A raucous blend of atomic blues rock and arty garage punk--The Sideshow Tragedy sounds like Led Zeppelin would sound if they were the Velvet Underground. 2014 is shaping up to be a big year for the band: they are currently finishing up their fifth LP, recorded at Old Soul Studios in New York and produced by Kenny Siegal(Chris Whitley,Langhorne Slim, Joseph Arthur). They have been touring the South and Northeast steadily this year as well, and are gearing up for their second European tour in the Fall.

Press:
"For anybody who likes the idea of the Black Keys but finds them impossibly tame, the Sideshow Tragedy will not disappoint: they are the real deal. If dark twisted surreal country blues is your thing, this will hook you up for the duration. Frontman/guitarist Nathan Singleton took the entire blues dictionary, distilled it, lined it up down the bar and then did shots of it until he had the whole thing in his system. It’s like the Gun Club, but more raw, or like Dylan at his most haphazard and interesting."--New York Music Daily (http://newyorkmusicdaily.wordpress.com/2013/05/page/2/)

"With equal parts poetry, grit, and screech, The Sideshow Tragedy sounds a bit like a punk band resurrected at some dusty crossroads. Listen closely and a train chugs and whistles along in the background, a lonely measure of distance."--Taos News

"Persona finds the band hitting its stride, with production and backing from members of Austin funk outfit T-Bird & the Breaks...balances Nathan Singleton's rumbling vocal tremble with guitar licks fitting for both a dark club or a back porch."--The Austin Chronicle

"If you like rock and roll you're in for a treat."--The Bay Bridged, San Francisco Area Indie Music

"The Sideshow Tragedy perform with so much verve and energy that words will not fairly describe it."--littlerocklivemusic.net

"(The band's)talent is undeniable, if you have ears, but their style is harsh as well as beautiful, like the Clash and Lead Belly at the same time. Nothing like it on the radio today, when even the rock bands are polished with a computer till all evidence of a human hand is erased. Give me my music with all the scars, sweat and sweet fuckups that mean more than all the perfect ones and zeros ever will."-Guy Forsyth



River Rising is the collaboration of Chicago singer-songwriters Megan Deiger and Tim Hazen. The duo's first EP When I Find You is available for download on Bandcamp  and iTunes.

Ben Howard returns with his 4th album, Collections From The Whiteout, produced alongside Aaron Dessner (The National). The foreboding darkness that coated Ben’s second record I Forget Where We Were and thinly veiled its follow up Noonday Dream, isn’t so evident on Collections. These are songs written from headlines scanned, or news stories scrolled past, providing inspiration for a selection of vivid narrative snapshots – the death of amateur sailor Donald Crowhurst (Crowhurst’s Meme); Russian fraudster Anna Sorokin (Sorry Kid); the man who stole and crashed a plane in Seattle (The Strange Last Flight Of Richard Russell); and the dismembered body a friend of his father found in a suitcase floating along the Thames (Finders Keepers). Alongside them, the personal anecdotes from the same scattered period living between Paris, Devon and Spain. Yussef Dayes features, as does Kate Stables (This Is The Kit), James Krivchenia (Big Thief), Kyle Keegan (Hiss Golden Messenger), and Dessner. Thomas Bartlett, St. Vincent’s go-to pianist, and Rob Moose, a long-standing arranger of strings for Bon Iver, are also present. Long-term guitarist to Ben’s band, Mickey Smith (A Blaze of Feather), remains a reassuring constant. It’s a sonic adventure that continues this nagging suggestion that Ben is one of the UK’s most inventive and naturally talented songwriters. CFTW is his latest opus, and arguably his most fully realised to date.

Heavy grooves steeped in the blues. Smoky, sludgy sound dense and charged like the air just before a rainstorm.

Liz Magee is following