Supergroups are all the rave this decade.  Velvet Revolver.  Audioslave.   The Raconteurs.  Chickenfoot.  Next in line are the Monsters of Folk: Bright Eyes’ Conor Oberst, super-producer Mike Mogis, Retro-Nuevo troubadour M. Ward, and My Morning Jacket front man Jim James.  If the gold standard is the Traveling Wilburys—and it is—the Traveling Wilburys they are not, despite so many media types deeming them to be the next coming.  Nor are they folk in the most Woody Guthrie sense of the word.  Neither declaration is their fault– somebody inevitably has to label …

In true do-it-yourself fashion, Toronto singer-songwriter Danny Handes took pretty much whatever he could find—guitar, microphone, tambourine, knitting needles—and weaved an impressive debut album. The Asterisk Eye is a musical quilt, a patchwork of 14 songs that cover a lot of ground. It travels pretty much everywhere, from “So Bad” with its AC/DC-like driven riff to the softer land of “Our Leaves Are Green Again” and “Long Road,” which would be fitting on a mix-tape with the likes of Keane and Thom Yorke. “Hearts Again” is a catchy windows-rolled-down-on-a-cool-fall-night companion …

There is a concession to the difficulty of categorizing The Keys’ music in the promo materials for Years Are Made of Seconds. It says, “Were one to label [Boris Paillard's] music (if only to appease the norm’s demand to do so), it would be described as a kind of acoustic folk ‘n’ roll.” While there is definitely a rustic acoustic foundation beneath each song, a label is irrelevant. This is art, pure and simple.
The Keys is driven by Boris Paillard, though it features many guests and collaborators. And with an …