Category: Reviews

Album Review: Miranda Lambert – Crisco 

If you’d told me a few years back that Miranda Lambert would be releasing a disco album, I’d have laughed in your face. The crazy ex-girlfriend who likes to burn stuff down? The woman who was more likely to be standing at the bar getting the drinks in than heading onto the dance floor? Miranda who released the Marfa Tapes? Last seen in a Texas honky tonk? Miranda? Disco?

So yes before listening to this whole album in full, I had severe doubts. On first glance the project seemed like a mid-life crisis, an artist trying to follow Kacey’s ‘High Horse’ or the ‘Bell Bottom Country’ 70s trend and getting it slightly wrong. The video for ‘Crisco’ felt a little awkward, like she was uncomfortable dancing on camera. 

But I did love ‘A Song to Sing’, with Chris Stapleton and loved the roller disco vibe of that video which was the original inspiration for this whole album. After the first few songs were released I was still unsure but soon I found myself going back to them quite often. Sure it was disco, but it was country disco, it had a beautifully lush sheen to the sound. Plus Miranda’s voice just always pulls me in. Slowly Crisco started to make sense to me. 

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Album Review: The Womack Sisters 

Living in the legacy of your family can sometimes be a curse, with the nepo baby insult now being thrown around at anyone even with even the remotest connection to their respective industry. For some people nepotism suggests a kind of intervention to elevate untalented people above their station, which in most instances is just not the case. I think it’s much more interesting to consider how younger generations are tackling the need to continue their family’s musical legacy. How do you honour the past and yet convey your own sense of self?  

The Womack Sisters have a lineage that lives and breathes soul music. Their parents are Womack & Womack, their uncle Bobby Womack and their grandfather is Sam Cooke. That’s a legacy to be proud of, not to hide behind – hence their group name shouts the connection proudly (as they should). The sisters are BG, Zeimani, and Kucha Womack, vocalists who started out as backing singers for their family before stepping into the spotlight. After the deaths of their father and uncle they had to regroup and find a new path forward in the music industry. 

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Album Review: Julia Jacklin – The Gem

Even if you’re always listening to new music, or even if you’re a music blogger like myself, sometimes there’s an artist whose name you hear often but whose music for whatever reason you never get around to listening to. Julia Jacklin is one of those names for me. I resolved to make an effort this album cycle, after enjoying the preview songs. ‘The Gem’ was also the first new album Apple Music added to my library this week, so with zero expectations or knowledge of her at all, I pressed play and found myself hooked into her melodic, vulnerable indie music right away. 

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Album Review: Two Runner – Porchlight

Two Runner have been quietly building a stellar reputation in the Americana scene over the last few years: recording sessions with Western AF and Gems on VHS, and going on tour with Alela Diane and Watchhouse. The new album ‘Porchlight’ comes six months or so after violinist Emilie Rose left the duo, making Two Runner now a solo proposition led by songwriter, guitarist and vocalist Paige Anderson. 

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Album Review: Laura Veirs – Temple Songs

Laura Veirs’s new album is the first she’s entirely recorded and produced herself and the first in four years since Found Light. Her garden studio is called ‘Temple of Bloom’ and this was where ‘Temple Songs’ was born, after living through a songwriting drought she has reframed as a ‘gathering phase’. The seeds of that work have grown into songs whose roots feel surprisingly strong. 

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Album Review: Allison Russell – In the Hour of Chaos 

On her recent appearance on the lovely ‘Playing Along with Norah Jones’ podcast Allison Russell described her favourite part of making music as ‘the collaboration’, calling her fellow musicians on this new album ‘In the Hour of Chaos’ a ‘rainbow coalition’. 

Allison begins her third solo album by singing an ode to the ‘Rainbow’, offering herself a reminder to keep hold of her childhood innocence, knowing as an adult that’s ‘it’s not easy to keep all seven colours in your mind’. The song sets the tone for an album that understands the pain of the world, and seeks solace through connection and celebration. 

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Live Review: Alela Diane @ Days Off Festival, Paris 5/7/26

I hadn’t planned on going to Paris last weekend. I had seen a while back that Alela Diane and Kevin Morby were playing Paris one day after the other during my summer holiday but a trip to Paris in summer was surely going to be too hot and too expensive. 

And yet as the time drew nearer I felt like it would be more wrong not to go, especially considering these were two of my favourites who’d both released brilliant new albums this year and neither artist were playing Scotland on this tour schedule. The heat looked to be dipping a little back under thirty degrees on the weather forecast (in the end it was stifling) and I got some extra money for work I did in June. So off I went. 

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Live Album Review: The Highwomen – Live at The Gorge 2023 

This past weekend The Highwomen reunited at The Gorge for the first time since they last played that same venue in 2023. Honestly I’ve spent the last hour or so just watching the videos of the performances and I’ve felt a mixture of deep, deep FOMO, unabashed joy and just a sense of hope and optimism which only this group of women seem to create when they’re together. 

2019, when the Highwomen united to release their only album, feels like a century ago. They hoped to change the Nashville sound, to show that women were the beating heart of country music and deserved more respect. 

In the end their initial hopes and dreams for this project didn’t exactly come true. They did well but didn’t hit the country music airwaves and dominate the charts. While some progress has been made they unfortunately didn’t start a rainbow revolution that brought diversity to the genre.

In fact Maren actually dealt with some horrific trolling from country music fans after standing up for transgender rights, causing her to distance herself from the country music mainstream altogether. Brandi’s star skyrocketed after working with Joni and Elton but she released music that veered more towards epic stadium rock. Amanda’s last couple of albums went more rock and roll too. Natalie Hemby released a second solo album but mainly focused on writing songs for other artists. A word too for Yola who featured on the debut but seems to have distanced herself from Nashville and the genre too since that time. You wondered if The Highwomen would ever come back together again as a group. 

But listening to this new live album of their 2023 show reminded me of what the Highwomen did achieve. They sang songs for people who needed them, who craved them, who wanted country music to be something else. They created something beautiful – a crowded table of their own making. 

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Album Review: Alela Diane – Who’s Keeping Time?

In a world of online influencers selling false versions of themselves for profit, it seems absurd that musicians are now expected to produce content and compete for attention on the same platforms. And yet here we are. 

Portland based indie folk songwriter Alela Diane has been someone whose social media feels more like a natural reflection of her life, very low-key DIY, with a wry smile that suggests she’s playing the game without taking it too seriously. She’s filmed videos in her stunning Victorian home, featured her pets and children, partnered with eco-fashion brand Christy Dawn, wearing them in her social media content and on stage, while always keeping the focus on the most important element: the music. 

This new album was recorded in her own home studio, and she has recently made a deliberate choice to engage with her local music community again after many years focused on motherhood. Although it must be said that even if her attention was elsewhere she’s never really been away from music releasing Cusp, Looking Glass and It’s Always Christmas Somewhere with the Hackles in the ten years since this blog began in 2017.  Her new album ‘Who’s Keeping Time?’ is full of beautiful, warmly rich sounding songs which she will be touring far and wide in the upcoming year, another sign of her renewed ambition. 

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