Aug 20th, 2008 · A master of soft, poignant folk songs, the Irish crooner has created a repertoire full of poetic lyrics backed by formidable fingerpicking. He performs at what he calls the "biggest jewelry box in the world" on Mountain Stage.
Jul 18th, 2008 · Everyone Is Crying Out to Me, Beware, the second album from Ukrainian-born singer-songwriter Alina Simone, is utterly haunting. With bare-bones arrangements and Simone's powerful, poignant vocals at the forefront, the record burns through a collection of songs by Siberian punk-folk singer, Yanka Dyagileva, with cathartic fervor. Though the lyrics are in Russian, the emotions are raw and easily felt.
Jul 17th, 2008 · With steely nerve and mordant wit, Jacques Nolot's Before I Forget presents an unflinching portrait of a former hustler now in middle age, HIV-positive, and negotiating the financial and emotional legacies of several generations of gay men.
Jun 23rd, 2008 · Setting Sun is a quintet led by frontman and producer Gary Levitt. The band's third album, Children of the Wild, evokes the laid-back simple life of Levitt's Upstate New York home. Driven by simple acoustic guitar lines, Erica Quitzow's graceful string orchestrations, and Levitt's hushed vocals, Setting Sun's arrangements are dramatic and poignant.
May 23rd, 2008 · Set during the Siege of Leningrad in 1941, David Benioff's novel combines masterful storytelling with poignant historical insights — and, in the end, a joyous conclusion.
May 21st, 2008 · Before Sen. Ted Kennedy's diagnoses, he and Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson were working hard on a piece of major legislation to reform cancer treatment . "It's more poignant, more personal and our commitment will be renewed," Hutchinson tells Alex Chadwick.
Oct 15th, 2007 · The organ riff that opens Beirut's "Nantes" sounds like a setup for a variation on modern garage rock. But when a tango beat enters soon after, "Nantes" transforms into something else altogether: a new genre that could be called poignant ballroom cabaret pop.
Mar 16th, 2007 · Funerals celebrate life as much as they mourn the departed, and Robert Glasper's poignant requiem "Tribute" -- assembled in honor of his mother -- makes no secret of that. Glasper and his bandmates initiate a plaintive piano-trio hymn that soon underscores Rev. Joe Ratliff's poetic eulogy.