homage- following his mother’s death, he drew heavily from Bowie’s Scary Monsters. When it came to 2020, Mallman like a lot of artists used his Covid-era time to record the memorable single “Quarantined”.

I totally missed his last album 2021s Happiness, an album that was an extension of his 2019 autobiography- “The Happiness Playlist” Checking out Mallman’s short music history videos as suggested by my Minnesotan friend, I immediately thought I would check for recent albums and sure enough, there was Magic Time- released in June of 2025, how fortuitous to find it in time to mix it into my October listening. As someone who had enjoyed Mallman’s music but never drawn to a particular album, I was shocked how much Magic Time sucked me in. I would imagine most would be put off by the cheesy horror movie cover and song titles full of cryptids, vampires and ghosts. That surely isn’t the sales pitch for a lot of indie rockers, but it somehow is the perfect fit for Mallman. 

His piano driven style is still hard to pin down, though there’s definitely an emphasis on 70s glam. Like the things that go bump in the night, it’s hard to take the proceedings too seriously. Yet, the way Mallman weaves seemingly autobiographical facts makes it a compelling listen. There’s a bit of Ben Folds. There’s Bolan of course. Yet I also hear some Warren Zevon who fittingly wrote his most famous song about a monster. The best song on the album is “I Know the Mothman” in which the most memorable character may be that of Mallman himself-a long time, high mileage musician. Songs like “Clowns” and “Christopher Lee” come close to that high watermark. For seemingly silly subjects, there’s a large amount of pathos. 

While certain songs are better than others, there’s generally no bad songs here “Screaming in My Dreams” opens with a cinematic flourish fills with biographical details. Is the real horror the Music Industry? The theme makes the album fun and smaller gems like “Seen My Own Ghost” give real depth with new wave keyboards and storytelling lyrics, while “Poison Flower” slows things to an Alice Cooper worthy glam horror ballad, and “The Cancer” is a string laden Beatlesque number with accompanying flute. If you don’t like Mallman’s voice, it’s likely that this won’t win you over. That said, I was impressed with how Mallman was able to put together a signature album this far into his career. I rate it highly and find it one of the most compelling albums of recent years.

Album Review- Voxtrot- Dreamers in Exile

Voxtrot was a favorite band of mine from the early 2000s. The Texas-based band evolved from the same vein of the Smiths and Belle and Sebastian. Like some of the British bands of the prior decade (The Smiths, Suede, Cocteau Twins), they decided to release their music in a series of EPs. There's some fantastic music on these records, and those early songs of theirs finally got compiled in 2022. The band planned on recording their debut full length album with Stephen Street (Morrissey, Blur, The Cranberries), but that did not work out and so it ended up being produced by Victor Van Vugt (Nick Cave, PJ Harvey, Kirstie MacColl). The album did not receive the rave reviews that the early songs did. The expectations were surely too high in the days where Pitchfork and its ilk were looking to break the new big thing. As a fan of the band, I think it is safe to say the debut isn't good as the EP songs. That can be attributed to the album being less guitar fueled indie rock, and more wistful bedroom piano musings. But it also has some great moments, so dismissing it seems unfair, too. 

In 2010, three years after that debut the band broke up. I am only making assumptions but I assume that based on singer Ramesh Srivastava's public communication and the musical environment, that the rollercoaster ride had lost its appeal. 

I was excited to hear Voxtrot had reunited and planning music when they made the announcement in 2025, releasing their first song in years. Ramesh had released a solo album in 2014 but he had been largely out of the spotlight. I am super excited to hear the new album. It's great to see the band get a proper "next chapter" in their story. I imagine "Quiet Noise" is the sound that the band wanted on that 2007 album. It sounds like a potential radio single and an arena singalong, but it still sounds intimate and real. It is important to focus on how great Ramesh's voice sounds. It wasn't important in the early days, but it is a real strength. I am not an emo fan, but I can see where he might translate to that crowd. Certainly, it feels in line with something that might appeal to fans of The Shins, Death Cab for Cutie and indie bands of that ilk. 

