Before we get to Rev. Marv Ward’s new album, “Sparkling Isolation,” we need to pause and be grateful that he is still making music at all. He …

The best live albums make you question whether the artist should bother recording in a studio. “Thank You So Much, We’re Dear Blanca” is such an album.

The charm of Ken Baldwin’s “A Strange Brew” is its sense of togetherness.

Fat Rat da Czar didn’t have to include a pair of surprising, well-chosen samples from Netflix favorites at the top of his new release to prove…

I really wanted to hate “Smiling Politely,” the new album by Hillmouse, AKA Columbia singer-songwriter Tyler Gordon.

Columbia rapper 2Ru3’s new release “Lil Sumthin’” is hands-down the most accurately titled album of 2020.

In 2016, veteran Palmetto State musicians Dave Britt and Bobby Sutton started Ashes Of Old Ways, a group that split the difference between ragged rock and mournful honky-tonk country right down the middle.

My Columbia Craft Famously Hop IPA was brought directly to my cove in a stapled brown paper bag, the height of coronavirus concert luxury.

In rock music, perfection is the enemy. Few things throw off a good rock song like too much polish. There should be some sloppiness, some ragged edges.

Last year, Columbia singer/songwriter Ahomari released an EP called “Girl Kiss,” a spacey combination of synth-pop and soul that came with a w…

The band’s more intense tracks offer a welcome catharsis from the steady, thrumming dread they cast in relief.

On its debut album, the married Columbia duo comes across as exactly what it is — nice, personable, immensely talented, and overflowing with potential.

In describing itself with genre tags, the Columbia quartet Bathe nods to several immediately apparent strains of heavy metal — doom, grindcore…

It’s fascinating how the elements of ‘80s music that once seemed so cheesy — space-age synths, overripe sax solos, robotic programmed drums — …

What is a dead swell — the place where a perfect wave goes to die? Surf City submerged in the Sargasso Sea? Whatever the answer, Dead Swells i…

Three years after its self-titled debut, multi-instrumentalist Austin Larrimore’s sludgy math-rock outfit Ort returns, now as a duo with guita…

Over a long enough timeline, everyone changes. Our likes, our dislikes, our dreams, our desires, our political opinions, the ways in which we …

On the surface, everything about I Was Bored, the new seven-song release by Columbia singer and songwriter Ahomari, seems designed to lower ex…

Cooking is an art of chemistry and patience. Understanding not only how combinations of ingredients will interact, but also how the effects of…

Major events and crises have a way of spurring artists to create responses. The current pandemic is no different, even on a local level.

Like the dark forces it often evokes, goth-rock’s names are legion — cold wave, dark wave, death rock and witch house, to name a few. Even pos…

There’s always a danger in waiting too long between records. Artists can change, or become plagued with self-consciousness, self-doubt, or mer…

Boo Hag, Burial Ground (self-released)

Give Eight Track Parade credit for ambition. With its second album, Babylon Gold, the Columbia octet transcends its ’70s smooth-rock and soul-…

Marcum Core (aka MIDIMarc), the ne plus ultra of Columbia’s beatmakers, is pushing 40. So it’s tempting to view Thirty Seven, which Core named…

On “Falling,” the opener to the second album from Charleston’s 2 Slices, leader Danny Martin delivers a verse that crystallizes the theme of t…

Experimental instrumental act Modalcoda has always been a bit of an enigma, referencing anything from Can to Black Sabbath, Miles Davis to the…

Aldean performed his song “Drowns the Whiskey” (the brown liquor references were mounting) and between the staff constantly coming to mop up spilled beers and a guy collapsing because he was completely hammered, this scene had to nearing its end.

Galaxy Chief, Dreadnoughtus (self-released)

Hot Lava Monster, The End Cometh (self-released)

There are just enough authentic touches to give it a human heartbeat underneath the programming.

Les Merry Chevaliers, Punque Vivant  (self-released)

Bruised Fruit, the sprawling debut from Columbia indie rock quartet Hold Fire, feels at times like a distillation of millennial indie rock as it brims with the eager melody and bursting dynamics of perennial favorites, without sacrificing the idiosyncrasies that mint cult-favorites. 

Is it still retro rock when some of the musicians involved have been playing around Columbia in various bands almost since it was new wave? In the ears of the listener, at least, the sounds on Lost In Time certainly place The Transonics squarely in the early-’80s college radio era. Chiming guitars, martial beats, gutsy female vocalist — it’s all there for your next Brat Pack or Valley Girl theme night. 

On Axattack’s new EP, Feasting on Violence, the instrumentals are firing on all cylinders throughout. The trio, singer/guitarist Alec Edelson, bassist Anthony Oliver and drummer Chris Crass, are an absolutely lethal unit on the four songs, playing with power, precision, volume and velocity.

E.Z. Shakes, Summer Cut (Pow Pow Sound)

Quinn Cicala, Talkin’ to Breathe (Shibby) 

Welcome to the era of Hootie 3.0. It’s complicated.

Quark Lepton, Beachcop (self-released)

Teiji Mack, Lavenders for Ty (self-released)

Dead Spring, Being Kind on Purpose (self-released)

MNRVA's Black Sky (self-released)

The Disquiet's Kingdom (self-released)

Ashley Wright and the Vance Gap Ramblers, too good to be true (self-released)

Hopscotch is hurricane-proof — at least when it’s a glancing blow.

This was Hootie Madness.

Longshot Odds, Circle the Drain (Dying Scene)