New and Notable Music

Thelonious Monk: Brilliant Corners

2012-01-28T11:11:00.000-05:00

"[Monk's wife] Nellie called those lean days [1951-54] the 'un-years,' mired in a kind of internal exile, when, banned from playing clubs, Monk retreated into his own head, drifting along to his own tempo. 'There was no money,' Nellie said. 'No place to go. A complete blank.' Monk described it as like 'laying dead.' Then Monk got a call from Charles Delauney inviting him to France to play at the Third Paris Jazz Festival. ... Monk was ready for Paris, but the Parisians, who had embraced so many black jazz musicians, didn’t know what to make of Monk. ... After Monk returned to New York, his career began to pick up. He signed a deal with Riverside Records and quickly recorded two of his best albums: the startling Thelonious Monk Plays the Music of Duke Ellington and Brilliant Corners with Sonny Rollins blowing a fire-breathing sax. Both records sold relatively well and earned Monk some of his best reviews" (Jeffrey St. Clair, "Out Walked Monk," Counterpunch, 12/2-4/11).
View catalog record here!

Various Artists: The Green Album

2012-01-26T12:12:00.001-05:00

"In advance of the fall release of the new Muppets movie (simply titled 'The Muppets'), Disney is releasing an album of Muppets songs, covered by some big names in the rock world, according to Pitchfork. Among the participants on 'The Green Album': Weezer, My Morning Jacket, Evanescence's Amy Lee, OK Go, The Fray, Alkaline Trio and Andrew Bird. It's not the first Muppet-Weezer crossover. Kermit and Co. appeared in the pop rock band's 2002 video for 'Keep Fishin''" ("Album News," Sound Magazine, 9/11).
View catalog record here!

Michael Feinstein: The Sinatra Project, Vol. II

2012-01-25T09:27:00.000-05:00

"Three years ago Michael Feinstein, the piano-bar crooner turned stand-up entertainer jumped ship, so to speak, with his album 'The Sinatra Project,' in which he became an acolyte of Ol’ Blue Eyes after two decades in the Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire camps. ... Now comes 'The Sinatra Project, Vol. II: The Good Life,' whose stylistic center of gravity is the 1960s, where the first volume had its heart in the ’50s, Sinatra’s greatest decade. ... From the opening cut, Dickie Thompson’s obscure, campy 'Thirteen Women,' (the B-side of Bill Haley and the Comets’ global game changer 'Rock Around the Clock') exhibits a more playful attitude. On songs like 'Hallelujah, I Love Her So,' 'Is You Is or Is You Ain’t My Baby?,' 'Luck Be a Lady' and 'The Lady Is a Tramp,' Mr. Feinstein doesn’t bear down as heavily as before. ... Three beautifully sung ballads — 'I’ll Be Around,' 'The Way You Look Tonight' (a smooth, glossily orchestrated bossa nova) and the old Tony Bennett hit 'The Good Life,' arranged for just voice and piano — are the heart of an album that finds Mr. Feinstein embracing his past as an intimate crooner and popular music purist par excellence" (Stephen Holden, "New Music," New York Times, 10/31/11).
View catalog record here!

The Fall: Ersatz GB

2012-01-24T09:28:00.001-05:00

"Against the stereotype of the aging musician, [Mark E.] Smith has, over the years, steered his band toward a heavier and more truculent sound. There is even a moment of what sounds like heavy metal in the entirely hysterical 'Greenway,' which opens with an irrelevant little piano figure and then drops into a chug that could be an amateur version of Metallica. Smith growls, comically enough to make people across the room take notice. Then he abandons that routine and goes into his more usual mode of loud recitation, which makes no pretense at singing. 'Channel-hopping the other day on Danish rock TV,' Smith says that he has spotted someone in a video who bears a coincidental resemblance to him. He then calls neighbors in his hotel to see if they have a CD player. After visiting their room—it’s hard to imagine that these people invited Smith over—he passes judgment: 'Their tone was snotty and offensive, so I called them / People like that really get on my nerves / To relax, I called my cat.' Entirely logical. 'Mask Search' is a more typical Fall number, alternating between two or three simple patterns. Smith gurgles, 'I’m so sick of Snow Patrol / and where to find Esso lubricant and mobile number.' Here, again, is that marvellous tension of Fall songs—the solid, immovable forces beneath the voice, which refuses to do anything remotely predictable" (Sasha Frere-Jones, "Plug and Play," New Yorker, 11/14/11).
View catalog record here!

Helene Grimaud: Mozart

2012-01-23T10:50:00.000-05:00

"She had just come back from Bologna, where she had recorded two Mozart piano concertos, with Claudio Abbado and the Orchestra Mozart. Abbado is one of her longtime supporters, and he has conducted her many times over the years. ... This time, however, there was a dispute. According to Grimaud, the taping of the two concertos, the Nineteenth and the Twenty-third, went well; but the next day, when the orchestra had disbanded and Abbado and Grimaud were in the 'patch' session—fixing blemishes on the recording—he asked her to perform a cadenza that Mozart had written for the Twenty-third. During the recording of that concerto, they had taped Grimaud playing one by Ferruccio Busoni, the late-nineteenth-century composer. Grimaud had first heard the Busoni cadenza on an old Vladimir Horowitz recording, with Carlo Maria Giulini conducting. 'I told myself, "When I play the concerto, that’s the cadenza I will play,"' she said to me. At the patch session, Grimaud sight-read and played the Mozart—'to humor' Abbado, she said. Two weeks later, Abbado, having listened to the recording of the two versions, decided that they should use the Mozart. ... Grimaud refused to back down. 'I simply said no,' she said. Soon afterward, Abbado had Grimaud uninvited from the Lucerne Festival, which she was set to open, in August. ... Grimaud didn’t just demur over the cadenza; she fought back. She enlisted the soprano who had sung in Bologna, Mojca Erdmann, and paired her with another ensemble, the Bavarian Radio Chamber Orchestra, with whom Grimaud had performed the concertos earlier in the year" (D.T. Max, "Profiles," New Yorker, 11/7/11).
View catalog record here!

Oneohtrix Point Never: Replica

2012-01-20T09:17:00.003-05:00

"There's loopy, ambient minimalism aplenty in Brooklyn-based experimental musician Daniel Lopatin's latest offering, but there are also surprising nugs of humor, like the beginning of 'Nassau,' where an insignificant, fifth-pitched vocal sample gets twisted into a motive, surrounded by burbling rhythms and passable piano doodles. Lopatin's modus operandi involves re-purposing snippets of TV ads, bathing them in Juno-60 washes, acoustic samples and reverb plates, and letting the whole affair loose as a sink-or-swim kind of deal. Each of the 10, often formless, tracks of dance-less electronica free-flows into the next, a George Winston/Animal Collective jam session with Teo Macero producing. Some float by, unnoticed. Close, repeated listenings reward the patient" (Michael Hamad, "CD of the Week," New Haven Advocate, 12/1/11).
View catalog record here!

James Blake (self-titled)

2012-01-19T12:56:00.001-05:00

"Looking out into the sold-out Music Hall of Williamsburg, Blake's first words were 'Oh, hi! Thanks for coming,' before breaking into his set. Blake's style of music is a hybrid of experimental dub step, lo-fi, and electronica and his lyrics show his vulnerability, passion and sensitivity. Only releasing his self-titled debut last month, he has become a critical favorite, and now on his first trip to America and at his debut US show, Blake is a fan favorite" (Salvatore Bono, "British Buzz Boy James Blake Arrives in Brooklyn," Huffington Post, 3/15/11).
View catalog record here!

Dropkick Murphys: Going Out in Style

2012-01-18T09:23:00.002-05:00

"The Dropkick Murphys did a few things differently on their new album, 'Going Out in Style.' For one thing, the band (including West Hartford native Tim Brennan on guitar) didn't tour last fall during the making of the record, which meant the musicians were fully focused on the writing and recording process. Also, it's more of a narrative album. 'This is our "London Calling," in a way,' singer Al Barr says, referring to the Clash's seminal release during a phone call from Minneapolis, on a tour that stops Sunday at Mohegan Sun. 'It's brought us to a new level with ourselves in terms of songwriting and approaching recording.' Although the Boston Celtic-punk act has often traced narrative paths through individual songs -- the band's iconic single 'I'm Shipping Up to Boston,' featured in Martin Scorsese's film 'The Departed,' is something of a story song -- the group carries a theme through all of 'Going Out in Style.' 'One of the first songs the band wrote was what ended up being the title track, and we just kind of realized with the title song that we had this character, and it would be kind of cool to thread this character's life throughout the record,' Barr says. The character is Cornelius Larkin. The title track takes place at a wake for the Irish immigrant, and the album traces his life -- through his arrival in America as a teen, his military service during the Korean War and his family life with a wife and nine kids" (Eric R. Danton, "Dropkick Murphys Very Much 'In Style,'" Sound Check, 3/1/11).
View catalog record here!

Miles Davis: Bitches Brew

2012-01-17T09:29:00.002-05:00

"Miles Davis ... ever ahead of the curve, began inventing '70s jazz in 1969, first with the sublime electrified sounds of In a Silent Way and again, later that year, in New York City at Columbia Records Studio B (the same room where Springsteen would record his demos). At 10:00 a.m. on Tuesday, August 19 -- the morning after Jimi Hendrix closed the Woodstock festival a hundred miles upstate with his wildly improvisational take on 'The Star-Spangled Banner' -- Davis began recording Bitches Brew, the opening salvo of the jazz-fusion movement" (Will Hermes, Love Goes to Buildings on Fire, p. 20).
View catalog record here!

