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Reviews of Attainable Hi-Fi & Home-Theater Equipment

Most Popular Featured Releases

Details: Written by: Joseph Taylor; Category: Featured Releases; Created: 15 March 2014

Morning Phase Capitol B001983901
Format: LP

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Although Beck hasn’t recorded an album of new music since 2008’s Modern Guilt, he hasn’t been goofing off. He’s produced recordings by Thurston Moore and Charlotte Gainsbourg, co-produced and contributed to Rework: Philip Glass Remixed, and played on several discs by other musicians. In late 2012 he released a portfolio of sheet music -- new songs in written notation for others to perform. His website shows a firm grasp of how useful current technology can be to a musician, and on it he hosts Record Club, which brings musicians together to reinterpret an existing work by another artist and post the results online.

Read more: Beck: "Morning Phase"

Details: Written by: Joseph Taylor; Category: Featured Releases; Created: 01 March 2014

Internal Sounds Outside Music 23339-9087-2
Format: CD

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The Sadies formed in 1994, in Toronto, and it says something about the music business that a band this good isn’t better known in the US. Two of the members, Dallas and Travis Good, are nephews of Brian and Larry Good, of the well-regarded Canadian country group the Good Brothers. Country music forms a part of the band’s sound, but they’re so versatile that they can play blues and garage rock with the same skill and conviction. They’ve played and recorded with blues singer Andre Williams, and with John Doe of X (Country Club, 2009), but are perhaps best known for their work with Neko Case.

Details: Written by: Joseph Taylor; Category: Featured Releases; Created: 15 February 2014

Rickie Lee Jones Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab MFSL 1-392
Format: LP

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I first saw and heard Rickie Lee Jones on Saturday Night Live, in April 1979, when an appearance on that show could make a musician’s career. Her eponymously titled debut album had been released only a few weeks before, and that night she became a sensation. “Chuck E.’s in Love,” one of the songs she performed that evening, went on to hit No.4 on Billboard’s Hot 100, and her album sold over two million copies. Her music had hints of jazz, R&B, folk, and Tin Pan Alley, and Rickie Lee Jones was the beginning of a recording career that would be marked by quality and unpredictability.

Details: Written by: Joseph Taylor; Category: Featured Releases; Created: 01 February 2014

What I See Jazzed Media JM1065
Format: CD

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Judy Wexler has released only four CDs since 2005, when she debuted with Easy on the Heart, but she has a solid reputation among jazz critics and other musicians. She is also an actor who has appeared on television and in the theater, and that background perhaps accounts for her ability to capture the meaning of a song and tell its story. She hits the right emotional notes to give listeners a sense of what a song is telling us, and her skills as a jazz singer give her interpretations rhythmic excitement and unpredictability.

Read more: Judy Wexler: "What I See"

Details: Written by: Joseph Taylor; Category: Featured Releases; Created: 01 January 2014

I Hear the Sound Archie Ball/Harmonia Mundi ARCH1301
Format: CD

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On September 9, 1971, prisoners at Attica State Prison, in upstate New York, took control of the facility to demand better living conditions. When state police and the New York National Guard regained control of the prison four days later, ten hostages and 29 prisoners died in the gunfire. Over 50% of the prison population was African-American, and had acted, in part, out of anger over the death of prison activist George Jackson in California the previous month.

Details: Written by: Hans Wetzel; Category: Featured Releases; Created: 15 December 2013

Foreverly Reprise 9362493997
Format: CD

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I'd never heard the Everly Brothers before I bought this album, nor had I heard of them. But given that the brothers born in Kentucky and Illinois enjoyed a career that featured 35 Billboard Top 100 singles, including 26 in the Top 40, and a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, I feel sheepish about admitting as much. Having done some research on the pair, I wouldn't have naturally associated Billie Joe Armstrong, lead singer of punk-rock group Green Day, and singer-songwriter Norah Jones with them. Yet on the appropriately named Foreverly, the tandem recreates the legendary brothers' second album, Songs Our Daddy Taught Us. That 1958 release comprised a selection of songs that the boys had -- bear with me here -- learned from their father. Given that the pairing's popularity and commercial success owed to their billing as a rock 'n' roll act, it's fair to say that the album was a departure.

Details: Written by: Joseph Taylor; Category: Featured Releases; Created: 01 December 2013

Quality Street Yep Roc YEP-2330
Format: CD

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As I’ve noted elsewhere, Christmas music is a guilty pleasure of mine. I’ve probably played Vince Guaraldi’s A Charlie Brown Christmas more times than any other disc in my collection. Two years ago, my wife picked up for me both volumes of Blues, Blues Christmas, which include such obscurities as Gatemouth Moore’s “Christmas Blues” and Lightnin’ Hopkins’s “Merry Christmas.” This year, I add Nick Lowe’s Quality Street to my seasonal lineup.

Details: Written by: Joseph Taylor; Category: Featured Releases; Created: 15 November 2013

Wise Up Ghost and Other Songs Blue Note B001875002
Format: CD

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The cover design of Elvis Costello’s collaboration with the Roots, Wise Up Ghost and Other Songs, is based on the Pocket Poets series published by Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s City Lights Books, especially that series’ best-known title: Allen Ginsberg’s Howl and Other Poems (1956). A few of us who are around Costello’s age (he was born in 1954) still have our copies of Howl; perhaps the reference is to reassure us, and Costello, that we’re all still hip.

Details: Written by: Joseph Taylor; Category: Featured Releases; Created: 01 November 2013

Songbook Rounder 11661-9154-2
Format: CD, DVD

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Allen Toussaint’s name is familiar to anyone who has followed popular music since the 1960s. He made his first record in 1958, but hit his stride in the next few years when his songs were recorded by Ernie K-Doe, Irma Thomas, Aaron Neville, and other New Orleans singers. His piano playing graced recordings by Lee Dorsey, Chris Kenner, and others, and in the ’70s he produced records by the Meters and Dr. John, and worked with artists as diverse as Robert Palmer and Paul McCartney. Many rock fans know him from the horn arrangements he wrote for several of the Band’s projects, including Rock of Ages and The Last Waltz.