The moment the jaunty guitar kicks in on John Smyths’ new single, "Now I'm Wiser", you feel a familiar, comfortable warmth. It’s the sound of a good chair in a bar where the floor is sticky with spilled truths. And then the story starts, a classic yarn of a hard-living past yielding to a peaceful present. Smyths, a Dutch ex-metalhead singing country out of...

The Chicago duo Two Whatevers drops a genre-smashing, high-energy protest album 'Punk Deluxe' that makes fighting hyper-capitalism sound like the best party of the year. You know that feeling when you have fifty tabs open, your phone is buzzing with notifications, and you just want to scream? Two Whatevers took that exact sensation, plugged it into a massive pedalboard, and turned it into a ten-track...