Bruce Springsteen: We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions

CML call number: CD/FOLK/Springsteen
Will Hermes wrote in the New York Times: "'John Henry' … [and] other folk standards — the old labor song 'Pay Me My Money Down,' the spirituals 'O Mary Don't You Weep' and 'Eyes on the Prize,' the Irish war ballad 'Mrs. McGrath' … will appear on Mr. Springsteen's new record, 'We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions,' a collection of songs popularized by the venerable folk singer Pete Seeger. … 'The Seeger Sessions' came about … from a clutch of songs he recorded in 1997 for a Pete Seeger tribute album. … 'Whenever I'd get tired of what I was working on, I'd go back to it," the singer said of the session tape, which included 'Jesse James.' … 'Listening to it was a relief, you know? It was just people playing. It sounded like fun.' … Mr. Seeger, who turns 87 next month, is of course a hero of the left, a musician, songwriter and song collector-historian who helped spur the politically tinged folk music revival of the 50's and 60's. … 'That's there,' Mr. Springsteen said of the political element. 'But I approached the whole thing musically'" (4/16/06).
This album is in DualDisc format, with CD content on one side and DVD content on the other.

Bill Frisell: East/West

CML call number: CD/JAZZ/Frisell
Contents: Disc 1 (recorded live in Oakland, CA): I Heard It Through the Grapevine, Blues for Los Angeles, Shenandoah, Boubacar, Pipe Down, A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall (Dylan); Disc 2 (recorded live at the Village Vanguard): My Man's Gone Now, The Days of Wine and Roses, You Can Run, Ron Carter, Interlude, Goodnight Irene, The Vanguard, People, Crazy, Tennessee Flat Top Box.
Personnel: Bill Frisell, guitars, loops; Viktor Krauss, bass, Kenny Wollesen, drums (Disc 1); Tony Scherr, bass, acoustic guitar, Kenny Wollesen, drums, percussion (Disc 2).
Howard Mandel wrote in the New York Press: "Frisell, back in the halcyon '80s, was the East Village improvisers' electric stringman of choice, a soft-spoken man by turns gently melodic and outrageously explosive. Since moving to Seattle in the '90s, he's muted some of his crunch in favor of high-lonesome Americana, but on his most recent album East/West he refreshes unlikely tunes -- 'I Heard It Through the Grapevine' and 'A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall' among them. He plays his instrument top to bottom and inside out …" ("Guitar Gods," 4/19-25/06).

Pearl Jam: Pearl Jam

CML call number: CD/ROCK/Pearl
Jon Pareles wrote in the New York Times: "'Once dissolved we are free to grow,' Eddie Vedder sings in 'Severed Hand,' a grungy garage-rock song on the band's first studio album since 2002. … Instead of chasing pop-chart success, Pearl Jam now … makes studio albums on its own timetable and tours regularly to arena crowds. … 'Pearl Jam' comes on like a fireball. Most of the songs -- like 'World Wide Suicide,' a bitter, furious tirade about a soldier's death and the prospect of endless war -- are fast and noisy, although the album pauses now and then for songs like 'Parachutes,' which suggests a John Lennon ballad with some skipped and added beats. Pearl Jam is now grounded as much in 1960's garage-rock and the psychedelic turbulence of Jefferson Airplane as in metal or punk. Mr. Vedder's lyrics have death, war, morality and faith very much on their mind -- with a digression on surfing in 'Big Wave' -- and he's not offering many answers. But arguments with himself are incarnated in the way the guitars squabble, the meter turns irregular and the song structures take off on tangents" ("New CD's: Examining Identities," 5/1/06).

