“LOVE FOREVER – DEMO RECORDINGS 1966-68” by iconic female music innovator Jackie DeShannon is the first official release devoted entirely to her largely […]
It is music for a peer group dealing with similar battles between theory and practice, how things feel and how they are, the emotional range is noticeable and the disquiet is tempered, sometimes distempered by mooted desire: it is all burgeoning lushness and self awareness. Sixteen years old , but sixteen years old unblinking looking into the heart, and sometimes into the dark.
The sound is broad, modern, owing as little as Whitley can manage to his antecedents, for a blues guitarist he is as wary as Gary Clark: completely unwilling to justify his sound through even his own past. It is post-modern mood blues for a 21st century audience and a world unwilling to justify itself to any one.
Yes, great songs, terrific voice, beautiful guitars, lyrics: a long term artist with more than enough integrity and skill to last a lifetime. But lemme tell ya something, kids: I want more solos (I wouldn’t mind an instrumental album) and I want many more people to listen.
In these days where certain artists self proclaim themselves to be the best thing since sliced bread there’s something about
Around 20% of this is really good and 20% is complete crap and 60% is whatever. It has an ebb and flow, starts off strong, slows to a halt, picks up speed and bows out. Miley needed an editor, and she needed a producer, and instead she got a flaming enabler.
If naming a song “Live To Tell” is cheeky but good natured, naming another song on the same EP
The trio has come to form Queen Moo, a band that has been playing shows for about a year now, and released a not-quite album, “Incomplete”, which was exactly what it sounds like.
The Most Lamentable Tragedy Of – Titus Andronicus – Whatever doubts you may have about this 29 song rock opera song cycle detailing the ebb and flow of manic depression, if only for its sheer audacity you will hear nothing more important this year. Plus, cmon, what price “Dimed Out”? It dimes out and then some.
It is a real achievement, an artistic highlight of the 2010s. It repays close attention with strange insights. Really, it is the musical “Pale Fire” -an extended mind game but with a steely and real purpose behind it. +@ are playing with you but for a real reason. I mean, I love it. It’s fun.
On we go,and though we are only on the fourth song, it sure feels like there is a lot of throat clearing going on. I guess if you’re going deep into the consciousness of a manic depressive you might as well keep into on the down low
You can’t do the same thing twice and expect people to be surprised the second time: you can’t produce an album filled to the brim with slow paced, thoughtful, literate and tasteful Southern soul and expect people not to expect it and worse, not to compare it to your earlier material, not to compare it to Southeastern
The problem is, Weezy has been off his A Game since 2008, and the man has all the gifts he needs to be the top of the game. Yet he isn’t any more. When I saw him with Drake last year, he more than held his own. On record, he can’t catch up with his student. Weezy needs to free himself as well as his album.
Before This World – James Taylor – A late career masterpiece by Sweet Baby James Uncle, songs as sweet and strong as memory and as strong and lasting as this exact moment, as though before this world there was this world and just this world was then and now.
Taylor has a large catalog, from covers like “You’ve Got A friend” and “How Sweet It Is (To be Loved By You)” to original songs like the lullaby “Sweet Baby James” and anthem “Shower The People”, all fine stuff, though over an album he could get a bit much, but his last three albums are something more, they honor the aging, they honor this time of life.
Christopher Owens is like a girl you fell out of love with. Why? No reason, no reason not to love her anymore, she looks the same and smells the same, still as sweet and cute and other people are still envious but you just don’t love her any more.
As for “The Most Unforgettable Night of Forever” -” while the October 17th finale features the theme “The Most Unforgettable Night of Whatever – Featuring Spectacular Musical Guests, Glorious Tunes and Riffage, and Whatever the Party Calls for! Parking Validated for First Dozen Diehard Fans.”
