Dropkick Murphys: The Warrior's Code

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Lisa Robinson wrote in Vanity Fair: "The year's most exciting movie song? Boston-based punk band Dropkick Murphys' 'I'm Shipping Up to Boston,' from the Martin Scorsese masterpiece The Departed. The song has an intensity that embodies the guts and energy of the movie and is another in a long list of music that the director — a renowned music fan — has brilliantly utilized in his work. He's made impeccable choices: the Ronettes in Mean Streets, Bernard Herrmann's Taxi Driver score, the Cavalleria Rusticana Intermezzo in Raging Bull, the Rolling Stones in GoodFellas, Mickey and Sylvia's 'Love Is Strange' in Casino, just to name a few. The Dropkick Murphys number, originally on the band's 2005 CD, The Warrior's Code, was inspired by an unpublished Woody Guthrie lyric and has a hard-core bagpipe stomp that puts other bands who consider themselves punk rock to shame. It's included on the Departed soundtrack CD — along with songs from the Stones, the Beach Boys, the Band, Van Morrison, and LaVern Baker. Kudos to Scorsese" ("Fanfair: Hot Tracks," 3/07, p. 216).

Glenn Kotche: Mobile

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Alex Ross wrote in the New Yorker: "[T]here's more new music in the city than ever before. … An exceptionally vital group of young composers is driving the proliferation of new music. As they pontificate on blogs and Web sites such as Sequenza21 and NewMusicBox, distribute music via MySpace pages and Internet radio, and post flyers for their shows, they act for all the world like unsigned rockers trying to make it in the city. Some, like Christopher Tignor, have adopted a double identity, studying composition by day (in Tignor’s case, at Princeton) and playing by night in a post-rock band (Slow Six). Classifying their work becomes tricky; many composers of Tignor’s generation are erasing the line between classical and pop, dispensing with performers in favor of laptops, incorporating improvisation and world-music practices, or singing their own art songs in semi-pop style. Complicating the picture further is a new breed of pop artist who composes on the side. Glenn Kotche, the drummer of Wilco, has released an album of solo works on Nonesuch. …" ("Club Acts: New York's Vital New-Music Scene," 4/16/07).

Threat Signal: Under Reprisal

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Michael Levy wrote in the New Haven Advocate: "Thank goodness (or darkness) for the metal underground. A host of below-the-radar bands have realized that metal, as brutal and savage as it is, can be successfully melded with various other forms of music, for creative rather than commercial reasons. … [T]rue heavy metal requires some digging. The Canadian band Threat Signal released its first album last year after an extremely successful demo version of their song 'Rational Eyes' beat out over 8,000 other entries in a competition on garageband.com. Produced by Fear Factory's current guitarist, Christian Olde Wolbers, the songs came out sounding full of life. Vocalist Jon Howard's screaming vocals are as brutal as they are energetic. The young band puts more focus on great riffing than some of their counterparts who would rather focus on catchy choruses. Granted, Threat Signal has those too, but since their songs rely more on thrash elements than death, they grind quicker, leaving room even for bits of piano, as on 'As I Destruct'" ("The Smart Set: The Foremost Mentally Stimulating Metal Bands," 4/19/07, p. 24).

Rush: Snakes & Arrows

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Bob Cesca wrote in the Huffington Post: "Within its first 60 seconds, the new Rush album, Snakes & Arrows, throws down against the Christian right. … Snakes & Arrows is, musically and lyrically, one of the best recordings of Rush's 35 year history and probably the most important … appropriately and ominously describing this era in history as if 'we're back in the Dark Ages.' Rush's drummer and lyricist, Neil Peart, has always been an intelligent and outspoken proponent of secularism. In the song Faithless, Peart describes himself as not having 'faith in faith.' … [H]e and the band are far from quiet about the way the winds are blowing. … America has, more often than not, tempered its unprecedented strength with reason. … Not so much recently, though. Cooler heads, as described by Rush and Peart, have been almost drowned by the 'dry rasp of the devil winds.' In the allegorical song Spindrift, Peart describes himself as frustrated, separated and disillusioned … by the devil winds from the east: the television pundits and radical religious 'fools' who rip across the waves of modern reality."

