Reviews of Attainable Hi-Fi & Home-Theater Equipment
- Details
- Written by: Joseph Taylor
- Category: Featured Releases
Columbia 88883 73487 2
Format: CD (2)
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When Bob Dylan released Self Portrait in June 1970, critics pounced on it. The most famous review is probably Greil Marcus’s, for Rolling Stone, which began with the famously blunt, “What is this shit?” A more insightful comment in the review was, “I once said I’d buy an album of Dylan breathing heavily. I still would. But not an album of Dylan breathing softly.”
Read more: Bob Dylan: "Another Self Portrait (1969-1971) -- The Bootleg Series Vol.10"
- Details
- Written by: Joseph Taylor
- Category: Featured Releases
Le Chant du Monde 2743 2258
Format: CD
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Chet Baker has long been held in high regard in Europe, where he spent much of the last ten years of his life and where, in 1978, he died. The release of Chet Lives!, by the Italian jazz singer and guitarist Joe Barbieri, marks the 25th anniversary of Baker’s death, in Amsterdam. Interest in the great trumpeter and singer seems to be at a peak -- just a few months ago I wrote about Eliane Elias’s highly enjoyable I Thought About You: A Tribute to Chet Baker, which captured Baker’s spirit and celebrated his influence.
- Details
- Written by: Joseph Taylor
- Category: Featured Releases
BFM Jazz 302 062 418 2
Format: CD
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Drummer Steve Gadd has had a busy recording year, appearing on discs by Eric Clapton, Bob James and David Sanborn, and the Gaddabouts, his collaboration with Edie Brickell. Gadditude adds to the list a recording made under his own name. The Steve Gadd Band’s debut benefits from the comfort these musicians have from playing together as James Taylor’s touring band -- even the most difficult passages flow easily.
- Details
- Written by: Joseph Taylor
- Category: Featured Releases
Mom and Pop Music MP111-2
Format: CD
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The first time I heard the Smith Westerns, the DJ called them “Beatles-esque,” a term they probably hear a lot. It’s true that “3AM Spiritual,” which opens the Chicago band’s new album, has some late-Beatles flourishes, but nothing else on Soft Will is so overt an homage. The album contains hints of so many groups that it’s tempting to drag in one or half a dozen names in an attempt to nail down this band’s sound. But like Big Star, another group writers evoke to try to describe them, the Smith Westerns have a clear affection for pop craftsmanship, they borrow freely, and they create something wholly their own.
- Details
- Written by: Hans Wetzel
- Category: Featured Releases
Def Jam 3743213
Format: CD
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“I’m not going to sit here and defend shit. That shit is rock’n’roll, man. That shit is rap music. I am a god. Now what?”
-- Kanye West
Kanye West sucks. A simple Web search of his choice quotes over the years yields some real gems, and would lead most people to question how on this vast blue planet of ours he became popular. His lyrics offer little illumination. The words on his newest album, Yeezus, appear to have been written over the course of a few hours, by someone capable of rhyming and little else. This isn’t far from the truth, as it turns out; producer Rick Rubin -- responsible for producing Adele’s 21, among other legendary albums -- claims that the last songs on the album were written in two hours. Mind you, these two hours fell between Ye’s (short for Kanye, hence Yeezus) attending a baby shower and flying off to Milan, Italy . . . two days before his album was due to his label. Rumor has it that Rubin was still tinkering with songs just a week before the disc dropped, almost assuredly as a matter of necessity rather than artistic liberty.
- Details
- Written by: Joseph Taylor
- Category: Featured Releases
XL Recordings XLCD 556
Format: CD
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I imagine that anyone buying Vampire Weekend’s eponymous first album because the band’s name evoked something sinister would have been disappointed. Their music is unusually upbeat, even bouncy. “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa,” a single from that disc, is a good place to begin. The song is a combination of Western and African pop, the exotic influences defining and focusing the infectious melodies. Vampire Weekend’s unique sound made them an unlikely choice for a spot on Saturday Night Live, but college-radio play and Internet buzz worked together to make them fan and critic favorites.
