Various Artists: The Lost Notebooks of Hank Williams

"Williams, who [died at] only twenty-nine, left behind notebooks filled with scribbled lyrics. Decades later, the notebooks were entrusted to Bob Dylan with the idea that he might turn them into songs. ... Dylan sings just one song, 'The Love That Faded,' and it has an archetypal Williams lyric, melancholy verging on maudlin, with terrific poetic compression: 'Brown eyes, blue eyes, they're all the same / None are for me, I've lost this game.' For the rest, he assembled a roster that includes Lucinda Williams (affecting without being affected on 'I'm So Happy I Found You'), Jack White (who turns in a taut, accusatory performance on 'You Know That I Know'), and Norah Jones (blue and angelic on 'How Many Times Have You Broken My Heart'). ... The musical settings provided by the artists are familiar, mid-tempo melodies flavored with fiddle or steel guitar. ... It's hard to pick a standout, but Alan Jackson ('You've Been Lonesome, Too') and Levon Helm ('You'll Never Again Be Mine') come closest" (Ben Greenman, "Pop Notes," New Yorker, 10/10/11).
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The Rapture: In the Grace of Your Love

"A lot of turmoil, but the Rapture were always writing. ... 'I just went in one day [and said], "Look, I'm really sorry. Falling out over money is just retarded,"' [Rapture singer-guitarist Luke] Jenner says. After a long, healing chat, [DFA Records manager Jonathan] Galkin's cards were on the table. All of Jenner's were, too, except one: 'Oh, by the way, we have a new album.' 'No big deal,' laughs Galkin. 'He wouldn't play any music.' Soon after, Jenner, multi-instrumentalist Gabriel Andruzzi, and drummer Vito Roccoforte returned and played Galkin the tracks they'd put together with Philippe Zdar of Cassius, who'd produced the last Phoenix album. Galkin was apprehensive at first. ... He needn't have worried. DFA signed the Rapture again. The new album is called In the Grace of Your Love. It's a homecoming, appropriate for an album whose themes are healing, rebirth, forgiveness, and eternal returns. Or as Andruzzi puts it, simply, 'It's our soul record'" (Michaelangelo Matos, "The Rapture Come Home," Village Voice, 9/21-27/11).
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Tinariwen: Tassili

"This band's name will forever be associated with Tuareg music, being the first to break through to international audiences a decade ago with an intriguing blend of African blues and percussion. Featuring '70s era electric guitars and lyrics and chants sung in Tamashek, Tinariwen plays trance music: the subtle, pervasive percussion creates a circular hypnotism that the melodies and guitar riffs embrace. While much has been made about the band's nomadic roots -- members really do live in the desert, and don't just rush there for photo ops -- so far they've only recorded in studios in Bamako and France. While the music may have been written amidst the sand and sun that the members know intimately, it was not until Tassili (Anti-) that Tinariwen recorded in its native environment. Setting up camp and powering off generators for three weeks, this softer, more acoustic offering is perhaps the closest thing you can achieve to being among the musicians without pond-jumping to Africa" (Derek Beres, "Global Beat Fusion," Huffington Post, 11/2/11).
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Young the Giant (self-titled)

"Sameer Gadhia ... is a pro at handling the media. ... Young the Giant released their eponymous debut full-length album earlier this year and experienced moderate success playing SXSW and Lollapalooza. But nothing compares to the band's performance at the 2011 MTV video music awards, where Sameer went crowd surfing and then lay flat on the stage belting lyrics to their hit single. The following week sales for the song 'My Body' increased by 220 percent on iTunes. Is the Sameer we see on television the same guy when he hangs out with his buddies on an idle Wednesday? We go behind the interview to find out what he thinks about all the media attention. MC: Do you read the things written about you? SG: I try not to. But I do. I have a weekly Google alert set up. Which is bad. I've been trying to not read them. I've Googled my name every now and then. There is a lot of good stuff, a lot of bad stuff. I try not to read it ..." (Mark R. Collins, "Anatomy of an Interview: Young the Giant at Austin City Limits," Huffington Post, 9/29/11).
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Apollo's Fire: Come to the River

"While Blow and Purcell were making high art in Britain, a rich folk culture of Anglo-American music was developing in New England and the South -- as 'Come to the River: An Early American Gathering,' a new release by the excellent Cleveland group Apollo's Fire (on Avie) makes delightfully clear. Jeannette Sorrell, the ensemble's harpsichordist and director, has done most of the arrangements on the album, short vocal and instrumental pieces that have origins in material collected by the seventeenth-century English musician Thomas Ravenscroft ('Willie, Prithee Goe to Bed'), the Sacred Harp tradition of shape-note singing, or the work of anonymous American balladeers ('Wild Bill Jones'). The disk is evidence of a maturation of 'crossover,' in which early-music and folk performers are joining forces to make a new kind of sound" (Russell Platt, "Classical Notes," New Yorker, 11/7/11, p. 18).
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Alice Cooper: Welcome 2 My Nightmare