Dawes: Nothing Is Wrong

2012-01-14T10:17:00.000-05:00

"Robbie Robertson uses these guys as his backing band, and with good reason. Of all the groups who cite the Band as an influence, Dawes are the ones who come the closest to capturing the spirit, without copying the sound. Great melodies, great ol' fashioned rock 'n' roll tunes, and they're even better live" (M.S., "Best Albums of 2011," New Haven Advocate, 12/22/11).
View catalog record here!

Honegger: Pastorale d’Été, Symphony No. 4, Cantate de Noël

2012-01-12T12:10:00.002-05:00

"Since the London Philharmonic Orchestra engaged the Russian maestro Vladimir Jurowski as its principal conductor in 2007, this august institution has reaped consistently strong notices for its dynamic, exacting performances and broad repertory. ... Associated with the Parisian composers’ klatch Les Six, Honegger often found himself at odds with the group’s anti-Wagnerian modernist cheek. In his best-known work, 'Pacific 231,' a modern orchestra’s heft and might evokes the machine-tooled power of a locomotive. That work is not included here, but its brawn comes through in parts of 'Une Cantate de Noël' ('A Christmas Cantata'), completed by a terminally ill Honegger in 1953. Created partly from themes he composed during World War II, the 22-minute piece for baritone soloist, adult and children’s choirs and orchestra opens in a gloomy tone, rising to a haunting plaint. But from there the piece proceeds through a medley of European carols, blazing with joy up to its serene finale. The baritone Christopher Maltman ... sings with care and passion. Mr. Jurowski maintains a balance among the work’s dense layers, and the orchestra plays brilliantly. Add in lucid accounts of Honegger’s sunny Fourth Symphony ('Deliciae Basilienses') and gently bluesy 'Pastorale d’Été,' and what results is a disc admirable in all seasons" (Steve Smith, "Classical Recordings," New York Times, 12/25/11).
View catalog record here!

Ella Fitzgerald Sings the George and Ira Gershwin Songbook

2012-01-11T09:27:00.002-05:00

"'In the very beginning,' said Hal Schaefer, a jazz pianist, composer and arranger who was hired as [Marilyn] Monroe’s vocal coach, 'I told her to buy Ella Fitzgerald’s recording of Gershwin songs. And I ordered her to listen to it a hundred times.' 'She wasn’t really into jazz when she came to me,' Mr. Schaefer added, by phone. 'But I told her: "Look, I’m going to be your guide. This is where we have to start: listening to the best female singer there is."' The actress became a fan of Fitzgerald, and the two women became friends. In 1955 Monroe persuaded the owner of the Mocambo, a popular Hollywood nightclub, to lift its policy of not booking black performers and hire Fitzgerald. Monroe reportedly promised to attend every performance seated at a front table. Years later Fitzgerald told Ms. Magazine, 'I owe Marilyn Monroe a real debt'" (John Marchese, "Channeling a Bombshell, One Jazzy Note at a Time," New York Times, 8/7/11).
View catalog record here!

Death Cab for Cutie: Codes and Keys

2012-01-10T09:05:00.001-05:00

"MR: Any track that you're closest to? BG: I think probably the title track, 'Codes And Keys,' is one of the songs that is very close to me. I'm very proud of how it turned out. It's one of the lyrics on the record that I'm the most proud of, and I think that over the course of its three or so minutes, it kind of takes a nice little lyrical journey, so to speak. It starts out a little nervous and ends in this very anthemic, uplifting out-chorus of sorts. It's a song I feel very close to. MR: I know what you mean about it feeling resolved by the end. BG: Yeah, and it's nice to have a song that opens up kind of nervous and you're not sure where it's going, and by the end of it, it's solved its own question. MR: What's the story behind that one? BG: There's not a particular story. I think in the past, when I've been writing songs, I've had a very specific event in mind to such an extent that the event is referenced in the song or that a particular song on one of the older records exists in a very specific time and place, either in my life or in the fictitious, kind of pastiche of life that I surround myself with. One thing that I'm kind of fond of in a number of these songs is that I feel the details are very specific--the emotional details and touchstones are very specific, but the song doesn't exist within a particular event. I feel that somebody can listen to the song and place it in their life and kind of interpret it in a way that fits them more specifically, because the song isn't placing itself in a particular location by referencing that location" (Mike Ragogna, "A Conversation with Death Cab for Cutie's Ben Gibbard," Huffington Post, 7/18/11).
View catalog record here!

Wilco: The Whole Love

2012-01-09T09:28:00.001-05:00

"Released almost exactly 10 years after they were dropped from Reprise, The Whole Love is Wilco's first entirely self-produced LP and the first to be released through their own dBpm label. This seems to be the catalyst that allowed them to recapture some of the risk and danger that colored their turn-of-the-century work. The album begins with 'Art of Almost,' a broken-down industrialized groover that is the closest the band has come to the Yankee Hotel Foxtrot since its release" (Theo Spielberg, "Wilco Returns to Form with The Whole Love," Huffington Post, 9/27/11).
View catalog record here!

Tony Bennett: Duets II

2012-01-06T10:11:00.001-05:00

"On a bright Sunday afternoon shortly after one o'clock in Manhattan, a few days before his eighty-fifth birthday, which he would modestly acknowledge on August 3rd by dining at a neighborhood restaurant with his wife, Susan -- who, within a few weeks, would be celebrating her own, forty-fifth birthday -- Tony Bennett was standing behind a microphone at the Avatar Studios, on West Fifty-third Street, rehearsing a few lines from 'The Lady Is a Tramp' while awaiting the presence of Lady Gaga. Lady Gaga was expected to arrive at two o'clock, with her hairdresser, her makeup artist, her creative director, her vocal coach, her producer, her security guards, and others who know her by her pre-fame name, Stefani Germanotta; and then, after she had warmed up, she would join Bennett in singing 'The Lady Is a Tramp,' the final recording for his latest album of duets, 'Duets II'" (Gay Talese, "High Notes," New Yorker, 9/19/11).
View catalog record here!

David Lynch: Crazy Clown Time

2012-01-05T12:40:00.001-05:00

"The creepiness in a David Lynch film comes as much from the soundtrack as from the Surrealistic images: the subtle melancholy of Laura Palmer’s theme in 'Twin Peaks,' Isabella Rossellini's come-hither rendition of the title song in 'Blue Velvet.' Mr. Lynch, the filmmaker, devotee of transcendental meditation and coffee distributor, has long dabbled in music himself; he has written songs for his films and others (often in collaboration with the composer Angelo Badalamenti), and he sang with Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse for their 2010 album, 'Dark Night of the Soul.' Last week he released his solo debut, 'Crazy Clown Time' (Sunday Best Recordings/PIAS America), a brooding electronic blues album with his highly processed vocals, created in his home studio with the engineer Dean Hurley. 'Mostly it starts with a jam,' Mr. Lynch said. 'Dean now lately on drums and me on guitar, and out of the jamming comes some kind of form, like, lots and lots of garbage — you can picture a landfill — but some chunks of gold.' He released the album at the behest of the label — 'When you find somebody enthusiastic about your stuff, it really helps, and it inspires you to finish up things and polish things and get them out,' Mr. Lynch said — and over his own fear of being a singer. (He has no plans to play live.) That’s where the processing, which can make his voice sound high pitched, comes in. 'It’s like some other character comes in and is singing,' Mr. Lynch, 65, said" ("Playlist," New York Times, 11/13/11).
View catalog record here!

Phil Collins: No Jacket Required

2012-01-04T09:17:00.003-05:00

"British singer and drummer Phil Collins has used his personal website to announce his retirement in a bid to clarify recent speculation over his career. ... Speculation about a possible last act for Collins was sparked by an interview in April's issue of FHM magazine in which the former Genesis drummer and frontman said 'it feels like a good time to stop for awhile.' ... Collins has sold an estimated 100 million albums as a solo artist, but he told FHM he looks at events like the MTV Music Awards and says he 'can't be in the same business as this.' 'I don't really belong to that world and I don't think anyone's going to miss me.' ... The 60-year-old singer of hits like 'Groovy Kind of Love,' 'In the Air Tonight,' 'Another Day In Paradise,' 'Against All Odds (Take a Look at Me Now),' and 'Separate Lives' with Marilyn Martin, has also won an Academy Award for his soundtrack to the film 'Tarzan.' His album 'No Jacket Required' won a Grammy for album of the year in 1985" (Cassandra Vinograd, "Singer Phil Collins Announces Retirement," Huffington Post, 3/8/11).
View catalog record here!

Susan Boyle: Someone to Watch Over Me

2012-01-03T09:27:00.004-05:00

"Someone to Watch Over Me is the third album by Scottish singer Susan Boyle, which was released on 7 November 2011 in the United Kingdom and 1 November 2011 in the United States. The album has been described as a 'diverse mix of music' which includes songs inspired by the stories of Boyle's fans who write letters to her. Susan announced the album title and release date on September 1, 2011. Boyle announced the news on the semi-final results show of America's Got Talent, after performing a track from the record called 'You Have to Be There', the song was written by ABBA legends Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus and is taken from their popular Swedish musical Kristina från Duvemåla. After Susan performed 'You Have to Be There' on America's Got Talent she said: "I'm so pleased the audience enjoyed the song. I really loved performing that big number. I was also a little nervous introducing something new. America's Got Talent - it's where I started with my first album, so it was wonderful to be back'" (Wikipedia).
View catalog record here!

Various Artists: The Lost Notebooks of Hank Williams

2011-12-30T10:08:00.004-05:00

"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).
View catalog record here!

The Rapture: In the Grace of Your Love

2011-12-29T12:45:00.003-05:00

"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).
View catalog record here!

Tinariwen: Tassili

2011-12-28T09:16:00.003-05:00

"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).
View catalog record here!

