Americana

Exposure: Kill it Kid

13 Aug 2009

Their Americana twang will leave you feeling like you’ve ended up in deepest, darkest Alabama, especially when singer Chris Turpin’s melancholic roar booms across the room and keyboardist Stephanie Ward’s voice stands in opposition, but Kill It Kid’s…

Southern Fried Festival - country music comes to Perth

23 Jul 2009

Glen Lyon, 1982, is as good a place to start as any. That summer Andy Shearer, son of the local deerstalking ghillie, met Will Oldham, a young American holidaying on the estate with his family. They struck up a friendship and began to swap music…

Marissa Nadler

30 Apr 2009

AMERICANA We journalists are forever putting musicians into convenient categories, only for artists to spend their careers trying to escape them. So it is with Marissa Nadler, American purveyor of sweeping dream-folk over her last three albums, who’s…

Star Wheel Press - Life Cycle of a Falling Bird

A timeless album from the Americana heartbreakers

23 Apr 2012

Bonnie Prince Billy is not the only alt-country bard to have dibs on Glen Lyon. Americana heartbreakers Star Wheel Press are based in Aberfeldy (BPB’s erstwhile stomping ground), and have quietly amassed a dedicated following since their lovely debut…

Band of Horses are back in the saddle

3 Jun 2010

Get your lighters out. Band of Horses are bringing their country-tinged rock to Bellahouston Park. Ryan Drever traces the path that brought them here. Upon forming in Seattle in 2004, Band Of Horses hit the ground running. After landing an early break…

Robert Plant - Usher Hall, Edinburgh, Mon 18 Oct 2010

Singer's 'other band' create intimate experience mixing Americana with Led Zep

2 Nov 2010

It’s impossible to ignore Robert Plant’s illustrious past with his ‘other band’ but tonight belongs to The Band of Joy. He may have reprised the name of his 1966 folk rock group but the current incarnation is very much an Americana outfit.

Kort - Invariable Heartache

6 Oct 2010

(City Slang) Lambchop frontman Kurt Wagner has made a career out of perfecting an alternative to his hometown Nashville’s commercial mainstream country sound. With this album of duets with Cortney Tidwell (the daughter of a Nashville dynasty)…

The Low Anthem, Mountain Man and Avi Buffalo set for Edinburgh date

Americana, borrowing from jazz, gospel and folk

24 Aug 2010

With a relaxed, mellow sound steeped in the traditions of American folk and blues, the Low Anthem are a group of Ivy League music graduates from Providence, Rhode Island, currently touring Europe with their unique fusion of instruments, ranging from…

Sparrow and the Workshop - Crystals Fall

15 Apr 2010

(Distiller) Americana-tinged debut using powerful vocals, drums and stormy guitars to fantastic effect.

The Avett Brothers - I and Love and You

14 Apr 2010

(Sony) The Avett brothers Scott and Seth have been making music since 2000, but this is their major label debut. Produced by Rick Rubin, whose input guarantees a certain level of success, it’s an excellent collection of songs – an example of…

The Wynntown Marshals - Westerner

4 Dec 2009

(Charger) Impressively boasting two Keiths and two Iains amongst their ranks, The Wynntown Marshalls say they write songs about ‘love, loss, wars, natural disasters and the otherwise broken ride we like to call life’. More specifically, the songs on…

James Apollo - The Caves, Edinburgh, Tue 6 Oct

Ecstatic Americana

15 Oct 2009

Some people might say that rock’n’roll isn’t all about having great hair. But these people are fools! James Apollo has a truly spectacular quiff and a rockabilly sound of equally high calibre that both get an awe-inspiring showcasing in the…

Blueflint

The banjo toting duo on their Edinburgh Americana

17 Sep 2009

Sometimes the path less travelled isn’t as peculiar as you might think. Admittedly on paper, Blueflint’s story isn’t an entirely conventional one, but the result is something wholly engaging to anyone’s ears: great songs. ‘Clare [Louise Neilson] and…

Bap Kennedy - Howl On

23 Jul 2009

Belfast-born singer-songwriter, Martin (or Bap) Kennedy, has been treading the rocky boards for nigh-on 20 years having led minor hitmakers, Energy Orchard, on their unsustainable UK Top 60 debut in 1990. Once sharing a stage with mentor, Van Morrison…

Glasgow Americana Festival

14 May 2009

Scotland in general, and Glasgow in particular, has had a long love affair with the dusty backroad heartbreak of Americana and anything with a folky bent from across the pond. In the past the Big Big Country festival run by late promoter Billy Kelly was…

Ray Lamontagne

5 Feb 2009

The once semi-reclusive, gravelly voiced grizzly bear of Americana folk has come a long way from early gigs where he used to keep his eyes shut throughout. Last year’s Gossip in the Grain was praised as his most open album to date. Royal Concert…

Findlay Napier and The Bar Room Mountaineers - Out All Night

11 Dec 2008

SCOTTISH AMERICANA This debut from the Back of the Moon, Croft No. Five and Celtic Connections stalwarts is a peculiarly natural Scottish Americana that weaves traditional Scots instrumentation with an altogether wider influence, exemplified by the…

5 Reasons To Go See - Dean Owens

27 Nov 2008

1 He’s got both kinds of music – country and western An old gag, but not entirely appropriate for Owens, an Edinburgh-based purveyor of finely crafted Americana, who also manages to channel folk, traditional, pop, soul and punk into the mix. 2 The…

Eliza Gilkyson

2 Oct 2008

In our increasingly cynical world, moments of optimism appear more fleeting than ever. Eliza Gilkyson’s is a chink of bright sunshine on a cloudy day, and her lilting, warm tones have been a delight to behold for almost 30 years now. That’s not to say…

Glasgow Americana Festival - Jason Ringenberg

22 May 2008

If there was ever a singer who fits the dewy-eyed, British notion of Americana as thinking man’s country music, it would be Jason Ringenberg. With the social conscience of Steve Earle, the cheekbones of (a young) Johnny Cash, the punk aesthetic of Joey…

Made in the Shade @ The Lighthouse

22 May 2008

She wears a frilly apron and teases her hair into a rock-hard bee-hive. She spends her days baking fresh cupcakes and her nights stitching patchwork quilts. According to Carrie Maclennan, she’s ‘the American 1950s housewife mother you never had’, and…

The Wynntown Marshals

28 Feb 2008

AMERICANA Cabaret Voltaire, Edinburgh, Sat 9 Feb ‘If Carlsberg made Americana...’, runs the jokey tagline on this Edinburgh quintet’s MySpace, although the rest of the slogan would still be somewhere near true if it appeared next to footage of this…

American Music Club - The Golden Age

31 Jan 2008

(Cooking Vinyl) AMERICANA Terminal romantics Mark Eitzel and AMC have been breaking hearts and taking names for over 20 years and still manage to turn out new albums that surprise with songs that are utterly evocative, fragile, dry, witty and truly…

Chuck Prophet

20 Sep 2007

AMERICANA King Tut’s, Glasgow, Thu, 27 Sep Not to be confused with the current trend for trucker-chic and check shirts, Americana in the musical sense magics up the sound of smoky bars, whisky-soaked nights in the desert and heartbroken farm boys.

O’Death

Head Home

9 Aug 2007

ALT.COUNTRY O’Death are five guys with barely a shirt between them, who, despite hailing from New York, evoke the deep south in their punk country songs: toothless yokels and moonshine-fuelled barn dances. Greg Jamie’s weathered vocals swings from…