Drag City

Silver Jews make quintessentially American popular music - but "Suffering Jukebox" and "My Pillow is the Threshold" strike deep into the worldwide realm of the chart-worthy song. This is the sound that sold out countless shows across the globe on the firs

As any Six Organs of Admittance fan will tell you, life isn't all smiles and sunshine for Mr. Six Organs, one Ben Chasny. His discography has dodged in and out of the shadows with each successive record but 2005's School Of The Flower was an extended brea

Matt Sweeney and Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy return with the follow-up to their Superwolf album from years back. The songs, then, go boldly into undreamed-of places, and go deep, as Matt and Bonny take all the musics they know to make songs that penetrate. In c

Mind Maintenance is the duo of Joshua Abrams playing guimbri and Chad Taylor on mbira. This is where the music begins, but Mind Maintenance can’t be described with a summing of parts and players. It’s not about world music, it’s not about jazz. It’s about

What you remember: the upside-down crosses on your girlfriend's jean jacket. Always drawn with magic marker. Always smeared in the wash.

Out on the street, indie rock was an exciting way of life for boys and girls alike in the gay 90s. Here's a couple of voices from the fertile Denver scene, Lisa and Hilarie of Secret Square, picking a favorite from the Drag City young galaxy of stars. In

An electrical tension enters the room—a guitar, left to its own devices, is surfing the breeze. Breaking in the air, smiling from ear to ear. Bicoastal, even! Suddenly, The Peacers are back with their third album. The time has been kind. Three years since

2005's Superwolf is an acclaimed collaborative album from songcrafters Matt Sweeney and Bonnie Prince Billy aka Will Oldham. Bonnie challenged Matt to write music to a series of song lyrics, and this collaboration was done over some months, and included l

“Classic proto-punk from 1970s Detroit. Raw with little polish, the record showcases the organic power relationships within the trio of brothers. The HACKNEY’s were first influenced by soul and funk music but it all changed when they saw Iggy and the Stoo

Broken nation time! Dark skies over our days, an increased reliance on black-market products. Wanna buy some 5-year old sunshine? With 2020 hindsight, it’s looking pretty good... Smash-cut to 2015. Two boys with guitars on their chests, stretching songwri

Received an 8.0 rating from Pitchfork. Bajas Fresh is on the beach here in 2017, existing and thriving in the same wrecked world as you and me. How they finding it so chill and pretty? It’s been over three years since the last proper BITCHIN BAJASs—a natu

2020! Now it can be told: the charade of a world without new MAGIK MARKERS records (six-plus years!) has finally ended. In these times of contagion fables and hacky blockbuster N95 disaster imagery IRL, Markers emerge again like three Lazarus from their t

Received a 7.5 rating from Pitchfork. BITCHIN BAJAS have been around the world in five years; chasing sonics through space and time and coming up with a lot of conclusions along their discographical path. Always, they push forward, recklessly consuming pr

For his first record in….uh, well, just a little over a year (!), BILL CALLAHAN’s given us his first Gold Record. You could probably call the album “Gold Records” too: all the songs have a stand-alone feel, like singles, meant for you to have a deep encou

Five years after Tangier Sessions, SIR RICHARD BISHOP, we presume, is back from his travels around the world. With Oneiric Formulary, he’s dug deeper into his bag of extra-musical gestures from the eternal and unknowable, along with a few sounds we might

Life is a Rorschach, life is a Rashomon. Fuck your facts. Throw ‘em out with yesterday’s webpages. Lives lie beyond the equations of currency, border lines and government—and truth is just a drop in the beholder’s eye. TY SEGALL has made whole records tha

Essentially an ensemble recorded live in the studio, Bill Callahan’s Apocalypse is the corpus delecti. If tape is like meat, this record is the whole hog, no cuts, delectables and guts intact! In the opening salvo “Drover,” the cattle are herded. Callahan

As you listen to Shepherd In a Sheepskin Vest, a feeling of totality, of completeness, steals over you, like a thief in broad daylight. Of course it does – you're listening to a new Bill Callahan record! The first one in almost six years! What more do you

Located at the mid point between Lee Marvin and Harvey Oswald, Bill Callahan aka Smog has established a reputation as a classic American male outsider. With 12 studio albums under his Smog belt Callahan remains an enigma. A consummate storyteller in the t

Espers' self-titled first release appeared in 2004, heralding an era in which there was a perception of back-to-the-roots in the underground; kids making new music that spoke strongly of folk traditions and psychedelia, in the process setting themselves a

"Our salivating makes it all taste worse," croons Ty Segall in "Taste," the lead single from his latest album, First Taste. He's talking about us: how we're the masters of our own destiny, tellers of our own prophecy, makers of our own sickened choices. I