THE CURATORS

Every month, we ask a different artist to give us their personal thoughts on our featured Record of the Month.

Some of our many notable curators are…

Photo by Alysse Gafkjen

BRANDI CARLILE

on Maggie Rogers’ Heard It In A Past Life

“Maggie Rogers is an absolute force to be reckoned with. She is hungry for art and equally thirsty for knowledge. I like how she holds herself in this male-dominated industry. My daughters need role models like Maggie. She is enviably self-assured and smart and has one of the most pure and unaffected voices of her generation.”

WESLEY SCHULTZ

(of The Lumineers) on Magnolia Presents: Rayland Baxter

“I’m sitting in a hotel room in Grand Rapids, MI, staring out over the city cloaked in a swirling snowstorm. It’s beautiful and haunting all at once, a lot like Rayland’s music. This entrancing quality, like staring at a fire, is something so rare to find in a musician. Rayland Baxter has that special thing. That thing that keeps you coming back to the music over and over, finding new artifacts and gemstones hidden deep within the sounds and mystical poetry.”

Photo by Danny Clinch
Photo by Alysse Gafkjen

JULIEN BAKER

on Phoebe Bridgers’ Punisher

“These songs are entries into an anthology of solutionless, ongoing experiments, a document of gleaning in progress, a picture of a woman inhabiting the no man’s land that exists at the border of what we understand about ourselves and what we don’t yet. No manual, but a crude map with pictogram landmarks. All the heartache around which is no shortcut, all the relief which inevitably follows; a scream howling into chaos followed by a whisper bursting into quiet laughter.”

JOSH RITTER

on Wilco’s Ode to Joy

“I pictured Wilco, the band, as hunter gatherers against a canvas of midwestern time-space, discovering one day a burning branch and carrying it with them.  But to carry that fire you needed a container, and the albums, like Ode to Joy, are the only vessels strong enough to carry the sweet and acidic mixture of pity and laughter, loneliness and trepidation, heartbreak and cautious optimism that is Wilco’s music.”

Photo by David McClister
Photo by Andrew Lipovsky/NBC

CHARLES BERRY JR.

(son of Chuck Berry) on Nathaniel Rateliff’s And It’s Still Alright

Nathaniel has brought forth a masterwork of emotions and musical talent few, if any, will ever be able to match. A journey into his life and soul. He has always delivered outstanding experiences both heartfelt and vibrant. As hard as it is to imagine, he’s pushed the envelope and explored new territory, extolling sides of him not seen in the past…listening to these songs found me stopping what I was doing and giving it my full attention; it’s pretty much impossible not to. I’m sure you will many, many times as well.

COURTNEY MARIE ANDREWS

on Kathleen Edwards’ Total Freedom

“When I listen to Kathleen sing, I feel like she’s a friend telling me a secret – one that I keep too. “I’ve got total freedom, no one to need…” sings Edwards, and I feel that this line sums up a lot of the underlying themes on this record. This is the story of a woman who has been let down by relationships in the past, and though she visits those hardships throughout these stories, she explains them with strength and a deep understanding of herself and womanhood.”
Photo by Alexa Visclus
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