Taylor Swift: Speak Now

"In case you've been wondering whence Taylor Swift draws inspiration for her material, she clears that question right up in the liner notes of her new album, 'Speak Now.' 'These songs are made up of words I didn't say when the moment was right in front of me,' the 20-year-old singer writes. Indeed, there's little opacity here -- what you see in these 14 tunes is what you get. Well, almost. Swift, one of the top-selling artists of the past few years, addresses former loves, chronic underminers and Kanye West. But there are also deeper messages hidden literally within some of the songs: letters capitalized seemingly at random in the lyric booklet spell out postscripts of a sort. ... 'Dear John' ... has been widely perceived as referring to what may have been a brief, apparently regrettable fling with John Mayer. Over gentle, crying guitar licks, Swift sings with the hurt disappointment of someone who feels as though her optimism and naiveté were taken advantage of" (Eric R. Danton, "CD Review," Sound Check, 10/26/10).
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John & Yoko: Some Time in New York City

"Among those sharing memories of John Lennon on what would have been his 70th birthday, no one was more directly affected by a Lennon song than poet John Sinclair. After Lennon and Yoko Ono flew to Michigan to perform Lennon's song John Sinclair for the Free John Rally, Sinclair was released from his sentence of 10 years for giving an undercover police officer two joints. 'I first heard it in prison when one of my lawyers came and played it for me,' Sinclair said of the song in a phone interview. 'I couldn't believe he would come and play it for my concert.' The rally was held at Ann Arbor's Crisler Arena in December 1971. Within a week, the Michigan Supreme Court ruled that the state's marijuana statutes were unconstitutional and Sinclair was released. ... The song was later featured on Lennon's Some Time in New York City album" (Karen Dalton-Beninato, "Exclusive: John Lennon Recalls the Song John Lennon Wrote to Free Him," Huffington Post, 10/9/10).
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Curren$y: This Ain't No Mixtape

"With the Pitchfork Music Festival upon us, we're bringing you a sample of who's taking the stage. Today, we highlight New Orleans rapper Curren$y, who's been slowly climbing to greater recognition for the past couple years. His latest album, Weekend at Burnie's, dropped late last month, but we're looking at one of his early greats so you can get your bearings. On 'Elevator Musik,' from his debut album, This Ain't No Mixtape, he raps in his signature low drone, which plays delightfully against the elevator music in a higher octave. If only this were what they played in elevators, we wouldn't feel as insane throwing spontaneous dance parties in them" ("Pitchfork Music Festival: Rapper Curren$y Can Make Even Elevator Music Sound Good," Huffington Post, 7/15/11).
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David Weiss & Point of Departure: Snuck Out

"David Weiss has drawn sustenance from ... the postbop vanguard. ... Point of Departure consists of Mr. Weiss and the industrious tenor saxophonist J.D. Allen, along with a flexible young rhythm section: Nir Felder on guitar, Matt Clohesy on bass and Jamire Williams on drums. The band functions at the higher levels of postbop slipperiness, staying away from too-obvious material: two of the five pieces on 'Snuck Out' are [Charles] Moore’s, from the unjustly obscure Kenny Cox album 'Multidirection,' released on Blue Note in 1969. The band — in particular, the rhythm section — addresses this music with an air of feverish discovery, and only the most permissive sort of reverence. 'Gravity Point,' by Mr. Moore, spins out from a tightly dissonant horn line into swirling improvisation; 'Paraphernalia,' by Wayne Shorter, stretches even further. Mr. Felder leads the best of these digressions, and like his teammates he sounds thrillingly unrestricted" (Nate Chinen, "New CDs by David Weiss and Lloyd," New York Times, 7/12/11).
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NRBQ: Keep This Love Goin'

