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The best songwriters are natural storytellers with an intuitive grasp of how to frame and describe an idea or situation in a way that draws the listener in with a handful of carefully chosen words. That holds true whether they are writing about the lives of imaginary characters, real people, or themselves. Beyond that particular skill set and the drive to use it, though, you need one more ingredient: a good story to tell. Jason Isbell has a good story to tell. Isbell was born in Green Hill, Alabama in 1979, a few miles from both the Alabama / Tennessee…

          In the short history of rock and roll memoirs—which for obvious reasons have been a thing for only a few decades now—my favorite has long been So You Wanna Be A Rock & Roll Star by Jacob Slichter. The drummer for Semisonic, the Minneapolis trio that burned brightly across the media heavens circa 1998, Slichter proceeded to pen one of the most piercingly witty and self-aware autobiographies in the genre, cast in the role of the insightful Everyman who thinks—and reveals—all of the thoughts that you or I might have if we suddenly found ourselves thrust into the funhouse-mirror…

What makes a song great? Objective standards exist that can help you make a judgment like that, but the answer also often involves intuitive leaps that defy logic or explanation; sometimes greatness is entirely subjective, residing in the way one particular line of a song hits you at one specific moment in your life. A great song might feature a brilliant lyric, or a captivating melodic hook, or an amazing solo, or all of the above, or none. But many if not most of them also manifest a certain je-ne-sais-quoi that elevates them by engaging your heart, your mind, your…

To the casual observer, any individual James Taylor album might feel more or less interchangeable with the others—both because his style has been remarkably consistent over the years, and because the gap in quality between his worst and best albums is pretty narrow. James Taylor has never made a bad album, just a few that have felt somewhat looser, less focused or less inspired, as well as a few that focus on covers rather than his typically powerful originals. This list, then—like all the others, if we’re being realistic—is for the fans, the devotees who’ve gobbled up every bit of…

In choosing the band name “Yes” in 1968, five young Brits aimed to personify the positive spirit of the ambitious music they wanted to make—expansive, adventurous, and full of possibility. Over the course of more than five decades since, the band has persevered through myriad lineup changes while releasing somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 songs ranging in length from half a minute to 22, and ranging in style from bleeding-edge progressive rock to mainstream arena rock to mild-mannered adult contemporary. It’s a rich catalog of songs of wildly divergent approaches (and quality) to explore and consider—which is why we’ve…

If the 1960s were a socio-cultural maelstrom, 1967 was the eye of that storm, the whirlwind inside of which a fertile popular music scene, the clash of generations, drugs, racism and political upheaval all collided hard with one another. If it feels like only one or two of those terms would need updating to capture the essence of the last few years in America, that might explain why Richard Fulco ’s new novel We Are All Together feels both very much of its time, and remarkably relevant. New Yorker Fulco’s previous novel There Is No End To This Slope followed…

One of my favorite t-shirts is one I’ve never actually encountered in the wild, though it’s described in Jessica Bruder’s Nomadland. It reads “Introverts unite! We’re here, we’re uncomfortable, and we want to go home.” I can relate to that, and so can Courtney Barnett. Since first gaining notice with her A Sea Of Split Peas double EP in 2013, Barnett has steadily built an audience for her witty, self-deprecating tunes, typically framed by her laconic vocals and dynamic guitar playing. Already something of a unicorn as a left-handed female Australian guitar ace / singer-songwriter, Barnett is also intensely shy.…

Pete Mancini pays attention. This is something you would understand even if you never spoke with the Long Island singer-songwriter; it’s right there in every one of his detailed, nuanced, emotionally resonant songs. Like so many of the best creatives, he seems to soak up events around him like a sponge and transmute them into art—in his case, songs that carry on the rich storytelling tradition of Americana, while increasingly infusing it with the melodic pizzazz of power pop. Mancini’s new studio album Killing The Old Ways is his third as a solo artist, along with a live album and…

We all live inside a frame of reference, a body of perceptions and beliefs about how the world works and what our place in it looks like. The moments when that frame is rocked, even splintered, are among the most important along our life’s path; how we react to them determines whether we will continue stubbornly being the person we are today, or adapt and grow. By turns absorbing, insightful, lyrical and laugh-out-loud funny, Songs by Honeybird (Wampus, March 29) is a story that, like its author Peter McDade—son of the South, rock drummer, history professor—contains multitudes.On the surface the…