"Many artists have been compared to Alice Cooper, but the legendary rocker says one stands above them all. 'Lady Gaga is the female Alice Cooper,' the 63-year old rocker said. 'She totally gets it.' Though their music styles may differ, both inject a heavy dose of theater into their performance, living out fantasies and nightmares on stage. Since the early 1970s, Cooper has used a real guillotine with a forty pound blade that comes within inches of his head and hung himself using a real rope. ... 'She created a character named Lady Gaga and wrote songs for Lady Gaga, just as I write songs for Alice,' he said. 'But when you meet her offstage, she's nothing like that person... and neither am I.' When not playing music, Cooper can usually be found on a golf course, where he handicaps between zero and four. Instead of gothic attire with streaming mascara; he opts for a Callaway golf shirt, and the traditionally loud trousers. Cooper will release 'Welcome 2 My Nightmare' on Sept. 13" (John Carruci, "Alice Cooper Says Gaga Is a Female Version of Him," Huffington Post, 9/2/11).
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American Mystic: Music of Alan Hovhaness (1911-2000)

"The ever-popular Prayer of St. Gregory (1946), for trumpet and strings, was first heard as an intermezzo from Hovhaness' opera Etchmiadzin -- but it soon found favor as a separate work. The composer characterized it as 'a prayer in darkness,' honoring St. Gregory, 'the illuminator,' who first introduced Christianity to Armenia in the fourth century. This rather brief, but soul-satisfying work lays down a soft, charle-like bed of typically Armenian modal string harmonies, drifting beneath a serenely aching trumpet solo. The piece gradually increases in sacred fervor and entreaty -- as if rising heavenward -- without ever losing its pervasive sense of radiant calm. With The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (1975) -- for narrator, solo accordion and orchestra -- Hovhaness offers a rather unconventional work, in that the music serves as a framework to spoken recitations of well-known love poetry by the 11th-century Persian writer Omar Khayyam. Another unusual aspect is that the piece is uncharacteristically hedonistic" (CD notes by Lindsay Koob).
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Me'Shell NdegéOcello: Weather

"'We can always blame it on the weather,' sings Meshell Ndegeocello, her voice shaded in octaves, on 'Weather,' the title track and opener of her intoxicating new album. The line arrives in the service of seduction, but functions as an overarching metaphor. Love and attraction, sexual entanglement and romantic attachment — they’re as mutable and unaccountable as complex weather systems, Ms. Ndegeocello suggests. And she’s intent on flying kites in the storm, taking some readings for herself. She has covered this ground before, but rarely with such an unwavering sense of clarity and restraint. 'Weather' is her most consistently strong album in some time, a product of vision and discipline. She had a shrewd outside producer in Joe Henry, who also contributed lyrics to a track; she had the inestimable advantage of her working band, which she has honed like a steel blade. ... And she opened herself to collaborators like Benji Hughes, who wrote those lyrics in 'Weather,' and who plays piano on 'Oysters'" (Nate Chinen, "New Music," New York Times, 11/7/11).
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Mahler: Symphony No. 10; Berliner Philharmoniker, Simon Rattle

"You used to listen to the Grateful Dead while writing? Who do you listen to now, if anyone?
"Grateful Dead. Messiaen. Mozart. Dylan. Mahler. ..."
("'Get the Music Right': Michael Moorcock Interviewed by Terry Bisson," in Michael Moorcock, Modem Times 2.0, p. 93)
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Miles Español: New Sketches of Spain

"MR: Bob, what inspired you to take on Miles Davis' latin works? BB: ... Depending on the immediate environment ideas pop into my head all the time. Over the years I have developed a network of producers, industry people and musicians that I can start a dialog about these ideas and develop them. ... Miles Español came about after reading a lot of books on the plague and the Berber Invasion of Spain and the Reconquista, the Inquisition and the gypsy migration from India, the links between India and North Africa and the expulsion of the non-Christians from Spain by Queen Liz in 1492. In that survey of humanity emerged a narrative that I could abstract into the language music. There are parallels today in the deportation of Romas from Europe, the genocidal migrations of Darfur and Somalia and the harassment of our Latino friends in the US. If there is any inspiration it is in the desire to reflect this Modern Reconquista in music" (Mike Ragogna, "A Conversation with Bob Belden," Huffington Post, 11/2/11).
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Kristin Chenoweth: Some Lessons Learned