Young the Giant (self-titled)

2011-12-27T09:21:00.003-05:00

"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).
View catalog record here!

Apollo's Fire: Come to the River

2011-12-23T09:22:00.003-05:00

"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).
View catalog record here!

Alice Cooper: Welcome 2 My Nightmare

2011-12-22T12:40:00.004-05:00

"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).
View catalog record here!

American Mystic: Music of Alan Hovhaness (1911-2000)

2011-12-21T09:18:00.001-05:00

"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).
View catalog record here!

Me'Shell NdegéOcello: Weather

2011-12-20T09:09:00.003-05:00

"'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).
View catalog record here!

Mahler: Symphony No. 10; Berliner Philharmoniker, Simon Rattle

2011-12-19T09:06:00.005-05:00

"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)
View catalog record here!

Miles Español: New Sketches of Spain

2011-12-17T09:38:00.004-05:00

"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).
View catalog record here!

Kristin Chenoweth: Some Lessons Learned

2011-12-15T12:20:00.003-05:00

"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).
View catalog record here!

Ombra Cara: Arias of George Frideric Handel

2011-12-14T09:18:00.005-05:00

"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).
View catalog record here!

Beyoncé: 4

2011-12-13T09:11:00.003-05:00

"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).
View catalog record here!

Sibelius: The Symphonies; Wiener Philharmoniker, Lorin Maazel

2011-12-12T09:20:00.004-05:00

"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).
View catalog record here!

Feist: Metals

2011-12-09T09:12:00.003-05:00

"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).
View catalog record here!

Primus: Green Naugahyde

2011-12-08T12:43:00.003-05:00

"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).
View catalog record here!

Bela Fleck & the Flecktones: Rocket Science

2011-12-07T11:38:00.004-05:00

"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).
View catalog record here!

The Summer Set: Everything's Fine

2011-12-06T09:28:00.003-05:00

"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).
View catalog record here!

Return to Forever featuring Chick Corea: No Mystery

2011-12-05T09:18:00.003-05:00

"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).
View catalog record here!

They Might Be Giants: Join Us!

2011-12-03T09:58:00.003-05:00

"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).
View catalog record here!

Charles Ives: Four Sonatas; Hilary Hahn, violin; Valentina Lisitsa, piano

2011-12-01T12:12:00.003-05:00

"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).
View catalog record here!

My Brightest Diamond: All Things Will Unwind

2011-11-30T08:46:00.004-05:00

"'All Things Will Unwind' is [Shara Worden's] third album with My Brightest Diamond, the indie-rock-meets-chamber-folk group built around her singing, songwriting and orchestration. It’s an album of oppositions and also a reflection of her recent experiences. She did indeed have a child; she also moved to Detroit, buying a dilapidated house and engaging with a resourceful local arts group. But her chief musical partners on the album are the members of yMusic, a New York chamber ensemble at the heart of the current indie-classical overlap. And the writing is far from ornamental. Each pinprick or flutter or flourish in Ms. Worden’s arrangements manages to feel integral, supporting the songs as well as the singing. There’s very little electric guitar on this album; the drumming is urgent but muted. The atmosphere runs restrained enough so that any outburst — as in the latter half of 'Be Brave,' with its martial cadence — lands hard" (Nate Chinen, "New Music," New York Times, 10/17/11).
View catalog record here!

Jaco Pastorius (self-titled)

2011-11-29T09:11:00.004-05:00

"Jaco Pastorius may well have been the last jazz musician of the 20th Century to have made a major impact on the musical world at large. Everywhere you go, sometimes it seems like a dozen times a day, in the most unlikely places you hear Jaco's sound; from the latest tv commercial to bass players of all stripes copping his licks on recordings of all styles, from news broadcasts to famous rock and roll bands, from hip hop samples to personal tribute records, you hear the echoes of that unmistakable sound everywhere. (It may even be more imitated at this point than the previously most pervasive jazz sound to escape into the broader culture beyond the local borders of jazz -- the moody harmon mute stylings of Miles Davis.[)] For all the caterwauling that has gone on about new musicians that have shown up in recent years, being to[u]ted as the 'next Miles,' or the 'Duke Ellington of their generation,' or whatever, Jaco outranks all of them and all of that" (CD notes by Pat Metheny).
View catalog record here!

Radiohead: OK Computer

2011-11-28T09:25:00.003-05:00

"I first heard Radiohead at the Hammerstein Ballroom in 1997, during their OK Computer tour. The second song on the setlist was 'Just,' with its octatonic scale spiraling gigantically upward; I was converted. I wrote at the time: 'OK Computer has fewer stately airs than The Bends, but it adds layer upon layer of weird beauty. The sound is somehow tall: ideas unwind in every register. "Paranoid Android" is a symphony in six minutes, moving from a shuffling introduction to a hardcore scherzo, then from a slow chorale on the words "From a great height" to a hammering coda. Throughout the album, contrasts of mood and style are extreme: a couple of the songs could almost have been sung by Sinatra (or so it's fun to imagine), while a couple of others, rescored for bass clarinets, might win appreciative shrugs from new-music cognoscenti at the Knitting Factory. This band has pulled off one of the great art-pop balancing acts in the history of rock'" (Alex Ross, "Radiohead in New York," The Rest Is Noise, 9/25/11).
View catalog record here!

Steve Reich: Double Sextet; 2x5

2011-11-22T09:07:00.003-05:00

"New York-based composer Steve Reich has won the Pulitzer Prize for music with his piece Double Sextet. Reich composed the work for two identical sextets of instruments, each made up of flute, clarinet, violin, cello, vibraphone and piano. 'I'm very glad that this particular piece got it, because I do think it's one of the better pieces I've done in the past few years,' Reich tells NPR's Tom Cole, who broke the news to the composer over the phone at his home in New York. 'The piece can be played in two ways,' Reich says. 'Either with 12 musicians or with six playing against a recording of themselves.' That's exactly how the Double Sextet was premiered, in May 2008, by the ensemble eighth blackbird. The concept of musicians playing against taped recordings of themselves is not a new idea for Reich. He used it in his 'Counterpoint' series and Different Trains in the 1980s, and as far back as 1967's Violin Phase. 'It's the idea of writing basically unison canons,' Reich says" (Tom Huizenga, "Steve Reich Wins Music Pulitzer," NPR, 4/20/09).
View catalog record here!

Gillian Welch: The Harrow and the Harvest

2011-11-21T09:16:00.004-05:00

"Here are some sample raves ... The Independent (UK), [rating] 100: 'On this, Gillian Welch's fifth album, the familiar blending of traditional sounds and moods with modern sensibilities is effortlessly sustained through songs like the mordant "The Way It Goes" ("Betsy Johnson bought the farm, stuck a needle in her arm, that's the way that it goes").' The Telegraph (UK), 100: 'There cannot be another musical duet around at the moment who are able to make two acoustic guitars and two voices produce a sound that is so subtle and yet powerful.' ... The American-based Paste liked it too, 90: 'While it's true that Gillian Welch isn't the first artist to use the rugged quality of early American folk music -- with its rich iconography and imagery -- as inspiration, what separates her from other artists who have done so is the deftness with which she employs familiar themes from archaic songs and adapts them to reflect the concerns of a person living in the 21st century" (Art Levine, "Songs for the New Depression," Huffington Post, 8/3/11).
View catalog record here!

Historic Gershwin Recordings

2011-11-19T09:40:00.003-05:00

"The American Repertory Theatre's new Porgy and Bess, with its claims that Gershwin's is a crippled opera that needs fixing, is controversially in the news. I read that 'Gershwin purists' are expected to thunder their objections. ... I would like to know what a Gershwin purist looks like or might have to say. ... I cannot think of another composer so inherently subject to a range of interpretive possibilities. ... The first recordings of Porgy and Bess were made in 1935 by white opera singers: Helen Jepson and Lawrence Tibbett - and Tibbett's 'Oh Bess, Where is My Bess?' [included here] is the most searing version I know. ... In his indispensable handbook on Rhapsody in Blue (1972), David Schiff ... opines ... : 'The Rhapsody cannot be played as written. Performers either have to reconstruct an evanescent "authentic" style of performance, or have the courage to image a new one.' Gershwin's own recordings [2 are included here] irresistibly apply his bright, quick piano style" (Joe Horowitz, "Gershwin Impurities," The Unanswered Question, 11/7/11).
View catalog record here!

The Who: Who's Next?

2011-11-17T12:04:00.003-05:00

"I was on the phone with my hero, Peter Townshend, guitarist of The Who.  Having no idea what to say, having no real reason for calling, and feeling like I was floating in ether, I blurted out... 'Hi, Pete, I was wondering if I could drop by before tonight's show...' ... 90 minutes later, I was standing in the impossibly posh hall of an upper floor at the Hotel Pierre (yeah, that's Peter in French), knocking on Pete's suite door. ... I spent the next hour flip-flopping back and forth between talking freely to a really friendly cool guy who I sorta knew and/or being just agog. We talked about 'Tommy' and how sick of it I was. 'God, we are too, Binky.' ... We discussed Gretsch guitars. Pete had used an old Gretsch 6120 that Joe Walsh of The Eagles had given him to record all the electric guitar tracks on 'Who's Next' back in 1971. Listen to the tone of that guitar. Unique! At the time, even now to a certain extent, Gretsch was a very outre brand of guitars" (Binky Philips, "I Have a Chat with Pete Townshend in His Hotel Suite, 1974," Huffington Post, 9/16/11).
View catalog record here!

