Demob Happy

Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle - Bill Callahan
8.5/10

Just as I thought I was tiring of the alt-country/new folk revival, along comes an album - from one of the scene’s relative old timers - of such immersive beauty that I can’t get enough of it. While there is much about Bill Callahan’s ‘Sometimes I [...]

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Family matters
FIRST PUBLISHED AT ALTSOUNDS.COM
7.5/10
The Handsome Family’s (aka Brett & Rennie Sparks) eighth album ‘Honey Moon’ is a collection of love songs “featuring tales of intimate insects and lovers kissing in wet caves”, released to mark their 20th wedding anniversary. Maintaining the gothic Americana Family template of previous albums, ‘Honey Moon’ blends the baroque with [...]

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FIRST PUBLISHED AT THE LINE OF BEST FIT
Keep this in mind for your Christmas stockings …
8/10
When it was released earlier this year I resisted ‘Sunday At Devil Dirt’, Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan’s well-received, rather tongue-in-cheek take on Americana, their second full-length collaboration. It seemed to me too studied, too contrived somehow, a feeling heightened [...]

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Breezy brilliance from casual genius
8/10
FIRST PUBLISHED AT THE LINE OF BEST FIT
Arthur Russell’s ‘Love Is Overtaking Me‘ compiles previously unreleased material from the critically regarded but somehow commercially overlooked artist’s archive. Ranging from Dylanesque folk, country and angular art pop from the 1970s through his final home recordings before death in 1991, the album provides [...]

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Thrill Jockey release low on thrills
5/10
FIRST PUBLISHED AT THE LINE OF BEST FIT
Angela Desveaux’s second solo album is agreeable but very much old time country in the mould of Dolly Parton and Loretta Lynn, mildly infused with Californian rock. Despite her Montreal and Nova Scotia background, Desveaux’s musical origins are very much south of the [...]

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Spaghetti westerns and pulp fiction
6/10
Calexico’s second album is a sprawling, doom-laden and cinematic work that draws heavily on latin jazz, mariachi, country and gypsy folk. Typically rich in the kind of malevolent desert imagery and border country narratives that suggest the novels of Cormac McCarthy, ‘Black Light‘ explores territory that is more fully realised in [...]

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Beguiling second album
8/10
Not being familar with her first solo effort or previous (pre-Broken Social Scene) encarnations in the Canadian punk scene and beyond, it was something of a surprise to come across this album. Such is the massive (frequently brilliant) overloading of Broken Social Scene’s musical pallette that Feist’s vocals are often buried quite deep [...]

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