Haydn: Piano Sonatas nos. 23, 24, 32, 37, 40, 41, 43, 46, 50, 52

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James R. Oestreich wrote in the New York Times: "Haydn reveled in suspense, misdirection and jokes large and small, nowhere more so than in the C major Sonata. … The hop, step and a jump of an opening theme is itself a little joke, beautifully spun out here. [Marc-André] Hamelin's crisp touch keeps it constantly lively, though he relishes the two opportunities to douse the theme in a wash of pedal. The finale is just as playful, with its frequent hesitations and harmonic twists, and again Mr. Hamelin's humor is irresistible. … In the Presto of the G major Sonata … he starts at what seems an almost impossible clip, evoking a music box run amok. Not only does the tempo turn out to be possible, but in the reprises Mr. Hamelin adds whole handfuls of ornamentation that might have made Haydn himself catch his breath and chuckle. … [T]his attention to Mr. Hamelin's technical command should not be taken to imply any deficiency in more songful or lyrical moments. As so often, he commands attention at least as much for his unfailing lyrical bent and for the clarity and shapeliness of his phrasing in subdued passages as he does for his boffo moments. "

Laura Veirs: Saltbreakers

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Genevieve Koski wrote in The A.V. Club: "Laura Veirs has always been a stronger lyricist than she is a singer, guitar player, and bandleader: Her albums are loaded with more wordplay than you can shake a Roget's at. Though her folk-pop songs sometimes tread dangerously close to sad-girl-with-a-guitar territory, they're inevitably buoyed by shimmering instrumentation and ethereal delivery. Her last album, 2005's excellent Year Of Meteors, was a great leap forward, as she and her … backing band, The Tortured Souls, finally gelled. … The Tortured Souls … are now called Saltbreakers, but the chemistry remains on Veirs' new Saltbreakers. Continuing Meteors' affinity for lush, catchy riffs, Saltbreakers' music-to-lyrics quality ratio is nearly perfect. … Saltbreakers … sees Veirs venturing further sonically, experimenting with male backup vocals … choir arrangements … and subtle horns. … These elements add new layers to Veirs' established sound, while retaining her trademark intimate feel. … Saltbreakers is exceptionally strong, and it shows Veirs has more than just poetic whimsy up her sleeve" (4/10/07).

Richter the Master, Volume 2: Mozart

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Bernard Holland wrote in the New York Times: "In the Soviet era piano classes were in part international competition factories manufacturing faster, louder musicians capable of crushing opposition and waving the Red flag above cultural as well as political ground. Few students have had the personality to separate themselves. … Hovering over all of this is Sviatoslav Richter, who died 10 years ago at 82. Decca has produced three two-CD reissues of his recordings: one all Mozart, another all Beethoven and the third a collection of 20th-century Russians. They are in a different category. Richter did and did not belong to the era in which he lived. No teacher ruined him because he largely taught himself and did not pursue organized piano studies until his 20s. Turn first to the Mozart, all live recordings, to hear how good he was. Not much happens in the slow movement of the early Sonata in F (K. 280), and Richter makes doing almost nothing into an act of supreme musical mastery. Keeping the tempo in the first movement of the B flat Sonata (K. 333) becomes not an act of pedantry but a manifestation of good health" (5/20/07).

Best of Philip Glass

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Contents: Disc 1: Songs from liquid days. Lightning -- Glassworks. Facades -- Satyagraha. Evening song -- The photographer. A gentleman's honor (vocal) -- Akhnaten. Hymn to the sun -- Metamorphosis four -- Songs from liquid days. Open the kingdom -- In the upper room. Dance II -- Glassworks. Glasspiece no. 1: Rubric -- Songs from liquid days. Changing opinion.
Disc 2: Glassworks. Opening ; Floe -- Einstein on the beach. Knee play 1 -- Akhnaten. Funeral of Amenhotep -- Songs from liquid days. Forgetting -- In the upper room. Dance IX -- Itaipu. The dam.
Keren Ann Zeidel told Winter Miller of the New York Times: "'Best of Philip Glass' … is some of his more accessible stuff. Hopefully you'll go crazy for him and listen to it all. He is a giant. I don't think any rock band or songwriter brings the kind of innovation to the contemporary music landscape that he does. He created emotion in repetition. … I know the songs on this record from their original recordings, but it's important to know Philip Glass and his oeuvre" ("Playlist," 5/6/07).

