New York singer/songwriter Leslie Mendelson describes her sound as a "lost Motown track", and it's easy to see just how and why that works on a more simmering soulful scale. Her new album Swan Feathers, just out this week on Rykodisc, has what we've called a "combination of laid back, sultry vibe and intelligent, piano-driven songs (that) may have some turning to the Norah Jones trajectory to find similarities in style and substance." Check out a "live in the studio" version of "Easy Love" to see if you don't agree. More DC on Leslie here.

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Contemplative, introspective and with all the power of a hushed whisper, Canadian singer/songwriter Barzin gets to the core of his sublimely personal songs with an economy of effortless understatement. Third album Notes To An Absent Lover, arriving July 7, is short (31 minutes) but filled with weighty melancholy, both stylistically and lyrically, a project that manages to be as sweepingly dramatic as a one man theatrical tragedy and as simple as a well-turned phrase. Confessional and soulsearching after a failed relationship, the Toronto performer has delivered what one critic has described as "flawless...gorgeous and poignant...a dreamy, elegant stunner." (Exclaim)

Since his eponymous 2003 debut, Barzin has elevated his fragile voice to a thing of shadowed beauty, creating emotive musical sketches fleshed out with lushly orchestrated production. Notes is a more stripped personal affair with apt comparisons to the tender side of Damien Rice's trendsetting masterpiece O. New Barzin songs such as "Stayed In This Place Too Long" and "Tangled In Blue" are bathed in a moody reflective light, mournful steel guitar, cellos and reverbed guitar lines filling in the wide open spaces with muted color. Recommended. Watch the video for "Nobody Told Me" after the jump...

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Barzin - "Stayed In This Place for Too Long" (from the album Notes To An Absent Lover)

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It's been an interesting stylistic tightrope walk of late for singer/songwriter Michelle Branch. Following a promising 2001 major label debut The Spirit Room and her 2002 collaboration with Carlos Santana on the smash hit "The Game Of Love", Branch decided in 2005 to team up with Jessica Harp to form the successful, if short lived, country/pop duo The Wreckers. So the question now is, what's next for Branch as a solo artist? Given the dividends paid to The Wreckers with some support by the ever fickle gatekeeper known as "country radio", it's easy to see why she's decided to pursue a Nashville-styled twang on her forthcoming album Everything Comes and Goes.

But it has also already proven something of a challenge as her new project gets pushed back once again from a mid-September drop to a new street of November 11. Country radio, always particular when it comes to the paltry number of females gracing the playlists, hasn't exactly made things easy for Branch (or for Harp's solo album efforts, for that matter). Still, we're fine with "This Way", Branch's latest stab at a radio success. Now if she can only find some love (and exposure) amidst the steel guitars...

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Scotland simply seems to have a way with smart pop bands. From Travis to The Blue Nile to Belle and Sebastian to Snow Patrol to Del Amitri, the ability to meld a memorable melodic hook to a refined, but often scruffy, buskery sound must be in the water somewhere in Glasgow and surrounding towns. One of the best examples of the Scot/pop sound comes from one of the longest running and least heralded names: Trashcan Sinatras, a band that has delivered only four studio albums in nearly 20 years, but has made each one an exquisite, multi-faceted gem of delicious wordplay and thoughtful pop craftsmanship.

New July 28 album In The Music - their first since 2004's wonderful Weightlifting - finds the band in top form, their age serving to deliver some perfectly seasoned songs. Frontman Frank Reader, brother of chanteuse Eddi (another one of our faves) finds the right mix of brooding melancholy and spirited hope on songs such as the glistening first single "People" and their positively incandescent, waltzing tribute to Pink Floyd founder Syd Barrett "Oranges and Apples". Highly recommended.

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Trashcan Sinatras - "People" (from the album In The Music)

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Breakup songs can be a wonderfully cathartic release for an artist, an emotionally cleansing experience that's the creative equivilant of washing out and starting the healing process of an long infected wound. For Amy Speace, the gifted roots/pop singer/songwriter now living in Jersey City, the recent split with her husband of ten years has provided a deep well of an outpouring of pent up emotions in her devastating new album The Killer In Me, just out today.

