Nels Cline: New Monastery

CML call number: CD JAZZ Cline
Nate Chinen wrote in the New York Times: "The pianist Andrew Hill makes music of deep reflection and patient discovery. For most of his long career he has stayed faithful to a mode of abstraction steeped in his own preoccupations: enigmatic harmony, elasticized rhythm, a multilayered arrangement of texture and pulse. When he plays his own compositions — and he rarely plays anything else — he can create the impression of elusive and flickering beauty. In a lunch-hour concert on Thursday at Trinity Church, Mr. Hill developed that feeling into an enveloping sensation. … The haunting depth of that performance was a reminder of why other musicians rarely try to play Mr. Hill’s music. One noteworthy exception is the guitarist Nels Cline, who released an excellent album last year called 'New Monastery: A View Into the Music of Andrew Hill.' … Mr. Cline happened to be booked at the Jazz Standard on Thursday night, and his six-piece group sounded fierce. Mr. Cline is a resourceful improviser with a strong connection to experimental rock, and he brings a radiant, noisy extroversion to Mr. Hill’s music" (3/31/07).

Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, Ray Price: Last of the Breed

CML call number: CD COUNTRY Nelson
Ben Ratliff wrote in the New York Times: "Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard — that just would have been easy business. And, put in terms of copyright and back catalog, it would have been a follow-through on 'Pancho and Lefty,' the hit record they made together almost 25 years ago. But to triangulate them with Ray Price, as the new record 'Last of the Breed' does, is to structure a summit meeting on honky-tonk singing. The three singers are connected by lots of small résumé items … but also in one big way. They are all magnetized toward the sound of Bob Wills’s Texas swing. Mr. Haggard, for his part, seems drawn to the kind of frontman Wills was: a sporadic fiddle player, spontaneous organizer of arrangements and agent of the unpredictable. Mr. Price, for his part, long ago adapted Wills’s twin-fiddle breaks, folding them into nearly all his honky-tonk hits of the 1950s and ’60s. As for Mr. Nelson, a Texan, a country singer and an improviser, Wills is part of his light and air. … There are 22 songs on the album, from the repertory of their favorite ’40s and ’50s country songwriters" ("A Half-Century of Honky-Tonk With a Trove of Hits," 3/24/07).

Amon Tobin: The Foley Room

CML call number: CD JAZZ Tobin
Sean Cooper wrote in Wired: "Like every good DJ, Amon Tobin tends to make new music by plundering vintage vinyl for cool snippets. But for his sixth album, the Brazilian beat junkie decided to take sampling to another level. He's turned everyday noises — a hive of wasps, a shimmying Slinky, a whirling eggbeater — into richly textured trip hop. To make The Foley Room, Tobin camped out in a studio typically used by sound engineers to record door slams and footsteps for movies. 'A Foley room is acoustically dead,' Tobin says. 'It makes everything raw with no spatial coloration, which means you can make the sound do whatever you want.' To find some of his 'performers,' Tobin ventured out with an omnidirectional mic, capturing everything from someone singing in the shower to a lion devouring a piece of meat. With roughly half a terabyte of material, he then used a technique called convolution reverb to stretch his from-scratch samples into full-fledged songs. The roar of a Harley got warped into a pounding bass line. That hive of wasps — total divas — became a humming groove" ("Play: Music: Amon Tobin Bugs Out," 4/07, p. 96).

Il Divino Boemo (Symphonies of Josef Myslivecek)

CML call number: CD CLASSICAL Myslivecek
Daniel J. Wakin wrote in the New York Times: "A few brush strokes have come to define the otherwise obscure 18th-century composer later known as Il Divino Boemo, or the Divine Bohemian: Josef Myslivecek. He was a close friend of Mozart and a musical influence on him. He was one of the most celebrated opera composers in Italy in the 1770s. … Concerto Köln has just released a recording of symphonies, 'Il Divino Boemo.' … Myslivecek's music has its own merits. It is sprightly, modestly inventive, melodically pleasing. Just as much, it provides a slice of context for the works of Mozart, a composer of truly divine spark whose friendship with Myslivecek is one of the more touching stories in classical music. 'He was unquestionably one of the greatest models for the young Mozart in composition, and he had a close personal relationship with Mozart that was unique,' said Daniel E. Freeman, a lecturer in music at the University of Minnesota. … 'There is no other composer in his entire life,' Mr. Freeman said, for whom Mozart 'expressed such affection'" ("A Composer Forgotten to All but Mozart," 3/4/07).

