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6 days ago | 
shepherdexpress.com | Jon Gilbertson
In 2023, Maren Morris told the world she was leaving the country-music industry, and that last word is key. Dreamsicle, her fourth album, keeps country sounds in the mix while it brings in more of the other sounds she was delving into before now.
Morris expands more overtly with her many collaborators, including Delacey (who’s co-written with the very pop Chainsmokers and Halsey) and Jack Antonoff (who’s been a producer for and co-writer with … everyone, it seems).
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1 week ago | 
shepherdexpress.com | Jon Gilbertson
The voice, if you’ve heard it before, is impossible not to recognize. The melodic diction. The dry sensuality. The hint that, every time the singer opens her mouth near a microphone, she’s confronting shyness. The voice belongs to folk, rock, and pop artist Suzanne Vega, and on Flying With Angels, she moves it through her first collection of new songs in over a decade.
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2 weeks ago | 
shepherdexpress.com | Jon Gilbertson
Although Samantha Fish isn’t afraid to be brassy and flashy, the singer, songwriter and guitarist has marked her 30s with a journeywoman’s devotion to the basics, building rock and soul edifices over a blues foundation. Paper Doll is the latest row of houses, and it is very sturdy.
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3 weeks ago | 
shepherdexpress.com | Jon Gilbertson
Without background knowledge of the players, What Did the Blackbird Say to the Crow initially comes across as bucolically modest: 18 decidedly old-time songs played on banjo and fiddle and captured, along with chirping birds and outdoor breezes, with the simplicity of a field recording.
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1 month ago | 
shepherdexpress.com | Jon Gilbertson
The roots of plants, from the lowliest weeds to the mightiest redwoods, are wrigglingly alive, and roots music should be just as alive and growing as plants are. Valerie June understands this, and on her fourth studio album, Owls, Omens, and Oracles, she continues to be a cultivator rather than a preservationist.
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1 month ago | 
shepherdexpress.com | Jon Gilbertson
Brandi Carlile and (Sir) Elton John balance deference and challenge on Who Believes in Angels? This would be impressive for any two strong-willed musical collaborators, much less a highly lauded singer-songwriter who keeps increasing her stylistic range and an elder statesman of adult-contemporary pop.
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1 month ago | 
shepherdexpress.com | Jon Gilbertson
The term “jazzy” can feel pejorative, especially when applied to successful female performers from Sade and Cassandra Wilson to Diana Krall and Norah Jones. When applied to a younger woman, it can feel even more so.
It doesn’t have to feel that way, though, as the above artistes have proven. Maya Deliliah, a 24-year-old English singer, songwriter, and guitarist, strides toward very strong if not incontrovertible proof on her debut full-length, The Long Way Round.
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1 month ago | 
shepherdexpress.com | Jon Gilbertson
The fourth Japanese Breakfast album bears an artistically true title. Frontwoman and songwriter Michelle Zauner folds her indie-pop petals into protective desolation after the award nominations and commercial success of 2021’s Jubilee brought her blossoming into bright light and then withering under its glare.
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2 months ago | 
shepherdexpress.com | Jon Gilbertson
American music and science fiction have combined very memorably: jazz explorer Herman Blount called himself Sun Ra and claimed to be from Saturn; Funkadelic’s members often portrayed themselves as Flash Gordon’s soul brothers and sisters; and didn’t Prince sometimes look and sound like a parallel-universe version of himself?
The rap collective Clipping.
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2 months ago | 
shepherdexpress.com | Jon Gilbertson
In 2020, Bob Mould released his 14th solo album, Blue Hearts. He also, with the mammoth boxset Distortion, gave an overview of the rest of his solo career up until then, including his electronic projects and his fronting of the alt-rock band Sugar.
In 2025—a mere 37 years after he left Hüsker Dü, the punk- and alt-rock band that influenced and inspired, among others, Nirvana and Green Day—Mould reaffirms his late-career potency with his 15th solo album, Here We Go Crazy.