"This is the record that I needed to make," Speace states. "In many ways, it was the hardest thing I've ever done. And in some ways, it was the easiest. Writing the songs was emotionally difficult, deep and intense--it was kind of an exorcism. But in the end, the songs flowed pretty quickly. You write the things that you’re afraid to say out loud." For those of us who witness what she calls the "spilled blood" of her new songs the imagery and feelings that permeate Killer have a depth and understanding -- along with the requisite frayed emotions -- to deliver an album that springs strong from painful but undeniably inspired personal reflection. Produced with a rough-hewn honesty by longtime collaborator James Mastro, Speace's deep and dark forays, whether in a forelorn ballad ("Haven't Learned A Thing") or feisty rocker ("This Love"), shimmer and shine with jangling guitars and her own lovely, expressive vocals.

Amy Speace - "Blue Horizon" (from the album The Killer In Me)

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Norwegian Sondre Lerche (LER-kay) hangs his hat in Brooklyn now but the boyish-looking 26-year-old singer/songwriter may as well be kicking around the streets of London in the days of smart 80's ironic pop/rock of U.K. pioneers Elvis Costello, XTC, Prefab Sprout and Roddy Frame's Aztec Camera. New album Heartbeat Radio, due September 8 via Rounder, sticks a sharply honed needle in that particular vein of brash and wordy, twisty and twisted musical tumult and draws out a crackling collection of thirteen new songs that hum with a taut urgency.

“My last few records were recorded with my backing band, Faces Down, almost live off the floor," says Lerche. "And those were a reaction to my first records, which were more studio affairs. On this album, I wanted both: I wanted the physical force and excitement from the live setting and the patience and the endless possibilities of the studio setting.” New collection, produced by Joe Chicarelli (My Morning Jacket, The Shins) comes on the heels of Lerche's much-praised soundtrack for the 2007 Steve Carell romantic comedy Dan In Real Life, a project that found him not only a wider audience but new label interest as well. A new maturity pulses through Hearbeat, a sense of adventure that's also made more compelling - and grounded - with a skilled genre-blurring songcraft at work.

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Sondre Lerche - "Heartbeat Radio" (from the album Heartbeat Radio)

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Finnish sibling duo Samu and Ville Kuukka, AKA The Gentleman Losers, create atmospheric, instrumental film noir soundtracks for your head, or as they put it, "music from a past that hasn't happened yet." Heavily reverbed guitar lines mesh with brushed percussion and a crystallized ambient electronica coating for a sound that one critic described as the "fine line between twilight beauty and dusky threat." New album Dustland, out July 7, follows up the brothers' eponymous 2006 debut with more gauzy, drifting tracks that seem the ideal aural backdrop to a bleary-eyed, soul-searching sunrise serenade, music that revels in the spaces between the notes. Think some inspired Deadish noodling blended with Ry Cooder's Paris, Texas soundtrack topped with a sweet dollop of Badalamenti "Twin Peaks" mood shadows. Then listen. Then think again.

From their bio: "The Gentleman Losers' music has been called post-rock, alt-country, folktronica and ambient americana. It's been described as mesmerizing, cinematic, soothing, and ominous. It has been called music from a land inhabited by Kerouac's characters. It's a land of long forgotten crooners on crackly old 78s. Tapes with no name, found in a basement. A Telefunken mixer from the 1950s. Midnight recording sessions in a haunted house. The distant din of the city. The silence of the woods. Freight trains in the horizon. Abandoned towns on the edge of the desert. Fading photographs of lives past. Dead butterflies fluttering in the setting sun. A darkness approaching. An archipelago of insomnia." We know this for certain: you won't hear anything quite like it this year. Recommended.

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The Gentleman Losers - "Farandole" (from the album Dustland)

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“This is a very personal album for me,” says Angela Easterling of her sophomore July 14 full-length BlackTop Road. “There is so much of my family in it. The themes are family and home and looking for a home. I think there is also a theme of where the past, present and future intersect and have an effect on each other. Sometimes it seems like the future is trying to destroy the past. But we can’t escape the past; it still haunts us.”