Bloc Party: A Weekend in the City

CML call number: CD ROCK Bloc
Kelefa Sanneh wrote in the New York Times: "[T]he second of two sold-out appearances by Bloc Party … was the first of an impressive series of shows at United Palace. … [Kele] Okereke and his bandmates were here to celebrate 'A Weekend in the City' … their gloomy but spirited second album. It’s hard to be optimistic about a CD, or a concert, that begins with the line, 'I am trying to be heroic in an age of modernity.' On Saturday night the mood improved when the band came crashing in, which is exactly what happens on the CD. … 'A Weekend in the City' often sags under the weight of Mr. Okereke’s sighing: 'We’re so handsome and we’re so bored/So entertain us,' he moans. (Smells like teen dispiritedness.) In some ways it feels like a paradigmatic second album. … But it has its moments, especially 'I Still Remember,' a tantalizing account of a gay romance that never quite happens. And on Saturday night the members proved that their greatest asset is antsiness. Matt Tong, the drummer, plays fast but glitchy, so that the rhythm never stays steady; even the slower songs were all herky-jerky" ("Post-Punk Makes Home in the Palace," 4/2/07).

Schumann: Fantasie, Kreisleriana, Arabeske

CML call number: CD CLASSICAL Schumann
Alex Ross wrote in the New Yorker : "Jonathan Biss … recently appeared in New York, trailing the release of … an all-Schumann disk on the E.M.I. label. … On the program were … Schumann’s 'Kreisleriana.' Biss offered no radical reinterpretations, but at almost any given moment he seemed to be making the right artistic choice. The slow sections of 'Kreisleriana' … magically approximated the sound of one man thinking aloud. … There’s something almost surreal in the sight and sound of a twenty-six-year-old playing with such unerring sophistication. Listening blind, you might take Biss to be an elderly gentleman of Budapest or Prague, one who has a faint childhood memory of what life was like before Hitler and TV. Sometimes I found myself wishing, perversely, that he would do something peculiar or crude, just for the sake of variety. Lang Lang is the kind of performer you really want to hear when he has grown up a bit. … Biss, on the other hand, may someday wish to take a few more risks, to push against the flow of the music that he understands so well. Then again, why would he want to play differently when he is so close to perfection?"

Modest Mouse: We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank

CML call number: CD ROCK Modest
Personnel: Isaac Brock, Jeremiah Green, Eric Judy, Johnny Marr, Tom Peloso, Joe Plummer.
Contents: March into the sea (3:30) — Dashboard (4:08) — Fire it up (4:34) — Florida (2:57) — Parting of the sensory (5:32) — Missed the boat (4:26) — We've got everything (3:40) — Fly trapped in a jar (4:29) — Education (3:56) — Little motel (4:44) — Steam engenius (4:26) — Spitting venom (8:27) — People as places as people (3:42) — Invisible (3:59).
Wired wrote: "Bad news for people who dig bad news (namely music critics): Modest Mouse's third major-label album is damn good. Much like fellow breakout group the Shins, this former indie fave is proving that popular doesn't have to mean mediocre. As the title suggests, We Were Dead... sounds like a collection of frenzied chanteys, with frontman Isaac Brock fearlessly sailing back and forth from Leonard Cohen to Lux Interior. New bandmate Johnny Marr (yes, the legendary ex-Smiths guitarist) keeps it all afloat with his virtuoso twanging" ("Playlist: What's Wired This Month," 4/07, p. 83).

Andrew Bird: Armchair Apocrypha

CML call number: CD ROCK Bird
Contents: Fiery crash — Imitosis — Plasticities — Heretics — Armchairs — Darkmatter — Simple X — Supine — Cataracts — Scythian empires — Spare-Ohs — Yawn at the apocalypse.
Eric R. Danton wrote in his Hartford Courant blog Sound Check: "[W]e went to see Andrew Bird. … He focused mainly on his excellent new record, 'Armchair Apocrypha' (out March 20 on Fat Possum). The Chicago musician just gets better on stage every time I see him, and he was pretty good to start. He's added a bass player to his live lineup, which also features drummer Martin Dosh, and the low-end helps shape the presence of his songs on stage. He sings, plays violin, guitar and xylophone, and whistles. It's fascinating to watch him record and loop a violin part, then add a guitar figure on top of it and whistle counter-melodies between verses. He's already toying with the arrangements of his new songs, which made for a thrilling ride on a fierce version of 'Plasticities' as the noodly, meandering verses resolved into a tight, defiant-sounding chorus. He also drew a huge crowd (for SXSW, anyway), which was heartening to see" (3/17/07).

