El DeBarge: Second Chance

"On his new album, Second Chance (Geffen), his long-awaited return to the music scene after sixteen years, R&B/pop legend El DeBarge has made the journey with his considerable gifts as a singer and songwriter intact. DeBarge's distinctive falsetto, familiar from a trail of hit singles in the 80's and 90's, resurfaces virtually unscathed after a two-decade battle with drug addiction (and just over a year in prison). Second Chance is exactly that — a new opportunity to reconnect with his loyal fans, but also a thrilling possibility to share his talents with a completely new generation of younger record buyers, many of whom have only heard DeBarge's songs sampled by Notorious B.I.G, Mariah Carey and others. The effort to surround the 49-year-old DeBarge with a mix of both established, hit-making songwriters and producers, and younger creative voices, is a rousing success" (Marlynn Snyder, "Second Chance: El DeBarge Has a Winner," Huffington Post, 12/1/10).

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Richard Thompson: Dream Attic

"Back in the late '80s, British post-punk Joe Jackson recorded an album of 15 new songs in front of a live audience that was asked to keep quiet. Jackson wanted the energy of a concert without the pesky applause. Fifteen years later, fellow Brit Richard Thompson has taken the idea. However, unlike Jackson, Richard Thompson is not afraid of a noisy crowd. 'Dream Attic' is very much a live album, with most of the 13 songs stretching well past the five-minute mark. It's typical Richard Thompson: literate rock and guitar solos flying high without a net. And as usual, he's a thrilling listen from start to finish. Feel free to clap along" (Shawn Amos, "PLAY > SKIP," Huffington Post, 8/31/10).

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Jamie Baum Septet: Solace

"The flutist Jamie Baum favors an orderly approach to composition but clears ample space for improvisation. And as she does on her most recent album, 'Solace' (Sunnyside), she gathers fine musicians for the task, like the multireedist Doug Yates, the pianist George Colligan and the drummer Jeff Hirshfield" (Nate Chinen, "Jazz Listings," New York Times, 12/2/10).
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Brian Wilson Reimagines Gershwin

"Wilson’s new record, Brian Wilson Reimagines Gershwin, may be the summer’s most stunning mash-up, a marriage of two of popular music’s most influential and well-loved composers — New York sophistication meets SoCal rapture — that casts both in a new light. Tackling everything from standards ('It Ain’t Necessarily So,' 'Someone to Watch Over Me') to little-known rarities, Wilson has created gorgeous and unexpected arrangements that strip away decades of familiarity. 'They’re unlike anything I’ve heard before,' says Adam Gershwin, George and Ira’s great-nephew, who helps manage George’s estate. 'But I would expect nothing less from Brian.' Wilson was around 5 years old when he first heard 'Rhapsody in Blue.' 'All I remember is I loved it,' he says. And when he began writing his own music, it was Gershwin who 'inspired me to write good harmonies.' Adam Gershwin believes his great-uncle and Brian to be kindred spirits" (Aaron Gell, "His Pet Sound," New York, 8/9/10).

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Virgil Thomson: Three Pictures

"'Sea Piece With Birds' ... some four minutes of somber, heaving music, is thick with chromatic chords that move in big parallel blocks, with skittish atonal themes mingling hesitantly above. The atmospheric orchestral colors suggest strangely updated Debussy. A frenetic climax sounds like some ornery blast of Varèse. The composer? Virgil Thomson, best known for his iconoclastic and affecting operas 'Four Saints in Three Acts' and 'The Mother of Us All,' with nonsensically mesmerizing librettos by Gertrude Stein. But Thomson had another side, exemplified by 'Sea Piece With Birds,' the third in a set of impressionistic essays for orchestra written independently over five years and later grouped into a 20-minute suite, 'Three Pictures for Orchestra.' This seldom-played score concludes a fascinating new recording of six Thomson works from the Boston Modern Orchestra Project" (Anthony Tommasini, "'Pictures' Seldom Played," New York Times, 11/14/10).
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Big Brother & the Holding Company with Janis Joplin: Cheap Thrills

"Joplin died of a heroin overdose at 27, alone in a Los Angeles motel room in the early morning hours of Oct. 4, 1970. ... 'We don’t celebrate her death,' said Laura Joplin, the singer’s sister, who controls the Joplin estate with her brother, Michael Joplin. 'We celebrate her life.' Some Joplin fans wonder whether there has been enough celebrating at all. ... But now the Joplins have recruited, for the first time, a professional estate manager, Jeffrey Jampol, to develop business opportunities and guide the career of a singer dead since Nixon’s first term. ... Mr. Jampol’s presence might provide a new avenue of communication between the singer’s family and her old band mates. Profits from the two albums Joplin made with Big Brother, notably 'Cheap Thrills' and its hit single 'Piece of My Heart,' are split among the three surviving band members ... and the estates of Joplin and the guitarist James Gurley, who died last year" (Greg Evans, "A Piece of Her Heart on a 40th Anniversary," New York Times, 10/1/10).