The 5 Browns: No Boundaries

CML call number: CD/CLASSICAL/Five
Contents: Gershwin, Rhapsody in Blue; Lecuona [disc and booklet have "Lecouna"], Malagueña from Andalucia Suite; Copland/Dvořák, Simple Gifts/Going Home; Novacek, Full Stride Ahead (Rag); Ravel, Feria from Rapsodie espagnole; Liebermann, Gargoyles, Op. 29, III & IV; Liszt, Hungarian Rhapsody No. 6; Lutoslawski, Variations on a Theme of Paganini; Ginastera, Danzas argentinas, Op. 2; Rachmaninoff, Valse and Romance; Stravinsky, The Firebird (from the 1911 version). Arrangements of the Gershwin, Lecuona, Copland, Dvořák, and Stravinsky works are credited to Jeffrey Shumway and Grace Helen Nash; other works presumably performed as originally composed. "Going Home" designates a theme from Dvořák's "New World" symphony.
CD inlay card: "On No Boundaries, the original all-sibling piano ensemble features the five Juilliard trained pianists in a wide-ranging selection of music both familiar and rare. " The Gershwin, Copland/Dvořák, and Stravinsky tracks are performed by all five; the Novacek, Liebermann, Liszt, and Ginastera by individual siblings; the others by various groupings of two or three.

Test Icicles: For Screening Purposes Only

CML call number: CD/ROCK/Test
Artist websites: http://www.test-icicles.com/; http://myspace.com/testicicles
Personnel: Raary Decihells, DevMetal, Sam E. Slaughter (from liner notes; websites have "Raaary Deci-Hells" and "Sam E Danger"). The band has dissolved but will issue one more album.
Contents: Your Biggest Mistake; Pull the Lever; Interlude; Boa vs. Python; Circle, Square, Triangle; Catch It!; Maintain the Focus; Snowball; What's Your Damage?; All You Need Is Blood; Sharks; Dancing on Pegs; Party On Dudes; What's Michelle Like?; What's in the Box?
Josh Langhoff wrote in the Village Voice: "You know one of 'em went to art school because For Screening Purposes Only's only real hook, which punches out the line 'We could do with some more poison,' does not appear in the song 'Boa vs. Python.' … In truth, Test Icicles were more a jokey hardcore band than a jokey dance band, but they did value rhythm much like LiLiPUT back on their song 'Split.' The guys' voices could call and respond and trade off lines in elaborate arrangements, so the whole album has momentum and some fun. …" ("'Smart'," 4/19-25/06).

Mugam Sayagi: Music of Franghiz Ali-Zadeh

CML call number: CD/CLASSICAL/Ali-Zadeh
Alex Ross wrote in the New Yorker: "Franghiz Ali-Zadeh, a composer from Azerbaijan, … is a quietly substantial voice in modern music, and Kronos [Quartet] has been promoting her for more than a decade. … In rigorous and balanced forms, Ali-Zadeh fuses traditional Azerbaijani music -- in particular, the intricate improvisations of mugam -- with twentieth-century techniques, such as the avant-garde colorings of George Crumb and the instrumental deconstructions of John Cage. She alternates between reflective-static and muscular, driving moods, manipulating the tonal nuances of mugam's scales and melodic types. Kronos performed 'Mugam Sayagi' and 'Apsheron Quintet.' The composer joined them on piano in the latter piece, and also played 'Music for Piano,' for which, inspired by Cage's prepared-piano pieces, she draped a necklace over the middle strings of the piano, making it sound lutelike. This music can be heard on Kronos's recent disk 'Mugam Sayagi,' which is a gorgeous object and one of the best things the quartet has done" ("All Over the Map: The Kronos Quartet Returns to Carnegie Hall," 4/10/06).

Sarah Blasko: The Overture and the Underscore

CML call number: CD/POPULAR/Blasko
Contents: All Coming Back, Beautiful Secrets, Always Worth It, At Your Best, Don't U Eva, Counting Sheep, Perfect Now, Sweet November, Cinders, True Intentions, Remorse.
Credits: All songs written by Sarah Blasko & Robert F. Cranny; produced by Wally Gagel, Sarah Blasko, and Robert F. Cranny; drums played by Joey Waronker; backing vocals by Darren Hanlon; ambient sounds by Nadav & Edo Khan; sampling by Brian Paturalski; "all else by Sarah & Rob."
Artist website: http://www.sarahblasko.com/
Andrew Iliff wrote in the New Haven Advocate, 4/27/06: "As the theatrical title suggests, Aussie Blasko resembles a guitar-driven Tori Amos, with artful melodies and a rich, aching voice, but without the sugarplum-fairy-fireball histrionics. Her functional but oblique lyrics, unlike Amos', serve the songs' greater good without taxing the brain too much. Occasionally she wanders into humdrum territory, but many of Blasko's songs will make ideal closing-credit fodder for pull-yourself-together chick flicks."

