It seems entirely appropriate that Atlanta alternative/indie rocker K Michelle DuBois is surrounded by a fortress of cardboard containers on 27 January while chatting about The Fever Returns, her next solo album that premieres in its entirety today at PopMatters. READ MORE…
“It’s such a cruel feeling to be standing next to someone who has checked out of a relationship yet is still going through the motions with you,” Katie Jo lamented to American Songwriter.
Born in Wichita, based out of Los Angeles and inspired by country legends like Patsy Cline, Loretta Lynn and Tammy Wynette, Katie Jo is no stranger to the type of heartache that walks hand-in-hand with the aforementioned scenario. In fact, the retro-Americana songwriter explores that very topic in her new dreamy single, “I Don’t Know Where Your Heart’s Been.”
“With this song, I wanted to capture that awful, heart-sinking moment in time when a relationship hasn’t quite ended, but you both know it’s over,” Jo explained. “For me, this tune is really a little capsule of that, saying ‘indifference is the opposite of love.’ Whether it’s a puppy-love crush that isn’t reciprocated or a longterm partner who has one foot out the door, that holding pattern before a breakup is sometimes almost worse than the heartbreak itself. It’s even worse when it’s clear someone else is in the picture.”
Like the local dive bar’s perennial drunkard, Parker Smith’s music has that rare ability to thrive while at its scrappiest. All aching pedal steel and cigarette-soaked pleas, Smith seems to put his own spiritual turmoil in a chokehold, elevating it until he squeezes out the elegant songs that make for his forthcoming sophomore LP, Underground, which is due out April 9th. Unlike most of his peers in the Americana community, Smith manages to defy being pigeonholed by inflecting his music with touches of blue-eyed soul (“Fray”), Asbury Park-indebted blues-rock (“Holy Water”), and even Gordon Lightfoot (“Arrowroot”).
Parker Woodland is lumbered with a bland name that sounds like it should belong to a nature reserve owned by the National Trust. So it’s a pleasant surprise that their debut EP is such an exhilarating listen. READ MORE…
Coming off a dizzyingly prolific run of releases – this will mark his 11th full-length record in six years – How We See it Now came about by breaking through the social-emotional chokehold that 2020 strapped the world with. Though these songs were not written for or during the lockdown (for that see Grimm’s 2020 solo release A Little Heat), they were born from a flurry of creative output. Grimm holed up at Magpie Cage Studios in Baltimore, MD and culled together a ‘best of’ from his past three years’ worth of Bandcamp output. When he finally sat down to listen to years worth of material, these were the songs that stood out as surefire winners.
Opening songs hold the power to crack albums open, revealing the stuff they’re made of and setting mission statements for listeners to reject or embrace. READ MORE…