The title track evokes a little bit of the Killers with its nostalgia for U2, Duran Duran and the Smiths. Srivastava no longer sounds like the bedroom depressive hiding behind jangle guitars. You may love the album or hate it, but he's not going down without a fight. "My Peace" even with its bright production recalls the driving hunger on those early Voxtrot songs. "The Times" is reminiscent of C86 or perhaps the literate rock of Lloyd Cole, but smooth enough it could have been a college rock single from way back. "Rock and Roll Jesus" is surely more of a glam emo stomper. Those songs stray a bit from the early songs that I fell in love with, but there are those moments here too like "Fighting Back". The band on Dreamers in Exile is one that has grown over the years. It is much more steeped in pop and emo sounds with way more polish. That said, I am glad to be on this journey with them and hope this is just the first of many more records.

Concert Review- Dari Bay

As music fans, most of us value the times we find a really good band no one yet knows about. One for me has been Dari Bay. 2023s Longest Day of The Year captured my attention and though the band is not that terribly obscure, it’s nice to see them get a bigger re-release in 2025 for this album on Double Double Whammy records. 

 I assumed being the way they often present themselves on promotional material and social media (and album cover)that Dari was a person. Dari is a band but at the same time also is largely centered around vocalist/ guitarist/drummer (as well as producer/songwriter) Zack James. James also plays drums for Unknown Mortal Orchestra. It feels like this may be the biggest artist to come out of Vermont, but when I read interviews, I think that state may be more fertile than I realize. Burlington has become a thriving scene with Dari Bay one of many artists making wave. 

I was introduced to the band as an alt country act but that seems to be such a vague term. In my introduction to the band I heard they were Neil Young influenced. Of course, saying “they sound like Neil” doesn’t really narrow things down any. But Dari Bay exist in that world where indie folk, alt country and indie pop meet. There’s elements of all those. There’s a bit of a straight line from Pavement as much as anything. I have seen Teenage Fanclub mentioned in their reviews and I have seen Camper Van Beethoven mentioned. (I don’t really think they sound like CVB but the idea intrigues me since there are similar alt “everything” vibes. They have opened for MJ Lenderman, which is probably the best comparison I can think of. In can’t case, the space occupied by bands like Big Thief that is indie with Americana influences. 

When I saw Dari Bay was coming to town. It was a no brainer. They were opening for a band named Florry, that I don’t know a ton about but Uncut Magazine raved about them and they sounded unique. I don’t like to go to concerts by myself so I told my friend to take a listen and he fell in love with them right away. With tickets being relatively cheap, it was easy to get another friend to join in. Dari Bay in concert aren’t really an alt country band at all, and I realized why, though there were a few country sounding guitar chords, there was no pedal steel or banjo which features on quite a few songs on the album. 

They are touring with Florry though and Jon “Tiltin” Cox of that band came out to play pedal steel on “Walk On Down”. “Walk On Down” is a favorite song- the highlight of the album and one of the best songs anyone has recorded in recent years. The band are young - a fact often noted upon and noticeable in concert but they are also very talented. James plays drums and sings which is an unusual setup and certainly challenging for the sound guy. He’s charismatic enough and band is great too. I go back to the reviewer that compared them to “early Teenage Fanclub” and that’s more of the live vibe than anything. There really is a 90s indie rock feel. Although not sound alikes, bands like Dinosaur Jr, Pavement, and Superchunk came to my mind. While James is largely credited with most all instruments on Longest Day of the Year, the band onstage is a four piece with two guitars and Nina Cates plays bass and adds occasional vocals (and is shown in the promotional video here). Cates and James play together in a band (that Cates leads) called Robber Robber. 

I got to talk to her after the show but I didn’t know much to say except words of encouragement and buying some merch. I don’t know what the future holds for this very talented group of artists but Longest Day of the Year stands as one of the great “under the radar” albums of recent years.

  

Concert Review- Florry

As a fan of Dari Bay’s debut album, I was excited to see Dari Bay in concert. This was going to be the last night of their tour as opener for Philadelphia band Florry. 

My introduction to Florry was as a selection on Uncut’s Best of New West Volume 7 from their October 2025 issue. That band is produced by MJ Lenderman/Wednesday producer/band member Collin Miller, and just released their third album, Sounds like Florry I have to admit that I wasn’t that taken away by the band’s recorded output though I appreciated that they seemed to have a similar feel to Dr Dog and really were mining a bunch of different genres. Plus, though I had barely heard of them, they had got the highest of plaudits from places like Pitchfork, Bandcamp, Brooklyn Vegan, Paste and Sterogum. 

