RECENT ARTICLES

Before she played electric guitar like a God, before she became known as one of the best ever to do it, Nancy Wilson played a rented acoustic. She started when she was nine years old. The action had about two inches between the strings and the neck. But she played it with passion and burgeoning prowess. Later, Wilson joined her sister, Ann, in the seminal rock ‘n’ roll band, Heart, and the rest is Hall of Fame history. Now, with multiple time-tested hits to their credit, the sisters have become legends. (And their story is rumored to be put to film in the not-too-too-distant future.)

But there are slices of the proverbial pie that come along with being infamous that aren’t always as appetizing as the peak of a solo on stage. There’s the grueling travel, constant attention and watchful eye of the press. There’s also the simple reality that to “be a member of Heart” means you might not always get to be yourself. While it may not be the worst problem on earth, it is something to navigate concertedly. Over the years, Wilson has done just that. Now though, she is doing something she’s never done: releasing her debut solo LP.

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For London-based musician, Dodie (born Dorothy Miranda Clark), to be an artist today means to be bilingual. But that’s not to say that Dodie is fluent in Spanish or French (though she may well be). What it means is that Dodie, as a producer of her own original songs, must be able to navigate and speak to both the internet and analog interfaces to be successful. Dodie, who grew to prominence online via the social media platform, YouTube, has since crossed over into more traditional, mainstream recognition. But that, of course, doesn’t mean she will abandon her nearly two million YouTube subscribers. It means that she should continue to increase that audience while also acclimating to and growing a new in-person one, which the 25-year-old has been doing diligently for the past few years. On Friday (May 7), Dodie is set to release her new LP, Build A Problem, which will likely win over more fans while also showcasing Dodie’s signature sense for the theatrical.

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It’s rare that a musician has to move away from New Orleans to find her place in music, but such was the case for the now-London-based (via The Big Easy and New York City) soul singer, Acantha Lang. Unlike many big-voiced performers, Lang didn’t grow up in church and/or a particularly musical household. Her older sister would share records like Sade and Anita Baker, but songs, melodies and rhythms weren’t particularly prioritized.

Lang’s career began to click when she left The Crescent City for The Big Apple. Upon landing in New York, Lang says she quickly realized it was “sink or swim,” so to supplement her new music passion, she modeled. But when she found a regular residency at a new club in Harlem, her career began to progress. Today, Lang is poised to premiere her latest single, “Whatever Happened to Our Love,” which showcases her vocal prowess and signals a new record release later in 2021.

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To listen to the new album, The Million Masks of God, from the Atlanta-based rock group, Manchester Orchestra, is to inhabit a cathedral-like building and let your ears take in each swell, each ring and each echo as the vibrations subsume and the medicine of music takes hold. The forthcoming record (out April 30) is spacious. It’s like wind and chimes but if they occupied a symphony. But these qualities make sense when you consider the earliest memories the band’s frontman and principle songwriter, Andy Hull, has when it comes to music. As a kid, Hull’s mother would play classical music at night to help him fall asleep. He’d drift toward slumber as the compositions of Chopin or Bach unfurled. Now, the music Hull makes is similarly epic-yet-tasteful. It’s a fine line to walk but one he and the band’s co-founder and guitarist, Robert McDowell, traverse expertly.

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As an artist, Marie Ulven (a.k.a. the popular musician, girl in red), lives a dichotomous life. In one sense, she has a rather uneventful day-to-day in her home country of Norway. She grew up in a small Norwegian town, she really likes fingerboarding and she walks her dog regularly. But in another sense, Ulven lives a very engaged life with music and fame at her fingertips. Today, she has millions of fans and even more video and song streams. Since releasing her smash 2018 hit, “I Wanna Be Your Girlfriend,” Ulven’s career has continued to take off thanks to her devastating honesty, eclectic sonic sensibilities and knack for saying just the phrase to perk and ear or raise an eyebrow. This week, Ulven will release her debut LP, if I could make it go quiet. The album, which begins with brash statements and keen personal insights, should continue to garner Ulven a large following while still continuing to allow her to live the life she’s always dreamed.

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Los Angeles-based R&B singer-songwriter, Asiahn (born Asiahn Bryant), remembers the many Greyhound bus rides she took from her then-hometown in South Carolina to the creative hotspot of Atlanta, Georgia. From nine years old, Asiahn knew she wanted to sing and perform for people. So, by 15 she was taking the 300-mile often-overnight Greyhound bus trips every other weekend to A-Town to learn the ropes, to write and record. When not in transit, however, Asiahn would continue to work. At home, she’d film herself singing in-performance with her family’s handheld video camera, critiquing a high note or watching how she moved with a microphone in her hand. It’s not that she was obsessive, exactly. It was more than that. She was determined to be better. These days, Asiahn is working even harder, inspired by a session with the famed singer, Jennifer Lopez.

