BD Let it be

After your debut album gets nominated for two Grammys, it’s easy to overthink the approach to and implications of your follow-up. Unless you’re throwback/laidback Texas country trio Midland. “It's got to be better than the first,” guitarist Jess Carson tells Apple Music's Brooke Reese. “Otherwise, why are we doing it? What we've been doing for the last two years is playing live. So we tried to translate that into a recording studio. We attempt to write songs that are going to be around for a long time and could fit into a time period from the past as well as they could in the future—just kind of ageless. And I think we accomplished that.” Don't just take his word for it: The 14 freewheeling songs on Let It Roll channel '70s country and SoCal soft rock like the Eagles, but never feel dated or contrived.

Legendary artist and studio maestro Alan Parsons has announced the release of a new live album entitled “The Neverending Show: Live in the Netherlands” on November 5, 2021. The show was recorded live on May 5, 2019 and showcases the performance that Alan Parsons Live Project held at the Tivoli in Utrecht, Netherlands. The band was, as usual, in fine form and fed extra energy by an enthusiastic audience. An amazing performance by quite possibly the definitive band line-up of exemplary musicians that Alan has toured with. As an added treat, the album includes a brand new studio song, “The NeverEnding Show” which offers a hint of the new studio album that Alan is currently working on for release in 2022.

Bernard Allison is unstoppable. He's the face on the magazines and the voice on the radio. He's the showman roaming the open road on the 2018 Blues Caravan tour, bringing it to the people each night with compadrés Mike Zito and Vanja Sky. He's the visionary songwriter whose latest studio release - Let It Go is already tipped as an album of 2018. It's a work ethic that would leave most musicians gasping, but for this creative dynamo - now entering his fifth decade at the head of the blues pack - it's all in a day's work. Starting the blues calendar with a bang in January 2018, Let It Go feels like a homecoming. After all, this latest studio album sees Bernard return to Ruf Records: the iconic German label that was created in 1994 to serve as a home for his father, the much-missed Chicago heavyweight, Luther Allison.