So I was going to see the opener but seeing Florry would be a bonus. Seeing Florry in concert brought to my mind the smell of 1970s Records. They still weren’t “my thing” but I sensed Running on Empty, Rust Never Sleeps and The Best of the Band. Hey wait, I own all those albums on vinyl! Maybe I am more of a fan than I thought. 

When I heard about the concert, I was interested in seeing a six piece band that has a steel guitar player. That’s not something that you see everyday. Here’s the spoiler, I am never going to be a huge fan of Florry. They are one of those hippy dippy bands that probably have strong opinions on THC. But unlike the jam bands of the 90s I survived that would noodle endlessly, Florry can kick up a holy hell. Florry has less to do with those 90s bands that started to sound the same and more like the actual Rolling Thunder Revue, Crazy Horse or Anthem of the Sun- era Grateful Dead. 

The band’s encore was a cover of NRBQ’s “It Comes to Me Naturally” which shows they kind of know their stuff. They were a fun time. A band that could really rock out. Fame is hard to predict, but it wouldn’t be surprising to see Francie Medosch become a big star. The potential is there. She’s got a bit of Dylan, a bit of Courtney Barnett, and maybe even a bit Lucinda Williams. Again, I didn’t walk away a convert, but they never were going to be my thing and I never regret going to a live show. 

(Side note: The selected video performance is not the concert I was at, but it is taken from a show 2 days after I saw them)

Album Review- Kristen Ford- Pinto

In 2016, I caught Kristen Ford in concert in a small Chicago venue and was immediately taken as a fan.

Ford played a loop style “one man band” concert which even then seemed to be a fad from a decade earlier. Technology made “looping” easier and musicians found a way to make it sound good. Famously, KT Tunstall would hit the US Top 40 charts twice in 2005. 

A year previously, Howie Day had a Top 20 hit with “Collide”, the culmination of seven years of work constantly touring and making a reputation for accompanying himself on samplers and effects pedals. (If you want to check out Ford's early work in this style- she has a fantastic cover of Steve Winwood's "Higher Love" you can look up on YouTube), Tunstall has remained a star in Europe, but has yet to have another US hit. Day’s career has been marked by self-sabotage. 

Other prominent loop artists like Andrew Bird expanded their pallet, and lest we forget, Ed Sheeran started as a looper. There of course is a long history of “one man bands” going as back probably as far as time itself, and along the way cult figures like Hasil Adkins and Nash the Slash, and there always will be. But even in that context, some of those road warriors like Scott H Biram and Bob Log 3 don’t have the visibility now that they experienced circa 2005 when they might grab a review or mention in Pitchfork. 

But of course, it’s the songs that matter and Ford had those. Fame isn’t fair (just turn on the radio and you are likely to hear JJ Abrams’s daughter within the hour) and I was shocked that someone so talented was not so well known. Ford is the type of artist that truly must love their work. She constantly tours and records. She spent the early part of her career self releasing albums. 

As she has established her career more in recent years, those albums seem to be scrubbed off her webpage and streaming services. But I believe she recorded four albums between 2011 and 2017. I am most familiar with 2014s Dinosaur and 2017s Rend and Renderer which have some real gems on them. Showing her versatility and depth, consider some of her other projects. She formed a duo with cellist Kels Van Stran called EVRGRN and they released a 2020 album. She also was part of a hip hop duo with MC Genesis Blu called the Blu Janes who released their album that same year. Ford’s online presence now treats 2021s self released War in the Living Room as a debut album. It is a mix of Ford’s styles (and has now been re-released on Righteous Babe Records.) What is cool is that it was co produced by June Millington the singer/guitarist of rock trailblazers Fanny (It is co-produced along with engineer Brett Buillon who worked with Low). 

In 2022, Ford met Ani DiFranco and ended up signed to the Righteous Babe record label. DiFranco is a musical hero of Ford’s but the partnership seems logical. Both are prolific songwriters who have generally chosen to do things their own way through hard work and constant touring. Both write politically conscious folk music, though they blend multiple genres including Hip Hop, Punk, Funk and Jazz. Both are multi instrumentalists 2025s Pinto is Ford’s shot at greatness. Released on Righteous Babe, DiFranco coproduces, cowrites with Ford on four songs and sings on album opener “Here’s to You Kid”. Also producing with DiFranco and Ford is John Driscoll Hopkins of country hit makers Zac Brown Band. Hopkins duets on Richest in the World. Nashville indie rocker Joseph Jared of the Dangerous Method sings on the album’s closing track. 