The "back to roots" attitude that Easterling brings to her fine new project transcends any casual lipservice. To dig deep into her own 18th century South Carolina roots, the singer/songwriter returned home and began to explore the themes, musical traditions and ancestral connections that have affected not just her own persona but generations of her own family tree. Working with producer Will Kimbrough (Todd Snider, Kate Campbell), Easterling expanded her sound, a blend of what Kimbrough describes as "rock-n-roll, country, bluegrass, literature and French pop." Fiddles and banjos trade space with slide guitar and some charged honkytonk rhythms for an album that has one foot firmly planted in the traditional southern music, the other in the modern interpretations of Americana. It's a balancing act that blossoms on track such as the wistful slow-dance ballad "Just Like Flying", charming French twanger "Un Microphone" and jukebox raver title track. Recommended.

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Angela Easterling - "Just Like Flying" (from the album BlackTop Road)

Angela Easterling - "BlackTop Road" (from the album BlackTop Road)

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If, like us, you are underwhelmed by the quality - and overwhelmed by the quantity - of the derivative autotuned wankery that passes for R'n'B these days, take a second to give thanks: neo-soul icon Maxwell is returning to the scene July 7 after an eight-year hiatus with a BLACKsummers' Night, a trilogy of albums set to unfold over three years. The first installment will be BLACK, followed of course by Summers' and Night, and if lead single "Pretty Wings" is any indication, Maxwell has not lost his knack for makin' baby makin' music.

So why thedisappearance, especially after his first three albums each went platinum? To hear him tell it, he was too successful for his own good: "People failed to realize that when you're living such a hyper, super reality of a life, where you're just doing shows and you're on TV and you're talking to this magazine, that doesn't bode well for trying to talk about everyday stuff that hopefully you'll connect with people on," he says. "So a lot of my absence was based on just going out to get life experience, you know. Becoming a guy, becoming a man. I'm 35 years old now. In your 20s you're just a sketch of what you think you're trying to be."

Maxwell's music and persona have always exuded authenticity, which in part explains why debut Maxwell's Urban Hang Suite still sounds fresh after over a decade, so when he offers self-improvement as his explanation for risking career suicide by removing himself from the spotlight, we're inclined to believe him, and when he decides to return with such a bold overture, we're inclined to anticipate it, and when he says, "I'm not making music because I want to be on your TV screen or the cover of your magazine. I want you to make a baby to something I wrote," we're inclined to start choosing potential names.

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Maxwell - "Pretty Wings" (from BLACKsummer's Night)

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We think there's an extremely good chance that you've never heard anything quite like the innovative and mesmerizing music from U.K. instrumental quartet Spiro. Utilizing traditional British folk instruments - guitar, accordian, mandolin and violin - Spiro's impressive players weave a flurry of intricate melodies together into a layered sound tapestry for an effect that one critic described as "unsettling, exhilarating and highly impressive...Fascinating, and I suspect, unique." Often the result is that it's almost impossible for the listener to discern individual melodies or themes as the four interplaying instruments begin to sound like a blur of whirling notes - almost an acoustic recreation of the minimalist neo-classical styles of composers such as Steve Reich and Philip Glass.

New album Lightbox, just out June 22 in the U.K. via Peter Gabriel's Real World label, builds upon this overlaying technique that the band simply refers to as "the mesh". New original compositions sit beside radical, brilliant reworkings of traditional Northen English folk melodies for a collection of tracks that can be listened to intently, trying to follow the complex, "looped" lines, or more casually, capturing only the overall effect with intertwining yielding a more fluid, discernable melody. Confused? Don't be. Just ready yourself for something completely different. "Spiro's music defies categorization," says composer Max Richter, "brilliantly played and arranged, lyrical yet groovy, traditional yet contemporary, raucous yet tender…"

Watch an interview with Spiro, introduced by Peter Gabriel, here.

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Spiro - "The White Hart" (from Lightbox)

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Forget the old adage about a man in a uniform, we're talking a woman in a helmet here (and a mighty spiffy one at that). Joan Wasser -- AKA Joan As Policewoman --  still manages to escape the big time for some unknown reason but we did see that she's lining up a full-band U.S. tour for the fall -- and any reason to put JAP in the spotlight makes perfect sense to us. "Joan is Carole King in a little black dress, Burt Bacharach with balls and Lou Reed without the mean streak, all rolled into one", imagined one particularly inventive scribe. Check out the video for "To Be Loved", from her June '08 album "To Survive":

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Described by one critic as sounding like "the Kings of Leon with a shot of valium", scruffy Anglo-Swede neo-roots rockers Alberta Cross will follow up their acclaimed 2007 EP debut with new album Broken Side of Time on September 22 via new home ATO. The strong critical buzz that emerged upon the release of the seven-track The Thief and the Heartbreaker eventually led to a Leon-like U.K. base of adoring fans and press and their inclusion on last fall's Oasis tour at the personal request of Noel Gallagher.

