Patrick Ferrucci on She & Him

"Zooey Deschanel … teamed with indie singer/songwriter M. Ward, thus forming She & Him. Although Ward produces both 'Volume One' and this new 'Volume Two,' the originals on both were written solely by the actress. And what’s clearly evident after listening to either record is that Deschanel is just as talented musically as she is as an actress. 'Volume Two' is a piece of pure pop bliss, a retro record filled with 13 sunny songs that show an affinity for Laura Nyro, the Brill Building, late-era Brian Wilson, The Ronettes and Harry Nilsson, though none of those comparisons really does the music of She & Him justice. … While the actress’ vocal limitations that popped up on 'Volume One' still exist, on this sophomore effort Deschanel and Ward do a much better job hiding them. The actress sounds more comfortable letting loose, and, as you’d expect, the harmonies from Ward are impeccable and work brilliantly with Deschanel’s voice. These are better songs, performed better and presented better. … This is the kind of band indie hipsters and Baby Boomers can both enjoy, the kind of album that’s simply pleasing. And cute. But not in a cloying way. Yet really cute" ("Album Reviews," New Haven Register, 3/26/10).

Jimi Hendrix: Valleys of Neptune

Copy at Case Memorial Library
Contents: Stone free — Valleys of Neptune — Bleeding heart — Hear my train a comin' — Mr. Bad Luck — Sunshine of your love — Lover man — Ships passing through the night — Fire — Red house — Lullaby for the summer — Crying blue rain. All songs written by Jimi Hendrix except "Bleeding Heart" by Elmore James, "Sunshine of Your Love" by Peter Brown, Jack Bruce, and Eric Clapton. Recorded between May 5, 1967 and Sept. 23, 1969.
Personnel: Jimi Hendrix, guitar and vocals, with: Mitch Mitchell, Rocky Isaac (track 3), drums; Billy Cox (tracks 1-3), Noel Redding, bass; and additional musicians.
From the notes by John McDermott: "Valleys of Neptune illustrates Jimi Hendrix's extraordinary creative evolution during 1969 — the most tumultuous year of his celebrated life and career. These twelve never before released songs include the final studio recordings made by the original Jimi Hendrix Experience as they endeavored to create a worthy sequel to Electric Ladyland as well as Hendrix's earliest efforts to chart a new course with Mitch Mitchell and bassist Billy Cox."

Nadia Reisenberg: A Chopin Treasury

Copy at Case Memorial Library
Contents: Disc A. Nocturne op. 9, no. 1 [to] op. 48, no. 2 (77:46) — Disc B. Nocturne op. 55, no. 1 [to] op. posth., C-sharp minor; Barcarolle, op. 60, F-sharp major; Berceuse, op. 57, D-flat major; Allegro de concert, op. 46, A major; Sonata no. 3 in B minor, op. 58 (78:53) — Disc C. Mazurka op. 6, no. 1 [to] Mazurka, op. 50, no. 1 (76:54) — Disc D. Mazurka, op. 50, no. 2 [to] Mazurka, op. 68, no. 4; Mazurka "Notre temps," A minor; Mazurka "A Emile Gaillard," A minor; Mazurka, op. posth., B-flat major, D major, C major, G major, D major (67:10). The Sonata no. 3 recorded at Carnegie Hall, November, 21, 1947; all other works recorded 1955-1957.
From the notes by Robert Sherman: "Mother played a short piece at her American recital debut in 1924 … and the B Minor Sonata at her last solo recital in 1947 (the Carnegie Hall performance here issued for the first time). … Mother never approached Chopin as a specialist who knew exactly how everything should be done; she was simply an artist who sought out the emotional heart of every piece she played, and approached Chopin in awe of his creative magic."

Alan Jackson: Freight Train

Copy at Case Memorial Library
Contents: Hard hat and a hammer — Every now and then — After 17 — It's just that way — Freight train — Tail lights blue — I could get used to this lovin' thing — Till the end (with Lee Ann Womack) — That's where I belong — Big green eyes — True love is agolden ring — The best keeps getting better. Principally composed, in part with others, and performed by Alan Jackson, vocals, guitar ; with accompanying musicians.
"On one of the highlights of his new album, Alan Jackson sings that 'The Best Keeps Getting Better.' While he's referring to a relationship that's 'like a 30-year-old wine,' he could also be crowing about his staying power in Nashville in the face of many younger bucks. Indeed, his last album, 2008's Good Time, went platinum and produced three No. 1 country singles. He won't be derailed on Freight Train, another pleasant journey with Jackson exuding an easygoing confidence. Tunes such as the wistful 'Every Now and Then' play well to his strenghts, displaying the power of keeping it simple" (Chuck Arnold, "Music," People, 4/12/10, p. 49).