"[I]t’s a collection of breezy songs laced with elements of pop, boogie-woogie, torch songs and a hint of a country shuffle on 'In Every Dream,' adapted from, of all things, Tchaikovsky’s 'Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-Flat Minor.' Adams immediately establishes a link to NRBQ's past on the jaunty opener 'Boozoo and Leona,' a follow-up of sorts to the song 'Boozoo, That’s Who!' from the band’s 1989 album 'Wild Weekend.' Boozoo was the nickname of zydeco pioneer Wilson Anthony Chavis, and the song rolls easily along on a zydeco-flavored piano vamp while Adams sings in an affable, slightly roughened voice. Bluesy guitar with a warm, fat tone drives 'I’m Satisfied,' Ligon yearns for a non-human simplicity on 'The Animal Life' and the group gets a little goofy on the throwback rock ’n’ roller 'Sweet and Petite,' a song of a piece with the Trashmen’s 1963 hit 'Surfin’ Bird'" (Eric R. Danton, "CD Review," Hartford Courant, 6/20/11).
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Amadou & Mariam: Welcome to Mali

"It took more than ten years to make their first record. Then, in 1994, [manager Marc-Antoine] Moreau 'discovered' Amadou and Mariam and changed their lives. He was in Senegal to visit one of his acts, the singer Ismael Lo, and decided to tack a loop through Mali and Ivory Coast on to the end of his trip. At one point he stayed in a bus station in Bamako for three days waiting for the bus to Abidjan to fill up. 'While I was there a guy came with a big box full of tapes. ... One said "The Blind Couple from Mali, Volume 1." The first track was called Everyone has their Own Problem.' ... A year later, back in Paris, a friend to whom he had played the tape found out that Amadou and Mariam were playing in an African restaurant. Moreau went and introduced himself. ... They have worked together ever since. The breakthrough came with the 2005 album Dimanche a Bamako, which sold more than half a million copies. The follow-up was partly produced by Damon Albarn, who has become a regular collaborator" (Ben Hoyle, "The Conversation," Times [London], 7/9/11).
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Moby: Destroyed

"i don't sleep very well when i travel. and as a result, i tend to be awake in cities when everyone else is asleep. and that's where this album comes from. it was primarily written late at night in cities when i felt like i was the only person awake (or alive). being the only person awake (or alive) in an empty city is strange and disconcerting, but it's also comforting. the streets are empty and quiet. the streetlights are all on but are only illuminating emptiness. i don't know if any of this will make sense to anyone listening to the album, but for me 'destroyed' is an album that makes the most sense late at night in an empty city when everyone else has gone to sleep. and, as always, i presumptuously ask that you listen to the album in its entirety at least once, as it was put together as a, hopefully, cohesive body of work, and i believe that it makes the most sense when listened to from start to finish. a soundtrack for empty cities at 2 a.m., at least that's how i hear it. and, as always, thank you for listening" (CD notes by Moby).
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Dave King Trucking Company: Good Old Light

"Dave King’s dirty, aggressive, disciplined joy in playing drums conjoins many degrees between swing rhythm and more rigid backbeats. 'Good Old Light' (Sunnyside), by his new, Minneapolis band Dave King Trucking Company, shows him as a generous-bulldog kind of bandleader, with serious ideas about instrumentation and contrast between players’ styles. One of those ideas is Erik Fratzke, who is a puzzle. ... He wrote the most forthright jazz tune on 'Good Old Light,' called 'Night Tram.' ... On the Trucking Company record Mr. Fratzke is something like a timbral ingredient until 'Hawk Over Traffic,' an orderly tune near the end, defined by Mr. King’s medium-tempo, John Bonham-like groove. And when the guitar solo comes in, uh-oh: it’s free, pan-tonal, dissonant, unspooling in wide intervals and impulsive motion, but gradually holding together by triplets and patterns. It’s 90 seconds of strong medicine, hidden deep into the record" (Ben Ratliff, "New CDs," New York Times, 7/12/11).
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Robert Plant: Band of Joy