Once again, more ecstatic reviews. Brit music bible NME declared "each tune comes like a fragile gesture - rich with euphoric choruses, layered guitars and raw harmonies. And when a quietly appreciative crowd allows the band to transport them down an abandoned highway to the spiritual home of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young - honestly you could hear a heartbeat." Another critic declared that the band "pulls of Fleet Foxes' trick of simultaneously sounding like lost treasure and something fresh and new."  Alberta Cross founder/guitarist/vocalist Petter Ericson Stakee says of the new project, "It's kind of a desperation album, a darker album; it's definitely angrier. We've been in a crazy place during the whole album and you can hear that." Lead track "ATX" backs him up with a vengeance.

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Alberta Cross - "ATX" (from the album Broken Side of Time)

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We've been, shall we say, enamored with Kristina Train since we first caught her live at a small club in New York's Lower East Side almost two years ago. A Savannah, Georgia native with gorgeous pipes and intuitive, soulful style, Train sings like someone raised on a steady musical diet of pure Aretha-powered R+B, country standards and darkly lit torch songs. Her smoky, slow-burning voice seems tailor-made for cozy red leather booths, candle lit bars and warm, southern breezes. Her debut album Spilt Milk, arriving September 22 summons the sunny and sweet along with a few restless dark shadows for a collection of stunning tracks that still manage to keep her cards securely and confidently close to the vest. Nothing is overplayed, everything is dealt in careful measure, even when her voice hits the rafters or emotion is tapped in full flow.

Spilt Milk was recorded in England with noted producer Jimmy Hogath (Duffy, Corinne Bailey Rae) and most tracks were co-written by Train with stellar songwriter EG White, the Grammy-winning arranger and producer of Adele's magnificent debut 19. One of our favorites, singer/songwriter Ed Harcourt, collaborated on two more songs for an album that has an abundance of riches in classy and classic songwriting. The velveteen title track, previewed here months ago under its original title "Hit and Run", along with the bittersweet breakup odes "Don't Beg For Love" and "It's Over" radiate a mellow vibe that we first wrote "is at once disarming and warmly seductive." Train describes her Spilt Milk as "the record I always wanted to make" and "the album that defines who I am." We simply sum it up as an album that's one of the best finds of the year. Highly recommended. (See the full bio after the jump...)

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Kristina Train - "Spilt Milk" (from the album Spilt Milk)

Kristina Train - "Don't Beg For Love" (from the album Spilt Milk)

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It's been twenty years since Scottish songstress Eddi Reader burst onto the British charts with the band Fairground Attraction and the spry, folksy hit "Perfect" - a song that won a Brit Award for Best Single. With her first solo album five years later, Reader picked up another Brit for Best Female Singer and she hasn't looked back since, recording seven albums of memorable folk/pop melodies and her own distinctively lighter-than-air vocals.

Her latest, Love Is The Way, continues the winning ways spanning traditional U.K. folk and contemporary acoustic pop with thirteen songs that include a reworking of Fleetwood Mac's "Never Going Back", a rare Brian Wilson tune ("Sweet Mountain of Love") and, as usual, some wonderful songs written by and with long-standing collaborator Boo Hewerdine.

Recorded with her band at a small Glasgow studio, Love marks a decisive new beginning for Reader. "My history is well known," she writes recently, "and if you happen not to know it, GOOD! Forget it. I am starting from here." A delightfully home-spun and personal work, Reader's new project brims with lovely guitar jangles, breezy harmonies and her own high-flying, brogue-inflected singing. "I have a passionate love of instinctive, beautiful songs," she says. "Also a slightly insane attachment to romantic chord structures. Words that speak of some universal humanist truth. That can be 'thrown away' with no regrets. This can be summed up in most of the songs on this record." Released April 13 in the U.K. on Rough Trade, Love Is the Way will hopefully see an American release date later this year.