Angel Taylor: Love Travels

Copy at Case Memorial Library
Contents (all songs written by Angel Taylor): Chai tea latte — Like you do — Make me believe — Maple tree — Too good for words — Spinning wheels — Don't forget me in time — Lightning strikes — Epiphany — Feed your ego — All lost at C — Not even human — Best father around (hidden track).
Personnel: vocals and piano, Angel Taylor; guitars, Greg Suran, Mikal Blue, Jason Reeves, Andrew Williams, Gary Jules, Chris Bruce, Andrew Dixon; and other musicians.
Sample lyrics: "I have been taken before / You're not the first to rob me / of my peace and my sanity / You've taken all my peace and my sanity / You must've been kidding / with that whole romantic love spill / Or maybe I just didn't hear you right / You run over my heart and then ask for it back / You must think that that's alright / Well, it's not alright / But you're not even human / You're just a lovely idea of one / who I accidentally loved / And gave everything to become / the girl on the piano bench / Singin' all of her tears away …"

Ben Greenman on Tom Lehrer

"He started writing and performing while an undergraduate at Harvard … and he continued clowning through his graduate studies in math. In 1953, Lehrer bought an hour of studio time and released 'Songs by Tom Lehrer'; over the decade that followed, he became, much to everyone’s surprise, a pop-culture sensation. His songs had more to do with show tunes than rock — 'The Elements' set the periodic table to Gilbert and Sullivan’s 'Major-General’s Song' — but he also had a nasty topical streak. … [I]n the wonderfully sour 'National Brotherhood Week,' hopelessness springs eternal. … [W]hat’s most newsworthy here … is a DVD that collects a 1967 performance from Norwegian TV … and more. In Lehrer’s liner notes, he recalls the Catch-22 of trying to write biting satire for a network TV show … and — most charmingly — gives away more credit than he takes, acknowledging as many contemporaries and forebears as possible (Danny Kaye gets mentioned twice). This may be an academic trait, or possibly Lehrer’s own, but it has been part of his work since the start; 'Lobachevsky,' one of his earlier songs, lampoons a mathematician who steals the work of others" ("Pop Notes," New Yorker, 4/19/10).

Alicia Keys: The Element of Freedom

Copy at Case Memorial Library
Contents: Element of freedom (intro) — Love is blind (Alicia Keys/Jeff Bhasker) — Doesn't mean anything (Keys/Kerry Brothers, Jr.) — Try sleeping with a broken heart (Bhasker/Keys/ Patrick "Plain Pat" Reynolds) — Wait til you see my smile (Keys/Bhasker/Kasseem Dean) — That's how strong my love is (Keys) — Un-thinkable (I'm ready) (Keys/Aubrey Graham/Kerry "Krucial" Brothers/Noah Shebib) — Love is my disease (Keys/Brothers/Toby Gad/Melini Smith) — Like the sea (Keys/Bhasker) — Put it in a love song (featuring Beyoncé) (Keys/Dean) — This bed (Keys/Brothers/Steve Mostyn) — Distance and time (Keys/Brothers/Mostyn) — How it feels to fly (Keys/Brothers) — Empire state of mind : part II (broken down) (Keys/Al Shuckburgh/Sean Carter/Jane't "J'nay" Sewell-Ulepic/Angela Hunte/Bert Keyes/Sylvia Robinson).
Sample lyrics: "Baby I'm from / New York / Concrete Jungle where dreams are made of / There's nothing you can't do / Now you're in New York" ("Empire State of Mind").

One Fast Move or I'm Gone

Copy at Case Memorial Library
Personnel: Jay Farrar, vocals, guitar, lap steel, piano, organ, harmonica, percussion; Benjamin Gibbard, vocals, guitar, piano, drums; with, variously: Mark Spencer, lap steel, piano, bass, guitar; Aaron Espinoza, bass; Brad Sarno, pedal steel.
Contents: Country and folk-rock songs from One Fast Move or I'm Gone, a documentary on Jack Kerouac (words from the poem "Sea" and the novel Big Sur by Kerouac, music as noted). California zephyr (Farrar; 2:27) — Low life kingdom (Farrar; 3:22) — Williamine (Farrar and Gibbard; 4:01) — All in one (Farrar; 2:09) — Breathe our iodine (Farrar; 2:58) — These roads don't move (Farrar; 3:11) — Big Sur (Farrar; 3:25) — One fast move or I'm gone (Gibbard; 4:17) — Final horrors (Farrar; 2:42) — Sea engines (Farrar; 3:30) — The void (Farrar and Gibbard; 2:59) — San Francisco (Farrar; 3:54).
From the notes by Farrar: "The novel Big Sur is like Kerouac's version of Heart of Darkness — waking up in a place where you start to lose your grip and are not sure you can make it out. …"