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John Cage: Fontana Mix

"The score Cage created for Fontana Mix consists of 20 sheets, ten transparencies inscribed with points (or dots), a single transparency bearing a straight line and ten plain white sheets with squiggly lines. By means of an included graph and a straight line, the performer uses the sheets in combination as a 'tool' to assemble a realization of Fontana Mix. In executing the tape, Cage divided his sound sources into six classes; city sounds, country sounds, electronic sounds, manually produced (meaning 'instrumental') sounds, wind-produced sounds (such as singing), and small sounds that require amplification, such as crickets chirping. Coordinate points drawn from the transparencies determine the class of each tape sound, inches of tape used, its volume, timbre, mixing, and other elements. Cage once described the score of Fontana Mix as 'a camera from which anyone can take a photograph'" (Uncle Dave Lewis, "Review" at Answers.com).
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PS I Love You: Meet Me at the Muster Station

"Once every so often, you hear about a band having disputes with its founder ... and deciding to forge on without him or her in the fold. Paul Saulnier is in the fortunate position of almost surely never having to undergo such an ordeal with PS I Love You because its very name unavoidably brings up its creator. ... Kicking off in 2005, it didn’t take PSILY too long to move from the namesake’s one-man show to a duo because, as Saulnier says, 'My live shows that were solo were always disastrous.' Adding Benjamin Nelson on drums fleshed out Saulnier’s indie rock. ... The Kingston, Ontario, Canada-based duo seesaws between vigorous, peppy playfulness and an anxious collapse into heart-wrecked misery. In either instance, a sense of vulnerability persists. PSILY’s debut LP, Meet Me at the Muster Station, bears the fingerprints of ’80s post-punk and ’90s indie rock, evoking The Chameleons, Built to Spill, and Personal Life, The Thermals’ recent stab at despair" (Reyan Ali, "Honest Goodness," New Haven Advocate, 12/2/10, p. 41).
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"Milo": Works by Bridge, Britten, Turnage

"A web of musical connections among several generations of teachers, pupils and friends inspired this disc of works by three British composers, vividly interpreted by two other Britons, the cellist Guy Johnston and the pianist Kathryn Stott. Benjamin Britten was often inspired to write for a particular musician, like the tenor Peter Pears. The great cellist Mstislav Rostropovich was the beneficiary of Britten’s Sonata in C for cello and piano, given a vigorous performance here. Ms. Stott and Mr. Johnston play with witty panache in the pizzicato-driven second movement and with soulful intensity in the somber third movement, which displays Mr. Johnston’s rich tone to fine effect. Rostropovich described the fifth and final movement as 'irresponsible and tempestuous.' Mr. Johnston’s burnished and varied sound, aptly complemented by Ms. Stott’s sensitive playing, is also lovely in the gentle 'Spring Song' and 'Mélodie' by Frank Bridge" (Vivien Schweitzer, "CD Review," New York Times, 10/31/10).

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Kings of Leon: Come Around Sundown

"The band tried to shake itself out of its routine for the new album. It had recorded before in Los Angeles and Tennessee; 'Come Around Sundown' was made in a Midtown Manhattan studio. Various songs drew on ideas from all four previous albums. 'The fears that we did have were people just knowing us for our last record,' Mr. Followill said. 'We tried to show them at least moments of everything we’ve done along the way.' One constant is that Kings of Leon play together, live in the studio. Then they patch up mistakes and add parts, but the core of the music is the sound of the four Followills in one place. That choice, Caleb Followill said, appeals subliminally to multiple generations of listeners. 'Even if you can’t tell it when you’re listening to one of our songs, it’s been recorded probably the way your parents used to listen to music,' he said. 'I think there’s just that little something that they can’t put their finger on'" (Jon Pareles, "Wary Coronation for Kings of Leon," New York Times, 9/12/10).
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Caroline Goulding (self-titled)

"Having appeared on the popular public-radio and TV series From the Top, Goulding tapped the show’s host, pianist Christopher O’Riley, to join her on a self-titled debut CD. ... Goulding’s romp through works by Americans, composed in America or inspired by America is a crowd-pleasing venture; even selections that aren’t so well-known, such as Paul Schoenfield’s Four Souvenirs, sound as familiar as Jascha Heifetz’s arrangements of themes from Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess. ... The violinist’s rendition of Vieuxtemps’s Variations on 'Yankee Doodle' will undoubtedly keep her busy on many a Fourth of July to come. Goulding’s technical skill comes to the fore in John Corigliano’s devilishly difficult Red Violin Caprices, a ten-minute fireworks display with its Paganini-inspired variations. She nods to a Celtic-music background with a pair of Gaelic tunes—one melancholic, the other lively" (Amanda Angel, "Album Review," Time Out New York, 9/2/09).

