Month: August 2017

Given the current climate, this is, at least in part, an album that resonates by painting a picture of a broken, divided world which is conflicted and uncertain. David Ramirez is a clever fellow though and approaches the task at hand by distilling the hurts of modern America into a series of songs that tell its story through 10 songs that re-imagine recent history, dysfunction and dissatisfaction as though they are the defining attributes of a relationship that’s falling apart. Indeed there are some bewildering truths buried in this record that are chilling and desperate. Continue reading “David Ramirez “We’re Not Going Anywhere” (Thirty Tigers, 2017)”

In the 1990’s Tom Russell was, along with Dave Alvin, hailed as the architect of what came to be known as Americana music. Folk Hotel is album number 36 for Russell and, in 2017, he has surely delivered one of the Americana albums of the year. This is a storytellers’ album with every song a poem or a story in its own right. A year after the passing of one of the great song writing poets, Leonard Cohen, a song about New York’s Chelsea Hotel, Up in The Old Hotel, provides a fitting and high-quality opening. Leaving El Paso, a song about the journey Russell and his wife made following the route the Spanish took to Santa Fe some 500 years previously, features Eliza Gilkyson on vocals and some gorgeous Tex-Mex accordion from Joel Guzman.  Continue reading “Tom Russell “Folk Hotel” (Proper Records, 2017)”