50 years ago, Gene Clark’s White Light came out, an aural and lyrical poem produced by Jesse Ed Davis that is so completely intimate, vulnerable, and warm. It’s the album that got me into Gene and although I love the maximalist, mysterious opus that is No Other, White Light is as close to my heart as Gene’s mouth to the mic. The raw vulnerability is at times too much – Gene’s candor and his aching voice can bring tears immediately when visited by certain mental states. Gene is long celebrated as the Byrd who is still criminally overlooked – I’m…

In early 2021, Oakland musician Raphi Gottesman released an album on German label AOsmosis. The instrumental The Clarity of Dawn features many guest instrumentalists around the world but the majority of the work is done by Raphi himself, broaching themes of finding hope in the face of his young son undergoing treatment for leukemia. The record is jazzy at times, atmospheric at others, but heartfelt and emotionally resonant through and through. Raphi’s played with a myriad of artists and bands including Black Swans and Sonny and the Sunsets and he also gives music lessons! Have a listen to the playlist he…

Madrid-based guitarist Xisco Rojo recently released a shockingly gorgeous album of drone-meets-Spanish-guitar, an enigmatic, darkly psychedelic record called Transfigurations about the power and magic of love. Intricate guitar compositions are accompanied by twinkling chimes upon the album’s opening, and Xisco adeptly uses the space between notes to add an aura of intrigue and sorcery. This record comes six years after Xisco’s last full-length studio release, entitled You Got to Walk That Lonesome Valley. Prior to tracking for Transfigurations, Xisco was on the brink of despair, having suffered from anxiety and that particular mental anguish that unfortunately seems to afflict so…

Musician Harpooner, the nom de plume of Scott Schmadeke, picked songs from all the countries he’s going to this summer while he’s taking an artist residency in Turkey to make this playlist for Petal Motel. Harpooner’s sophomore release,  In Two Minds, was released on Cold Lunch Reords on on April 30. The album is smooth, silky “chamber pop” in the vein of Blake Mills or Damien Jurado, while Schmadeke’s voice at times is reminiscent of Rufus Wainwright’s operatic heights. Interestingly, the title track was originally written for Erin Rae, and it lends itself easily to Schmadeke’s voice. Touching on personal topics…

If you haven’t dug into Bobby Lee’s specific brand of time-traveling, astral plane exploration soundtracks, it’s time. Bobby Lee’s desert edge is like an east-of-the-Atlantic, ayahuasca-tasting J.J. Cale through a prism, the sound of your mind expanding featuring plenty of chromatic bottleneck guitar and resplendent reverberation. Last year, Bobby Lee released Shakedown in Slabtown, a dusty study in western-worn meditation. Only a few months later, in March of 2021, he released Origin Myths, which Tompkins Square picked up and is releasing on vinyl on May 14th in the US (available at record stores in the UK as of yesterday, officially.)…