Intimate Voices: String Quartets of Grieg, Sibelius, and Nielsen

CML call number: CD/CLASSICAL/Emerson
Bernard Holland wrote in the New York Times, 5/1/06: "The real Grieg, in all its magical lyricism, found its place in the piano pieces and songs, and it peeps out as well from the rhetoric of the G minor String Quartet. The first audiences in 1878 liked the piece, but Grieg does not seem to have satisfied his German colleagues' desire for more depth of complication: too much melody and harmony for them, and not enough of anything else. The quartet as a whole is full of sudden shifts in mood, relieved by the Romanza movement's gentle dance in triple time. In the finale, the dancing turns wild. Sibelius, rather mysteriously, called his D minor quartet 'Intimate Voices' [i.e., Voces intimae, which can also mean 'inmost voices']. … In formal terms, the five movements offer a kind of circular symmetry, with the third, Adagio di molto, as a center. Sibelius's chamber music sings with the same lonely voice and near-moral severity of texture by which we know his symphonies. The Nielsen piece … was written for the funeral of a young friend in 1910. … The Emerson String Quartet plays here with its usual sleek intensity and deeply cultured touch."

Rihanna: A Girl Like Me

CML call number: CD/REGGAE/Rihanna
Contents: SOS, Kisses Don't Lie, Unfaithful, We Ride, Dem Haters, Final Goodbye, Break It Off, Crazy Little Thing Called Love, Selfish Girl, P.S. (I'm Still Not Over You), A Girl Like Me, A Million Miles Away; bonus track: If It's Lovin' That You Want -- Part 2.
Kelefa Sanneh wrote in the New York Times: "Last year this Barbados-born singer scored a smash with the lithe pop-dancehall track 'Pon de Replay.' Then came the first single from this album, 'SOS,' which brazenly -- and astutely -- recycled the beat from Soft Cell's version of 'Tainted Love.' The follow-up is 'Unfaithful,' a profoundly ludicrous -- but not disagreeable -- pop lament: 'I don't wanna hurt him any more/ I don't wanna take away his life/ I don't wanna be a murderer.' (If there's a singer who could make these lines sound sinister or desolate, it sure isn't this one.) [The album also includes] a triumphant return to her old formula: a pop-dancehall song called 'Break It Off,' where she shares the microphone with Sean Paul atop an electro-reggae beat" ("Critic's Choice: New CD's," 4/24/06).

Bartók: Concerto for Orchestra; Lutoslawski: Concerto for Orchestra, Fanfare for Louisville

CML call number: CD/CLASSICAL/Bartók
James R. Oestreich wrote in the New York Times: "Paavo Järvi's adventures as music director of the Cincinnati Symphony have been well documented. … The coupling of Lutoslawski's riveting Concerto for Orchestra (1954) with the work that probably inspired it, Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra (1943), seems inevitable, if only on the strength of Christoph von Dohnanyi's brilliant versions with the Cleveland Orchestra from the late 1980's. … The juxtaposition pits Bartók late in his career against Lutoslawski early in his. But with their allusions to Hungarian folk music in one case and Polish in the other, they come out in much the same place. Lutoslawski's concerto is for the most part louder and brasher, offering some of the most exhilarating noise this side of Janacek's Sinfonietta. The skittish and intense 'Fanfare for Louisville,' a minute and a half long, gives at least a taste of the later Lutoslawski as well. Mr. Järvi's interpretations are everywhere persuasive, and the performances almost uniformly virtuosic. Telarc's typically expansive sound is especially gratifying in the clatter and the occasional shriek of the Lutoslawski concerto."

