There’s a strange comfort in calling your personal disaster a fairytale, and Jeremy Ryan’s new single, “My Fairytale,” lives entirely in that conflicted space. This isn't the storybook of our youth; it's the grim, dog-eared version one finds in a dusty attic, its moral hopelessly smudged. https://open.spotify.com/track/0qn6YtxVNcUmPZhjwxoCIb?si=ac355c4e77274635 Ryan sings of a rainbow devoid of its colors, an idea that for a moment made me think of...

There's a curious jolt in hearing a title like "Us Against The World" from an act called The Cockney Cowboy. The name itself is a glorious contradiction, a pairing of gritty East London reality with the wide-open romance of Nashville. You half expect a joke, but what Justin Vella delivers is a dead-serious, straight-shooting country ballad that smells less of hay bales and more...