songwriting

Joanna Gruesome’s singer on the “happy-sad” world of Grouper and the overwhelming power of quiet.

The new album by the elder stateswoman of early '70s British pastoral-pop is a quietly defiant rebuke to a lot of things.

On his 20th album, Robyn Hitchcock drops the whimsy for a focused meditation on death, love and loss.

As long as we have songwriters like Justin Townes Earle, there’s no reason to worry about the fate of country music.

Intimate, direct and yes, lo-fi, Karen O's solo album delves deep into the guts of this messy thing we call love.

Pallbearer bassist Joseph D. Rowland contemplates war and peace in Rome’s A Passage to Rhodesia — and in himself.

After 35 years, you might think you have Tom Petty figured out, but this portrait of modern malaise is worth spending time with.

If the lyrics to the new Gold-Bears album Dalliance are fiction, then Jeremy Underwood is a genius, because halfway through I wanted to...

A sea of 20,000 hands wave in unison like tendrils in a kelp bed when the waves force them to dance. But it's music, not the Pacific Ocean, driving...

I've been a fan of Bob Mould's music for maybe half as long as he's been making it. In the '80s when we were in junior high, skateboarding and...

My husband will, on occasion, wax lyrical about British autumn afternoons, sitting, as a toddler, next to his mother and listening to her play...

I'm not a huge lyrics person — I hear the music first. But sometimes tuning in to the words can clarify things. And when I checked out the lyric...