After a lengthy career of working with others, Grey Tower Heights was created as a solo effort. Melancholy permeates the tracks, which deal with the loss of love, fragility, and our frail sense of self. https://soundcloud.com/grey-tower-heights Songs with haunting voices and rich harmonies boost the piano-driven, lyrically sombre, and narratively oriented compositions. In Grey Tower Heights, Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits, and Nick Cave are among the...

Robin James Hurt’s “A Song, A Story Told” arrives with a sound you can almost run a thumb over, like worn corduroy. In an age of sterile, diamond-polished productions, this album is a defiantly handmade thing, tracked onto vintage cassette machines. The result is not a flaw, but an ingredient. A faint, persistent hiss breathes alongside the instruments, a ghost in the machine who...