Tarbox Ramblers: Tarbox Ramblers

CML call number: CD COUNTRY Tarbox
Joshua Mamis wrote in the New Haven Advocate: "Back in the day, when Bukka White was singing 'Shake ’Em On Down,' old-timey music was punk, it was garage, it was devil’s music. While everyone else was singing hymns … these guys were rocking and rolling. … The guitar on the first cut of The Tarbox Ramblers’ debut disc reminds you of those long-ago rave-ups. A jagged fuzz-toned slide, jackhammers through the traditional blues of 'Jack of Diamonds,' establishing The Tarbox Ramblers as high-octane reinterpreters of long-forgotten rough-cut gems from the hillbilly songbook — including White’s 'Shake’Em On Down.' … The rest of The Tarbox Ramblers’ debut album (released in 2000) scorches, with an unlikely fiddle-and-electric slide combo and whomping 4/4 drumming revving up a slate of traditional tunes, as if John Lee Hooker stared down the rambunctiousness of the Skillet Lickers and sucked the yee-haw right into his Gibson. That disc … proved [Michael] Tarbox was that rare musicologist willing to pay tribute to those who influenced him by putting his own jagged stamp on the material" ("Oh, Didn't He Ramble," 4/19/07).

Good Night, and Good Luck: Music From and Inspired By the Motion Picture

CML call number: CD SOUNDTRACKS Good
Ben Ratliff wrote in the New York Times: "'I work with my ear and try to make it feel right, or I just keep changing it until I like the way it tastes.' So does every musician. But from Dianne Reeves this formula sounds excessively humble. Ms. Reeves isn't stumbling around in the dark; she has the training, the tools, the instrument. Hers is a big and forthright voice, one that sounds as if it might have been trained over the blare of a touring big band, except that such a model hardly exists anymore. She is a jazz singer who has absorbed some of the loftiest and most difficult models: Sarah Vaughan, Betty Carter, Shirley Horn. She treats standards with skyscraper authority, drawing a circle of repertory wide enough to include material from her favorite singer-songwriters; she has her own vocal and performance devices, subdividing vowels into a dozen notes, pouring forth welcomes and singsong advice to her audience. Her most recent record, which won her a fourth Grammy Award, was the soundtrack to the 2005 film 'Good Night, and Good Luck,' in which she climbs into the 1950s without affectation" (4/20/07).

Kings of Leon: Because of the Times

CML call number: CD ROCK Kings
Rob Sheffield wrote in Rolling Stone: "They don't make seven-minute doomed-teen-lover melodramas like the Kings of Leon's 'Knocked Up' anymore. This is the Tennessee band's big album-opening saga, building from quiet to loud with guitar licks that sound like the Edge fried in okra, with ominous thunderclap drumrolls. Caleb Followill chokes on his story: He and his cowgirl are gonna have a baby, her mama don't like it, they don't care, they're hitting the road in a Coupe de Ville, no doubt just one step ahead of The Man. 'I've taken all I've had to take/This takin's gonna shake me,' Caleb declares with his usual throaty passion, gunning for the border as the guitars weave between U2 and Uriah Heep. Car + girl + lots and lots of guitar = 'Knocked Up.' Kings of Leon make it sound so simple — and so funny — they make you forget how many other bands go soft trying to run this same road. It's an excellent opener to an excellent third album from the Kings. Because of the Times … is a whole album full of songs inspired by the only topic the Kings seem to care about: no-good women, the kind who turn nice country boys into thieves."

Matt Wilson's Arts & Crafts: The Scenic Route

CML call number: CD JAZZ Wilson
Bill Carbone wrote in the New Haven Advocate: "'The new record is a joy,' Wilson commented in a recent phone interview. '[Arts and Crafts] has been playing together so much it’s a real band.' … A joy indeed. … The album’s opener and title track, which sounds like Ornette Coleman and Jack McDuff jamming at a ’50s beach party, features the Hammond B3 organ of Arts and Crafts’ newest member Gary Versace plus Wilson’s Sidewinder-inspired funky bossa drumming. This twist has a twist: the dance alternates between measures of 10 and 12 beats before breaking down altogether into free improvisation. Arts and Crafts also look to the left while on The Scenic Route. Both Ornette Coleman’s mach-speed 'Rejoicing' and Wilson’s own 'In Touch With Dewey' feature the melodic collective improvisation of the Coleman free-bop school and Wilson’s characteristically refined drum solos. And, as an elegantly poignant closing statement, Albert Ayler’s 'Our Prayer' and Lennon and McCartney’s 'Give Peace A Chance' are set together above a bed of Versace’s accordion and Wilson’s brush circles" (4/26/07).

