Some songs are like a time machine. You press play, and suddenly you’re somewhere else, some other time. Maybe it’s a smoky bar in the 1970s, a sweaty punk club in the 80s, or, in the case of “Oh Denise,” the new single from Ken Woods and The Old Blue Gang, a dusty dancehall on the outskirts of Austin, Texas, sometime in the not-too-distant past. The...

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...