"Tony and Emmy Award-winning performer Kristin Chenoweth made her way to New Jersey to headline the 16th Annual Spotlight Gala, celebrating arts education and the Women’s Association of the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, Oct. 1 at NJPAC. 'What [the Women’s Association does] is so much about arts education for kids in this area, and that’s what I’m about,' Chenoweth told Playbill.com a few minutes before her performance. 'I grew up in "Friday Night Lights" land, and arts was the last priority. It makes me scared that it’s disappearing in our schools as we speak.' ... 'You want them to hear what inspires you,' Chenoweth said regarding the songs on her recently released album 'Some Lessons Learned,' which hit number 14 on the country music charts. ... Chenoweth then offered a few numbers from 'Some Lessons Learned,' including 'God and Me,' 'I Didn’t,' 'Fathers and Daughters' and her first single, 'I Want Somebody (Bitch About)' " ("Highlights from Kristin Chenoweth's Performance at NJPAC," Playblog, 10/3/11).
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Ombra Cara: Arias of George Frideric Handel

"For all the scholarship and convincing guesswork that may underlie [conductor René] Jacobs’s performances, he is certainly intense and Romantic, as even his detractors recognize. His recent recordings attest to his boldness of approach, consistency of vision and brilliance of effect. ... A CD of Handel arias and duets with [Bejun] Mehta ('Ombra Cara,' Harmonia Mundi HMC 902077; CD with a bonus DVD) is simply beautiful — a duet with Rosemary Joshua pure heaven — and fascinating in the technical kinship between Mr. Mehta and Mr. Jacobs (who has now given up his public singing career). Both subscribe to Mr. Jacobs’s plausible theory that the best countertenors gain body and weight of voice if their falsetto is built on a firm tenorial foundation. In a way this might be seen as another dig at the British, given the disembodied, grown-up-treble sound of many early British countertenors" (John Rockwell, "Conductor Flies Freely over Critical Gulfs," New York Times, 11/20/11).
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Beyoncé: 4

"Beyoncé’s 4, one of the summer’s biggest CDs, revels in the silky ’80s R&B synth and horn arrangements that once made Whitney Houston an MTV fixture" (Josh Kun, "Sing, Memory," The American Prospect, 11/11, p. 52).
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Sibelius: The Symphonies; Wiener Philharmoniker, Lorin Maazel

"Sibelius was born into a culture without a musical tradition and the style which he assimilated as a student of composition was Teutonic. His inspiration, however, came from the Finnish national epic, the Kalevala (from which he took material for his symphonic poems), from Finnish poetry and from the folk music of his homeland. Yet while his music evokes the vastness and often the bleakness of Finnish landscapes, it does not derive directly from folk-song. The technical means he uses are strikingly individual, just as the music which results from their use is more the expression of a personal sensibility than the manifestation of national characteristics. He made plain his own views on symphonic composition in a conversation he had with Mahler in Helsinki in 1907. Mahler declared that 'the symphony must be like a world ...,' but Sibelius said that what he admired in a symphony was 'severity of form, and the profound logic that created an inner connection between all the motifs" (CD notes by Timothy Day).
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Feist: Metals

"Four years after her hit album The Reminder (the one that gave us '1234,' that song from the iPod Nano commercials), Feist is back with Metals. This meticulously crafted album steers clear of any obvious crowd pleasers. It's darker and brooding, and it probably won't be used to sell you anything" (Claire Suddath, "Pop Chart," Time, 10/17/11).
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Primus: Green Naugahyde

"MR: I want to get some stories behind the songs. For instance, 'Last Salmon Man.' LC: Well, most of my friends are contractors and trades people, or fisherman. So -- I've written about this times before -- this is the fisherman's chronicles, chapter five or six. I'm watching the fishing industry, especially the salmon fishing industry of Northern California, fading away. I see these poor bastards losing this legacy that their grandfathers built for them as we send all of our water down to make more golf courses in Palm Springs. It's a little frustrating, so I wrote about this legacy of the 'Last Salmon Man.' ... MR: Les, I want to move on to the song 'Eternal Consumption Engine,' I love that because I think collectively, we are. LC: We definitely are. That riff was a riff that Ler has been kicking around for about at least 15 years, and I finally said, 'Let's put that thing on a record man, I love that riff.' The wheels started clicking. ..." (Mike Ragogna, "A Conversation with Primus' Les Claypool," Huffington Post, 10/24/11).
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Bela Fleck & the Flecktones: Rocket Science