Ingram Marshall: Kingdom Come

CML call number: CD CLASSICAL Marshall
Anne Midgette wrote in the New York Times: "Sentiment is not a quality often associated with concerts of new music. So a friend of mine was struck, after a performance of new work by the American Composers Orchestra some years ago, to find two industry insiders in the audience reduced to tears, simply because they found one of the pieces so beautiful. It was 'Kingdom Come,' by Ingram Marshall. Plenty of people describe 'Kingdom Come' in terms reserved for masterworks. Steve Reich, the composer, apostrophized it as 'some of the most beautiful music I've heard.' Mark Swed, the music critic of The Los Angeles Times, called it 'downright addictive' in a review of the CD. … [I]t's odd that Mr. Marshall, at nearly 65, remains something of a musician's musician. … He has been churning out a steady stream of works that have been performed and recorded in notable places. … So why isn't he better known? Is it his relatively slow output? … Or just that Mr. Marshall, a soft-spoken and gentle man … spends more time writing music in his studio in Hamden, Conn. … than playing the game of composer hustle?" (4/13/07).

Chuck Brown: We're About the Business

CML call number: CD R&B Brown
Jon Pareles wrote in the New York Times: "In a sharp suit, black fedora and sunglasses, with a gold tooth glinting and a well-traveled guitar in his hands, Chuck Brown, 72, was the image of a classic bluesman leading his band at Joe’s Pub on Thursday night. But he wasn’t playing the blues: he was playing go-go, the dance-club music from Washington that has survived long enough to be a tradition of its own. Mr. Brown was a pioneer of go-go in the 1970s. In marathon live sets, he used a midtempo, Latin-tinged beat to string together old and new songs, merging the variety of a disc-jockey set with the sweaty teamwork of a funk band. Not too fast but deeply funky, the go-go beat was made for dancing all night long. Go-go was going to be the next big thing in the ’80s. … But despite a movie about the music … go-go couldn’t translate its live pleasures into radio hits. It’s still a regional phenomenon, and with Mr. Brown’s band, it’s still a delight. … Mr. Brown brought on his daughter KK to rap on 'Chucky Baby,' a song from his new album, 'We’re About the Business' (Raw Venture)" ("Still Soulful, Still Swinging, Still Ready to Bust Loose," 4/21/07).

Huang Ruo: Chamber Concerto Cycle (2000-2002)

CML call number: CD CLASSICAL Huang
Allan Kozinn wrote in the New York Times: "Mr. Huang was born in 1976 on Hainan Island, in southern China, and grew up in Guangzhou, not far from Hong Kong. … 'I grew up in a China where people started to wear bluejeans,' Mr. Huang said, 'and where we would listen to Bach at the same time as pop songs. It could be Michael Jackson, it could be the Beatles. And Stravinsky's music came to China. I remember hearing 'The Rite of Spring' and thinking, "My, I haven't heard anything like this before."' … Mr. Huang came to the United States in 1995, after he won the Henry Mancini prize at the International Film and Music Festival in Switzerland. … He has established himself quickly. Another competition victory in 2000 led to a performance of his 'Three Pieces for Orchestra' by the Philadelphia Orchestra. Since then, his list of works has expanded substantially, with music for orchestra, chamber ensembles, solo instruments and voice. His four chamber concertos, which made a powerful impression when they were performed at the Miller Theater in 2003, have just been released on CD by Naxos" (4/14/07).