Eddi Reader - "Roses" (from Love Is The Way)

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Belle and Sebastian's Stuart Murdoch brings his ambitious "girl group" drama/musical concept to life with God Help The Girl, the "soundtrack" to the Scottish popster's evolving filmed project. Music hits next week -- but we would be remiss if we didn't highlight this amusingly retro slice of fuzzy, chiffon-layered pop. Since the video is a actually an excerpt from the larger film, there's about a two minute set up, but your patience is rewarded with "Come Monday Night" featuring the effortlessly gorgeous voice of Catherine Ireton (second from left above).

Nashville roots rocker Brendan Benson, best known for his work with Jack White in The Raconteurs, returns with his fourth studio album My Old, Familiar Friend on August 18th via ATO. The new project was recorded in Nashville and London and produced by Gil Norton (Pixies, Maximo Park, Foo Fighters) and is the follow up to his 2005 album The Alternative To Love. With Benson's recent work with The Raconteurs, we're speculating that the anticipation - and reception - for My Old, Familiar Friend will be dramatically stepped up. The blogs are already abuzz...and, from the bit we've heard so far, for good reason.

Much like his previous works, Benson's newest is pretty much a one man, D.I.Y. showcase but lead track "Feel Like Taking You Home" sounds a bit more polished than his previous works, though we are, of course, only one song in at this point. Upbeat and bristling with a full band sound, Feel feels like a joyous, tight and perfect summertime radio romp. The teasing press release mentions that new track "Garbage Day" has a "Motown swoon" and "A Whole Lot Better", targeted as the album's first single, is "work of heart-felt buoyancy" utilizing "hand-claps, harmonies and guitar".

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Brendan Benson - "Feel Like Taking You Home" from the album My Old, Familiar Friend)

PS: One of our favorite Nashville tracks of recent memory has to be "Consider Me", the product of a quick offshoot EP project featuring Benson and the lovely Ashley Monroe, owner of one of the purest, sweetest voices in Nashville. The two recorded four tracks earlier this year, most of which can be heard Benson's myspace page or at Monroe's here.

Brendan Benson/Ashley Monroe - "Consider Me"

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For Brit singer/songwriter Olivia Broadfield a stylistic move from guitar-strummings to lush keyboard synths came in 2002 when she first heard the debut album from the Imogen Heap/Guy Sigsworth collaboration Frou Frou. “It was so different, and I found it really inspiring," says Broadfield. "I fell in love with the warmth of electronica." Normally the terms "warm" and "electronica" might strike us as being diametrically opposed but in the hands of this 28-year-old performer the results found in her July 14 debut album Eyes Wide Open have a noticeable richness and subtlety, the perfect supportive production base for her light, airy vocals and playful melodies.

Much like transplanted Norwegian Kate Havnevik (another Sigsworth devotee), Broadfield creates soft-focus electronic landscapes and understated beats to build songs such as the nursery-rhymish singsong "Don't Cry" or lovely "Lost In You", all created in her own private studio retreat. There's no earthshaking originality or hand-waving significance in Eyes Wide Open nor, do we imagine, is there meant to be. Broadfield simply, and with quiet assurance, delivers some fine songs with a deft personal touch making Eyes, originally released in the U.K. nearly two years ago, a welcome, if belated, release. “Some singers strike a pose," says fan Sigsworth, "some make attention-seeking songs out of gossip-column inanities. Olivia takes you inside her head, and what a wonderful place it is.”

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Olivia Broadfield - "Lost In You" (from the album Eyes Wide Open)

Olivia Broadfield - "Don't Cry" (from the album Eyes Wide Open)

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"Twee" is a quaint British colloquial term that implies a certain "precious" quality, a word that would - in the best sense - describe the magical and utterly charming work of Kristian Leontiou and his band One eskimO. Utilizing some incredible, award-winning animated videos, Leontiou has created an enchanting world of childlike innocence and some sweet pop melodies. But to dismiss them as a sugary concoction, devoid of real musical substance would be a mistake. Take away the cutesy images and you're left with some impressive songs that stand on their own, produced by Dido's brother Rollo Armstrong (of Faithless) and imbued with an intimate sound that is one part airy, electronic ambience and two parts chilled-out O-era Damien Rice or Cat Stevens folk/pop musings.

Leontiou explains, "I really wanted to make a beautiful, peaceful album, like a soundtrack to a film that didn't even exist. There were many stages of evolution and it all sort of grew together. The Eskimo represented something quite peaceful, making music in isolation. I was writing about my journey, about life, love, losses and failures, heartbreak and triumph. And along the way I met amazing musicians, who helped bring this music to life".

