Angie and the Deserters – You URL: https://www.angieandthedeserters.com/ Angie and the Deserters’ third recording, a six song EP titled You, is a slight shift in gears from her previous release Blood Like Wine. There are no real barnburners in this release comparable to Blood Like Wine’s bruiser “Country Radio” and, instead, Angie Bruyere and her fellow musicians sound like an artistic unit intent on exploring a wider emotional array than before. The same clarity defining the production on her earlier releases continues with this new studio confection and it results in a group of songs that sound cut live on the floor mere minutes after they finalized their composition. This fresh quality captures the band seemingly in a state of constant inspiration and there’s no question Bruyere is there with every word of her vocals. This is bracing and physical music delivered from a place deep within and geared for broad-based audience appeal. 

Kathy Muir - Second Life URL: https://www.kathymuir.com/ It is refreshing to hear an album so committed to presenting fully rounded material. Kathy Muir’s third album Second Life doesn’t just succeed on a musical level, but it scores big on a lyrical level as well. Muir’s lyrics are full of plain-spoken poetry and exquisite imagery in equal measure and never aspire to any sort of pseudo-poetic incomprehensibility. The musical qualities are abundant. Melodies abound and the instrumentation is beautifully tasteful without ever missing opportunities. The production gives the music a great sonic forum to reach the listener and the urgency of its sound keeps the songwriting sounding intimate from first song to the final track. This is an improvement over her two preceding albums, but the observation is no slight on those earlier efforts. Second Life is just that damn good. 

Juliet Huns - Behind the Scenes URL: https://www.juliethuns.com/ The EP Behind the Scenes, the first release from Kenyan born and now Los Angeles based singer Juliet Huns, is an impressive introduction to a artistic figure poised to garner considerable attention. The three songs included are definitely pop tracks, but they aren’t your typical offerings. There’s an evolved sensibility here that’s certainly a cut or more above what the mainstream gatekeepers prefer. Huns simply isn’t pigeonholed easily. Describing her songs and performances as pop is scarcely even half the story. Much of the time, Huns eyes song construction the way rock bands approach it – orchestrated to induce tension – and her voice carries off those moments without a hitch. She is a powerful, fluid singer who can move through a range of emotions without overexerting herself or turning the vocal in a heavy handed direction. 

Jokatech – Standing Still Symphony URL: https://jokatech.webs.com/ The latest two songs from indie hip hop songwriter and New York City native Jokatech are further entries in a successful artistic career. While Jokatech may not enjoy the same marquee notoriety experienced by more commercial performers, there’s little question after listening to his music that this is a songwriter and performer of rare distinction. His lyrical constructions are full of fire, intelligence, sarcastic humor, and the preening self-confidence while he shows the phrasing of a three decade or more veteran when delivering his songs. He is, essentially, an one man band responsible for the lyrics, melodies, and backing track and the responsibilities do not seem to have negatively affected his creativity. Instead, he sounds positively inspired. This is an artist unafraid of entertaining his listeners, but moreover, he’s unafraid to plumb into the depths of his life and return to the surface with something that might resonate or otherwise enlighten you. 

Thomas Charlie Pedersen - Second Hand War FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/thomas.c.pedersen Thomas Charlie Pedersen, on his first solo album Second Hand War, cannot be accused of attempting to remake the wheel. Instead, he relies on traditional folk music forms and a solid approach in the singer/songwriter vein to convey his deeply reflective, witheringly honest, and unflinching lyrical narratives. Much of his lyrical point of view is first person, but don’t let that suggest this is solely some exercise in self-pity or self-punishment. Pedersen writes just as convincingly about other characters in his song as he does about himself or his fictional narrators. The music is lean, cut down to the bone, and the stripped back setting allows a chance for Pedersen’s voice and words to shine as never before. The result is a fourteen song collection where no two songs sound exactly alike and everything beats with a massive, all-encompassing heart. Second Hand War is real music made by real people for real people. 

Kim Vogels - Native URL: https://www.kimvogels.com/ Being brought up surrounded by so many different cultures, Kim Vogels was drawn to the power and energy of the original sound of those worlds i.e. Flamenco, Klezmer, Celtic, early Persian, Gypsy, Native American, Folk & Blues etc. Even though these musical styles are all quite different from each other, they hold a similarity in their powerful connection to their culture. “Native” is the EP which also includes a promo video for the track “Call Of The Wild.”