James Hunter: People Gonna Talk

CML call number: CD/R&B/Hunter
Ben Sisario wrote in the New York Times: "Mr. Hunter, a 43-year-old former railway worker from Colchester, England, who has spent two decades playing an uncanny simulacrum of early-1960's American R&B in the clubs of London, is going for a mainstream American crossover. Adult-contemporary radio stations around the country have begun to play his songs. … Studiously recreating the delicate and comforting soul sound of [Sam] Cooke, Jackie Wilson and lesser-known figures like Roy Hamilton and Little Willie John, Mr. Hunter has mastered a territory of American music beloved by fans and collectors worldwide. And with touches of Chuck Berry guitar and some falsetto shouts from the playbook of James Brown, his style is too eclectic to be easily pigeonholed. But Mr. Hunter is well aware that even in the retro-rock age of the White Stripes and Joss Stone, his music is out of step. 'I'm not really on a mission to redress any kind of balance,' he said over tea. … 'This is just the stuff that really speaks to me. It might be because some of the rhythms are sexier and the tunes are prettier.' The time for his music, he insists, is not past."

Enya: Amarantine

CML call number: CD/NEW AGE/Enya
Contents: Less than a Pearl, Amarantine, It's In the Rain, If I Could Be Where You Are, The River Sings, Long Long Journey, Sumiregusa, Someone Said Goodbye, A Moment Lost, Drifting, Amid the Falling snow, Water Shows the Hidden Heart; all titles composed and all instruments and vocals performed by Enya, lyrics by Roma Ryan, produced by Nicky Ryan.
Artist website: http://www.enya.com/main.php
According to Wikipedia's article about her, Enya is Ireland's best-selling solo musician. She often writes in a style reminiscent of folk song and tends to frame her voice in a wash of strings and vocal overdubs. She has won Grammys for "Best New Age Album," though she personally does not consider herself a New Age artist. Her major hit to date was probably "Orinoco Flow" from the 1988 album "Watermark." She has a simple but haunting sound on "Amarantine," especially in the title track.

Tom Zé: Estudando o Pagode

CML call number: CD/INTERNATIONAL/Zé
Jon Pareles wrote in the New York Times: "'Estudando o Pagode' [is] an album billed as an operetta. Mr. Zé is the most avant-garde of the songwriters who emerged in Brazil's rebellious tropicalia movement of the 1960's, so his operetta is hardly a straightforward narrative. 'Estudando o Pagode' leaps through time, space and cultures; it's a series of arguments over love and power set to springy, sweet-and-sour pop. Since Mr. Zé has invented characters for his operetta, his flinty voice shares the debates with a gallery of women: sweetly romantic, contemptuous, furious, or screaming in what's either ecstasy or torture. In Mr. Zé's music, serious intentions are inseparable from playfulness and his mad scientist's love of crackpot systems. One agenda is never enough for a Tom Zé song; he juggles allusions and non sequiturs, familiar Brazilian styles and his own deconstructions. 'Estudando o Pagode' means 'Studying the Pagode,' and Mr. Zé often dips into the lilting, acoustic, usually macho Brazilian pop called pagode, which he finds both wrongheaded and seductive." (FWIW, the title could also mean "studying the pagoda.")

Mozart: Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute)

CML call number: CD/OPERA/Mozart
Anthony Tommasini wrote in the New York Times: "It was written for a people's theater in which audiences expected to see shows with magic tricks, comic antics and fantasy. Mozart's fairy-tale opera has all that. Yet it is also a searching, mystical and musically sophisticated work. The matchless recording is Otto Klemperer's 1964 account with the Philharmonia Orchestra, which plumbs the score for its spiritual resonances. A dream cast is topped by the tenor Nicolai Gedda, who brings lyrical ardor to the role of Tamino, and the soprano Gundula Janowitz … as a pure-voiced and tender Pamina. The dazzling soprano Lucia Popp is simply the best Queen of the Night ever. Walter Berry makes a hardy yet poignant Papageno. The luxury casting extends to the Three Ladies: here, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Christa Ludwig and Marga Höffgen" (4/14/06).
On a personal note, I've known this recording for a long time, but hadn't heard it lately. Recently I heard about someone who says that going to concerts "realigns her molecules." (I'm sure she means "in a good way.") That's how I feel about listening to this again!