Bach: Sacred Arias & Cantatas

Copy at Case Memorial Library
Personnel: David Daniels, countertenor; The English Concert; Harry Bicket, conductor.
Contents: Mass in B minor BWV 232. Qui sedes (4:16); Agnus Dei (5:17) — St. John passion BWV 245. Von den Stricken (4:46); Es ist vollbracht (5:14) — St. Matthew passion BWV 244. Du lieber Heiland du … Buss und Reu (10:10); Erbarme dich (6:46) ; Erbarm'es Gott … Können Tränen (7:58) — Cantata "Ich habe genug", BWV 82a. Ich habe genug (6:48); Schlummert ein, ihr matten Augen (10:04) — Cantata "Vergnügte ruh, beliebte seelenlust", BWV 170 (5:40) — Cantata "Was mir behagt, ist nur die muntre jagd!", BWV 208. Schafe können sicher weiden (4:20). Recorded Nov. 13-17, 2007, St. Jude-on-the-Hill, Hampstead Garden Suburb, London.
From the notes by Simon Heighes: "Bach's church music was originally performed by a youthful ensemble of schoolboys and students. But they were not quite as young as we might imagine. In the eighteenth century voices tended to break much later than they do today. … [T]he usual age at which a boy alto became a tenor was over 18. With age came experience."

John Adamian on Leonard Cohen

"It's four in the morning … August 1970. … Leonard Cohen Live at the Isle of Wight (a DVD and concert album were just released at the end of last year) … captured a pivotal moment in a festival that had its share of problems. … 'Greetings, greetings,' he says. … 'When I was 7 years old my father used to take me to the circus, he had a black mustache and gray vest and a pansy in his lapel, and he liked the circus better than I did.' He goes on to describe how the ring master would get the circus crowd to light matches to give everyone a sense of the crowd’s dimensions. 'Could I ask you, each person, to light a match, so that I could see where you all are? Could each of you light a match so that you sparkle like fireflies at each of your different heights?' he says gesturing to the dark hills filled with campers surrounding the area. 'I know you know why you're lighting them. … There's a lot of people without matches.' … Then he launches into 'Bird on a Wire.' The band sounds great, if a little tired. With three women singing the ethereal oohs that show up again and again in Cohen’s songs and players alternating from banjo and spirited but low-key guitar thrumming'" ("Music: Man on a Wire," New Haven Advocate, 3/25/10).

David Browne on Sharon Jones

"After three decades of near obscurity, Jones is in demand; she and Brooklyn soul curators the Dap-Kings will release their fourth album, I Learned the Hard Way, on April 6. In recent years, she’s sung with Lou Reed in the stage version of Berlin and with Phish for their re-creation of Exile on Main St.; she duetted with Michael Bublé on Saturday Night Live and sings a funkified version of 'This Land Is Your Land' in the opening credits of Up in the Air. … Her belated acclaim is one of pop’s unlikeliest second acts, and she barely had a first. Jones was born in Georgia but grew up in Bedford-Stuyvesant, where her mother moved her six children after leaving an abusive spouse. After graduating from Brooklyn’s Thomas Jefferson High School, Jones — resplendent in an Afro and bell-bottoms — formed a funky party band called Inner Spectrum. But she had little interest in what followed: disco, crossover pop, then rap. Defeated after her aborted eighties audition, she spent a dozen years in a wedding band. She also did a sixteen-month stint as a guard on Rikers Island, where one night inmates demanded she sing 'Greatest Love of All' before lockdown" ("Pop: Schooled in Hard Tries," New York, 4/5/10).

Natalie Merchant: Leave Your Sleep

Copy at Case Memorial Library
Contents (all music by Merchant, texts as noted): Nursery rhyme of innocence and experience (Charles Causley) — Equestrienne (Rachel Field) — Calico pie (Edward Lear) — Bleezer's ice cream (Jack Prelutsky) — It makes a change (Mervyn Peake) — The king of China's daughter (anon.) — The dancing bear (Albert Bigelow Paine) — The man in the wilderness (anon.) — maggie and milly and molly and may (E. E. Cummings) — If no one ever marries me (Laurence Alma-Tadema) — The sleepy giant (Charles Edward Carryl) — The peppery man (Arthur Macy) — The blind men and the elephant (John Godfrey Saxe) — Adventures of Isabel (Ogden Nash) — The Walloping Window Blind (Carryl) — Topsyturvey-world (William Brighty Rands) — The janitor's boy (Nathalia Crane) — Griselda (Eleanor Farjeon) — The land of Nod (Robert Louis Stevenson) — Vain and careless (Robert Graves) — Crying, my little one (Christina Rossetti) — Sweet and a lullaby (anon.) — I saw a ship a-sailing (anon.) — Autumn lullaby (anon.) — Spring and fall : to a young child (Gerard Manley Hopkins) — Indian names (Lydia Huntley Sigourney).

