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...

With their single "Numbers Game," Grey Jacks has managed to build a deceptively inviting room inside a house that’s actively on fire. The foundation here is a slithering, almost hypnotic rock groove, driven by the lock-step pulse of Teddy Minton on drums and Howard Rabach on bass. It has that cool, coiled tension reminiscent of late-90s Radiohead, a sound that gets in your bones...