Bach: 5 Keyboard Concertos; Ramin Bahrami, pianist

2011-11-16T09:06:00.003-05:00

"[Riccardo] Chailly’s approach to this repertory is typically vigorous, with reduced scale but no effort to tamp down the sound. ... But he does side with early-musickers in favoring mobility over monumentality, with brisk tempos and clear textures. The concertos here are the first five in the conventional numbering: those in D minor, E, D , A and F minor (BWV 1052-56). The ... pianist, the Iranian-born Ramin Bahrami ... says that he devotes his 'whole life as a performer' to Bach. Elsewhere Mr. Bahrami has said that Bach’s music saved him from suicide after his father had been killed by 'Islamic fascists.' On the evidence here, Mr. Bahrami is returning the favor in fine style. His playing is everywhere strong and fluent. He embellishes lines freely ... and with seeming spontaneity. The [Leipzig Gewandhaus] orchestra ... seems to be thriving under Mr. Chailly. It plays with freshness, commitment and vitality. ... [T]his disc is eminently recommendable" (James R. Oestreich, "Classical Recordings," New York Times, 10/2/11).
View catalog record here!

Mates of State: Mountaintops

2011-11-15T09:26:00.003-05:00

"After recording their fifth album on a deadline dictated by the arrival of their second child, husband-wife duo Mates of State opted for a more relaxed pace on 'Mountaintops,' their latest. 'Sometimes you work well under pressure, and this time we just wanted to give ourselves a chance to breathe,' singer and keyboardist Kori Gardner says. Released today on Barsuk, the Stratford couple play with a broader palette of sounds on their new effort, as Gardner and drummer/singer Jason Hammel augment their keyboards-and-drums foundation with horns and guitar on songs that push beyond the bright, hooky pop sound the duo has honed on five previous albums of original material. 'We definitely want to expand and never kind of do what we've already done,' Hammel says" (Eric R. Danton, "Mates of State Strike New Balance on 'Mountaintops,'" Sound Check, 9/13/11).
View catalog record here!

Sibelius: Symphonies Nos. 1, 2, 4, and 5; Boston Symphony Orchestra, Colin Davis

2011-11-14T09:24:00.003-05:00

"In 1967 he succeeded Malcolm Sargent as chief conductor of the BBC Symphony. And in 1971 he followed Georg Solti as music director at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. ... When he left in 1986, his going wasn’t universally lamented. And amid a barrage of unkind press commentary, he disappeared — or so it seemed — to lick his wounds abroad, pursuing relationships with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Dresden Staatskapelle. In fact he never really left Britain. ... He turned down several job offers in the United States. And he appeared from time to time in London concerts, but invariably as a distant eminence with a dubious past until, in 1992, he was engaged by the London Symphony to conduct a Sibelius cycle at the Barbican. Sibelius, whose Second Symphony and Violin Concerto Mr. Davis will conduct at Avery Fisher Hall on Wednesday, has always been a cause for him: he has recorded the symphonies three times" (Michael White, "A Maestro Reflects, and Knits," New York Times, 10/14/11).
View catalog record here!

The Smithereens: 2011

2011-11-10T12:43:00.005-05:00

"Dennis Diken is the drummer and a founding member of New Jersey's rock'n'roll band The Smithereens. I met him through my musical hero, Don Dixon. Diken is one of the first drummers I ever played with. He is a mensch, a fountain of knowledge, a supreme musician, and a great story teller. The Smithereens are currently celebrating their 31st anniversary with the release of 2011, their first all-original studio album since 1999 and critics and fans are abuzz. ... RG: Tell me about your hometown. DD: Carteret, NJ, about 25 minutes southwest of New York City. Very blue-collar, with a strong sense of community. I was blessed with great friends, a wonderful group of bright, creative kids (which included Jimmy Babjak and Mike Mesaros of The Smithereens). We fed off each others' talents, passions and immense sense of 'play.' And we were extremely fortunate to have some very special teachers ..." (Ruth Gerson, "Dennis Diken: The Roots of Jersey Rock," Huffington Post, 8/5/11).
View catalog record here!

Works by Rodrigo and Latin Romances; Sharon Isbin, guitar

2011-11-09T09:10:00.004-05:00

"Giving rise to a rich literature from the sixteenth century onwards, the guitar experienced a new golden age in Spain at the end of the nineteenth century with the development of modern technique, whose pioneers included Francesco Tárrega, known as the 'Paganini of the guitar' and the author of the moorish-style Capricho arabe included here. Later it fell to Andres Segovia to amplify Tárrega's researches, thus encouraging many other composers. Among these was Joaquín Rodrigo, a representative of a cultivated style of neo-classicism, whose fame is owed in great part to his Concierto [de] Aranjuez, a limpid, luminous work of considerable difficulty, composed in Paris in 1938-39. In the Fantasía para un gentilhombre, a tribute to the guitarist Gaspar Sanz (who died in 1710) and dedicated to Segovia, Rodrigo oscillates between a pre-classical style and quite bold harmonic writing, whilst his Invocación y Danza is full of life and passion" (CD notes by Adélaïde de Place).
View catalog record here!

Stone Temple Pilots: Tiny Music

2011-11-08T08:45:00.003-05:00

"Tiny Music... Songs from the Vatican Gift Shop is the third album by American rock band Stone Temple Pilots, released on March 26, 1996 on Atlantic Records. Tiny Music displays a drastic change in the band's sound, featuring music strongly influenced by 60s rock and bands such as The Beatles. After a brief hiatus in 1995, STP regrouped to record Tiny Music, living and recording the album together in a mansion in Santa Barbara, California. The album had three singles reach #1 on the Mainstream Rock Tracks chart, including 'Big Bang Baby,' 'Lady Picture Show,' and 'Trippin' on a Hole in a Paper Heart.' ... In 1995, lead singer Scott Weiland was caught and convicted of buying crack cocaine. He was sentenced to one year's probation. Issues with drug use did not clear up after his sentence, and STP was forced to cancel most of their 1996-1997 tour for Tiny Music. Because of the tour cancellation, Tiny Music did not receive as much exposure as initially intended" (Wikipedia).
View catalog record here!

John Hiatt: Dirty Jeans and Mudslide Hymns

2011-11-07T08:49:00.004-05:00

"MR: ... Your new album Dirty Jeans And Mudslide Hymns kicks off with a pretty universally themed song, 'Damn This Town.' It's true, no matter what town you grow up in, every kid can't wait to get out of it. JH: Yeah, of course, the character in this song is particularly twisted, but I thought it was something that everybody could probably relate to. At some point, we all think 'If I can just get out of here, I know things will be better.' (laughs) But of course, everywhere you go...there you are. MR: And another one that speaks to the basics is ''Til I Get My Lovin' Back.' I think you're saying, in a very sweet way, I can't get my life back on track until I'm done with my love for you. Man, it doesn't get truer than that. JH: Yeah, I thought it was looking at a love story from a little different angle, you know? Sometimes, we don't get into relationships, we take hostages, so it's looking at love from that angle" (Mike Ragogna, "A Conversation with John Hiatt," Huffington Post, 8/3/11).
View catalog record here!

Bruce Springsteen: Human Touch

2011-11-05T09:46:00.004-04:00

"Human Touch is the ninth studio album by Bruce Springsteen, released in 1992 (see 1992 in music). This album was co-released on the same day as Lucky Town. It was the more popular of the two, peaking at #2 on the Billboard 200 and single release 'Human Touch' (paired with Lucky Town's 'Better Days') peaked at #1 on the Album Rock Tracks chart and #16 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. All songs by Bruce Springsteen; except where noted: 'Human Touch' – 6:31; 'Soul Driver' – 4:39; '57 Channels (And Nothin' On)' – 2:28; 'Cross My Heart' (Springsteen, Sonny Boy Williamson) – 3:51; 'Gloria's Eyes' – 3:46; 'With Every Wish' – 4:39; 'Roll of the Dice' (Springsteen, Roy Bittan) – 4:17; 'Real World' (Springsteen, Roy Bittan) – 5:26; 'All or Nothin' at All' – 3:23; 'Man's Job' – 4:37; 'I Wish I Were Blind' – 4:48; 'The Long Goodbye' – 3:30; 'Real Man' – 4:33; 'Pony Boy' (Traditional) – 2:14" (Wikipedia).
View catalog record here!

Nirvana: Nevermind

2011-11-03T12:10:00.003-04:00

"Nirvana's 'Nevermind' is approaching its 20th birthday this fall, bringing about more and more tributes to the band and Kurt Cobain. Now, Cobain's hometown of Aberdeen, Wa., is mulling whether to honor the late singer by naming a famous bridge after him, the AP reports. The Young Street Bridge, located above the Wishkah River just a few blocks from the home Cobain shared with his mother, might become the Kurt Cobain Bridge if the city's residents approve it. A nearby park could also be renamed Cobain Landing. The bridge has become something of a shrine to Cobain fans, with graffiti and memorabilia being left on the mud-ridden banks underneath it. Some people claim that the grunge icon slept there in his teens after he dropped out of high school, though it's unclear if that's true. Cobain also allegedly wrote the 'Nevermind' track 'Something in the Way' about the time he spent there in his youth" (Dan Reilly, "Kurt Cobain May Be Honored with Bridge Dedication in His Hometown," Spinner, 7/14/11).
View catalog record here!

Britney Spears: Femme Fatale

2011-11-02T09:15:00.002-04:00

"Despite a slew of hit singles and eye-popping sales figures, Britney Spears bas never released an album as coherent from start to finish as her latest, 'Femme Fatale' (Jive). Lack of cohesion clearly hasn't held her back; Spears' records have sold nearly 75 million copies worldwide since her 1999 debut. But the patchwork nature of her previous six albums gave the impression that she was continually casting around for the right sound. She's found it. 'Femme Fatale' -- featuring engineering from Glastonbury native Emily Wright on eight songs, vocal production on five and a co-writing credit on one -- skips the stabs at R&B and sex-kitten pop in favor of booming dance tracks that suit Spears more than anything she's recorded since 'Toxic' on her 2003 release, 'In the Zone.' ... 'Femme Fatale' is heavy on studio wizardry ... courtesy of executive producers Dr. Luke and Max Martin, but they keep sight of the songs beneath thumping beats" (Eric R. Danton, "Britney Spears' 'Femme Fatale' Is Her Best Yet," Sound Check, 3/28/11).
View catalog record here!

