From song inspiration to digital, distant recording processes, one of the stranger phenomena when it comes to the promotion of indie artists and albums this past year has been how creative expression is seen in the light of the pandemic. In normal times, the shimmering sonics, colorful guitar jangles, dreamy nostalgic vocals and infectious rhythms of Waxflight’s compelling in all ways album Flowers would be the focus. We would care deeply that all this sonic magic was being f

With its Peter Green-esque, early Fleetwood Mac flavored guitar vibes, cool languid melody, tippy mellotron and the gorgeous lead and harmony vocals of Tommy Oberon, “American Avenue” – the lead single from Nashville based Oberon Rose’s latest album Holographic Blues – works on a purely musical level as a beautiful, epic bit of escapist nostalgia. But on a deeper level, though Oberon says it’s not a political song, it speaks to our present moment of trying to sift through war

Collecting Things, the title of Mike Scott’s engaging, multi-faceted third album, taps into the heart of the compositional process where the melodic, harmonic and rhythmic muses first take hold. For the veteran guitarist, who’s been an integral part of the LA Jazz scene for more than two decades, every fleshed-out composition starts with those fresh little ideas he would spontaneously record as voice memos. On the new collection, featuring his spirited and soulfully swinging

Closing in on three decades as one of contemporary instrumental and world music’s most prolific and stylistically expansive composers and artists, Nicholas Gunn created something extraordinary with his 2020 album Pacific Blue, which met our collective anxiety early in the pandemic era perfectly. In my review I called it “a peacemaking, perspective and consciousness shifting collection that seems primed to help its listeners through this age of the coronavirus without having h