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2 weeks ago | 
uncut.co.uk | Stephen Deusner
Kassi Valazza opens “Roll On”, a meditative country-tinged ballad from her third album, with a stark realisation: “I’ve made up my mind, I feel like I do”, she asserts over a slow-motion two-step rhythm and thick brushstrokes of pedal steel and fiddle. “And if I feel like I do, I’ll try moving on”.
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3 weeks ago | 
yahoo.com | Stephen Deusner
When Eli Roth was doing press in Europe for Hostel or Hostel: Part II—he can’t remember which—he walked into a video store in Rome and found a bin full of Italian sex comedies. He’d never heard of any of them, despite having an interest in the country’s genre film industry: giallo murder spectacles, crime thrillers, horror movies, even westerns.
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3 weeks ago | 
spin.com | Stephen Deusner
When Eli Roth was doing press in Europe for Hostel or Hostel: Part II—he can’t remember which—he walked into a video store in Rome and found a bin full of Italian sex comedies. He’d never heard of any of them, despite having an interest in the country’s genre film industry: giallo murder spectacles, crime thrillers, horror movies, even westerns.
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3 weeks ago | 
pitchfork.com | Stephen Deusner
The most notable thing we know about Bill Fox is that we know almost nothing notable about him, and that’s still more than he might like us to know. In the 1980s he fronted a short-lived but well-loved band called the Mice, whose brand of catchy, acerbic power pop inspired Elliott Smith and fellow Buckeyes Guided by Voices. He released a series of solo albums—like 1996’s Shelter From the Smoke and 1998’s Transit Byzantium—that are considered beloved cult artifacts.
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4 weeks ago | 
stereogum.com | Stephen Deusner
We’ve Got A File On You features interviews in which artists share the stories behind the extracurricular activities that dot their careers: acting gigs, guest appearances, random internet ephemera, etc. There’s a few thousand special guests on What Did The Blackbird Say To The Crow, Rhiannon Giddens’ new album of field recordings with fiddler Justin Robinson.
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1 month ago | 
uncut.co.uk | Stephen Deusner
This feature originally appeared in Uncut’s March 2022 [Take 298] issueJoin us at the blackberry bushes, where MICHAEL HURLEY can be found cutting back the foliage deep in the Oregon wilderness. As the veteran folk singer prepares to release a new album, The Time Of The Foxgloves, he leads Stephen Deusner through his wild and idiosyncratic career – from Greenwich Village in the ’60s onwards. Stand by for many marvellous digressions, sundry gardening tips and a glimpse into “Snocko Time”.
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1 month ago | 
spin.com | Stephen Deusner
Teddy Swims is just back from the gym. Freshly showered in a sleeveless black T-shirt that shows off even more of his tattoos, the man born Jaten Dimsdale still has endorphins pumping when he sits down to talk with me. He’s midway through a European tour, having just wrapped up a show in Manchester, England, but still finds time to work out. It’s one of the many ways he stays sane on the road. “I love the U.K.,” he exclaims. Swims talks in an excited rush of words, enthusiastic and outgoing.
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1 month ago | 
pitchfork.com | Stephen Deusner
“Seeds,” the first song on Lonnie Holley’s seventh album, is a harrowing, nine-minute account of his childhood incarceration at the Alabama Industrial School for Negro Children, a notoriously brutal institution where he experienced whippings, beatings, starvation, and other forms of torture. His narration is soundtracked by swooping strings, a tensely bouncing beat, and what sound like distorted voices rising out of the past.
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1 month ago | 
uncut.co.uk | Stephen Deusner
Sam Moss always looks for the irregular pieces of wood at his local lumber yard. “They have a pile of weird scraps that they can’t sell,” says the woodworker and singer-songwriter based in Staunton, Virginia. “I like to paw through and take a bunch of odd pieces and make them into strange little tables or whatever.” When he’s not touring, Moss is at home in his workshop or doing handyman jobs around town.
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1 month ago | 
uncut.co.uk | Stephen Deusner
Edith Frost opens her first album in almost 20 years with an organ, some dramatic guitar strums, and an important question: “Can you hear me?” she sings on “Another Year”. The moment is small and intimate, as though she’s clearing her throat or testing her microphone.