The Flaming Lips: At War with the Mystics

CML call number: CD/ROCK/Flaming
Sean Cooper wrote in Wired: "'Garage rock with computers.' That's how Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips describes his famously chaotic band's new album. At War with the Mystics features skittering electronic rhythms and a zillion vocal overdubs that zing back and forth between the speakers before disintegrating into a cloud of pixelated dust. Like 2002's Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, this disc is unlike anything you've heard before. For most bands, that's an accomplishment unto itself. But for the Lips, the album won't really be finished until they perform it live, in front of a video backdrop (scenes from obscure newsreels, freaked-out DV footage, and even exercise videos) mixed by Coyne and the band's art director, George Salisbury. The music and visuals will be tightly synced to avoid a multimedia cacophony. 'When it works seamlessly,' Coyne says, 'we have the freedom to do a lot of pretty silly things onstage,' including strafing the audience with confetti cannons, dousing one another with fake blood, and surfing the crowd in a giant plastic bubble. In other words, it's monster garage rock with computers" ("Play: Music," 4/06, p. 52).

10 of New England's Finest Breaking Through

CML call number: CD/ROCK/Ten
Contents: Ready to Rock / Tom's All Stars (from Wallingford, CT) -- Haunting Me / Jimi Bell (from East Hartford) -- Insane / 6 Degrees (from Greenfield, MA)-- Please Go Away / Faultline (from Hartford County, CT) -- On the Outside / The Fall (from New Haven) -- I Can / Jimi Bell -- Your Mine, I'm Your's [sic] / Tom's All Stars -- Infatuation / Mark Cutler (from Windsor) -- Long Shadows / Martin O & Vinnie G (from Wallingford) -- F the World / Zoltan (from Enfield).
Record label website: http://www.10nefbt.com
This is a compilation CD of area bands, mostly in a heavy metal vein and mostly enjoyable. Our copy was donated by Tom A. Schappert, who produced the disc in 2004 and performs on the Tom's All Stars tracks. Those are good, but my favorite is "On the Outside" by The Fall, with a sound that reminds me of the Indian Tower album by Pearls and Brass. Caution: Strong language occurs in the track by Zoltan.

Il Divo: Ancora

CML call number: CD/POPULAR/Il
Personnel: David Miller, Urs Buhler, tenors; Carlos Marin, baritone; Sebastien Izambard, "vox populi" (voice ranges according to Il Divo's website; they are opera singers except for Izambard, who has a pop music background). In the liner notes the group "would especially like to thank … Simon Cowell"; the group is a "brainchild" of Cowell's, according to Wikipedia's article on Cowell.
Contents: All By Myself (Solo otra vez) (Rachmaninoff/Carmen); Isabel ("includes a musical adaptation of Pavane, Opus 50 by Gabriel Fauré"); I Believe in You (Je crois en toi), performed by Il Divo and Céline Dion; You Raise Me Up (Por ti seré); Si tú me amas; Hasta mi final; Heroe (Carey/Afanasieff); En Aranjuez con tu amor (Garcia; derived from Concierto de Aranjuez by Joaquín Rodrigo, not credited); Esisti dentro me; Pour que tu m'aimes encore.
According to the website, "Il Divo have taken opera into the mainstream on a global scale. [This seems to mean that they sing in Spanish, French, and Italian using an operatic vocal technique, though the repertoire is all pop.] … Their debut self-titled album has sold over 5 million copies. …"

Rhett Miller: The Believer

CML call number: CD/ROCK/Miller
Christian Hoard wrote in Rolling Stone: "Having fronted Dallas' Old 97's as they evolved from steal-your-gal cowpunks to a world-class pop-rock act, Rhett Miller is still an underrated songwriter, partly because he makes his finely wrought romantic tunes seem so easygoing. Miller's second solo album, recorded while the 97's are on hiatus, doesn't unveil any new tricks, but like 2002's The Instigator, it's full of gracefully rocking arrangements and ace tunes. Miller is a well-read guy who believes in keeping his heart on his sleeve and his songs tidy and focused. Catchy winners like 'Brand New Way,' the Rachael Yamagata duet 'Fireflies' and the power-pop opener, 'My Valentine,' air their discontent and deep feelings without ever slipping into bathos. On the sorrowful title track, Miller remembers Elliott Smith with a simple, elegant refrain where many Smith memorializers might have plumbed much further into the darkness. These fluid, unfussy songs don't quite stick in your gut the way the 97's' best stuff does, but give Miller a chance and he can charm you something fierce" (3/9/06, p. 90).

