Ana Tijoux

On her stunning album 1977, Ana Tijoux embarked on an introspective journey. She talked about being born in France to Chilean parents in exile during the Pinochet regime, and struggling to make it as a female MC upon moving to Chile as a teenager. While Tijoux’s songs were deeply personal, she never sounded self-important — partly because her story echoes those of so many Chileans (and Latin Americans in general) who were raised far from home, and who were told scary stories of distant political monsters by parents fleeing brutal dictatorships.   Read more...

Rodrigo y Gabriela

Raised in Mexico, based in Ireland, and not too far removed from life in metal bands — how could Rodrigo y Gabriela not wind up with a sound that splits the difference between jazzy flamenco and heavy rock? On 2006′s self-titled album and the 2009 breakout 11:11, fleet-fingered Rodrigo Sanchez and Gabriela Quintero craft their wild instrumental genre fusions using only acoustic guitars, but that changes on Area 52, out Jan. 24. Here, the songs remain the same — the album radically rearranges nine pieces from the pair’s past catalog — but the instrumental palette practically explodes.   Read more...

Ani DiFranco

After 20 years in the music biz, self-described “Little Folksinger” Ani DiFranco is still technically little, although her influence on fellow musicians, activists, and indie-minded people the world over has been huge. She still proudly identifies as a folksinger, too, but her understanding of that term has always been far more expansive than a bin at the record store or a category on iTunes, with ample room for soul, funk, jazz, electronic music, spoken word, and a marching band or two. Over the course of more than 20 albums, including the live double CD Living in Clip (1997) and the two-disc career retrospective Canon (2007), as well as the latest one, ¿Which Side are You On? (2012), Ani has never stopped evolving, experimenting, testing the limits of what can be said and sung. Her lifelong tribe of co-conspirators includes everyone from Pete Seeger and the late Utah Phillips to a new generation of twentysomething singer-songwriters who grew up with her songs and shows — and then there’s the motley crew of folks like Prince, Maceo Parker, Andrew Bird, Dr. John, Arto Lindsay, Bruce Springsteen, Chuck D, the Buffalo Philharmonic, Gillian Welch, Cyndi Lauper, and even Burmese activist and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, with whom she has crossed paths in a myriad of ways.

Born in Buffalo, New York in 1970, Ani spent part of her twenties in New York City, then returned to her hometown where she established first a business office and then a performance venue called Babeville as the twentieth century ground to a halt and the twenty-first one revved up. For much of the last decade she’s been based in New Orleans — but at her core she’s always seen herself as “a traveler,” covering pretty much the four corners of the earth by now, both solo and with her band. (There’s less corner-covering these days, now that she’s consciously slowing down a bit and raising a daughter with partner and co-producer Mike Napolitano, but she still gets around just fine, playing venues like Madison Square Garden for Pete Seeger’s ninetieth birthday bash and another star-studded lineup at the Beacon Theater in Manhattan for Wavy Gravy’s seventy-fifth.)
Early in her career, Ani made a choice that is now so obvious to so many people that it’s hard to remember it was once considered brazen: to say no to every record label deal that came her way, and yes to being her own boss. That decision has earned her plenty of attention over the years, but it has never been what brought sold-out crowds to her shows around the world, fans debating every nuance of her lyrics, and fellow performers clamoring to work with her. No, all that has more to do with another choice she made early in life: To use her voice and her guitar as honestly and unflinchingly as she could, writing and playing songs that came straight from her own experience, her boundless imagination, her sharp wit, and her ever-more-nuanced understanding of how the world works. She did it in noisy bars with nothing but a shaved head and a lone guitar in 1990, and she’s doing it with renewed intensity today.

Lamb of God

During the past decade, Lamb of God has become one of the most prolific American metal bands in the world. If not for the realities of time and a flagging music industry, Lamb of God would likely compete with the Big Four (Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth and Anthrax) in terms of popularity. Those two factors are the only things preventing the Virginia-based group from being included with the most famous bands in all of American metal. With six ground-breaking albums behind them (including one under their former name Burn the Priest), a remarkably stable line-up, and one of the most supportive fan bases in the world, Lamb of God is one of the only bands that manages to get bigger with each new release. Their newest album, Resolution, will definitely continue that trend, with even more destructive compositions for the listening pleasure of their fans.   Read more...

Black Keys

On 2002′s “The Big Come Up,” the Black Keys were all grime. Recorded in the most lo-fi of ways — in drummer Pat Carney’s basement using an old 8-track — the duo’s debut was as close to the blues as two young white boys from Northeast Ohio were going to get. And it was impressively close.

Nine years, six albums and one hell of a slow burn later, the Black Keys aren’t exactly the same straightforward  duo. Lyrically, they’re the same guys they’ve always been — times get tough with women-folk, and their rate of staying versus going hovers around 50 percent. Musically, there have been multiple attempts to step outside of their signature sound; there have also been several attempts to find a place for producer Danger Mouse in what they do.   Read more...

Ernest Greene

During the recording of his first releases as Washed Out, Ernest Greene was on his own. Holed up in a bedroom of his parents’ Georgia house, he began crafting the hazy electronica that soon defined his work under the Washed Out moniker. Although the tracks that came to make up his two 2009 EPs (Life of Leisure and High Times) are largely bright and sunny, they were unmistakably the work of a man in isolation.   Read more...

Death Cab for Cutie

By their seventh studio album, many bands are running out of creative steam and original ideas. But in the case of Death Cab for Cutie, nothing could be further from the truth. Codes and Keys is singular in the quartet’s catalog when it comes to sonic exploration and lyrical ambition. If anything, the band has never sounded more excited to experiment with textures, words, sounds and even the process of recording itself.   Read more...

Bon Iver

First it was For Emma, Forever Ago. The soul in a refraction of icicles. A moment hanging like breath on air. And yet life – even still life – is not still. The story is not a story if it does not unravel. Your eyes you may cast backward, but the heart is locked in the chest and must beat forever forward. Bon Iver, Bon Iver is the frozen beast pressing upward from a loosening earth, one ear cocked to the echo of the ghost choir still singing, the other craving the martial call of drums tumbling, of thrum and wheeze. The desolation smoke has dissipated, cut with strips of brass. Celebration will not be denied, the cabinet cannot contain the rattle, there is meat on the bones.   Read more...

Madeleine Peyroux

Sarah Jaffe

If there is one thing that Sarah Jaffe will never have to contend with it is the idea that she is a female singer for females. There was once a time that being a female singer meant you would undoubtedly be put into an all too snug box. Is she an angry singer? An activist singer? A singer for the victims or the singer your mom bonds with you over? To be honest, when Sarah’s new CD Suburban Nature was released on May 18th she inserted herself into and destroyed all those boxes simultaneously, because Sarah is a truth singer …and no matter who or what we are, we all need, and want, our singers to be truth singers. Jaffe’s words and voice seam like they are speaking to you, only to you, yet they contain a universal appeal evidenced by the fact that she’s recently toured with Midlake and Norah Jones. Two completely different audiences whom Jaffe, equally endearing and confident, easily won over.   Read more...