The Purple Mountains train rolls on through its desolate American landscape, equal parts joy and resignation. The voice, former Silver Jew David Berman, is returned from the hinterland, ten years after turning off the tap to his string of indie-jukebox classics  - and his findings, he warns us, are candid. Not only is his heart heavy with trepidation, but the world around him seems to be lacking. The only respite for our singer is to bury himself in the garish surroundings that make up... (read more)

The Silence has descended upon us once again! In the two years-plus since their previous album, Nine Suns, One Morning, their leader Masaki Batoh recorded and released his solo album, Nowhere - but from the first chimes of hazy guitar arpeggios that open Metaphysical Feedback, we are transported right back to the unique rock and roll space that The Silence conjure whenever they plug in and come together. As with their previous three albums, The Silence use the sound of analog recording as... (read more)

Drag City Press - the final frontier! Or so we thought back in the year 2000 (whotta coincidence) when we put out John Fahey's How Bluegrass Music Destroyed My Life. For a record label like ours, releasing books somehow implied the big time - and so we continued to search for projects that we could get behind and continued to find goods ones that now fill our catalog - or as we like to call it, "library." Now it's 2019, and we're still... (read more)

"Wasted" is a reflection of Nashville legend Chris Gantry's long and winding path through this world - but the vitality of the songwriting stops the music from becoming simple elegy or denouement. Chris' crafty old-school way with a tune and his smooth melodicism gives him the space to tell his tales with ease; lovers, losers and madmen are depicted with warmth and empathy, a genuine love of the human spirit and the singing chops of a man who's known tens of thousands of... (read more)

Put the hot 'n humid back into summer! Deep, drippy and super trippy, Purling Hiss' latest EP, Interstellar Blue, is packed to the brim with four new tunes available exclusively on the digital doo-dad of your choice! The first single, "Useful Information", is a euphoric outpouring of sugared guitar and insta-catchy vocals atop a steadfast n' slithering rhythm section, kaleidoscopically coloring what you hear like a full-on head rush. Mike Polizze's got a penchant for executing perfect "stuck-in-your-head" songs... (read more)

They say good things come in threes-and the new Mike Donovan album is back to remind us! Exurbian Quonset is his third solo outing, less than a year after his second solo, How To Get Your Records Played In Shops (which proved that good things came in twos last year). The opener, "Digital Dan", peels out like a dragster doing donuts behind the Dunkin Donuts - a bit meta, sure, and a bit just plain FUCKED too. Thankfully that's as far as the ol'... (read more)

Roots of Confusion Seeds of Joy is here, and just in time for everyone! As one of the practitioners of an increasingly rare form of musical alchemy, Major Stars have proven to be an antidote to all sorts of real-world trauma. Put on an album of theirs, and you're bound to be catapulted into a world of rock-based abstraction, diffraction, and finally, sweet distraction.

Playing material arranged for a sextet fronted by a trio of guitars, Major Stars have developed a habit of rehearsing... (read more)

There's breakup records. There's apocalypse records. Then there's the Purple Mountains  record! This new musical expression from David Berman is his most to-the-bone yet, very frankly confessing to a near-total collapse from the word go, before delving into the sorry subtext with twin lasers of personal laceration and the saving grace of a professional songwriter's natural remove. Our unofficial Gen X poet laureate has written a collection of songs that cries to be understood in the misbegotten country that made everything great about... (read more)

It's no wonder Soho Theater booked a long string of gigs for Neil Hamburger this month - laughter is always the best medicine, and given the will-they-won't-they state of things in Great Britain, London-types must be in need of a salve! But let's get serious - all jokes have some semblance of truth to them, and in case you missed it in the previous sentence, the important thing to notice is that Neil Hamburger is playing two back-to-back residencies at Soho Theater in London this... (read more)

"What Comes After Certainty" - that's what the whole Shepherd In a Sheepskin Vest album is about. But what comes after "What Comes After Certainty"? On this album, that would be Side 3 - the traditional side in pop-rock lore in which an album may attempt to reach its farthest-out point,  a dizzying apex of music and meanings where the thinness of penultimate air produces a sense of abstraction in the ear of the traveler.  
 
That said, we know that Bill... (read more)