"'I suddenly felt very free and liberated,' Mr. Plant said. ... Inspired by this emotion, and by the remarkable set of musicians he was working with ... Mr. Plant decided to title [his] new album 'Band of Joy,' after the group in which he and the drummer John Bonham played before the formation of Led Zeppelin in 1968. ... On paper 'Band of Joy' might sound a bit like a return to familiar territory, but the performances are consistently surprising. 'You Can’t Buy My Love' is a finger-popping back-porch rocker, while 'The Only Sound That Matters' offers an introspective meditation on love’s complications. Between the caliber of the musicians, the ambitious material, and Mr. Plant’s vocals (his signature banshee wail has modulated to a more weathered, expressive attack, which [guitarist and co-producer Buddy] Miller compared to jazz singing), the album — true to its title — genuinely feels like a band effort" (Alan Light, "With a Nod to His Past, Plant Moves On Again," New York Times, 9/5/10).
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John Adams: Son of Chamber Symphony; String Quartet

"The 'trickster,' composer John Adams once called it — the persona he evinces in pieces like his Chamber Symphony, which he described as a cross between Arnold Schoenberg and Wile E. Coyote. He's (understandably) tried to distance himself since from the notion that his pieces collectively fall into one of two categories, either jest or earnest, but still it's clear, once in a while, when he's up to his old tricks again. Case in point: One might reasonably suspect that Adams has revisited the aesthetic of the Chamber Symphony with the titular piece on his new CD, Son of Chamber Symphony (Nonesuch Records). The original was one of a kind in Adams' oeuvre, suggesting a close study of such great American weirdos as Frank Zappa and Mexico-based player-piano fiend Conlon Nancarrow. The sequel (self-deprecating title notwithstanding) defies the Hollywood law of diminishing artistic returns while still offering all of Chamber Symphony's daffy pleasures" (Daniel Stephen Johnson, "Unpop!," New Haven Advocate, 7/21/11, p. 37).
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Brian Eno and the words of Rick Holland: Drums Between the Bells

"Mr. Eno enthusiastically discussed evolution ... Jorge Luis Borges ... And, not least, he explained his thinking behind 'Drums Between the Bells,' a collaboration with Rick Holland, a young British poet, that is a kind of test of the limitations for interpreting the human voice. To make it, Mr. Eno gathered various acquaintances with striking speaking voices — a graphic designer, an employee at his health club — and had them recite Mr. Holland’s lines, which express cosmic wonderment and artistic ambition in emphatic, Twitter-length phrases ('invent new colors that fly'). Then Mr. Eno stretched and tweaked those recordings to bring out quirks in the speakers’ enunciation and tone, and, pushing the songs further into a realm of artificiality, added a glitchy electronic soundtrack. The effect, in tracks like 'Bless This Space' and 'The Real,' is a disembodied sing-speak that recalls both Brechtian Sprechstimme and those robotically stitched-together announcements in the subway" (Ben Sisario, "Pushing Back the Limits of Speech and Music," New York Times, 7/4/11).
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Bruckner: Symphony No. 7 (Bernard Haitink, Chicago Symphony)

"In this week's New Yorker I have a column about Prof. Dr. Anton Bruckner, on the occasion of the Cleveland Orchestra's Bruckner festival at Lincoln Center. The orchestra has DVD recordings of the four symphonies it played in the series: the Fifth, the Seventh, the Eighth (in the 1887 version), and the Ninth. I've heard only the last two; both are recommendable, the first for giving the best account to date of the original version of the symphony, the second for the sustained brilliance of the playing. Off the top of my head, here are a few other favorite Bruckner recordings: the Ninth, with Giulini and the Vienna Philharmonic (DG); the Eighth, with Boulez and the Vienna (DG); Furtwängler's vehement wartime Fifth with the Berlin Philharmonic (Music & Arts); the Fourth, with Jochum and the Berliners (DG); the Sixth, with Klemperer and the New Philharmonia (EMI); Haitink's fine new Chicago recording of the Seventh (Resound) ..." (Alex Ross, "Bruckner Extras (1)," The Rest Is Noise, 7/26/11).
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My Morning Jacket: Circuital