No Doubt: Tragic Kingdom

2011-11-01T11:01:00.004-04:00

"Tragic Kingdom is the third studio album by the American third wave ska band No Doubt. It was released on October 10, 1995, on Trauma Records, a division of Interscope Records. The album was produced by Matthew Wilder, mixed by Paul Palmer, and recorded in 11 studios in the Greater Los Angeles Area between March 1993 and October 1995. Between 1995 and 1998, seven singles were released from it, including 'Just a Girl', which charted on the Billboard Hot 100 and the UK Singles Chart; and "Don't Speak", which reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 Airplay and peaked in the top five of many international charts. The album received mostly positive reviews from music critics. At the 39th Grammy Awards, No Doubt earned nominations for Best New Artist and Best Rock Album. The album has sold over 20 million copies worldwide; and was certified diamond by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in the United States and Canada [and] platinum in the United Kingdom" (Wikipedia).
View catalog record here!

Beethoven: The Creatures of Prometheus

2011-10-28T09:18:00.007-04:00

"The original scenario of the ballet is lost. ... Nevertheless a broad outline of the story can be gathered from a surviving theatre-bill for the first performance at the Hofburgtheater on 28th March 1801: 'The basis of this allegorical ballet is the fable of Prometheus. The Greek philosophers ... depict him as a lofty soul who drove ignorance from the people of his time, and gave them manners, customs, and morals. As the result of this conception, two statues that have been brought to life are introduced ... and these, through the power of harmony, are made sensitive to the passions of human life. Prometheus leads them to Mount Parnassus in order that Apollo, the deity of the arts, may instruct them. Apollo gives them as teachers Amphion, Arion and Orpheus to instruct them in music; Melpomene to teach them tragedy; Thalia, comedy; Terpsichore and Pan, the latest Shepherd's Dance which the latter has invented, and Bacchus, the Heroic Dance of which he was the originator'" (CD notes by Ates Orga).
View catalog record here!

Foo Fighters: The Colour and the Shape

2011-10-27T09:56:00.004-04:00

"The Colour and the Shape is the Foo Fighters' second album. It was released on May 20, 1997, through Roswell. The album reached number three in the UK and number ten in the United States. The Colour and the Shape is the Foo Fighters' biggest U.S. seller, having sold over two million copies according to Nielsen SoundScan. The album is considered by many to be the band's Magnum opus. The album was in total nominated for 5 VMAs in 1997 and 1998, for the videos 'Monkey Wrench' and 'Everlong'. It was also a Grammy nominee for Best Rock Album in 1998. ... The album was the debut of Foo Fighters as a band, as frontman Dave Grohl had recorded all of the first album by himself with the exception of one guitar part by Greg Dulli. The Colour and the Shape was produced by Gil Norton, who was perhaps best known for his work with the Pixies. It was loosely conceived by Grohl as a concept album which documented the beginning and end of a romantic relationship" (Wikipedia).
View catalog record here!

Noah Preminger: Before the Rain

2011-10-26T09:07:00.004-04:00

"Toward the end of our interview, Noah Preminger says, 'It's easy to get dark, being a musician.' Although the sentiment is glum, it's a relief to hear him come out and say it. Preminger, at 24, has the world-wearied mien of a jazz man twice his age. ... 'I'm going home' -- home for Preminger is Canton -- because I've been playing the same tunes for about a year. ... I was like, "... I gotta write some new music."' Preminger's brooding demeanor stands in sharp contrast to his music, which is rather beautiful. His new disc, Before the Rain, is a collection of jazz ballads, attractive by intention and design. He's explicit about his populist motives; he says his current creative goal is to play 'melodies that are simple and pretty and people will remember.' The album's atmosphere will feel familiar to anyone who's listened to Miles Davis' Kind of Blue. Misty, muted, with legato brushstrokes, quiet, deliciously articulated, and comforting -- that's how Before the Rain feels" (Dan Barry, "More Than Just 'Kind Of' Blue," New Haven Advocate, 4/7/11).
View catalog record here!

Lucinda Williams: Blessed

2011-10-25T08:50:00.003-04:00

"MR: ... Let's talk about 'Buttercup.' You're razzin' this guy who's a loser who, basically, took advantage of a situation and now wants back in. But it's more than that, you point out lyrically, 'You're like a little kid with bruises on his knees,' and it's almost like this guy is such a jerk because he just never grew up. LW: Yeah. That's very perceptive. ... I like to tell people it's the only bad boy quote unquote song on the new album, and I still have a little bit in my system, still had some stuff I had to get out. MR: Let's also talk about a couple of these other songs, like 'Born To Be Loved,' another really topical song, one of my favorites. LW: That's one of my favorite ones too. MR: Its message is beautiful: 'No, you weren't born to be a jerk you weren't born to be abused, you weren't born to be horrible. You were born to be loved.' LW: Yeah. And, for me, I wrote it with a more, you know, universal theme" (Mike Ragogna, "Blessed: A Conversation with Lucinda Williams," Huffington Post, 3/7/11).
View catalog record here!

Glee: The Music, Season 2, Volume 5

2011-10-24T12:36:00.004-04:00

"You know the drill. Your favorite fake high school students sing your favorite songs by Michael Jackson, Justin Bieber, and anyone else who is smart enough to let them sing them and let the cash roll in. You gotta admire the 'Glee' folks for sheer tenacity. For those of you who feel the formula is wearing thin, find solace in your Kings of Leon records. For the rest, just sing along and don't ask questions" (Shawn Amos, "PLAY > SKIP," Huffington Post, 3/8/11).
View catalog record here!

Duran Duran: All You Need Is Now

2011-10-22T09:54:00.005-04:00

"While a generation of singers and bands futilely try to re-create the '80s, Duran Duran has finally stopped running from its own '80s past to actually bring the decade back in all its glory. And leave it to millennial producer Mark Ronson (born in 1975) to lead them there. With INXS gone, U2 in mid-shark jump, and Madonna usurped by Lady Gaga, Duran Duran may be our only viable connection to the days of Live Aid, nonstop MTV videos, and dudes with eyeliner. For those of you wanting to forget 'Hungry Like the Wolf' and 'Girls on Film,' you'll want to skip All You Need Is Now. For those of you who always thought of Duran Duran as an '80s high water mark -- or anyone who gets the irony of any '80s music now being high art -- All You Need is Now is all you need on your playlist" (Shawn Amos, "PLAY > SKIP," Huffington Post, 3/22/11).
View catalog record here!

Elephant Revival: Break in the Clouds

2011-10-20T12:02:00.003-04:00

"America has produced a startling number of regional music styles. Members of the Colorado-based quintet, Elephant Revival, joined forces to explore as many of them as possible. Inspired by bluegrass, fiddle music, Appalachian folk and even hip-hop (in some ways a folk form itself), the band recently released its second album, Break in the Clouds (Ruff Shod), once again merging their many shared passions. Along with its self-titled debut, the band's two albums feature a nice blend of acoustic singer-songwriter material, as in the lead-off 'Point of You' on the latest. It's a sumptuous song in the vein of Cat Power and a really good Ani Difranco ballad. Violins, banjos and mandolins immediately follow: an alt-country 'Cosmic Pulse' and fiddle jam on 'Lexington,' with members jigging on 'What is Time?' Elephant Revival is not five musicians supporting one songwriter, but friends in full collaboration for the betterment of music, both their own and what folk means to modern America" (Derek Beres, "Global Beat Fusion," Huffington Post, 3/18/11).
View catalog record here!

Michael Cleveland & Flamekeeper: Fired Up

2011-10-19T09:17:00.003-04:00

"You may never have seen a bluegrass fiddler as fast as Michael Cleveland and you may never have seen one who plays with as much pure joy. But you can see him Saturday -- in Hamden. ... Cleveland, a resident of Charleston in far southern Indiana — just across the Ohio River from Louisville, Ky. — who first picked up a fiddle at age 4, has been raising eyebrows on the bluegrass scene ever since 1993, when he was chosen to be part of the Bluegrass Youth All Stars at the IBMA’s award show. He played the Grand Ole Opry that same year — as the guest of none other than Alison Krauss — and has played onstage over the years with the likes of Bill Monroe, Jim and Jesse, Ralph Stanley, Mac Wiseman, Doc Watson, Larry Sparks, Doyle Lawson and J.D. Crowe, among many others. Cleveland, now 30, has been a professional bluegrass player since age 18. He’s played a few times not far away. ... Michael Cleveland and Flamekeeper has a brand-new CD, 'Fired Up'" (Mark Zaretsky, "Wine and Bluegrass," New Haven Register, 3/18/11).
View catalog record here!

Sara Evans: Stronger

2011-10-18T13:04:00.004-04:00

"Every syllable sounds calm and considered. ... There’s some joy, but not a lot, on this modest but sharp album, which continues the argument for Ms. Evans as an unjustly underappreciated country singer who’s becoming more assured as she gets older. Mostly, she’s concerned with melancholy here. 'What That Drink Cost Me' is morbid and resentful: 'I lost a good man to a bad habit/He didn’t love the whiskey, he just had to have it.' The beautiful single 'A Little Bit Stronger' is about the slow crawl out of a taxing relationship. 'It doesn’t happen overnight/But you turn around and a month’s gone by/And you realize you haven’t cried.' Again, she doesn’t sound exhausted or woebegone, giving her words a force of purpose and skipping melodrama altogether. Same goes for her gentle, regretful cover of Rod Stewart’s antic 'My Heart Can’t Tell You No,' and 'Alone,' on which she initially appears to be welcoming a lover’s affections, but is really just letting him down gently" (Jon Caramanica, "Critics' Choice," New York Times, 3/7/11).
View catalog record here!

