Back to the Altar
Josiah Queen's follow-up to 'Dusty Bibles' trades that song's outward-facing accusation for an inward one, turning the same indie-folk plainness on himself instead of a generic backslider.
Read review →Genre
Indie folk
Birds of Paradise
The title track from Thomas Dollbaum's Dear Life Records album is a goodbye letter to lost loved ones and former selves, recorded live in four days with a backing band that includes MJ Lenderman -- weathered heartland indie with no illusions about the place it's written from.
Read review →
Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing (Sufjan Stevens)
Sufjan Stevens recorded his banjo-led version in 2002 for a Christmas EP and released it in 2006 in the Songs for Christmas box set -- a hymn about waiting, recast as an Advent song, that builds to an unaccompanied finish.
Read review →
Dusty Bibles
Josiah Queen's Hot 100 debut turns a plain, almost embarrassed observation -- that his own Bible was collecting dust -- into a genre crossover that reached well past Christian radio's usual audience.
Read review →