featured alternative singer/songwriter albums
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- Cold Specks
- I Predict a Graceful Expulsion
- Canada-born, England-based singer/songwriter weaves a somber web of modern indie folk woe built atop a foundation of weathered gospel and blues.
- Horse Feathers
- Cynic's New Year
- On the fourth Horse Feathers album, Justin Ringle expands his vision into something simultaneously ambitious and methodically crafted, creating a kind of chamber…
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- Todd Snider
- Time as We Know It: The…
- On Time as We Know It: The Songs of Jerry Jeff Walker, wandering tunesmith Todd Snider pays fitting tribute to a mentor.
- Carina Round
- Tigermending
- The eclectic British singer/songwriter returns from a six-year hiatus with her most accomplished set of songs yet.
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- Birthmark
- Antibodies
- Antibodies is fascinating, layered, and unpredictable, playing Nate Kinsella's confessional lyrics against Jekyll & Hyde strings, propulsive percussion, and…
- Lonely Drifter Karen
- Poles
- Lonely Drifter Karen's third album is an eclectic triumph, adding rock and electronic touches to their masterful cabaret and folk.
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- Willis Earl Beal
- Acousmatic Sorcery
- Chicago outsider offers an incredibly raw selection of genre-hopping basement jams, and a sometimes uncomfortably honest look into a very personal world.
- Shannon Stephens
- Pull It Together
- The heartfelt, ragged, and stoic Pull It Together is a far more ambitious affair than 2009's austere Breadwinner.
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- Barry Adamson
- I Will Set You Free
- Barry Adamson's I Will Set You Free celebrates his post-punk past and rock/pop influences. He expertly employs them in his own sonic universe.
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- Beth Jeans Houghton / …
- Yours Truly, Cellophane…
- The album has as much whimsy as its title, but its carnival-chamber-folk also has surprising depth.
- M. Ward
- A Wasteland Companion
- Ward eschews many of the pop tics that colored 2009's Hold Time for meandering folk arrangements, galloping, country-gospel motifs, and Tin Pan Alley nostalgia.
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- Todd Snider
- Agnostic Hymns & Stoner…
- Snider continues to make laughter and anger sound like best of friends on this politically motivated, gutsy, and rocking album.
- Patrick Watson
- Adventures in Your Own…
- Spare and haunting, Watson's fourth outing feels a little voyeuristic, like walking in on a character in the midst of a moonlit soliloquy.
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- Anders Parker / Jay Fa …
- New Multitudes
- These folk-friendly indie rockers honor Woody Guthrie by putting their own spins on some of his less-known verses.
- Richard Hawley
- Standing at the Sky's…
- Richard Hawley uses guitars, bass, drums, "rocket sounds," and psychedelia brilliantly on the urgent Standing at the Sky's Edge.
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- Islands
- A Sleep & A Forgetting
- Islands' fourth album revolves around Nick Thorburn's divorce and is the most honest and direct, yet still tuneful, record of their career to date.
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- Damien Jurado
- Maraqopa
- With his tenth studio outing, Maraqopa, Jurado offers his most colorful and nuanced set of songs yet, pushing ghostly Americana to its least predictable limits.
- Simone White
- Silver Silver
- The warm, homespun sound of White's previous work is gone, replaced by a spare, atmospheric tone dominated by electronics and ghostly percussion accents.
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- Lissy Trullie
- Lissy Trullie
- Lissy Trullie embraces a slicker, moodier sound on her second album with the help of producers John Hill and TV on the Radio's Dave Sitek.
- Damon Albarn
- Dr. Dee
- Damon Albarn's first solo album, Dr. Dee, is a dense, rich opera about 16th century mathematician and occultist John Dee.
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about alternative singer/songwriter
With the explosion of alternative rock in the early '90s, a new kind of singer/songwriter emerged. While there were elements of introspection and personal politics held over from the early-'70s era of singer/songwriteres, the alternative singer/songwriters were also influenced by the loud guitars of punk and hard rock, inspired by the rootsy approach of the burgeoning Americana movement, and informed by the indie-rock attitude of "anything goes," both lyrically and sonically. Unlike contemporary singer/songwriters, who followed the trends of mainstream pop, alternative artists like Liz Phair, Will Oldham (in his many guises), and Elliott Smith garnered widespread acclaim, and even a measure of mass popularity, but remained firmly rooted outsde of the mainstream.