John Adams: Complete Piano Music

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Bernard Holland wrote in the New York Times: "Ralph van Raat plays all four items for Naxos, with Maarten van Veen as the second pianist in 'Hallelujah Junction.' … The early 'Phrygian Gates' is a monster, at almost 25 minutes. It adheres to familiar patterns of gathering repeated notes and slow, measured trills, and it moves by way of creeping intrusions that propel one meter into a new one. The tones vary from pastels to Romantic piano sound to a racing, thundering finale. 'China Gates,' a companion piece, is more elegant geometry: quieter, more contained and a fourth as long. … 'American Berserk,' from 2001, sits on a foundation of stride and boogie piano. Its heavy hand and sharp elbows make brutality into a compositional tool. There are whiffs of nostalgia for the 1930s and for Gershwin in particular. Listen for 'I Got Rhythm' in a cameo appearance. … Mr. Adams, once described as a Minimalist bored by Minimalism, might not mind Mr. van Raat's repeated notes, which are not always steady and immaculate. He would surely like Mr. van Raat's hard work and enthusiasm in music that is sometimes very complicated indeed." (4/29/07).

Arctic Monkeys: Favourite Worst Nightmare

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Chuck Arnold wrote in People: "When it comes to establishing real staying power in the flavor-of-the month pop scene, the second album is critical. Never more so than for Britain's Arctic Monkeys, whose much-hyped 2006 debut, Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not, was an instant classic, the kind that would almost make a sophomore slump inevitable. But Arctic Monkeys bring the heat again on Favourite Worst Nightmare, which comes about as close to matching Whatever as one could have reasonably expected. Although Nick O'Malley has replaced Andy Nicholson on bass, the Monkeys—and their awesome rhythm section—don't miss a beat from the blistering opener 'Brianstorm,' which, with its gale-force guitars and rumbling drums, sucks you in like a tornado. Elsewhere, these lads get downright funky on propulsive tracks like 'D Is for Dangerous.' And frontman Alex Turner can still turn out a killer lyric. On 'Fluorescent Adolescent' he sings about a girl gone unwild: 'You used to get it in your fishnets/ Now you only get it in your nightdress.' Luckily, though, these Monkeys won't be tamed anytime soon" (4/30/07, p. 43).

Handel: Concerti grossi, op. 3

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Anne Midgette wrote in the New York Times: "When Christopher Hogwood founded the Academy of Ancient Music in 1973, the early-music movement was often equated with dry playing and odd sounds from obdurate period instruments. On Thursday night, while watching and listening to the group in a delightfully engaging concert at Zankel Hall, it was striking how much freedom this movement now affords. … The academy certainly showed off a vibrant personality on this stop on its first album tour under Mr. Hogwood’s successor, the gifted keyboard player Richard Egarr. The album, which came out in February, is devoted to Handel’s Concerti Grossi (Op. 3), a collection of music both scintillating and disparate. The music was not so much great as eminently entertaining. … One memorable moment came between the two movements of the Concerto Grosso (Op. 3, No. 6), in which the two most distinctive period instruments, the harpsichord and the long-necked, lutelike theorbo, were pulled from the fabric of the ensemble like fine threads in a duo improvisation by Mr. Egarr and William Carter" ("Rejecting a Stiff Suit …," 4/28/07).

Mahler: Symphony No. 3

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Natalie Bauer-Lechner wrote: "[Mahler] said to me … 'You know, there's no money to be earned from the Third either! Its gaiety is not going to be understood or appreciated: it's the gaiety that soars above the world of the First and Second, with their conflict and pain, and it can exist only as the product of that world. It's not really appropriate to call it a symphony, for it doesn't stick to the traditional form at all. But "symphony" means to me building a world with all the resources of the available techniques. The content, continually new and changing, determines its own form. This being so, I must always first learn again to re-create my medium of expression. … I shall use two poems from Des Knaben Wunderhorn and a glorious poem by Nietzsche as the basis for the songs in the short movements. "Summer comes in" will be the prologue. For this I need a military band, to achieve the crude effect of the arrival of my martial hero. It will really be as if the garrison band were marching in. … Naturally, there has to be a struggle with the adversary, Winter, but it is easily vanquished.'" (quoted in Mahler: His Life, Work, and World, p. 110).