Martina McBride: Waking Up Laughing

CML call number: CD COUNTRY McBride
Kelefa Sanneh wrote in the New York Times: "More than just about any other singer Ms. McBride knows how to deliver a heavy-handed message with a light touch. Because she keeps her phrasing gentle as the melody soars, you get the feeling she really likes these characters, who suffer so much on her behalf. There's plenty of suffering on 'Waking Up Laughing.' A girlfriend is verbally abused, a niece is molested, a pregnant bride is married and then miscarries; no one does suburban melodrama like Ms. McBride. Yet the mood is upbeat, as the title suggests. This is the first Martina McBride album she produced herself. … 'Tryin' to Find a Reason' is a first-rate power ballad. … And then there's 'Anyway,' which Ms. McBride wrote with the Warren Brothers, a country duo. Until now she has been known only as an interpreter, and this is an audacious way to branch out: with a supersized inspirational ballad. From the first piano chord you know what's coming: quiet verses, triumphant choruses, an avalanche of strings. But that doesn't make it any less pleasurable, the first time or the 15th" (4/2/07).

John Adams: Naive and Sentimental Music

CML call number: CD CLASSICAL Adams
Contents: Naive and Sentimental Music: I. Naive and Sentimental Music (18:10); II. Mother of the Man (15:09) ; III. Chain to the Rhythm (11:00).
Personnel: Los Angeles Philharmonic; Esa-Pekka Salonen, conductor; David Tanenbaum, guitar.
From the notes by Ingram Marshall: "In choosing to call this large work Naive and Sentimental Music, John Adams … is using these words in the sense they were used two centuries ago by the German poet Friedrich von Schiller. … The 'naive' are the unconscious ones, 'for whom art is a natural form of expression, uncompromised by self-analysis or worry over its place in the historical continuum,' as Adams wrote in a note for the first performance. The sentimental artist, being self-aware, tries to find the lost unity of the naive; he is essentially a searcher. …"
Alex Ross wrote in the New Yorker: "A recent performance of Adams's monumental California symphony, 'Naive and Sentimental Music,' in the [LA Philharmonic] Orchestra's Casual Fridays series … drew a nearly full house." ("The Anti-Maestro," 4/30/07, pp. 67-68).

Nine Inch Nails: Year Zero

CML call number: CD ROCK Nine
Eric R. Danton wrote in his Hartford Courant blog Sound Check: "Nine Inch Nails' new project isn't just an album. 'Year Zero' is a multi-platform work of art that envisions a dystopian United States about 15 years in the future, where citizens are pacified by way of a drug added to the water supply to 'protect' against bioterrorism, and the world is shadowed by the Presence — what appears to witnesses to be a giant hand descending from the heavens. Trent Reznor and co. have gone to great lengths to create their alternate reality, including leaking music on USB drives left in bathrooms at NIN concerts in Europe and building layer upon layer of official looking websites. Even the CD portion of 'Year Zero' feeds into the concept. There's a warning label on the back from the 'United States Bureau of Morality' with a number to call to report people who have 'engaged in subversive acts.' … What's scary is that this doesn't seem as far-fetched as it should. …"
Listening to Year Zero reminds me of songs by the great Frank Zappa like "Who Are the Brain Police?" and "Concentration Moon" — different attitude, but pretty much the same nightmare.

Beethoven 5 and 7; Gustavo Dudamel, conductor

CML call number: CD CLASSICAL Beethoven
Alex Ross wrote in the New Yorker: "The incoming music director [of the LA Philharmonic, Gustavo Dudamel] was born in Barquisimeto, Venezuela, in 1981. … He studied music from an early age, learning the basics of notation and theory before he took up an instrument, the violin, at the age of ten. He showed an interest in composition, and, at one of his early conducting gigs, at the age of fifteen, he led his own Trombone Concerto. Conducting quickly took over, and by his late teens he was leading ninety concerts a year with the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra, the chief ensemble in Venezuela's youth-ensemble system. … Having won notice at the Bamberg competition in 2004, Dudamel found himself in the tricky position of being hailed as a savior of classical music. It only added to the furor that he was a non-Caucasian face in an industry suffering from the appearance of élitism. Last year, Deutsche Grammophon recorded him leading Beethoven's Fifth and Seventh Symphonies with the youth orchestra. … [T]he interpretations were expertly handled" ("The Anti-Maestro," 4/30/07, p. 70).

