At root, American pop is Latin music as much as anything else, from country’s Mexican DNA to the Cuban syncopations that seeded jazz, rock & roll, disco, salsa and hip-hop. So an apparent trifle like Cardi’s B’s “I Like It” is, in fact, a pan-Latin masterstroke packed with history, a …
Read More »
Rachael Price’s voice comes at you like a muscle car of music history, blues and bebop detailing on a classic soul ‘n’ rock chassis, and her band’s latest set comes with songcraft grown tighter and more polished, shrewdly conjuring retro pleasures per usual. The funky-pop strut “Shame Shame Shame,” for …
Read More »
Amazingly, mainstream country is still about ball-capped bros recycling hits from market-study bullet points, while Nashville’s ambitious women remain the primary engine behind the greatest creative renaissance since Willie and Waylon fucked shit up in the 1970s. Kacey Musgraves ushered in the new era in 2013 with her live-and-let-live hit …
Read More »
Richmond, Virginia singer-songwriter Lucy Dacus has said her second LP is concerned with staking her artistic platform to activist action. For the most part, though, the confrontations she maps out are more interior than openly polemic. Historian opens with “Night Shift,” where she sings about shaking loose a romantic obsession, …
Read More »