"More than any other group, My Morning Jacket has the talent ... to bring jam bands into the 21st century. Not content with just regurgitating 16-minute blues progressions, My Morning Jacket embraces experimentation with a musicality that's infinitely more convincing than that of their contemporaries, who lack the songwriting chops to make it work. And that's really My Morning Jacket's advantage. Whereas most jam bands put the emphasis on playing and regard songwriting and recording as a chore, MMJ realize that the jams are sweeter when the songs are solid. Listen to 'Wonderful (The Way I Feel),' and you'll get the idea. It's a song that could have been written by the Brill Building greats and performed by Jerry Garcia. Or 'Holdin' on to Black Metal,' which sounds like the theme to a lost '60s James Bond film. 'Circuital' is an album by a bunch of dudes who love songwriting, record-making, and playing -- all with equal fervor and mastery" (Shawn Amos, "PLAY > SKIP," Huffington Post, 5/31/11).
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Karsh Kale: Cinema

"The seven-minute title track offers an insightful gaze into the amalgam of universes that Kale has stitched together: the poetic wonderment of a Bansuri flute quickly opens into a guitar-drenched beat, somewhat reminiscent of an older track, 'Break of Dawn.' Mantra singer Vidhi Sharma weaves inside the rhythm beautifully before a cascade of violins emerge, which soon give way to an isolated bass line. The low end trucks along under a feverish pitch of percussion. ... The track that just won't get out of my head is also a throwback of sorts, sneaking into the drum 'n bass territory that helped Kale make his mark. 'Avalanche' also features a longtime friend and singer, Shahid Siddiqui, whose vocals over the piano-led melody are meticulous and brilliant. During moments like these, when Kale's precise production ear and masterful hands strike that magic balance between heavy and light forces, his genius is apparent. For the most part, Cinema strikes the balance perfectly" (Derek Beres, "Global Beat Fusion," Huffington Post, 4/25/11).
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Ha Ha Tonka: Death of a Decade

"In a land perhaps unfairly identified with cooking crystal meth and squirrel meat pie, it's refreshing to see a band successfully emerge with good taste (and good vibrations) intact while embracing their heritage. Ha Ha Tonka is one of those bands. Named after a Missouri state park about 120 miles from West Plains, where three of the four members grew up, Ha Ha Tonka is as Americana as hot dogs and apple pie, only tastier, edgier. ... Representing their region, they hope to present a positive image and sound that reverberates throughout the hills and valleys and beyond. ... Their third album (Bloodshot Records), released on April 5, is a fortifying rock 'n' roots concoction. Enriched by exceptional four-part harmonies, it also features [Brett] Anderson's spirited mandolin and guitar playing, [Lucas] Long's thumping bass, [Lennon] Bone's thunderous drum fills and the powerful soprano of [Brian] Roberts" (Michael Bialas, "Ha Ha Tonka's Talkin' Baseball, Bourdain and Death of a Decade," Huffington Post, 4/4/11).
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Michael Buble: Crazy Love

Winner of the 2010 Grammy for best traditional pop vocal album.
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Los Lonely Boys: Rockpango

"Making music has always been a family thing for Los Lonely Boys, but the Garza brothers have taken it to another level on 'Rockpango,' their latest. Not only did Henry, JoJo and Ringo produce 'Rockpango,' it's the first full-length album they've put out themselves on their own imprint, Lonely Tone Records. After three albums for Epic, it just seemed like the right time, JoJo Garza says. 'The last record or two we did with them, nothing really happened, you know? ... It's got to do with us being able to focus more on our music than on how quick to get a record out. ... There's rock on the record; there's ballads; there's funk,' Garza says. 'There's things on there that are pop, things that could be played on rock 'n' roll radio, country radio, Top 40 radio. To me, the unfortunate thing is that it's such a versatile record, some people are afraid to touch it.' It's the album that comes closest to capturing Los Lonely Boys' live sound, Garza says" (Eric R. Danton, "Los Lonely Boys Warming Up to New Label," Soundcheck, 6/9/11).
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Boog Brown and Apollo Brown: Brown Study