The Jimi Hendrix Experience: Winterland

2011-10-17T11:42:00.003-04:00

"On Thursday, October 10th, 1968, Jimi Hendrix walked onstage with his Experience, bassist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell, for the opening set of a long weekend at Winterland in San Francisco. The trio would play six sold-out shows over three nights at the 5400-capacity hall, originally built in 1928 as an ice-skating rink and turned into the city's biggest psychedelic ballroom by Fillmore impresario Bill Graham. There would be guest jammers -- bassist Jack Casady of Jefferson Airplane on the 10th and flautist Virgil Gonsalves and saxman-organist Herbie Rich from the Buddy Miles Express, one of the opening acts, on the 11th. And Hendrix would rotate eighteen different songs through his set lists. Amid the hits and road standards from his 1967 debut, Are You Experienced? -- 'Red House,' 'Foxey Lady,' 'Purple Haze' -- were a furious, rarely aired 'Manic Depression,' the concise rapture of 'Little Wing' from 1968's Axis: Bold as Love and thrilling previews of 'Voodoo Child (Slight Return)' ..." (CD notes by David Fricke).
View catalog record here!

Schumann: Complete Works for Piano Trio

2011-10-14T09:16:00.003-04:00

"In some circles Schumann is regarded as having been best suited to composing suites, songs, fantasies and other genres that gave full vent to his teeming musical imagination. He was less good, the thinking goes, at channeling his voice into symphonies, sonatas and chamber music forms. This take on Schumann is challenged by an exciting new recording of his complete works for piano trio, performed by three superb musicians who play together often: the pianist Leif Ove Andsnes, the violinist Christian Tetzlaff and the cellist Tanja Tetzlaff (Mr. Tetzlaff’s sister). They play every phrase and episode of these elusive scores with vitality, insight and character. The trios emerge as works full of invention and intricacy and also of structural integrity. The Trio No. 1 in D minor, written in a two-week burst of inspiration in the summer of 1847, may have been inspired by Mendelssohn’s piano trio in the same key. A surging first movement is followed by a restless scherzo. ..." (Anthony Tommasini, "Classical Recordings," New York Times, 8/18/11).
View catalog record here!

John Doe: Keeper

2011-10-13T12:54:00.003-04:00

"MR: Who influenced you as an artist? JD: I was 17 or 18 when The Band and The Rolling Stones doing Sticky Fingers was happening. That's when I was really learning how to play my instrument, how to play bass, how to put together songs, when I was becoming a student. MR: Did you have any flashbacks while listening to this finished album's batch of songs? JD: Well, Val McCallum, who recently played with Lucinda Williams, when he played slide on a couple of songs, it was so obvious he was channeling George Harrison. I think The Band and The Stones were a bigger influence on songs like 'Giant Step Backward' or 'Never Enough' and 'Lucky Penny.' MR: One of my favorites is 'Little Tiger.' What's the story behind it? JD: I wrote that for my sweetheart who's very important to me. Then, I realized it had a lot to do with my daughters who are now getting grown up. There's nothing better than a kid bouncing on a bed, there is nothing sweeter and cuter" (Mike Ragogna, "Keeper: Meeting John Doe Again," Huffington Post, 8/26/11).
View catalog record here!

Jill Scott: The Light of the Sun

2011-10-12T09:00:00.003-04:00

"The R&B singer Jill Scott hits No. 1 for the first time with her fourth studio album, 'The Light of the Sun' (Warner Brothers), which sold 135,000 copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan" (Ben Sisario, "Jill Scott Earns Her First No. 1 Record," New York Times, 6/29/11).
View catalog record here!

Kurt Vile: Smoke Ring for My Halo

2011-10-11T09:56:00.003-04:00

"Kurt Vile's new album is low-key enough that becoming aware of how strong these 11 songs are is something of a slow awakening. 'Smoke Ring for My Halo' is the Philadelphia singer's umpteenth collection since he started self-releasing CDs of his music when he was 17, and it's his second for New York's Matador Records. (Vile, 31, performs Monday in Milford.) His prolific nature pays off here, on songs that are airy, a little hazy and quietly engrossing. Vile sings in an offhanded voice swathed in spacey reverb, and he picks out guitar parts that move steadily forward through swirls of keyboards, echoing drums and the occasional cascade of muted piano. His acoustic guitar floats over ripples of atmospheric sound on the opener, 'Baby's Arms,' and his wandering voice evokes a sense of vague foreboding over a driving drum beat and minor-key wash of sound on 'Society Is My Friend'" (Eric R. Danton, "Kurt Vile's 'Smoke Ring' Slowly Envelops You," Hartford Courant, 3/8/11).
View catalog record here!

Ziggy Marley: Wild and Free

2011-10-08T10:13:00.004-04:00

"Bob's oldest son returns with his fourth studio album since 2009's Grammy-winning children's release Family Time, and it's easily his best since his Melody Makers days. Damn, this album sounds so good. Reggae is often a genre that's rich in grooves yet painfully short on fidelity. Producer Don Was delivers one of the most sonically full reggae albums I've heard in a long time. He even makes Woody Harrelson, singing about the joys of weed in the title track, sound dope. Smoke 'em if you got 'em, and let the vibrations roll through you. Wild and Free is easily the best reggae album you'll hear this year" (Shawn Amos, "PLAY > SKIP," Huffington Post, 6/14/11).

View catalog record here!

Eric Church: Chief

2011-10-06T12:07:00.003-04:00

"On the Billboard album chart this week, country returns to No. 1 and Amy Winehouse’s sales continued to rise in the week after her death. The country singer Eric Church reached No. 1 for the first time with 'Chief' (Capitol Nashville), his third release, which sold 145,000 copies in the United States in its first week out, according to Nielsen SoundScan. That was more than enough to bump last week’s top seller, Adele’s '21' (XL/Columbia), to No. 2 with sales of 83,000" (Ben Sisario, "Country Regains Top Spot on Charts," New York Times, 8/3/11).
View catalog record here!

Sufjan Stevens: The Age of Adz

2011-10-05T09:13:00.002-04:00

"Stevens: The Age of Adz, these are pop songs, but they're based on sound experimentation and noise. They're more aggressive, and even my tone of -- the way I'm singing -- it's more in my throat and not always pretty. So I was aware of that, and I just felt like an imperative to experiment with these tones, and generally, I think now more than ever, I'm making music for that elite 5% -- you know, the listener who's been with me from the very beginning and understands my interest in electronic music and noise and in sound sculpting and minimalism and all that stuff. So I think that that record, The Age of Adz, is really for that listener, you know? I don't think it's meant to be for the casual listener who likes the song 'Chicago,' which is fine. There's no condescension at all in that remark. I don't condescend to any of my music or to any listener. But I just am not in a season right now of feeling that kind of populist thrust" (Daniel J. Kushner, "Adz and Ends: An Interview with Sufjan Stevens," Huffington Post, 7/26/11).
View catalog record here!

The Caretaker: An Empty Bliss Beyond This World

2011-10-04T09:13:00.004-04:00

"The Caretaker is the ambient/Twilight Zone brainchild of Northern England soundscapist James Leyland Kirby (also of V/VM). Kirby founded The Caretaker in the mid-'90s, opening a door to a new sonic dimension utilizing his vintage 78 collection -- feels like you plugged your ears into your great-grandparents' memories. Kirby's credits include the score for Grant Gee documentary Patience (After Sebald) and numerous side projects. Discover The Caretaker's supernatural thoroughfare with 'All You Are Going to Want to Do Is Get Back There,' from his 2011 sophomore magnum opus An Empty Bliss Beyond This World" (Phil Ramone and Danielle Evin, "Dog Ears Music," Huffington Post, 7/29/11).
View catalog record here!

The Cars: Move Like This

2011-10-03T09:15:00.004-04:00

"MR: ... Let's catch everybody up on The Cars. Can you give us the basic bio? GH: Let's see ... The Cars formed in January of '77, and I had known both Ric and Ben for a few years before The Cars actually became an entity. In fact, I played in a band with the two of them a couple of years before The Cars, which was called Richard And The Rabbits, and like most bands, nothing really happened and we broke up after about a year. Then, I took a job playing with Martin Mull, if you know who that is -- a character actor. He used to make comedy albums, and I was in his band just before The Cars, and in the meantime, Ric and Ben had formed another band that had Elliot Easton in it. That band also broke up, so they started yet another band with Ric and Ben, and Elliot was still there, and then David Robinson, our drummer, joined. David had been in a group from Boston called The Modern Lovers, which was an early new wave band before there was new wave" (Michael Ragogna, "A Conversation with The Cars' Greg Hawkes," Huffington Post, 5/12/11).
View catalog record here!