"MR: Now, is it right that you were inspired early on by Earl Scruggs on The Beverly Hillbillies theme? BF: That's exactly right. He's just one of the most profound musicians on the planet, and hearing him play had a huge effect on people that weren't banjo players yet, you know what I'm saying? Once they hear him play, they go, 'Wow, what is that? I've got to find out what that is,' and they could be from anywhere. They could be from Japan or they could be from Canada somewhere, or they could be from New York--it's not all about the country part of it or the rural part of it. It's just a sound, it's an iconic sound...his playing. Anyway, he had that effect on me. I was in Queens, New York at the time. For me it was The Beverly Hillbillies, but for some people it's 'Foggy Mountain Breakdown,' or it could be anything he plays on because he just has this spirit and this tone to his playing that really knocks people out...if they're going to be banjo players" (Mike Ragogna, "A Conversation with Bela Fleck," Huffington Post, 9/23/11).
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The Summer Set: Everything's Fine

"MR: I really enjoyed the song, 'About A Girl.' But wouldn't you say this entire album is about a girl? BD: Absolutely. I think the whole album, to me, is this 11-song true story of a boy and a girl falling in love with each other for the first time and all of the trials and tribulations that go with that. I feel like it's kind of a true story for everyone, whether you relate to it on your own or whether you want to just believe the story that we're trying to tell. I think it's something that everyone can kind of hold on to and relate to, that was really important when we were putting it together as well. We wrote like thirty-something songs for this record, but we decided that it was really important for us to put out an album that we felt had some consistency lyrically because all of these songs are really just about the hardships of being in a relationship. It may even be about one that I went through in the past couple of years" (Mike Ragogna, "A Conversation with The Summer Set's Brian Dales," Huffington Post, 8/12/11).
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Return to Forever featuring Chick Corea: No Mystery

"NYC jazz outfit Return to Forever was founded in the early '70s. Captained by keyboardist Chick Corea, the ensemble's rotating cast has included luminaries Stanley Clarke (bass), Lenny White (drums), Frank Gambale (guitar), Jean-Luc Ponty (violinist), Al Di Meola (guitar), Joe Farrell (sax, flute), Mingo Lewis (percussion), Bill Connors (guitar), Flora Purim (vocalist), Airto Moreira (percussion), Steve Gadd (drums), and Earl Klugh (guitar). Despite a premature breakup in 1977, the Grammy-winning soundsmiths reassembled many times over, issuing a dozen-plus full-lengths to date. Rediscover 'Interplay,' from Return to Forever's mid-'70s fusion classic No Mystery" (Phil Ramone and Danielle Evin, "Dog Ears Music," Huffington Post, 9/30/11).
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They Might Be Giants: Join Us!

"Over the past three decades, They Might Be Giants has worn so many unique hats -- indie rock nobodies, alt-press darlings, phone-to-internet pioneers, commercial successes, kids' music heroes, Grammy winners, documentary subjects -- it seems they've had to grow a new head to accommodate each successive chapeau. Thankfully, the longstanding duo of Johns Linnell and Flansburgh has decided to recycle some of their older hats; their latest album, Join Us, their first album of non-children's market material since 2007's edgy The Else, has the wildly eclectic and experimental vibe of their earliest Bar/None releases in the '80s. 'John and I did have a couple conversations about at least part of what we were doing on the album,' says Flansburgh from a house painting project in the Catskills. 'There was a practical aspect to it, which is we wanted to have a few songs we could play as a duo that would showcase what we do ...'" (Brian Baker, "Here Come The Johns," New Haven Advocate, 9/8/11).
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Charles Ives: Four Sonatas; Hilary Hahn, violin; Valentina Lisitsa, piano

"If anyone can be said to be the father of American classical music, it's the Connecticut-born visionary Charles Ives (1874-1954). Combining the classical tradition of Brahms and Beethoven with the vibrant, self-reliant spirit of an optimistic, growing, still-young United States, Ives's music parallels and in many ways outpaces the European modernism of Stravinsky and Schoenberg. At the same time, he was in part a homespun populist, tapping into America's day-to-day musical life by quoting hymns, dances, and patriotic tunes known to nearly every listener. The four violin sonatas are emblematic of Ives's highly original and immediately engaging music. Although virtually unknown at the time they were written, the sonatas are now performed alongside Beethoven, Franck, or Schumann. And yet, in whatever context, the music is still bracing and fresh, still sounds 'new.' ... All four of the violin sonatas were completed in the middle 1910s, but their origins are even earlier" (CD notes by Robert Kirzinger).
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