- Details
- Written by: Joseph Taylor
- Category: Featured Releases
Abstract Dragon/Vagrant VR793
Format: CD
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Black Rebel Motorcycle Club’s new disc, Specter at the Feast, includes a version of the Call’s 1989 hit, “Let the Day Begin.” Michael Been, the Call’s bassist, singer, and primary writer, was the soundman and an occasional producer for BRMC. He died in 2010 of a heart attack backstage, during a BRMC performance in Europe, and his loss is a current that runs through this record. Been’s son, Robert Levon Been, is BRMC’s bassist and one of its singers.
Read more: Black Rebel Motorcycle Club: "Specter at the Feast"
- Details
- Written by: Hans Wetzel
- Category: Featured Releases
Columbia 88883716862
Format: CD
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Whether or not they realize it, almost everyone has heard Daft Punk. The pair of French DJs produced three full-length studio albums before Random Access Memories, and helped compose the music for the film Tron: Legacy. But despite achieving massive commercial success, and having done much to further the appeal of electronic music, they remain reclusive. The Frenchmen remain masked not as a marketing gimmick, but rather as a way to retain their privacy, while also strengthening the illusion that Daft Punk somehow transcends mere flesh and blood.
- Details
- Written by: Joseph Taylor
- Category: Featured Releases
Cherrywood EH 002
Format: Vinyl
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Tenor saxophonist Elias Haslanger is based in Austin, Texas, where he’s a pillar of the local jazz scene. He’s toured the US and Europe with a variety of jazz and pop artists, including Maynard Ferguson, Ellis Marsalis, and Asleep at the Wheel. The cover of his newest recording, Church on Monday, is in mid-’60s Blue Note Records style, front and back, including liner notes by a prominent jazz critic, in this case DownBeat’s Michael Point.
- Details
- Written by: Joseph Taylor
- Category: Featured Releases
Telarc TEL-34021-02
Format: CD
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Michael Feinstein is a singer and pianist, but he is also, and perhaps primarily, an archivist of the Great American Songbook. Channel surfing the other day, I stumbled on Michael Feinstein’s American Songbook, which PBS first broadcast in 2010. Feinstein was visiting the Gershwin archives in San Francisco (they’ve since been moved to the Library of Congress). Feinstein was a friend of Ira Gershwin’s, and his extensive research of Gershwin’s recordings and sheet music helped ensure that the legacies of Ira and his brother George would be accurately and fully preserved.
Read more: Michael Feinstein: "Change of Heart: The Songs of André Previn"
- David Bowie: "The Next Day"
- Hiromi/The Trio Project: "Move"
- Atoms for Peace: "Amok"
- Patricia Barber: "Smash"
- Yo La Tengo: "Fade"
- Orchestre National de Jazz: "Piazzolla!"
- Lifehouse: "Almería"
- War Poets: "Dulce et Decorum Est"
- Luka Bloom: "This New Morning"
- Poncho Sanchez and His Latin Jazz Band: "Live in Hollywood"
- David Chesky: "Dr. Chesky’s Sensational Fantastic and Simply Amazing Binaural Sound Show!"
- Father's Children: "Father's Children"
- The xx: "Coexist"
- The Gaddabouts: "Look Out Now!"