"Put simply, there is a huge female hip‑hop scene in Detroit. In contrast to the rest of the US and hip-hop as a whole, the city has become a hotbed of developing female talent, turning out dozens upon dozens of talented rappers. It's left other centres of hip-hop ... in the dust. ... Detroit has bucked the trend. ... The 5E Gallery is host to The Foundation, one of the most successful nights in the city's history. It's a Tuesday night event focused specifically on female performers. ... The Foundation debuted in May 2009. ... It is far from the only women-orientated hip-hop event in the country, but it is the only one that operates regularly. The impact it's had on those who pass through it has been undeniable: Foundation alumni have released a string of albums, including critically acclaimed projects like Boog Brown's Brown Study (released with producer Apollo Brown) and Miz Korona's The Injection, as well as records from artists like Mz Jonz, Mahogany Jones and Mae Day" (Rob Boffard, "Women Step Up to the Mic," Guardian Weekly, 7/1/11, p. 36).
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The Essential Paul Revere & the Raiders

"ML: Well, the band started in the Boise Valley area. I was singing with a group called Clay Chapman and the Idaho Playboys, which was a country band. I was a rockabilly singer. But across the street from where we rehearsed, I could hear rock 'n' roll music coming from a little white house. Turns out, there was a rock 'n' roll band playing there and that's when I thought, 'That's what I want to be in!' And, as fate would have it, they played at a gig at the Elk Lodge and I walked up and demanded to sing a song, they let me, and I ran off the stage. The next day, I was in McClure State Creek wrapping up orders and Paul Revere comes in. He was picking up his order for his drive, and he was telling me the story about this crazy, skinny kid that walked up and crashed their dance and demanded to sing a song. I asked him how the kid was and he said, 'He was pretty good!' So, I whipped off my glasses and my baker's hat and showed him that it was me" (Mike Ragogna, "A Conversation with Paul Revere & The Raiders' Mark Lindsay," Huffington Post, 4/22/11).
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Tomas Luis de Victoria: Requiem

"This music, often known simply as Victoria's Requiem, has been regarded as some of his finest and one of the last great works in what we call the Renaissance polyphonic style. Its refined and dignified austerity is shot through with passionate conviction; it glows with extraordinary fervour within a musical and spiritual atmosphere of serenity and fitness for its liturgical purpose. ... Victoria ... composed and published in 1583 ... a Missa pro defunctis for four-part choir. This early Requiem was reprinted in 1592. By then Victoria was well established in Madrid as choirmaster and chaplain to the Dowager Empress Maria. ... In 1603 the Empress died. ... [T]he solemn High Mass of the Dead ... was celebrated. ... King Philip III was there in his mourning black and silver, his cousin Princess Margaret, the royal nun, all the dignitaries of church and state, crowded into a scene which may now make us think of an El Greco painting. ... For this occasion the composer Victoria wrote his second Requiem" (CD notes by Bruno Turner).
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Paul Simon: So Beautiful or So What

"MR: [O]ne of my favorite tracks is 'Getting Ready For Christmas Day' on which you feature the Reverend J.M. Gates with all of his fire and brimstone. What motivated you to merge his sermon with your song? And the song's title was inspired by one of his sermons, right? PS: The title, absolutely, comes from his sermon, which is called 'Getting Ready For Christmas Day.' I heard his sermon on this box set that was issued called Goodbye Babylon from a label called Dust To Digital. It must have come out four years ago or something like that. ... One of the disks was just sermons, and I really liked this particular sermon, the way he delivered it. I didn't think I was going to do anything with it, but at a certain point towards the middle of the album, I went to the studio to cut a rhythm track, and we cut 'Getting Ready For Christmas Day.' I said, 'You know ... put that sermon on top of that track, and let's see what that sounds like.' It sounded really great and really arresting" (Mike Ragogna, "A Conversation with Paul Simon," Huffington Post, 3/22/11)
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