I’ve heard the five songs already released, Britney Spear’s Suzanne Vega cover, and a mega mix (see below) with snippets of the entire 12 song album. So half plus. Enough for a half informed opinion and here it is: I like it. If Daft Punk are Moroder inspired EDM monsters, Moroder has become a Daft Punk inspired update of himself
The album is a break up special, and it is good and if it had a few more songs it might venture into great land, but the first single “Right On Time” is all that’s wrong here: it is well played but mushy, a tasteful drag and that’s Dawes problem: they are a tasteful drag. And three songs does not an album make
The thing to keep in mind here, is this was Bruce as superstar, as popstar, as icon, as white Michael, as God, but what he gave was a performance for the ages which made a mockery of questions of sell out. Preaching to the converted, sure, but some of them were the newly converted.
The songs don’t quite interlock, but still they connect to the myth and then back away from it, it is Lennon as careerist and perhaps this is the one album you can really compare to mid-period McCartney. Say McCartney’s Pipes Of Peace and, yes I know I’m biased, but Lennon’s genius shines through: it is important stuff despite its intentions in ways Macca isn’t.
But what can you do with a album with songs as good as “Awaken”, a swirling whirl of surreptitious desire on a beautiful album which takes patience and love to be heard in a world with very little of either? You give it the time it needs, after all Halle Barry is the most successful of all the X Men actors.
The Waterfall – My Morning jacket – When they say it is MMJ’s best work in years, what they mean is it is better than Circuital… which it is, but so are more things. A lovely, low key, very melodic break up album that will come to life on stage – B
The album barely peaks and never dips, unlike the first two albums weed isn’t an essential character in the stories; she seems a little less dependent on artificial paranoia. Instead, there’s a snapshot of a woman nearing her thirties and running in place in the California days and California nights as her youth slips by and that is as close to be precisely what Best Coast want it to be.
Carrie And Lowell – Sufjan Stevens – His mother left Sufjan when he was three maybe four, and again, and again, and then she died, and left Stevens to deal with it by writing the most equisitely beautiful album of this or many years.
So as far as I am concerned The Magic Whip is a return to form. Good, sometimes not good, never as clever as it thinks it is, but with some good Blur songs to add to the catalog. A lot better than I thought it would be.
From an early “Be Still And Know” to a late “Softly And Tenderly” and a closing “Holy, Holy, Holy”, Grant maintains a calm, sweet quiet entry into faith: if we can’t join her in Jesus, we can join her in sound.
Waiting On You – Sam Lewis – Country singer songwriter, with a fine voice that sounds a little like Van Morrison, and some good and some really really good songs. The playing is delicious and sweet and the mood is complete in itself. This is a soulful, intelligent, lovely album. A pleasant surprise – ALBUM OF THE WEEK – B+
As It Is have a timeless sound that should not go unnoticed because they could literally fit in an era of Pop Punk with the sound they’ve crafted. They are a sweet mix of the old-school ways of Pop Punk and the new-school, gritty and angsty tunes that have come out in the last few years.
This is pure artistry and alive pop art: it covers the bases. And it is New York, watching the traffic flow in a true blues greatness. “It’s gonna be alright”, Phil claims in the midst of the concrete jungle that is Blueslands. I believe him.
Synths and strings, dark and light, dick jokes and no hopes, money, pussy… a real disappointment but it is still Tyler, still the voice,still the deflated attitude, and still some very good songs. Just not the future of rap or the voice of his generation.
Tony gives everything to the album, especially a playfulness and a depth of artistic integrity. On his website, Succar is quoted as saying “Even the horn lines, I would transcribe them from Quincy Jones’ productions and then apply them to the arrangement in a different way. The essence of every song was respected. I gave it my best to create this very thin line between what Michael did with his production and what I brought to the project.”
On the last track of the four song EP, Jessi sings “I’ am just the subject of gravity” and the lyric hits home in a minimal acoustic setting. It’s a wonderful thing, a near perfect song among near perfect songs. I’ve heard Jessi will be off to college this year.I am sure she will do great, though with this sort of gift for songwriting I sure hope it won’t distract from her songwriting too much.