Rose of Sharon: 100 Years of American Music, 1770-1870

2011-09-30T09:10:00.004-04:00

"The little Shaker song 'Simple Gifts,' by Joseph Brackett, comes with performance instructions built in. And when Joel Frederiksen and the Ensemble Phoenix Munich sing, '’Tis the gift to be simple,' they clearly believe it. ... [T]he disc from the Munich-based Ensemble Phoenix, directed by the American abroad Mr. Frederiksen[, is] a widely varied collection of musical Americana rendered with consistent beauty and restraint. Mr. Frederiksen sets a soulful tone at the start with a solo rendering of the Shaker spiritual 'Lay Me Low' and later adds the sober ballads 'The Death of General Wolfe' and 'Captain Kidd.' Three numbers by the great New England hymnist William Billings include the classic song that gives the album its title, 'I Am the Rose of Sharon.' A Civil War segment looks southward with the instrumental ditty 'Dixie's Land' and the song 'Maryland, My Maryland.' ... This one is to treasure, from beginning to end. " (James R. Oestreich, "Complex Pleasures Rooted in Love, Delight and Song," New York Times, 7/28/11).
View catalog record here!

Ron Sexsmith: Long Player Late Bloomer

2011-09-29T12:59:00.004-04:00

"His albums come in two flavors: good and very good. His new CD -- Long Player Late Bloomer -- is very good. ... Chances are, if you're smart and daring enough to lay some money down on a CD by a man who crafts brilliant pop music for adults, Ron Sexsmith will become a new favorite of yours. ... Sexsmith has a McCartney-esque gift for melody, but they're not the sort of hooks that grab you by the throat. They're sneaky, slithery things that slide into your subconsciousness -- always hummable, always memorable but in a very low-key manner. First you listen, then you sing along, then you start hearing the melodies in your head all the time. By the fourth or fifth listen to Long Player Late Bloomer, you'll swear you've known these songs all your life. For Sexsmith, it's also quite a forceful album. His voice always brings a melancholy air, a blue-ish tinge to all he sings. But here the arrangements practically rock out, especially for an act whose mellowness is one of his chief attributes" (Michael Giltz, "CD of the Week," Huffington Post, 3/6/11).
View catalog record here!

Bruno Mars: Doo-Wops and Hooligans

2011-09-28T09:20:00.003-04:00

"[H]is debut album, 'Doo-Wops and Hooligans' ... has already spawned two No. 1 singles, 'Just the Way You Are' and 'Grenade,' which is still at No. 1. Mars has an easily marketed wholesome feel that predates much of pop itself -- he evokes, both physically and tonally, Jackie Wilson, the sixties pop star who inspired Michael Jackson perhaps more than any other performer. ... Although Wilson, unlike Mars, conveyed pain and joy in even his most anodyne numbers, he had the same kind of permanent approachability that Mars exudes. There is little threat or discontent in Mars, or in his work, and it's no surprise to learn that he spent his childhood impersonating Elvis, in a Waikiki hotel, in a family band called the Love Notes. Mars describes the outfit as 'straight Partridge family.' ... Mars's current ubiquity is unremarkable -- he's a light, dashing figure who can write melodies that lodge quickly and repeat painlessly" (Sasha Frere-Jones, "Pop Music," New Yorker, 2/14&21/11).
View catalog record here!

Gregg Allman: Low Country Blues

2011-09-26T09:12:00.005-04:00

"MR: So, after you and [producer T-Bone Burnett] bonded, you went into this project together with a hard drive that contained 10,000 blues songs on it. GA: He said, 'Well, how about we peel you off about twenty-five of them and I send them to you, you listen to them over and over, then you pick fifteen of them that you wouldn't mind recording.' MR: What made you choose such a strict blues album this time out? GA: T-Bone is pretty into the blues himself, and this band is out of sight man. They didn't tell me 'til about a week and a half before I was supposed to be there, they said, 'By the way you can't bring your band.' ... He had in mind what he wanted to do, and I had in mind what I wanted to do. I sat home and arranged fifteen of those songs -- well, actually thirteen of them, one I wrote and then another one I threw in there called 'I Can't Be Satisfied.' MR: Dr. John is on the album, right? GA: Yeah. ..." (Mike Ragogna, "A Conversation with Greg Allman," Huffington Post, 2/16/11).
View catalog record here!

The Cox Family: Just When We're Thinking It's Over

2011-09-24T10:05:00.003-04:00

"The Cox Family is an American Bluegrass family group from Cotton Valley in Webster Parish in northwestern Louisiana, United States. ... The singing group comprises father Willard, son Sidney, and daughters Evelyn and Suzanne. Their distinctive sound derives from a combination of Country, bluegrass, and gospel styles. ... Their career was given a big boost when in the early '90s they met Alison Krauss, who brought them to the attention of Rounder Records. They also gained massive exposure when in 1994 they caught the ear of Adam Duritz, frontman of the multi-platinum-selling Counting Crows, who was so impressed with the Cox Family that he invited them to open for the band during its North American tour. ... The Cox Family recorded two records of their own on Rounder Records: Everybody's Reaching Out for Someone (1993) and Beyond the City (1995). ... Their major-label debut, Just When We're Thinking It's Over, was released on Asylum Records in 1996" (Wikipedia).
View catalog record here!

Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks: Mirror Traffic

2011-09-22T12:13:00.003-04:00

"Recently reunited here for the first time since Mr. Hansen (better known simply as Beck) produced 'Mirror Traffic,' a new record by Mr. Malkmus and his band the Jicks, these two musicians, stalwarts of the 1990s alternative-indie-hey-whatever scene, were not immediately inclined to discuss this album or what it represents to listeners realizing that two whole decades have elapsed since the age of insincerity, flannel and insincerely worn flannel. ... It seems fitting that their first collaboration should arrive at a moment when nostalgia for the pop culture of the 1990s ... is approaching peak capacity faster than you can say 'Reality Bites.' And it is in keeping with both artists’ unpredictable, against-the-grain styles that the sonically accessible, lyrically elliptical 'Mirror Traffic,' which Matador Records will release on Tuesday, is not an attempt to mash up or cash in on their best known work but to keep moving beyond it" (Dave Itzkoff, "Together Again for the First Time," New York Times, 8/18/11).
View catalog record here!

Esperanza Spalding: Chamber Music Society

2011-09-21T11:02:00.003-04:00

"Esperanza Spalding may have won the Grammy for Best New Artist, but some have reveled in her talent for years. A 26-year old, classically trained jazz/chamber music fusion musician and singer, Spalding has been making headlines in the jazz world since before her 2006 debut solo album, 'Junjo.' Having attended the Berklee Academy of Music, where she immediately became a professor after graduating at 20 years old, she began to travel with well known jazz musicians -- and then, the President. Showing prescient hipness, President Obama selected Spalding to perform at the Oslo City Hall when he accepted his 2009 Nobel Prize, as well as at a White House poetry jam. 'Chamber Music Society' is actually her eighth overall album, including her teenage band and collaborations with famous jazz musicians. But she's still excited to be considered Best New Artist" ("Esperanza Spalding: Grammy Award 2011 Winner for Best New Artist," Huffington Post, 2/14/11).
View catalog record here!

The Yale Camerata: Music of Calvin Hampton

2011-09-20T09:32:00.003-04:00

"(George) Calvin Hampton (December 31, 1938–August 5, 1984) was a leading American organist and sacred music composer. ... He served as Organist and Choirmaster of Calvary Episcopal Church, Gramercy Park, New York City, from September 1963 to June, 1983. His 'Fridays at Midnight' organ recital series, running from 1974 to 1983, was one of the most famous and popular organ recital series in American history. Hampton was also a respected composer for the church and for the concert stage. Before his death, Eric Routley, a noted authority on church music, called Hampton 'the greatest living composer of hymn tunes.' His settings of the Episcopal liturgy are also in use in Catholic churches, and his choral works are milestones of innovative, challenging sacred music. ... Towards the end of his life, Hampton gave up church work and concentrated on composition and organ consulting. ... Weakened with AIDS, Hampton remained active until the final few weeks of his life" (Wikipedia).
View catalog record here!

Junior Kimbrough: You Better Run: The Essential Junior Kimbrough

2011-09-19T09:18:00.003-04:00

"Bluesman David 'Junior' Kimbrough was born in northern Mississippi in 1930, the son of sharecroppers. A self-taught guitarist, Junior quit school and entered the workforce to help his family. Only in the late '50s did Kimbrough begin to find his place in the world of music. After performing for a few years on Chicago's blues scene, Kimbrough went to Memphis to record for the Goldwax label. Disappointingly, he would not realize success for many decades. After years of cutting sides with various labels, collaborating with R.L. Burnside, Kimbrough cut his first official full-length release at the age of 62 under the guidance of the legendary producer Robert Palmer for the Fat Possum label. In 2009, Big Legal Mess Records posthumously released Kimbrough's original Goldwax recordings. The bluesman passed away in 1998 and leaves a treasured path" (Phil Ramone and Danielle Evin, "Dog Ears Music," Huffington Post, 8/19/11).
View catalog record here!

Krallice: Diotima

2011-09-16T09:10:00.004-04:00

"[Guitarist Mick] Barr is showing copious love to the scene he grew up in. ... Rick Omonte — the impresario behind, among other things, the once-great 'Sundazed at BAR' concerts — is publishing selections from Barr's music and visual art in the next Ephemeroptera Quarterly, a multimedia zine/compilation record, and Carlos Wells' equally discriminating Safety Meeting Records is putting out Coiled Malescence, Derby-born Barr's first vinyl LP to be released under his own name. If that name is unfamiliar to you, you might not have heard of his wild array of past and present projects, either, ranging from Ocrilim (Barr solo), to guitar/drum duos Orthrelm (with Josh Blair) and Crom-Tech (with Malcolm McDuffie), to yet more collaborative efforts like Krallice, the quartet that every blogger seems to be calling a 'black metal supergroup,' and which released one of the most acclaimed metal records of 2011" (Daniel Stephen Johnson, "How Mick Barr Became an Unlikely Guitar God (and Composer!)," New Haven Advocate, 8/18/11, p. 12).
View catalog record here!