Metheny Mehldau: Quartet

CML call number: CD JAZZ Metheny
Ben Ratliff wrote in the New York Times: "On much of the second collaboration between the guitarist Pat Metheny and the pianist Brad Mehldau, time decelerates; music seems to hang in the air by an invisible string. This streamlined, weightless feeling has been rigorously worked out for more than a decade by Mr. Mehldau's trio, and here it's his gift to Mr. Metheny. Conversely Mr. Metheny's work … gave this pianist an open, pastoral-sounding harmonic vocabulary to build on in his formation as a composer and improviser. The music on 'Quartet' … keeps changing. Some tracks have tight pop surfaces; some are bumpier with swing rhythm and dissonant chords; some are piano-and-guitar duets; one, Mr. Metheny's 'Towards the Light,' has a nimbuslike atmosphere, with echo on Mr. Mehldau's piano, a long solo from Mr. Metheny's hornlike guitar-synthesizer. … Mr. Metheny can completely alter the character of someone else's chord changes. Here … the collaboration seems to have started long before the two musicians got together. … It's a strong foundation for working together" ("Critics' Choice: New CDs," 3/12/07).

Grizzly Bear: Yellow House

CML call number: CD ROCK Grizzly
Jon Pareles wrote in the New York Times: "[T]he music alone created a psychedelic haze when Grizzly Bear, Beach House and the Papercuts performed at the Bowery Ballroom on Wednesday night. Harking back to the 1960s, with some technological upgrades, all three bands prize songs as reveries: havens of slow-motion drone and drift. For Grizzly Bear that drift can lead in countless unforeseen directions: from folky picking to rippling vocal harmonies to imposing instrumental anthems. The band has two guitarists and songwriters: Edward Droste, who started the group with the drummer Christopher Bear, and Daniel Rossen, who joined it for its superb 2006 album, 'Yellow House.' … Grizzly Bear's songs usually have sparse lyrics and long instrumental episodes, but there's hardly any jamming; it's not that kind of psychedelic band. Each song follows its own predetermined and winding path, from oblique introspection to lush chorale to twinkly interludes and brawny guitar chords, not necessarily in that order. Grizzly Bear's songs usually take their time, rambling wherever they want in fascinating itineraries" ("Three Bands on Trips …," 3/9/07).

Snow Patrol: Eyes Open

CML call number: CD ROCK Snow
Jessica Herndon wrote in People: "The Irish band behind the hit 'Chasing Cars' (off the CD Eyes Open) is chasing fans on a U.S. tour through April 6. We caught up with frontman Gary Lightbody, 30. … ON HAVING 'CHASING CARS' PLAYED ON GREY'S ANATOMY 'It was pretty wild that it had such an impact. We hadn't heard much about the show. I can't watch any medical dramas because I get quite queasy. But The Simpsons would be kind of cool to have our music on. Even if it was just so Homer could say that he didn't like us.' ON ONCE OPENING FOR U2 'It was amazing. We learned a lot from them. When you tour with U2, you can't help but see how your show pales in comparison to theirs. You have an inflated view of who they are, but when you meet them they're normal guys.' ON THEIR FAVORITE U.S. TOUR STOP 'We have a soft spot for Seattle because of all of the music from there that inspired us: Nirvana, Mudhoney, Soundgarden. We looked to American music rather than British music when we were growing up" ("Picks & Pans: Music: Snow Garden Sounds Off," 3/19/07, p. 47).