Lobi Traoré: The Lobi Traoré Group

CML call number: CD/INTERNATIONAL/Traoré
Personnal: Lobi Traoré, guitar, lead vocals; Samba Traoré, Modibo Soumano, Mady Savadogo, vocals; Mamadou Keita, Brehima Kouyaté, bass guitar; Sékou Diarra, drums; Modibo Kouyaté, balafon (xylophone); Boubacar Sissoko, djembe ("a skin covered drum shaped like a large goblet … meant to be played with bare hands" and producing a wide range of tones, according to Wikipedia).
Kelefa Sanneh wrote in the New York Times: "Mr. Traoré is a Malian singer and guitarist, and the leader of the Lobi Traoré Group, which has a self-titled CD (Honest Jon/Astralwerks) out soon in America, and on it the band is loose but precise, conjuring one off-center groove after another. And while Mr. Traoré knows his way around a serpentine solo, he's even more impressive playing something more repetitive: in 'Koro Duga Mele Bila,' where a guitar figure grounds and stabilizes the music with the same few notes. The lyrics are in Bambara, and for one frisky song, 'Deni Kelen Be Koko' ('Lonely Girl by the Riverside'), the booklet provides one pithy sentence: 'Come on, girl, let's fool around'" ("Playlist: Petulance with a Helping of Sugar on Top," 3/12/06).

Pearls and Brass: The Indian Tower

CML call number: CD/ROCK/Pearls
Ben Ratliff wrote in the New York Times: "Pearls and Brass, a young band from Nazareth, Pa., suggests an old, doomy way of looking at the world: 1970's biker metal, low-pitched and greasy and repetitive. The music makes you think of Led Zeppelin, Blue Cheer, Black Sabbath. But they have a lived-in sound, and an effect like high-voltage meditation. They make the simple rather complicated, and the complicated rather simple. What makes this band so good -- on its second album, 'The Indian Tower' (Drag City) … is that its musicians have thought a lot about song structure, but even more about groove. The concentration on that groove by its three members -- Randy Huth on guitar, Joel Winter on bass and Josh Martin on drums -- means that the band can get rhythmically tricky in its theme riffs, swinging asymmetrically between two- and three-beat patterns, but you don't much notice it. The vocal lines sail right through these rhythmic shifts, the music's heavy bottom end never alters, and it all feels like one unfolding pattern. … [T]his is cheap, effective hypnosis; it's also music that feels extremely good" (3/14/06).

Shrift: Lost in a Moment

CML call number: CD/JAZZ/Shrift
Sasha Frere-Jones wrote in the New Yorker: "I call it 'hotel music.' Record stores call it 'downtempo.' You may have your own term. … The music started in England, at some point in the mid-nineteen-eighties, as acid jazz, an undemonstrative blend of jazz and funk. Over time, it absorbed the skipping digital rhythms of jungle. … Shrift's 'Lost in a Moment' … fits neatly into this genre, with a distinct difference: it's really good. Shrift turns the innate gentility of the music into actual grace, and the singer Nina Miranda has a voice like a rough cotton washcloth -- comforting, but not without some pleasantly unpredictable bumps. 'Lost in a Moment' is cast in a vaguely Brazilian color. … [T]here is a deep sense of physical pleasure to Shrift's music, which is made mostly by Miranda and the British musician Dennis Wheatley. There are brisk moments like 'To the Floor,' a snippet of seventies disco filtered through several other musical memories, but more typical is 'Snow Samba,' a slow and diaphanous blend of Brazilian percussion and Miranda's singing in Portuguese, neither element taking the lead" ("Pop Notes: Subtle Charms," 3/20/06, p. 32).