Rachmaninoff: Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Piano Concerto No. 2

2011-09-15T10:10:00.001-04:00

"The latest young pianist from China to excite classical music audiences and earn raves from critics is the 24-year-old Yuja Wang, a distinctive artist with a comprehensive technique. That Ms. Wang is already a musician of consequence was made clear this year when Deutsche Grammophon released her first recording with an orchestra: performances of Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini and Second Piano Concerto with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. The conductor is Claudio Abbado, no less, a towering maestro who is extremely discriminating in his choice of collaborators. Ms. Wang’s virtuosity is stunning. ... Ms. Wang, who will make her New York recital debut at Carnegie Hall in October, can play anything" (Anthony Tommasini, "Virtuosos Becoming a Dime a Dozen," New York Times, 8/14/11).
View catalog record here!

Todd Snider: Live: The Storyteller

2011-09-14T09:19:00.004-04:00

"Some singer-songwriters just play their songs and get offstage. Others, like Richard Thompson and Loudon Wainwright III, go for droll repartee. And then there's Todd Snider. For years now, Snider has endeared himself to crowds with his endlessly digressive between-song commentary, which combines the sly phrasing of a stoner, the perfect timing of a standup comedian, and a mastery of the tiny detail. Snider's monologues are a dice roll, at least: he'll hold forth on everything from the war on drugs to the self-aggrandizing graffiti he scrawled in an Oregon tunnel to the apparently boorish behavior of the NASCAR driver Bill Elliott, and his stories are sometimes as long as the songs they're introducing. Snider's most recent album, 'Live: The Storyteller,' collects some of his best routines -- the K. K. Rider story, about his early days in show biz, is without equal -- along with sharply funny, lyrical, sometimes mournful songs" (Ben Greenman, "Critic's Notebook," New Yorker, 2/7/11).
View catalog record here!

The Decemberists: The King Is Dead

2011-09-13T09:15:00.003-04:00

"After a series of increasingly complex albums, the Decemberists step away from ornate chamber-pop trappings on their latest, an album with no harpsichord, no hurdy-gurdy and barely any bouzouki. In fact, 'The King is Dead' (Capitol) is startlingly straightforward, featuring 10 songs steeped more in American roots music than the English folk (and, on 2008's 'Hazards of Love,' prog) traditions that leader Colin Meloy has more often drawn from over the past decade. ... The Portland, Ore., band's sixth album is full of acoustic guitars, mournful pedal steel licks and bursts of harmonica and violin. There are also lovely vocal harmonies, many of which come from Americana singer Gillian Welch. Nobody sings close harmony like Welch, and her voice hews to Meloy's as closely as the backside of a shadow on seven songs, starting with opener 'Don't Carry It All.' ... Meloy's lyrics are again full of naturalistic imagery, with plenty of rivers and streams ... and a particular emphasis on seasons" (Eric R. Danton, "CD Review," Sound Check, 1/18/11).
View catalog record here!

StarFish: Enter Sandbox

2011-09-12T12:30:00.003-04:00

"StarFish is five dads from New Jersey who describe their sound as 'cool, classic rock-style jams for families' and that’s a pretty fair assessment. In an obvious nod to Metallica, Starfish titled its second CD Enter Sandbox. Now don’t be scared; their roots are securely in 70’s classic rock rather than the headbanging of Metallica. At the same time, the more I listened to Enter Sandbox the more I felt the label of classic rock isn’t fair to them, because their sound is so much more than that. Because I'm more of a fan of alt-pop kids music, I was a little hesitant on this album. Kids and rock music doesn’t seem like a natural pairing, but StarFish makes it work. ‘Sick Day’ is a fun reggae track, ‘Elephant’ is bouncy pop ditty, or the beautiful acoustics of ‘Joshua’s Treehouse’ make this a surprisingly well-rounded album. Don't get me wrong; there is plenty of rock on this album, but 'Enter Sandbox' offers enough variety to keep everyone in the family happy" (Dan Walsh, "CD Review," milwaukeemoms.com, 6/7/10).
View catalog record here!

Ben Williams: State of Art

2011-09-10T10:30:00.004-04:00

"Ben Williams won first prize in the 2009 Thelonious Monk Competition for double-bass and has played with Wynton Marsalis, Pat Metheny, Roy Hargrove, and Stefon Harris’ Blackout. Like Harris, Williams incorporates R&B and hip-hop into his work. Here, he leads a fine group composed of saxophonist Marcus Strickland, guitarist Matthew Stevens, pianist Gerald Clayton, drummer Jamire Williams, and percussionist Etienne Charles. Williams might draw on contemporary pop elements but the core of his sound is clearly rooted in pre-free jazz styles. 'Dawn of the New Day' swings in a pleasingly mellow way, while 'The Lee Morgan Story' features guest MC John Robinson providing a rhymed biography of the great trumpeter. The group operates in a fiery Latin mode on 'November,' a track that finds Jaleel Shaw on alto sax. Williams nods to his Washington D. C. roots by adding a go-go groove to Woody Shaw’s 'Moontrane.' 'Mr. Dynamite' pays homage to James Brown. ..." (iTunes review).
View catalog record here!

Nitty Gritty Dirt Band: Speed of Life

2011-09-07T11:26:00.003-04:00

"JH: ... We continue to make albums, we have a new one called Speed Of Life on Sugar Hill Records, and we got a lot of great press on it. MR: Are all of the members back for this album? JH: Well, most of us. Jimmy Ibbotson left the band in 2004. So, for the last seven years, we've been playing as a quartet with John McEuen, Bob Carpenter, who has been with us for about 30 years, Jimmie Fadden, and me. Jimmy and I have been playing together since the start. John left for a while then came back, which we're really glad about. MR: Great. Is there an emphasis track on your latest album? JH: No, actually, there are several. There are two that I really like--one is called 'The Resurrection,' and it's a song I really like that was co-written by my wife Matraca Berg. She's a great songwriter. The other is called 'Tulsa Sounds Like Trouble To Me,' which was written by Shawn Camp and Mark D. Sanders. Another very cool tune" (Mike Ragogna, "Fishin' in the Dark: Chattin' with the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band's Jeff Hanna," Huffington Post, 5/27/11).
View catalog record here!

Amos Lee: Mission Bell

2011-09-06T09:35:00.003-04:00

"MR: Let's talk about your new album, Mission Bell. It was produced by Joey Burns of Calexico, and it features Lucinda Williams and Willie Nelson. AL: Yeah, they're both on it. Sam Beam's on it. ... MR: How did your Lucinda Williams collaboration come about? AL: I think Lucinda's Car Wheels On A Gravel Road was one of the records I was really drawn to when I was first writing songs. Her work as a writer and a singer has always touched me deeply. When we were thinking about that song, to me, there was always a female voice in there singing the second verse. When Joey and I were talking about who we could get to sing the part, I really heard her voice on it. We reached out to her, and she happened to be in the studio at the time, so we sent it over. I feel like, as a listener, she takes the song into a whole other place. It really changed the track for me from something that I liked, to something that absolutely had to be on the album" (Mike Ragogna, "Mondo Amore, a Mission Bell, and Joey's Song," Huffington Post, 2/1/11).
View catalog record here!

Mavis Staples: You Are Not Alone

2011-09-02T09:05:00.003-04:00

"Mavis Staples [at the Bell House in Brooklyn] ... opens with a gospel number, tosses in one or two new tunes, chats amiably with the audience by telling the same jokes but making them sound fresh, brings in The Band's classic 'The Weight' to turn things up and does an extended version of 'I'll Take You There.' She even tells the classic anecdote about the very first song that Pop Staples taught to his children after being disgusted with the no-shows at rehearsal for his gospel group. That first song? 'Will The Circle Be Unbroken.' Will she sing it? Yes, of course she will. The crowd at the sold-out show in Brooklyn ate it up, perhaps since many of them were seeing Staples in concert for the first time. Her every reference to Jeff Tweedy (who oversaw her latest album, one of the most acclaimed of the year and gave Staples a lovely new standard with the title track 'You Are Not Alone') was greeted with applause. Calling him a funny little thing pleased them even more" (Michael Giltz, "Music," Huffington Post, 1/21/11).
View catalog record here!

The Black Eyed Peas: The Beginning

2011-09-01T10:04:00.004-04:00

"will.i.am is the co-founder and creative force behind dance and hip hop juggernauts The Black Eyed Peas. To date, the band has sold an estimated 27 million albums worldwide, plus an additional 20 million singles. With the Peas' new album, The Beginning, set to hit stores worldwide, the enigmatic songwriter and I caught up to talk a little music, live performing, and politics. ... SS: With the 'Time of my Life' lyric and melody being the anchor of your Dirty Bit single, I'm guessing you were a fan of the old Bill Medley / Jennifer Warnes song. w: Just the chorus. I didn't like the verses. (laughs) ... We were on tour when we recorded this record, so our studio was our hotel room. We had a traveling studio: laptops, microphones, etc... So we recorded as we toured. And every night after the Black Eyed Peas shows, I'd do an underground DJ set and play some new beats in front of different audiences" (Steven Shehori, "A Conversation with will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas," Huffington Post, 11/26/10).
View catalog record here!

Taylor Swift: Speak Now

2011-08-31T09:10:00.003-04:00

"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).
View catalog record here!

John & Yoko: Some Time in New York City

2011-08-29T13:12:00.003-04:00

"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).
View catalog record here!

Curren$y: This Ain't No Mixtape

2011-08-26T09:13:00.003-04:00

"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).
View catalog record here!

David Weiss & Point of Departure: Snuck Out

2011-08-25T09:38:00.003-04:00

"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).
View catalog record here!

NRBQ: Keep This Love Goin'

2011-08-24T09:07:00.006-04:00

"[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).
View catalog record here!