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Lyle Lovett: Natural Forces

"Lyle Lovett's tour especially offered a model of what a great show should be like, sweetened by the sort of sensible prices that were especially appealing on a recent August evening at Wolf Trap. ... Much of the show was devoted to his last two albums, including his latest, Natural Forces, a sign that he keeps growing as an artist. ... One of the show's centerpieces was the latest album's title song, 'Natural Forces,' inspired while watching a beer commercial during a football game, and realizing he and other Americans were not sacrificing anything while troops fought overseas for them. It led him to craft a song, apparently from the point of view of a truck driver, recalling his trips across the American landscape. Now the trucker was watching a beer commercial and wondering: 'Now as I sit here safe at home/With a cold Coors Lite an' the TV on/All the sacrifice and the death and woe/Lord I pray that I'm worth fighting for'" (Art Levine, "Lyle Lovett's Showmanship Endures," Huffington Post, 9/10/10).

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Belle and Sebastian: Write About Love

"Belle & Sebastian continue to make the world a safer place, one pretty pop song at a time. Their latest is filled with lush arrangements, romantic chords, and a smartness that won't hurt your head. The critics love 'em. You should too. Give their latest a spin and thank me later" (Shawn Amos, "PLAY > SKIP," Huffington Post, 10/12/10).
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U2: The Best of 1980-1990

"The Edge has always managed to create a new guitar sound for each U2 album, and he had just received his infinite-sustain guitar, invented by my Canadian friend Michael Brook. It can be heard on 'With or Without You,' an infinite stratospheric sound never heard before. 'With or Without You' was ... cut to a beat box with drums added last, but in this case Adam Clayton's bass part was put on early. Adam then had the luxury of concentrating on his work with a fully arranged song structure. I say luxury because Adam is often tossed around the studio in a constant wave of evolving chord progressions. Composing in the studio as U2 does often means that the bass part has to be redone to try and catch up to the new bit that somebody just wrote. But in the case of 'With or Without You,' the chords were carved in stone. Adam chose to play a new Japanese bass he had recently acquired; a nice short-scale instrument by Ibanez" (Daniel Lanois, Soul Mining: A Musical Life, 2010, p. 81).

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Marc Ribot: Silent Movies

"Mr. Ribot is a vagabond poet on solo guitar, as he proved nine years ago with his superb album 'Saints.' His hauntingly intimate new release, 'Silent Movies,' features music composed for (or inspired by) films, much of it starkly acoustic and all of it attuned to the air it displaces in a room" (Nate Chinen, "Jazz Listings," New York Times, 9/9/10).

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Alexandra Pajak: Sounds of HIV

"University of Georgia graduate student Alexandra Pajak's new instrumental CD draws inspiration from an unlikely source -- HIV. 'Sounds of HIV,' released by Azica Records on Oct. 26, is a 17-track, 52-minute long musical adaptation of the fatal virus' genetic code. Pajak assigned pitches to the four basic nucleotides in DNA -- A for Adenine, C for Cytosine, G for Guanine and D for Thymine -- but the score contains much more than these for notes. Pajak explained the process to AOL News: 'I stayed very loyal to the DNA. Every segment of the virus was assigned music pitches that correspond to the segment's scientific properties. The sounds literally reflect the nature of the virus... There was a lot of logic involved in this. I also broke down 20 amino acids and proteins and assigned pitches to those. I used the A-minor scale for the amino acids based on their level of attraction to water'" ("Grad Student Uses HIV DNA to Make Music," Huffington Post, 11/8/10).

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Superchunk: Majesty Shredding

"Back in the '90s, Superchunk was the alt-rock band everyone could agree on: The group's hyperkinetic live shows and catchy anthems made its stickers a fixture on beat-up vans everywhere. But in 2001, Superchunk went on hiatus and band members Mac McCaughan and Laura Ballance jumped full-time into Merge Records, a little company they'd formed in 1989. Now it's one of the most thriving indie labels in the world. MacCaughan and Ballance have succeeded through restraint, keeping the staff small and the budgets sane — guiding principles that would bewilder most music execs. 'I have to be the hammer,' Ballance says. ... The result? Dorm room staples like Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane Over the Sea and a worldwide smash hit with Arcade Fire's Funeral. This year is Merge's biggest yet, with indie Top 10 releases from Spoon, Arcade Fire, and She & Him. Even Superchunk is back, with Majesty Shredding, a record guaranteed to send your Chuck Taylors 3 feet in the air" (Brian Raftery, "Cheap Thrills," Wired, 9/10, p. 96).

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Ingrid Michaelson: Everybody

"Everybody, Michaelson’s most recent album, was released last summer and is her third studio album. 'Compared to my first album [Girls and Boys, 2006], Everybody was more thought out. Not to say it’s better or anything, but I think that separates the two of them,' Michaelson says. ... Something worth talking about is Michaelson’s hit single 'Maybe' from Everybody, a sensitive reflection of a breakup. The slow, lounge-y melodies of her music are created from the unusual addition of the ukulele. Besides her uke-playin’ skills, Michaelson’s musical interest goes back to the age of 4 when she began taking piano lessons. 'A breakup is something I feel comfortable writing about,' Michaelson says. “I’m not politically minded, so I tend to write love songs. It’s kind of my expertise at this point. I don’t think it’s the most important thing to write about relationships, but that’s what comes out.' Those emotions consume Michaelson’s songs" (Emilia Murdoch, "Music for Everybody," New Haven Advocate, 7/29/10, p. 36).

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