Porcelain People – Streetlights FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/PorcelainPeopleMusic/ First releases, in any genre, are seldom this good. Porcelain People are a duo compromised of Josh Thornhill and Fred Kalil. They hail from southern Louisiana and are serving up a particular brand of electro pop quite a bit unlike anything offered by their peers. Thornhill’s profoundly melodic and flexible voice matches up well with Kalil’s expansive and varied electronic textures. Piano, synthesizer, and keyboards are recorded with equal clarity and blended in quite an impressive way. No one component takes precedence in the mix and, instead, the duo have mixed the individual parts into a seamless and forceful whole. There are many highpoints scattered among the album’s thirteen songs, but there’s also no filler dragging things down. These are fully realized songs with imagination and technique working together in concert to produce the desired results. 

Angie and the Deserters - Blood Like Wine URL: https://www.angieandthedeserters.com/ This is rough and ready music for passionate people. Angie and the Deserters won’t let you set on the fence – they win listeners over with a rare combination of intelligence, torrid emotion, and outright musical virtuosity. The songwriting on their latest release, Blood Like Wine, is smart without ever flying over the head of its intended audience, but it also does an excellent job of capturing the intensity of the lives lived out in vocalist Angie Bruyere’s lyrical content. The band is obviously top shelf in every way, but much like the lyrical content, their obviously extensive skill set never gets in the way of their central mandate – communicating and moving their audiences in some small, but significant, way. Bruyere’s vocals are key to this and the production does an excellent job without ever losing the important musical adventure going on around her. It’s an EP and, naturally, a relatively brief collection, but it accomplishes much in a condensed amount of space. 

Bob Lien - Color of Sky URL: https://www.boblien.com/ Color of Sky is very much in the Americana tradition, but it reaches ambitiously beyond that for a synthesis of dreamy folk music coupled with vibrant string arrangements. The collision of styles creates truly imaginative musical fireworks but there isn’t a single component in any track keyed to overwhelm listeners. This tastefulness extending over the course of Color of Sky’s ten songs never wavers and is part and parcel of high level artistry reaching far beyond the purview of typical recordings in the folk song idiom. The production job courtesy of Cyrus Rhodes does a remarkable job of bringing all of these parts into seamless interplay with each other – nothing sounds disjointed or out of place and, instead, there is a consistency of sound and approach that complements the material and Lien’s bell-clear vocals. 

Jupiter in Velvet - The One in the Many URL: https://jupiterinvelvet.com/ Iconoclasts stand out. In our world of cookie cutter pop stars with the shelf life of vegetable, the performer/songwriter who writes vibrant material referencing influences while still blazing its own path is increasingly a rarity. American born and UK based Jupiter in Velvet culls from a handful of influences to fashion a distinctive and varied musical attack with an unwavering melodic base. His guitar pyrotechnics seem inexhaustible – they spark, crackle, soar, and growl, but they never fail to find room to sing. His vocals are, likewise, always on the money. Jupiter in Velvet isn’t any sort of Pavarotti, but his voice has remarkable elasticity and inhabits each of the album’s ten songs with tremendous verve and personality. The production highlights each song’s individual strengths in thrilling ways and has undeniable warmth. 

Project Grand Slam - The Queen’s Carnival URL: https://projectgrandslam.com/ Typically operating as five piece, Project Grand Slam, led by bassist and composer Robert Miller, plays like a much larger band. They have somehow managed to balance a muscular sound while maintaining a firm control over the material and never pushing anything to an overwrought level. The production on their fourth album The Queen’s Carnival is every bit as immaculate as their preceding releases and captures a remarkably live sound despite the occasionally spontaneity crushing atmosphere of a recording studio. Like previous releases, Project Grand Slam maintains a primarily instrumental focus and the album’s eleven tracks never have a moment of filler or run too long. This is a masterfully composed work, never uncertain of itself, and has an overarching sense of construction not typically heard on works from its musical area. In some senses, it is a throwback to the way albums were written and recorded during Miller’s formative years, but Project Grand Slam’s music and presentation are thoroughly modern sounding in every way.

The Ann Wilson Thing - Focus #2 (EP) URL: https://www.theannwilsonthing.com/ It’s bracing to hear artists from Ann Wilson’s generation who truly embody the phrase age is just a number. No talk here about Ann defying her age. The same passion and skill defining her career is in full effect on her latest solo release, an EP entitled Focus #2. Wilson is not bashful about acknowledging her influences and admiration for contemporaries. Focus #2 features a little of that with her covers of Jimi Hendrix and Peter Gabriel. Both are stellar, but the real attraction for long time Wilson fans likely lies in the two new original compositions featured on the release. The four tracks compromising Focus #2 are recorded with great care and the live songs, both of the covers, do fantastic jobs of capturing a wildly supportive live audience who Wilson and her band clearly feed off of. This is a release that doesn’t deserve to fly under your radar despite its relatively brief link – every song here is a home run.