Charlie Peacock’s Mind-Bend: A Review of Skin and Wind

Art cannot be divorced from context, so it is the year of our Lord 2021 into which Charlie Peacock’s wonderful new album, Skin and Wind, enters and resides with its lovely melodies and poetic wisdom. It’s an important arrival, to be sure, given the artist’s posture and position in the world.

The Unabashed Optimism of Melanie Penn

Melanie Penn picked the perfect time to be so straightforward.

The Resistance, Episode 28: The Naked & Famous

We’re not sure how Alisa Xayalith or Thom Powers crafted something so meaningfully synthetic, but their new album, Recover, is a heartening, even healing listen.

Review: Melanie Penn’s More Alive, Vol. 1

The world is darker now than Melanie Penn could have ever predicted.

Arthur Alligood on his Journey Back to Recording

Several years ago, Arthur Alligood set his dreams aside. After a decade of trying to provide for a family as a touring singer-songwriter, Alligood came off the road for good and decided to pursue a new career—one that allowed for a consistent paycheck and presence at home. It was the necessary choice, but with it came a sort of death—a personal loss that required grief and time and reorientation.

The Resistance, Episode 27: William Fitzsimmons

There’s no way to make this more palatable: friction is essential to creativity. That doesn’t stop us, of course, from trying to find a hundred ways around or away from it, but in the end, if we desire to create then we must face and feel the friction. All of it.

The Resistance, Episode 26: Brooke Waggoner

Discernment takes practice. It’s a lifelong process of listening and looking, sensing and sitting, taking risks and taking breaths. And our ability to perceive, in healthy ways, when to move and when to stay is the difference between being overcoming or being overcome by the Resistance.

The Resistance, Episode 25: Mindy Smith

The experience doesn’t matter. The expertise isn’t real.

The Resistance, Episode 24: Li-Young Lee

There’s an ancient story handed down to us in the Old Testament book of Numbers in which a group of people find themselves walking in circles. Their fear of change, their avoidance of Resistance, kept them from entering a portal to something—or somewhere—better. Sound familiar?

The Resistance, Episode 23: Eric Hilton

Eric Hilton’s approach would be difficult to mimic even if the world didn’t feel as if it was presently falling apart.

The Resistance, Episode 22: Sarah Siskind

Somehow Sarah Siskind has saved her best work for her own albums. That’s a difficult feat for a songwriter who has written for the likes of Alison Krauss, Wynonna, and Randy Travis. She’s toured with Bonnie and Bon Iver. With over 20 songs placed on the hit TV drama Nashville alone, she is a master craftswoman who has learned to navigate the commercial side without sacrificing substance.

The Resistance, Episode 21: Rosi Golan

Rosi Golan isn’t afraid to admit her fears.

Despite Rosi’s 12 years in the music industry, beginning with 2008’s The Drifter and the Gypsy, the Israeli-born singer-songwriter says some fears loom larger than ever before.