Oft delayed full-length project All Balloons, finally arriving September 7 in the U.K. (U.S. label - hello?), will also feature animated episodes for each of the album's ten tracks, telling the tale of the little eskimo and his musical band of animals. "Twee"? Sure. We also think the word "irresistible" is equally apt.

UPDATES: New track "Hometime" has just been released digitally in the U.K. -- and the band begin opening for Tori Amos on her 27-date American tour July 10. Still no word on a U.S. release for All Balloons. Video EPK after the jump...

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One eskimO - "Hometime" (from the album All Balloons)

One eskimO - "Giving Up" (from the album All Balloons)

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Dido's fall 2008 excursion Safe Trip Home must have been a little more quiet than the U.K. singer (and her label) had expected. After selling millions of her earlier albums, the comparatively anemic sales of the more reflective collection of songs with producer Jon Brion (Fiona Apple) -- and the changing industry and radio landscape --must have been something of a wake up call. Dido has announced that a planned summer tour has been scrapped and she's back in the studio again working on her next studio effort.

Jack Johnson's upcoming live CD/DVD release has a slightly new name and street date. Formerly listed as simply Live, the new project is now En Concert, the name of the documentary live concert film directed by Brushfire co-founder (and surfing filmmaker) Emmett Malloy that chronicles Johnson's 2008 Sleep Through the Static European tour. And the collection is now pushed back a couple of weeks to August 25. More here.

We're frankly a little curious about what former American Idol finalist Katharine McPhee's  September 22 Verve label debut will sound like. We do know that after a disappointing contemporary dance/pop debut album a couple of years back, McPhee is looking for a more mature mainstream approach with her new jazz/adult label home and has been working with some fine songwriters like Lucie Silvas on choosing the right mix of songs.

John Mellencamp's (pic) career spanning four-CD box set On the Rural Route 7609 is now scheduled for an October 6 drop date. As we noted a month ago on our larger Mellencamp update, the title is a reference to 1976, the date of his debut album, to the present. Meanwhile, his 8-song live mini album Life Death LIVE and Freedom drops next Tuesday, June 23.

M. Ward (She + Him), Conor Oberst (Bright Eyes) and Jim James (My Morning Jacket) are billing themselves as Monsters of Folk for a new eponymous collaboration scheduled for release September. The 15-track album is being produced by Mike Mogus and recorded in Malibu and Omaha, according to Paste.

Look for a Live at the Olympia CD/DVD package from R.E.M. this fall. Also: the fine "deluxe" expanded 2-CD version of their classic Reckoning album is in stores next Tuesday.

One of our faves, Martha Wainwright, just finished a series of live dates in New York where she, and noted producer Hal Wilner, recorded a collection of Edith Piaf songs for release later this year.

Meanwhile brother Rufus (pic) will release a CD/DVD package of an August 2007 show titled Milwaukee At Last! on August 25 via Decca. Rufus' commissioned opera Prima Donna premieres next month in Manchester, England.

The ever unpredictable New York singer/songwriter Nellie McKay has signed a deal with the Verve label group for the October 13 release of her fourth, as yet-untitled album. The new project follows up McKay's 2007 album Obligatory Villagers and we're speculating (idly, of course) that the new project may be a little more grounded and mainstream than the more jazzy, campy Broadway-styled kitsch of Villagers. Then again, we are talking about the irrepressible Nellie here.

McKay first burst onto the music scene in 2004 with the release of Get Away From Me, her brilliant, precocious debut produced by Beatles engineer Geoff Emerick. That album topped a number of "Best of" annual lists with copious critical praise: “This supremely gifted, charming and darkly funny New York oddball has all the makings of the first great singer-songwriter of the young century," wrote a scribe at The Washington Post.

McKay is also immersed in writing the music and lyrics for a new musical based on the 1999 Alexander Payne movie Election, the satirical comedy starring Reese Witherspoon and Matthew Broderick. She also recently reteamed with producer Emerick to record a "Bollywood"-styled version of "Yellow Submarine" for a special Beatles tribute project centered on music from the Fab Four's classic Revolver album. Details to come...

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Nellie McKay - "Testify" (from the album Obligatory Villagers)

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