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Saturday, January 11, 2025

Latest adds to our New Music bin: Ringo Starr, Aysanabee, The Rockyts


Ringo Starr: Rosetta (feat. Billy Strings, Larkin Poe)


Wait, what year did we just start? Yes it's 2025 and the drummer from Liverpool (formerly with a well-known band) has released his 21st studio LP, 55 years after his first solo album. Recorded in Nashville and Los Angeles, produced and co-written by T Bone Burnett, it's billed as a country album, but we'd classify it more as rootsy Americana. Review site Ultimate Classic Rock calls the album "both slightly out of step and sweetly charming." The title track is the lead single, but we've picked this mid-tempo swamp-rock tune for our New Music bin.

Aysanabee: Edge Of The Earth


This First Nations musician from Northwestern Ontario issued his debut album, Waitin, in 2022 and came to our attention with his 2023 single "Somebody Else." We're told this new track precedes another album in the works. "This song is for anyone who has fallen in and out of love, and has come out on the other side of its reckoning," the singer-songwriter-guitarist says.

The Rockyts: A Girl Like You


We're always happy to see young artists discovering good old rock'n'roll and bringing it forward. Twenty-year-old Jeremey Abboud, originally from Ottawa and now based in Los Angeles, recorded this new single after a road trip to Memphis, Tenn. "Inspired by the birthplace of rock and blues, visiting Sun Studio (Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis) ... I stepped right out of the car and into my studio, and [this track] came exploding out the same night."

Saturday, January 4, 2025

New year, new music picks: Larkin Poe, Kathleen Halloran, Warren Haynes, The Weather Station, Brett Dennen


Larkin Poe: Little Bit


The first batch of new music added to our giant playlist in 2025 comes from Bloom, the new album from Rebecca and Megan Lovell, due for release in a couple of weeks. This track is an ode to keeping things simple and not overreaching: "Keep the things I need on a very short list / What do you keep looking for / More ain't always more / Than a little bit."

Kathleen Halloran: Free With Me


This is the debut release by a guitarist known in Australia as a session musician and a member of orchestral ensembles, and now trying her hand as a singer-songwriter and solo artist. The Other Side Reviews says of this single: "Pounding drums lie alongside a bold bass, but it is the outstanding guitar solo that ups the ante of the track. ... Halloran simultaneously eases you into a hypnotic state while retaining a hint of brash alt-rock in the mix."

Warren Haynes: These Changes


Just a few days into the new year, we're continuing to pick still-fresh produce from 2024. We previously featured "This Life As We Know It" from the blues-rock guitarist's new LP, Million Voices Whisper.Now popping into our New Music Bin is this track co-written by fellow Allman Bros. alumnus Derek Trucks and featuring his slide guitar.

The Weather Station: Neon Signs


LED lights may be replacing neon signs on stores, restaurants and taverns these days, but here Tamara Lindeman uses them as a metaphor for false attractions: "Every neon sign every flashing like tries to fool you ... You feel flattered to be wanted and you don't know why / It reminds me of that look, that look in your eyes." This track comes from her upcoming album Humanhood.

Brett Dennan: Another Day In Babylon


We dip back into the California singer-songwriter's eighth album, the recently released If It Takes Forever, for a song that is both specifically personal - "Kristina and I, we still aren't married with no plans to / But I call her my wife all the time" - and curiously obscure: "Do my words fail? / I laid them out like a yard sale / Now I'm stuffing a pillow into a suitcase."

Wednesday, January 1, 2025

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Our Marvelous Mix of Musical Variety flows on into 2025 - still free and commercial-free 24/7! 

Check out the many ways to listen to our stream from Canada on TorontoCast, or our stream from the USA on Live365. If one doesn't work in your area, another one will!


Monday, December 23, 2024

Best holiday wishes from Birch Street Radio

We wish all our listeners a wonderful holiday season - whatever, wherever and however you celebrate!

Our Marvelous Mix of musical variety keeps on streaming through the holidays and beyond!

Saturday, December 21, 2024

Lucius, George Marinelli, Michael Kiwanuka, Movieland, Lauren Mayberry bring the news


Lucius: Old Tape (feat. Adam Granduciel)


Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig are joined by the guitarist/vocalist from The War On Drugs on this new single from an album expected in the new year. "We wrote 'Old Tape' while working on new music at [bandmate Danny Molad’s] studio in LA," the two say. "We were discussing the loops we get stuck in, the rabbit holes our minds go down." For the sound of the track, they "wanted to make something that was both driving and uplifting," so they called Adam - for whom they had provided guest vocals on TWOD's “I Don’t Live Here Anymore.”

George Marinelli: Except Always


This is the title track from a new album by a founding member of Bruce Hornsby & the Range and more recently Bonnie Raitt’s lead guitarist. It's quite literally a solo LP: he plays every instrument, recorded the songs himself, found time to mix and master them and created all the artwork for the album.

Michael Kiwanuka: Rebel Soul


The new album Small Changes, says Kiwanuka, was inspired by the birth of his two children and moving out of his hometown London. He was motivated by the desire to transcend what’s deemed “cool”, adding: "We were trying to shoot for something that might have made it onto a Bill Withers album or a Sade album" - a good description of this track. (Photo by Marco Grey)

Movieland: I Relate


Here's a "new" track recorded in the 1990s by this Vancouver shoegaze group. Released only on a cassette back then, it's been remastered and included on a new collection of the band's work, Then & Now. The LP is part of a new archival series from 604 Records, paying tribute to Vancouver’s overlooked artists from decades past. Singer-guitarist Alan D. Boyd says this song is "about being in a flux state after meeting somebody."

Lauren Mayberry: Crocodile Tears


The Chvrches lead vocalist explores a range of different pop sounds on her new solo album, Vicious Creature. The Guardian says the album "shapeshifts frequently, often into realms that feel wilfully unbothered about current notions of 'cool.' 'Crocodile Tears' is so 1980s it should come with an obligatory tight perm." Mayberry says she wrote the song when feeling "trapped in an unhealthy, negative feedback loop with someone." She adds that she "consciously put in a lot of animal imagery (crocodile, rabbits, wolves) because I wanted it to feel escapist."

NOTE: This will be our last New Music update for 2024. Onward to 2025!