The album is engineered and mastered by Randy Merrill who has seemingly done the same for the biggest albums of the last 25 years (Taylor Swift, Adele, Harry Styles, Chappel Roan, Ariana Grande, Lady Gaga) Pinto is a fantastically put together album. Like a lot of her previous work, there is defiantly a sense of being “on the road”. Upon listening, I can’t help but think that Ford and I couldn’t be much more different, though I doubt she thinks anything of me listening. It is hard not to think that the great “on the road records” have been made in a genre that has been dominated by straight cisgender white males for most of its history, and before that decades of fiction novels dominated by same. So even with modern exceptions to that (Ezra Furman’s excellent 2018 album Transangelic Exodus for one) and besides the fact that Springsteen and Dylan seemingly perfected the art, it does seem notable when a queer biracial female drops the perfect “road album” but this time it has tampons, weed and long term lesbian relationships. 

It’s also probably a shame this album didn’t come out in the Lillith Fair years or that golden era circa 2012 -2014 where artists like Tegan and Sara, DiFranco, and Tori Amos were big deals before Pitchfork and its ilk flipped over from covering songwriters to highlighting pop music. The best moments are spread out throughout the album. My choices are “Grrl in the Mirror” a rollicking story of past loves. “Wild Heart” rocks hard with the arena rock cock rock getting a gender change . “Pop Pop Fizz Fizz” is a fuzz guitar fan’s dream meet an “us outsiders taking on the world” vibe. Between the references to sports bras and Kardashians, Ford is equally adept at the more-than-just-breakup-song “Whiplash” and at the political (but no less rocking “White Man’s Dream”) 

Opener “Here’s to you Kid” is kind of lightweight given the DiFranco debut but sets up the album quite well. The album closes with “Brand New Pair” which is a bit of a love song that is an absolute perfect ending. The angelic vocals open it up to interpretation. It is perfect for the “movie” feeling album gives and I can picture it as a happy ending but the song also has an unspoken weight that could mean things aren’t so perfect. The Great American Records have allusions to Charles Starkweather and Abraham (from the Book of Genesis) but what makes those albums so good is the autobiographical elements. I am not surprise that Pinto is good, but I am surprised how gripped in it I became. 

There are still plenty of great American albums being written - the Killers’ 2021 Pressure Machine album for one- and I am making assumptions because I assume there is surely some artistic license here, too- but Pinto joins that list of great insightful American journey albums.

Album Review- Curtis Harding- Departures and Arrivals- The Adventures of Captain Curtis

Listening to Curtis Harding’s 2021 album If Words Were Flowers was a revelation. It led me to his two previous albums- 2014s Soul Power and 2017s Face Your Fear- all three are terrific. 

Of artists who have come out in the last 10 years, Harding is probably a Top 3 “most listened” to for me. Harding’s pedigree is the kind of multi-genre path that is reflected in his music. That’s probably coincidental but it is a list of some of my favorite artists of the last 25 years. In 2002, he made his first appearance on the hip hop soul debut album of Cee Lo and His Perfect Imperfections (he would appear on Cee Lo’s 2010 solo album The Lady Killer too). In the latter part of that decade, he worked with members of garage bands The Black Lips and Night Beats. 

His debut album (2014s Soul Power) would be released on the garage rock heavy Burger Records label. There was even a brief collaboration with Mastodon guitarist Brent Hinds in that same time frame. He moved to Anti Records and producer Danger Mouse for 2017s Face Your Fears and start collaborating with Sam Cohen of Apollo Sunshine that would continue on the next album. 2021s If Words Were Flowers might be my favorite Harding album to date. Produced and cowritten with Cohen, it’s a soul album, but an album that sounds out of time. The video for “Can't Hide It” imagines Harding in 1971 on a "Soul Train" type show, and it evokes Funkadelic, Gil Scott-Heron and Stevie Wonder. And of course, with the name similarity, it’s impossible not to also think of Curtis Mayfield. You can hear a multitude of genres coming together- soul, pop, funk, gospel, hip hop, psych, jazz and R&B. Unfortunately, there’s no longer a home for this type of music outside of indie rock. 