The Neighborhood Bullys include drummer Reijo Kauppila and Zach Jones on rhythm guitar, which means they are in the business of selling you on a groove on song after song. It is like being pushed in a crowded club, it gets your attention but you know it is the price you pay for great rock and roll.
You won’t know it from the reviews, but if these three songs are anything to go by, this won’t be much of an addition to the canon, in much the same way and for many of the same reasons the last Beach Boys album wasn’t. Like Bruce and Paul, and an army of others, Brian does what he did only not half as well.
I saw the Drifters a coupla years ago, whoever was with them then, with the Drifters at least there was always a lot of singers coming and going ( around 60 by my reckoning) but they didn’t go within a million miles of their 70s hits. Still, more than a number in your little black book,go on Amazon to check em out, the 70s Drifters isn’t on Itunes or Spotify.
Morrison sounds great as he sings everything from Irish lullabies to the purest of blues, with soul, pop and everything else there as well; no longer young, he never really sounded all that young any way and now he sounds timeless. Morrison recently decried the state of rhythm and blues (no rhythm, no blues was his assessment) and here you hear wh
If it works from the edges, if it is clearly bewildered, if it could only send her away and if true love, or at least true hope, is so difficult to cling to, these are flaws in life not song.Perhaps at her age, it is wrong to search out a new thesis, her failure here is in laying one out, in a confessional that doesn’t know where it’s at
Country singer songwriter dabbles in rock and roll and comes out the better for it even if not always, “The Eye” is such a great song it makes the riff of “The ainstream Kid” soound pedestrian. At its best it is as good as this ten year veteran can get, at its worse it is pretty good – ALBUM OF THE WEEK – B+
The playing is consistently excellent and the sound, the arrangements, the guitars plus touches, make for an unceasingly pleasant ambient track: the songs and the singing aren’t there, but the music is a pleasure. Hey, they will buy it in the UK and he is always welcome to sell out the Beacon
It’s a good rock album, straightforward, 90sish but not grunge, sounds like what it is, smart lyrics, straightforward. Nothing as great as “Spin The Bottle” but the first two songs are huge inclusions for the Hatfield songbook.
Yeah, I haunt the first listen on NPR and seriously hit pay dirt from time to time. This week I have The Pop Group and Screaming Females new albums on heavy rotation. I might listen to these guys more than when the album is actually released.
We don’t want Matt to change, we want him to continue. Too good to be a regional phenom, too old fashioned to find an easy way out of Omaha. If Matt does what he does till he does it, that’s gonna do just fine.
When we discover she has broken up with another twenty something, a Timor Steffens or a Brahim Zaibat, we don’t imagine her sitting on a couch with a large tub of Haagen Daz and “Sleepless In Seattle” on repeat. We imagine her looking through dancers auditions and picking out a replacement.
It works like an extreme ambient, it moves into the background with that steady flow and smooth voice, which he clips and stretches out over and over again. The songs are fully formed and samey, they could segue on the same beats, the same sounds, yet it works over and over again.
On this live album “”12/31/75 Upper Darby, PA” Bruce was close but not quite Bruce yet. On the eve of 1976, “Devil In A Blue Dress” seguing into “Good Golly Miss Molly” into “CC Rider” as the minutes ticked into seconds, was the definition of the honest roar of rock and roll
I had avoided writing about it… not because it is a morbid album, it is just the opposite actually, but because it is a very busy and lively thing that may evolve like a living being in front of you, escaping your thoughts and ideas at each listen.
For a live album, Sno-Mule feels a little aimless, it doesn’t really build though the last composition feels like a last composition, it feels as though this evening the only place left for them might be “Mountain Jam”. But nothing quite builds momentum
I wouldn’t have bothered a full review at all but… when punk happened in 1976 it was God and the rest of pop was Sodom And Gomorrah and everything it wiped out is on this this album only much, much worse than you remember it.
I wouldn’t have bothered a full review at all but… when punk happened in 1976 it was God and the rest of pop was Sodom And Gomorrah and everything it wiped out is on this this album only much, much worse than you remember it.
