Neko Case – Neon Grey Midnight Green (Anti-) (13th Floor Album Review)
After a seven-year hiatus, the fearless Neko Case returns with Neon Grey Midnight Green, perhaps her most fully realized and ambitious album yet.
Album Reviews
Underwire – State Between (13th Floor Album Review)
It’s been incubating for nearly 15 years, now at last Underwire deliver their debut album State Between.
Amanda Shires – Nobody’s Girl (ATO) (13th Floor Album Review)
Amanda Shires’ Nobody’s Girl is a luminous, defiant chronicle of life after the end of both a marriage and a musical partnership with fellow songwriter Jason Isbell.
Robert Plant – Saving Grace (Nonesuch) (13th Floor Album Review)
Robert Plant continues his exploration of the “remote corners of recorded music” with this collection of covers and trad blues recorded in his own corner of the world…along the Welsh borders.
Ben Chavasse – Boxing (13th Floor Album Review)
Tamaki-Makarau-based indie-folk artist Ben Chavasse is no stranger to honing his craft. Having won Smokefree Rockquest at age 16, he’s been slowly refining it ever since – and now, he’s stepped triumphantly into the open with his debut album, Boxing, an impressive 10-track compilation. The album is produced by Ben and Michael Luke Howell, who […]
The Third Mind – Right Now! (Yep Roc) (13th Floor Album Review)
From the opening notes of Right Now! it’s clear that The Third Mind have once again captured the thrill of discovery in real time. Their third studio album is a dynamic dialogue between musicians, eras, and every earlier version of these songs that these fearless improvisers now claim them as their own.
Joan Shelley – Real Warmth (No Quarter) (13th Floor Album Review)
Joan Shelley writes songs that feel like places you can step inside: quiet rooms, wooded trails, a friend’s porch at dusk. With Real Warmth she invites us into the most welcoming space she’s built yet. It’s an album of home, connection, and slow-burning growth, recorded live in the dead of a cold Toronto winter yet filled with […]
Carson McHone – Pentimento (Merge) (13th Floor Album Review)
Carson McHone’s fourth album Pentimento arrives like a living manuscript, its pages alive with shifting landscapes, salt air, and the grain of skin.
Scarlet Rae – No Heavy Goodbyes (Bayonet) (13th Floor EP Review)
Every so often an artist emerges who feels both familiar and utterly distinct. Scarlet Rae, born in Los Angeles and now based in New York, is one of those.
Dead Famous People – Wild Young Ways (Tiny Global) (13th Floor Album Review)
Dead Famous People… their story is a pop parable. Formed in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland in the mid-1980s by the singularly gifted Dons Savage, they quickly shone with two Flying Nun EPs and Savage’s backing vocals graced The Chills’ Heavenly Pop Hit.