Richard Strauss: Die Ägyptische Helena

CML call number: CD OPERA Strauss
Anthony Tommasini wrote in the New York Times: "[Deborah] Voigt sang the [title] role in a concert performance at Avery Fisher Hall with the American Symphony Orchestra in 2002, available on a Telarc recording. … Strauss and the librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal had long talked of writing an opera about the mythical Helen of Troy, the wife of Menelaus, who is abducted by Paris. … But they were drawn to an alternate version of the tale, best known through Euripides, in which Paris runs off with a phantom Helen created by the goddess Hera, while the real Helen remains captive in Egypt until she is eventually reunited with her husband. The operatic 'Helena' has a wry, contemporary twist. … The creators … set out to write a lyrically rich and poetic yet lighthearted and buoyant opera. But the libretto is verbose and philosophical, cluttered with convoluted subplots. Strauss responded with music that at times sounds unfocused and generic: Is a passage heroic or mock-heroic? Opulently lyrical or intentionally over the top? Even on automatic pilot, though, Strauss is still Strauss" ("That Face of Beauty …," 3/17/07).

Kenny Werner: Lawn Chair Society

CML call number: CD JAZZ Werner
Ben Ratliff wrote in the New York Times: "Occasionally you hear jazz performed that’s so detailed, chiseled and compressed with energy that it’s hard to imagine the musicians doing it twice a night, six nights in a row. Such is the case with the pianist Kenny Werner’s quintet at Dizzy’s Club this week. Mr. Werner’s career has been all over the place for 25 years: a long-running trio that never quite rose above the hedges, long-standing gigs with the harmonica player Toots Thielemans and the singer Betty Buckley. He is a radical melodic improviser and a strong, logical organizer of rhythm and harmony. He processes a lot, all the time, and often produces music that’s pleasant and easy on the outside, but rippling with incident: shifts in meter, tempo and tonality. His quintet at Dizzy’s includes Chris Potter on tenor saxophone, Nicholas Payton on trumpet, Hans Glawischnig on bass and Brian Blade on drums. The gig is a consequence of Mr. Werner’s very good new album, 'Lawn Chair Society.' … It isn’t a working band. … Yet it was crazy how much it behaved like one, in the old-fashioned sense of steady comportment … across consecutive solos. …"

Mary Weiss: Dangerous Game

CML call number: CD ROCK Weiss
Anna Blumenthal wrote in the New York Times: "She still sucks lollipops and wears high-heel boots. … Mary Weiss, 58, was barely a teenager when she formed the Shangri-Las and quickly rose to fame with the hit 'Leader of the Pack,' a boyfriend-from-the-wrong-side-of-town anthem of youthful rebellion and doomed love, featuring her high-pitched yet sultry voice set against roaring motorcycles. Now the naïve teenager who inspired groups from the Runaways to Blondie to the Donnas has returned to the studio for the first time in 40 years. 'I did know that someday I would do this,' she said. 'But it had to be with the right people.' Her album 'Dangerous Game,' due out Tuesday on Norton Records, is equal parts 1967 and 2007: a catchy, modern garage-rock record with a discernible Shangri-Las feel — and even one Shangri-Las cover, the carefree 'Heaven Only Knows.' The tear-your-hair-out emotional desperation that drew scores of teenagers to the Shangri-Las' music is still there, but Ms. Weiss's deeper, more seasoned voice lends an air of maturity lacking in her piercing vocals as a 15-year-old" ("40 Years Between Records," 3/4/07).

Robert Glasper: In My Element

CML call number: CD JAZZ Glasper
Ben Ratliff wrote in the New York Times: "The depth of the pianist Robert Glasper's art so far has been about coordination: making all members of his piano trio move together as a single organism. It's the best part of his gigs, this stealthy motion; it's coordinated and dense. … Mr. Glasper still claims hip-hop as fertile source material. On half the record the drummer Damion Reid and the bassist Vicente Archer play spongey, changeable adaptations of hip-hop rhythm tracks, and Mr. Glasper himself plays as if he's a living sample, running off a truncated-sounding series of chord changes and playing them with the trio in a kind of real-time loop. When he does this at length, in the gospel-influenced 'Y'outta Praise Him,' it sounds like a new kind of songwriting. In 'J Dillalude' he folds the idea back on itself again, isolating clips of himself and the band playing this way for short stretches and then running the clips together into a digital pastiche. These aren't the only song fragments on the record. … (His mashed-together versions of Herbie Hancock's 'Maiden Voyage' and Radiohead's 'Everything in Its Right Place' qualify as fragments too.)" (3/19/07)

Noisettes: What's the Time Mr. Wolf?

