Okay, buckle up, because Track Dogs just dropped a Christmas card. Not the kind with a sparkly snowman, though. This "A Christmas Card" album feels more like a rambling, joyous postcard sent from a slightly tipsy, globe-trotting relative. They've taken the usual folk/Americana framework and tossed in some maracas and maybe a sneaky jazz trombone. It's the sort of unexpected musical mashup that makes...

A city can teach a person how to carry noise. The Liberties, with its old trade routes and close communal pulse, has long carried dense human music. From that inheritance, Zak Coghlan appears to have taken not only a taste for melody, but a belief that feeling becomes sharper when placed inside a story that can stand up under pressure. “Lead Balloon”, his new single...