It’s great that he’s found a home on ANTI-, with its roster of Mavis Staples, Bettye Lavette and Booker T Jones. But it’s also sad that he doesn’t get a bigger audience. You can name a list of recent artists that had that similar 70s sound - enough it’s a genre within itself- Durand Jones, Charles Bradley, Black Pumas, Michael Kiwanuka, Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings- and this crowd does well with critics. There is also the Americana-adjacent Adult Alternative format which has given us St Paul and the Broken Bones, Leon Bridges, Alabama Shakes and Nathaniel Ratliff to name a few- that play in bigger venues and inch their way a bit more onto radio playlists Which isn’t to say Harding isn’t doing well. It’s just the frustration of a fan that wishes he was a household name. 

 I have to admit some trepidation for listening to 2025s Departures and Arrivals: Adventures of Captain Curt. Harding has had such a solid three album run that eventually he will release a dud, right? But I need not worry. Even if it might not have quite the killer single of "I Can't Hide It", it’s a solid album. As you can guess from the title, it’s a bit of a concept album. The music again is soul backed by lavish orchestration. The theme isn’t pushy though it does tie the whole thing together. Opener "There She Goes" is punctuated with what sounds like Ernie Isley’s classic 1970s guitar. 

Across the album we are sent to "Hard as Stone" with its indistinguishable lyrics floats out in the world of OutKast and Cee Lo to a dreamy bliss and later the disco stomp of "The Power" with plenty of high hat and keyboard riffs along the way with dabbling in the sounds of the Fifth Dimension and Marvin Gaye along the way. This album is such a thrill for me as a listener taking me to some classic records with no missteps along the way. I don’t know what the future holds (no pun intended for such a futuristic concept record) for Harding but he’s doing amazing work. ("There She Goes" follows Harding's 2021 video "Can't Hide It" in giving nostalgic vibes visually as well as audibly, in this case a Night Gallery/Twilight Zone pastiche)

Album Review- Rhett Miller- A Lifetime of Riding By Night

In July 2025, Old 97s bassist Murry Hammond released a solo album. Last month, lead singer Rhett Miller released his tenth solo album. 

There is a new Old 97s album likely forthcoming next year. The Old 97s have not had any lineup changes and their interviews focus on them as the friends they have been for the last 40 years. U2 is the only other band I can think of quickly that portrays similar chemistry. While lead singer solo albums seem redundant, Miller has generally been purposeful in making them something different. While there are some moments on his solo albums that have the rollicking alt country of Old 97s, that’s usually the exception 2025s A Lifetime of Riding by Night has its own vibe. It’s focused on Miller’s lyrics as the accompanying music is stripped down for an intimate folky feel. This also may be an effect of Rhett’s recent vocal cord surgery. 

Hammond produces while cameos and the guest list on this album consists of Evan Felker of the Turnpike Troubadours, Caitlin Rose, Jesse Valenzuela (of the Gin Blossoms), and Nicole Atkins. Rhett (and the 97s) contains multitudes but it bears reminding that this is the singer who gave its one of the great songs of the last quarter century can write a tune. (I am referring here to “Question” from the 2001 album Satellite Rides, probably the band’s most well known song. It appeared prominently in the TV series Scrubs . Miller re-recorded it in 2006 for his solo album The Believer) his is an also a guy who has covered Prine and Jon Langford. As fun as the 97s are, let's not forget just how talented of a lyricist he is. Miller’s albums are often different than the Old 97s- they are more pop, less alt country. This album doesn’t sound like much of his previous work, but has a wonderful distinct vibe. 

I give Hammond a big thumbs up for capturing that mood. Rhett has always written some great reflective lyrics of life as a musician - the rollicking “Longer than You’ve Been Alive” off the Old 97s 2014 Most Messed Up album as one example. There’s definitely some of that Mott the Hoople style career rumination, but here he tackles it from a more self reflective angle on the disc's title track. “All Over Again” is a positive looking song that is the hallmark of Miller’s solo records. “Be Mine” might be the best song here because it combines that optimism and the detailed narrator sides of Miller. There’s surely an alternate world where only Miller’s solo albums exist and he is an underappreciated troubadour.