CML call number: CD ROCK Noisettes
Sasha Frere-Jones wrote in the New Yorker: "'What’s the Time Mr. Wolf?' [is] a smart, relentlessly exuberant thirty-eight-minute demonstration of chutzpah and musicianship, despite the band’s affinity with the fizzy amateur energy of punk. The twenty-six-year-old singer Shingai Shoniwa … looks like an African supermodel. … Shoniwa’s voice occasionally sounds a bit like PJ Harvey’s, especially on the pounding 'IWE,' if Harvey were a bit higher on life. There are moments when Shoniwa screams like a 1976 punk, and then drops down and sings like a balladeer. The range of 'What’s the Time Mr. Wolf?' is flummoxing in the most pleasant way. 'Cannot Even (Break Free)' is a waltz that starts like one of Radiohead’s quieter moments, forgets what it’s doing, and turns into a Led Zeppelin song with an extremely sharp edge. 'Don’t Give Up' will make more than one person think of a very hopped-up version of the White Stripes, while 'Count of Monte Christo [sic]' is a sunny acoustic number that might make it past a Norah Jones fan. Except for this bit when Shoniwa starts to, well, let loose" ("Pop Notes: The Shoniwa Show," 4/16/07).

Pat Metheny and Brad Mehldau: Metheny Mehldau

CML call number: CD JAZZ Metheny
Nate Chinen wrote in the New York Times: "[T]he guitarist Pat Metheny and the pianist Brad Mehldau … have been combining two of modern jazz's most distinctive personalities. … Each has developed an individual solo vocabulary on his instrument, as well as a deep attunement to ensemble interplay. Both are dedicated students of the post-bop jazz tradition who have also been deeply influenced by classical music, Brazilian music and harmonically sophisticated pop. … 'Brad's appearance on the scene was really significant to me,' Mr. Metheny said. … 'Brad embodies the quest for taking ideas and letting them sort of bloom in really extended ways.' … Naturally that quest is a guiding force of 'Metheny Mehldau,' which consists almost entirely of duets. … 'Annie's Bittersweet Cake,' a piece by Mr. Mehldau, has a discursive melody that Mr. Metheny happily executes and then expands. And on 'Make Peace,' one of Mr. Metheny's pastoral tunes, Mr. Mehldau employs a subtle chromaticism while his partner strums in the background. Even at its most rarefied, their rapport sounds easy" ("A Mutual Inspiration Society in Action," 4/8/07).

Charlie Louvin: Charlie Louvin

CML call number: CD COUNTRY Louvin
Jon Pareles wrote in the New York Times: "Charlie Louvin, 79, understands what made him a country music trailblazer. 'This is an extremely morbid song,' he said onstage on Thursday night at the Gramercy Theater, introducing 'Knoxville Girl,' a song narrated by a man who murders the woman he loves. It was, Mr. Louvin continued, the most requested song during his years in the Louvin Brothers, his duo with his older brother, Ira, who died in 1965. With their country hits in the 1950s, the Louvin Brothers became renowned for their close, consonant harmonies … and for songs that saw every grim possibility even when they set out to be optimistic. Another Louvin Brothers song in his set, 'Great Atomic Power,' preaches that Christian faith will help souls survive a nuclear holocaust, but not before it describes how 'a terrible explosion may ring down upon our land.' … Mr. Louvin remade both of those songs for his new album, 'Charlie Louvin' … his first studio album in 10 years, which features duets with George Jones, Elvis Costello, Jeff Tweedy of Wilco and others" ("Music in Review: Charlie Louvin," 3/10/07).