Dr. Dog: We All Belong

CML call number: CD POPULAR Dr.
Personnel: Brendan Cooney, Dan Scofield, John Pettit, Carlos Santiago, Mel Leaman.
Contents: Old news — My old ways — Keep a friend — The girl — Alaska — Weekend — Ain't it strange — Worst trip — The way the lazy do — Die, die, die — We all belong.
Chris Strauss wrote in People: "Given the late '60s, low-fi feel of their latest record, it's no surprise that two members of Philly quintet Dr. Dog once moonlighted in a Beach Boys cover band. Wearing their heavy Pet Sounds and late-era Beatles influences on their sleeves, bassist Toby Leaman and guitarist Scott McMicken share songwriting and vocal duties, creating layered harmonies on the perfect pop of 'My Old Ways' and 'Ain't It Strange,' which you almost expect to be encrypted with a subliminal message declaring that 'Paul is dead.' They even stop by Cripple Creek on the way to 'Alaska,' a rootsy throwback reminiscent of the Band. While some might criticize Dr. Dog for such idol worship, it's hard to find fault when the result is this enjoyable, appealing to both indie hipsters and their baby-boom parents" ("Picks & Pans: Music," 3/19/07, p. 45).

Harry Connick, Jr.: Chanson du Vieux Carré

CML call number: CD JAZZ Connick
Contents: Someday you'll be sorry (Armstrong) — Panama (Tyers) — Ash Wednesday (Connick) — Chanson du Vieux Carré (Connick) — Bourbon Street parade (Barbarin) — Petite fleur (Bechet) — Fidgety feet (Edwards, LaRocca, Ragas, Sbarbaro, Shields) — Luscious (Connick) — New Orleans (Carmichael) — I still get jealous (Cahn, Styne) — That's a plenty (Pollack) — Mardi Gras in New Orleans (Byrd).
Personnel: Harry Connick, Jr., arr., orch., cond., piano; Neal Caine, bass; Arthur Latin, drums; Charles "Ned" Goold, James Greene, alto saxophone; Jerry Weldon, Mike Karn, tenor saxophone; Dave Schumacher, baritone saxophone; Roger Ingram, Derrick Gardner, Joe Magnarelli, trumpet; Leroy Jones, trumpet and vocals; Mark Mullins, Craig Klein, John Allred, trombone; Lucien Barbarin, trombone and vocals; Joe Barati, bass trombone.
From the notes: "this recording is a compilation of traditional new orleans music and original music about new orleans, as well as songs that i associated with new orleans. …"

The Broken West: I Can't Go On, I'll Go On

CML call number: CD ROCK Broken
Contents: On the bubble — So it goes — Down in the valley — Shiftee — Brass ring — Big city — You can build an island — Hale sunrise — Abigail — Slow — Baby on my arm — Like a light.
Eric R. Danton wrote in his Hartford Courant blog Sound Check: "Band I want to see again at SXSW: The Broken West. I love the song 'Down in the Valley' on the group's recent album, 'I Can't Go On, I'll Go On,' but the Los Angeles jangling roots rockers seemed frazzled during their showcase Wednesday night. I suspect part of it was nerves, and singer/guitarist Ross Flournoy told me Thursday there were some technical difficulties, too. Either way, I'd like very much to give them another chance. Plus, the chorus to that song has been stuck in my head for two days. (Flournoy also told me that guitarist Dan Iead is from Connecticut.)"
Spoiler alert! The album's title is taken from the closing words of Samuel Beckett's novel The Unnamable. It is also the title of a selection from Beckett's work edited and introduced by Richard W. Seaver.

Bright Eyes: Four Winds

CML call number: CD ROCK Bright
Kelefa Sanneh wrote in the New York Times: "[Conor] Oberst, 27, has been the main — sometimes the only — member of Bright Eyes for more than a decade. … Friday's concert … celebrated the release of a six-song CD, 'Four Winds.' … Backed by a ragged but solid band that included … fellow singer-songwriter M. Ward … Mr. Oberst barreled through a handful of old songs and a fistful of new ones. Perhaps none was better than the new single, 'Four Winds,' a scuffed-up folk-rock song. … Mr. Oberst conjured up a chaotic world: 'Your class, your caste, your country, sect, your name or your tribe/There's people always dying trying to keep 'em alive/There's bodies decomposing in containers tonight.' A few years ago Mr. Oberst might have tried to tidy up this mess. But now, even as the ringing chorus — one of his grandest — arrived, this song remained elusive. There were references to poets and psychics and American Indian burial grounds, to the Whore of Babylon and 'Great Satan.' Somehow it all fit into four buoyant minutes. He sounded less like a kid raging at the world and more like a guy trying to live in it."