A toddler clutching a kaleidoscope probably doesn’t fathom the full extent of the beauty whirling inside it. That’s a bit like encountering The Report’s latest EP, “Everything Life Throws”. Just when you think you've pieced together what’s happening, you shift it slightly, and new patterns emerge, forcing you to sit with its intentions a little longer. Hugo Allen and Jo Rogers didn’t craft an...

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...