Next to Normal: Original Broadway Cast Recording

Copy at Case Memorial Library
Contents: Prelude — Just another day — Everything else — Who's crazy/My psychopharmacologist and I — Perfect for you — I miss the mountains — It's gonna be good — He's not here — You don't know — I am the one — Superboy and the invisible girl — I'm alive — Make up your mind/Catch me I'm falling — I dreamed a dance — There's a world — I've been — Didn't I see this movie? — A light in the dark — Wish I were here — Song of forgetting — Hey #1 — Seconds and years — Better than before — Aftershocks — Hey #2 — You don't know (reprise) — How could I ever forget? — It's gonna be good (reprise) — Why stay?/A promise — I'm alive (reprise) — The break — Make up your mind/Catch me I'm falling (reprise) — Maybe (Next to normal) — Hey #3/Perfect for you (reprise) — So anyway — I am the one (reprise) — Light.
"For a distinguished play. … Awarded to 'Next to Normal,' music by Tom Kitt, book and lyrics by Brian Yorkey, a powerful rock musical that grapples with mental illness in a suburban family and expands the scope of subject matter for musicals)" ("The 2010 Pulitzer Prize Winners: Drama").

John Mayer: Battle Studies

Copy at Case Memorial Library
Contents: Heartbreak warfare (4:27) — All we ever do is say goodbye (4:35) — Half of my heart (feat. Taylor Swift) (4:10) — Who says (3:00) — Perfectly lonely (4:28) — Assassin (5:10) — Crossroads (2:28) — War of my life (4:15) — Edge of desire (5:28) — Do you know me (2:29) — Friends, lovers or nothing (5:57). All songs written and performed by John Mayer except "Crossroads," written by Robert Johnson. Recorded at Battle Studios (Calabasas, CA), Capitol Studios (Hollywood, CA), Avatar Studios (New York, NY) and The Village Studios (West Los Angeles, CA).
Sample lyrics: "Now that we are over as the loving kind / We'll be dreaming ways to keep the good alive / Only when we want is not a compromise / I'd be pouring tears into your drying eyes / Friends, lovers or nothing / There can only be one / Friends, lovers or nothing / There'll never be an in-between, so give it up … Anything other than yes is no / Anything other than stay is go / Anything less than 'I love you' is lying."

David Finkle on Hilary Kole

"Throughout her current Birdland gig, the jazz-pop singer Hilary Kole has … a pure voice that flows as easily as burnished notes from a muted trumpet, impeccable musicianship, pellucid phrasing, the ability to swing an up-tune … [and] a visible appreciation of the musicians backing her (the marvelous pianist-arranger Tedd Firth, guitarist John Hart, drummer Mark McLean, bassist Paul Gill). … 'Better Than Anything' [is] a list song that Kole says she still doesn't quite understand — an honest response, since what the songwriters are referring to as better than anything but love is never made explicit. … The bright-and-breezy approach is also applied … to the Dorothy Parker (yes, Dottie Parker)-Jack King 'How Was I to Know.' … Incidentally, in time for Kole's Birdland nesting, she's bringing out a new CD, Haunted Heart, on which she uses the same musicians but for Hart, who's replaced by the disk's producer, John Pizzarelli. The 'Haunted Heart' title couldn't be more appropriate, because there is something not only haunting about her renditions of the ballads included but also, in the way she does them, somehow stunningly haunted" ("Hilary Kole Deserves to Be Your Valentine," Huffington Post, 2/12/10).

Kelefa Sanneh on Tonex

"Tonéx's eccentric style and vertiginous high notes helped make him one of the most acclaimed praise singers of the past decade and, for a time, one of the most successful. He had a certain hip-hop swagger, and he cultivated a coy, teasing sensibility; he had the status of a sex symbol, while portraying himself as a righteous alternative to the decadent mainstream. One early song, 'Waiting,' sounded a lot like a breathy slow jam, though the lyrics were about 'waiting' for divine guidance. ('Now that I listen back to it, I cannot believe I got away with it,' he says, chuckling proudly. 'That's where I got a lot of my female fan base from.') In his music videos, he flirted with raunchiness: he couldn't thrust his hips, but he could undulate his torso and snap his knees open and shut. A boisterous live double CD, 'Out the Box,' won him six trophies at the 2005 Stellar Awards, gospel's most prestigious event, and sold more than half a million copies. His success was proof of the continued popularity of gospel music, a vibrant genre with its own infrastructure and star-making machinery. … But then Tonéx fell from grace — or, depending on your point of view, was pushed. …" ("Revelations: A Gospel Singer Comes Out," New Yorker, 2/8/10).