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If you were to examine the record collection of Finnish musician, Jesse Markin, you’d inevitably encounter a veritable library. The artist digs it all, from progressive rock to pop to hip-hop, jazz, funk, soul and trap music. Indeed, the vast assortment that is Markin’s albums is an indication both of his eclectic tastes as a listener and of his creative music-making philosophy. When listening to Markin’s songs, you hear a wide swath of genres—There’s 808s & Heartbreak-era Kanye West, there’s Gorillaz, Arcade Fire and the Fugees. In a way, to listen to Markin is to put on a blindfold and walk through a neon midnight blue cavern, lit and warmed by the various songs and sounds you hear along the way. Markin takes pleasure in providing you this journey and on his forthcoming LP, NOIR, the artist is sure to attract many interested in signing up for his signature adventures.

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Beverly Glenn-Copeland, the Philadelphia-born multidisciplinary artist who has lived and worked for decades in Canada, is experiencing fame for the first time now at 76 years old. Glenn-Copeland, who for years identified as a lesbian woman before learning about transgender language and now identifies more accurately as a transgender man, is enjoying a new sense of fame and adoration thanks to the recent rediscovery of his nuanced 1986 electronic album, Keyboard Fantasies. New audiences are flocking to his work, which also includes writing he has done for kids shows like Sesame Street and Shiny Time Station and the records he released in the ‘70s and ‘80s. This week, on April 9, Glenn-Copeland will officially re-release his 1986 record, which, the artist says, originally came to him more as a transmission from above rather than an unearthing or physical labor.

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The story of the 77-year-old gospel singer, Elizabeth King, is the story of a life of hard work. King, who grew up on a Tennessee plantation, started working at five years old with her father. At nine years old, she began picking cotton and chopping corn. She worked so well with her brother that they earned adultpay, $3 a day, instead of $2. Later, working for a florist in Memphis the day Elvis died, King drove back and forth from her shop to the world famous singer’s mansion delivering bouquet after bouquet. Flowers from every state in America came through her place of business.

Throughout her life, King has attended church devoutly. Her relationship to a higher power remains central to her life, even today. King, who cut singles in the ’70s, stepped away from formal recording for more than four decades afterwards. In that time, she raised kids, sewing their school’s uniforms. Now, she’s back in the public eye thanks to her new record, Living In The Last Days, out today. The debut LP boasts her timeless, remarkable sound.

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The thing about a diary is that it’s private. But when that diary is also the music you make, it begins to morph into a different relationship and responsibility. For Nashville-based singer-songwriter, Bren Joy, the autobiographical admissions that his music allows him is what brought him to the art form to begin with, and what has kept him there working diligently ever since. In fact, that the music he makes will have a life after he departs the earth is crucial to Joy’s appreciation for the work he does. He wants each song and each record to mark his thoughts cleanly and clearly in a given moment in time. He responds to and respects other artists like Taylor Swift who manage their work in this way, too. It’s this impulse that inspired Joy to write and release his 2019 album, Twenties, and why he decided to release the deluxe version of the album last week. In short, he had more to say about this time in his life before it grows and shifts into a new era of creativity.

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Professional hit song maker, Starrah (born Brittany Hazzard), can trace it all back to when she was four years old. For the songwriter, who has since gone on to co-write tracks like Camila Cabello’s “Havana,” Maroon 5’s “Girls Like You” and Megan Thee Stallion’s “Savage,” inspiration first hit when she heard the 1994 song “Candy Rain” by the group, Soul for Real. More than the music, though, she was struck that the singing group included a kid in its ranks. This was an early light bulb moment—you didn’t have to be an adult to participate in music. Just a few years later, around 10 years old, the songs began to come. Starrah was on her way. She began recording with a rudimentary app on Microsoft Windows, recording herself over herself. Now, all of that inspiration and hard work is paying off. This month, Starrah has released her debut solo LP, The Longest Interlude, and the new album marks the beginning of yet another fruitful era in Starrah’s already illustrious career.

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Jamie Stewart, co-founder of the eerie indie rock group, Xiu Xiu, is no stranger to hardship. But thanks to the beauty of music, Stewart has long had a space where he can turn those difficulties into something new and, perhaps, especially beneficial. In that way, he can be constructive. Not the opposite.

Recently, Stewart says, about a half-dozen people he was “very close” with personally and professionally betrayed him, lied to him severely or just “fucked” him over at various recent times. For the sometimes cynical, oft-agoraphobic Stewart, that could have been the last straw. He could have pulled the proverbial blankets over his head and shut out the rest of the world. But, to his surprise, something else happened. Friends and fellow musicians began to reach out to him and ask about his state and offer their help. It was healing. And to thank them for their care, Stewart wrote and recorded his band’s new record, OH NO (out March 26), with the idea of the duet at its figurative center.

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The art of music production is as varied as the number of people partaking. Some release demo after demo, track after track, almost indiscriminately. Others, like the New York City-based trio of brothers AJR, are more reserved and meticulous. In one sense, it may seem that the fewer songs a band releases, the easier it is. But for AJR, it’s the opposite. The group combs over its music, finding the right sound here and the right one there.

The band has a mantra—Given that no one is perfect, therefore everyone fails. But the brothers work to “fail faster,” meaning that they endeavor not to linger on their errors, get past the inevitable junk as quickly as possible to better locate the gems. Since its inception in the early 2010s, the trio has produced a great many hits amongst the 50-something formal releases. The brothers’ newest offering, the forthcoming LP, OK ORCHESTRA, is set for release on March 26, and should produce more fans for the already popular family project.

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