When Robyn Hitchcock released his prior album, 2014’s The Man Upstairs, he offered explanations about the track listing’s assemblage of cover songs and previously incomplete originals salvaged from the archive. He told Billboard that the aging process stirred a specific instinct, making creators “want to put themselves in a historical context, like a picture looking for a frame.” It seemed an intentional announcement of a revised approach to his musicianship, an allowance that glances backward might be the new norm for a singular artist whose deeply embedded eccentricity had previously offered endless surprise. It wasn’t all bad news — the … Continue reading The New Releases Shelf: Robyn Hitchcock

To a degree, Josh Tillman has always positioned himself as a man out of time when performing in his Father John Misty persona. There’s a wounded troubadour embrace of classic pop that’s always been the shiniest threads running through the fabric of his songs. There’s also been a sense of humor that clangs against the opposing guardrails of bleak and boisterous, but mostly Father John has long sounded like a guy on the brink of collapse, and not in the James Brown grand showman way. The existential agony is what’s getting him down. Even happiness sows aching confusion. Tillman quadruples … Continue reading The New Releases Shelf: Pure Comedy