- Easy Star All-Stars: "Easy Star’s Thrillah"
- Return to Forever IV: "The Mothership Returns"
- Mike Stern: "All Over the Place"
- Sam Cooke: "The Best of Sam Cooke"
- Esperanza Spalding: "Radio Music Society"
- Ahmad Jamal: "Blue Moon: The New York Session"
- Leonard Cohen: "Old Ideas"
- Pink Floyd: "Wish You Were Here"
- Jeff Campbell: "Stop and Go"
- Miles Davis: "Miles! Live at Montreux: The Definitive Miles Davis at Montreux DVD Collection 1973-1991"
- Ray Charles: "Live in France 1961"
- Coldplay: "Mylo Xyloto"
- The Hollies: "Look Through Any Window 1963-1975"
- Doug Munro and La Pompe Attack: "A Very Gypsy Christmas"
- Chris Bauer: "In a Yuletide Groove: Harmonica Jazz for the Holidays"
- Paul Motian: "The Windmills of Your Mind"
- Three to Close 2011
- Josh Nelson: "Discoveries"
- Patricia Barber: "Café Blue"
- Mindy Canter: "Fluteus Maximus"
- Steve Cropper: "Dedicated"
- Andrea Wolper: "Parallel Lives"
- The Left Banke: "Walk Away Renée/Pretty Ballerina"
- Cooler Days
- Peter Erskine, Bob Mintzer, Darek Oles, and Alan Pasqua: "Standards 2 -- Movie Music"
- Zach Williams and the Reformation: "A Southern Offering"
- The Mike Eldred Trio: "61 and 49"
- Aimée Allen: "Winters & Mays"
- Maeve Gilchrist: "Song of Delight"
- Spectacle: Elvis Costello with . . . (Season 2)
- Summer Sounds
- Hiromi: "Voice"
- Ben Waters: "Boogie 4 Stu -- A Tribute to Ian Stewart"
- Nat "King" Cole: "After Midnight"
- Paul Simon: "So Beautiful or So What"
- Eliane Elias: "Light My Fire"
- Esperanza Spalding: "Chamber Music Society"
- Something New
- Gordon Goodwin’s Big Phat Band: "That’s How We Roll"
- “Stan Kenton: Artistry in Rhythm”
- David LaFleur: "Them Bones . . ."
- Gregg Allman: "Low Country Blues"
- Manhattan School of Music Afro-Cuban Jazz Orchestra: "Tito Puente Masterworks Live!!!"
- The Underground
- Jeff Beck: "Rock’n’Roll Party Honoring Les Paul"
- Jovino Santos Neto: "Veja O Som"
- The O’Farrill Brothers: "Giant Peach"
- Michael William Gilbert: "I Can See From Here"
- Selmer Saxharmonic: "Flying Saxophone Circus"
- Andy Farber and His Orchestra: "This Could Be the Start of Something Big"
- Eli Degibri: "Israeli Song"
- Jazz Shortlist
- Joey DeFrancesco, Robi Botos, Vito Rezza, and Phil Dwyer: "One Take, Volume Four"
- Treasa Levasseur: "Low Fidelity"
- Spin: "Believe"
- Michael McDonald: "This Christmas -- Live in Chicago"
- Berlin Voices: "About Christmas"
- Mike Mainieri / Marnix Busstra Quartet: "Trinary Motion / Live in Europe"
- Latin Flavor
- Marcos Amorim Trio: "Portraits"
- Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers: “Classic Albums: Damn the Torpedoes”
- David Bixler & Arturo O’Farrill: “The Auction Project”
- Miles Davis: “Someday My Prince Will Come”
- Frank Sinatra: “Sinatra at the Sands”
- John Mellencamp: "No Better Than This"
- Sons and Brothers
- Otis Taylor: "Clovis People, Vol 3"
- Steve Cropper & Felix Cavaliere: "Midnight Flyer"
- New Latin Quarter Presents: "The Jazz and Blues Collection, Volume 1"
- The Grip Weeds: "Strange Change Machine"
- Lawrence Lebo: "Don’t Call Her Larry, Volume 3: American Roots"
- The Rolling Stones: "Exile on Main Street: Deluxe Edition"
- The Nomad's Song
- Ray Charles: "Genius + Soul = Jazz (Expanded Edition)"
- Sebastian Sternal Trio: "Paris"
- Frank Sinatra and Antonio Carlos Jobim: "Sinatra/Jobim: The Complete Reprise Recordings"
- William Orbit: "My Oracle Lives Uptown"
- Catherine Russell: "Inside This Heart of Mine"
- Dusty Springfield, Small Faces, Herman’s Hermits, Gerry and the Pacemakers: "British Invasion"
- Freedy Johnston: "Rain on the City"
- "The Hot Spot" (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
- David Olney: "Dutchman’s Curve"
- Jason and the Scorchers: "Halcyon Times"
- The Music Will Find You
- Lin McPhillips: "My Shining Hour"
