Music Reviews

Social scientists will likely spend years analyzing Taylor Swift’s retained meteoric success, but the primary cause seems very simple: pure narcissism. Swift’s music is almost entirely about her, from her perspective only; in both her music and her public presence, those around her (lovers, friends, enemies) are secondary to her and how she feels, their proximity or distance meant to prove something favorable about her. In the age of main character syndrome, Swift’s... Read More

Jazz is to New York as port is to Portugal or coal is to Newcastle, yet there are great musicians who live elsewhere, many of them obscure in the metropole because they live elsewhere, and that’s a shame for us all. Kahil El’Zabar is one of those great musicians, a composer and percussionist who dwells mainly in Chicago, except when he travels through Europe, where he’s better known than he is in New York, even though he and his main band, the Ethnic Heritage... Read More

Released as a companion to its Live and Let Die reissue, this limited edition, deluxe 2CD set explores every note composed by John Barry for his return to the series, whose sound he created two decades earlier.

This is the first of two recent releases from LaLaLand Records exploring lesser-known Bond scores from the 1970s and 1980s. First up, this limited edition, deluxe 2CD release of Live and Let Die (1973), which was the first Bond film not to be scored by John Barry, and the first to star Roger Moore.  While at the time of the film’s release many felt George Martin’s score was a pale shadow of Barry’s template, the passage of time has been kinder to this music, and there’s no doubting the power of Paul McCartney’s iconic theme song.  Time, therefore, to follow LaLaLand Records’ cue and dive deep into the origins of “the Bond sound” and how two of the Beatles team tackled this impossible assignment to reinvent Barry’s stylings for a new era and a new leading man.

What are woo doing this Record Store Day? There’s always something to please almost everyone each year. One of my shopping strategies is to try to find something unique, containing music that hasn’t been heard before; I appreciate when an artist - or, their team - waits for this special annual shopping moment to drop some music that the world hasn’t yet heard; it makes it an event. This year, the record release that falls on that side of my barometer is Bernie... Read More

André 3000, one of the greatest rappers of all time, picks up the flute and makes his first solo effort in 17 years with an intriguing triple album of rap-free, mostly improvised ambient music.

How can an album filled with songs about drug dealers, users, losers, the jilted, and of course the age-gapped creep famously exclaiming, "Hey nineteen, that's 'Retha Franklin" be so sparkly-enticing and such a party listen? Partly it's the twisted fun Becker and Fagan have with their cast of characters delivering mellifluous lines like, "The Cuervo Gold, the fine Colombian, make tonight a wonderful thing," seemingly disconnected... Read More

Charles Lloyd is a wonder: 85 years old, still near the top of his game, his tone on tenor sax and flute clear and strong, not at all averse to risk-taking—in fact, keen to leap into new routes and approaches. Rather than hiring bandmates well suited to merely comping behind his solos, as some old masters do, Lloyd recruits the best musicians he can, to ensure a flow of adventure in the interplay. This has been true ever since his first major album as a leader, Dream... Read More

If you were even mildly curious, there’s a fair chance you caved and gave yourself a preview of The Cure’s last swing across North America once the YouTube clips started to appear. Those of us who did, got an advance listen to “Alone” - the epic, and gloriously mopey opener that should be included on their long-promised (and last?) studio album. But if the tour felt like something of a stop gap move because of the record’s delay, then what can be said now about Paris,... Read More

Seattle was the epicenter of the grunge movement. Just as the genre peaked in the early 1990s with bands like Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Soundgarden, and Alice In Chains dominating the scene, a band from a state further south would shake up the roost. Hailing from San Diego and originally named Mighty Joe Young, Stone Temple Pilots encapsulated the spirit of 1970s hard rock with hints of the relative alternative rock scene. The buzz from their 1990 demo and massive following... Read More

According to Ashley Kahn's outstanding annotation for this Rhino High Fidelity release, a few days before stepping into Phil Ramone's A&R studios to record Olé—his final session for Atlantic Records— John Coltrane had been at RVG's in Englewood Cliffs, NJ recording his first Africa/Brass session for Impulse! Kahn writes that the relatively new A&R was handling "overflow" for Atlantic, which is fortunate. It meant that Olé would be both... Read More

My old friend Ken Kessler What's App'd me sounding more excited than I've heard him in years! The veteran U.K. based audio and watch journalist told me a U.K. label Roller Coaster Records had just released a CD reissue of The "Chirping" Crickets that used similar tech to what Giles Martin used to remix Beatles albums in improved stereo, but Ken said for some reason it worked much better on this old Crickets album that was recorded and released... Read More

Ella backed by a small jazz combo was an unusual musical setting for Ella in the studio, which makes this album recorded and released in 1961 a catalog standout. Pianist Lou Levy leads the quartet that also features guitarist Herb Ellis, bassist Joe Mondragon and on drums Stan Levey. Clap Hands...is also highly regarded for its excellent sonics, recorded somewhere in Los Angeles. Since producer and Verve founder Norman Granz was also Ella's long time manager and... Read More

When Norman Granz organized and produced in 1980 The Trumpet Summit Meets The Oscar Peterson Big 4 (Pablo 2312-114), Peterson was fifty five years old, Ray Brown was fifty two, Bobby Durham was forty three, Joe Pass was fifty one, Dizzy Gillespie was the "elder statesman" at sixty three and Freddie Hubbard was the youngster at forty two. By today's age standards none of them were "old", but jazz at that point—at least the kind of jazz these... Read More

The past few decades have brought an array of New Order compilation albums, yet 1987’s Substance, the original New Order singles compilation, still reigns supreme. In a time when “greatest hits” releases are mostly obsolete, there are several reasons for this. One is that New Order were (are?) primarily a singles band who released their best work as five- to eight-minute 12” singles. Older fans’ nostalgia for Substance is also a factor, but most importantly, Substance... Read More

Maria Schneider is the preeminent big-band composer and leader of our time. She’s been at it for a little over 30 years, recorded nine albums in that span, and this, her 10th, Decades—a lavishly packaged, limited-edition three-LP boxed set, on the Artist Share label—is a celebration, a sort of best-of anthology tracing her evolution. It also marks the first time any of her work has been pressed on vinyl, in this case 180-gram vinyl, the lacquers cut by Chris Bellman... Read More

In the mid-2000s, Kaiser Chiefs finally exploded onto the post-punk revival scene. After a failed attempt in the music business as Parva, they scrapped everything to forge ahead with a new musical voyage. In a musical climate dominated by American groups like The Strokes and The Killers, Kaiser Chiefs provided a strong British influence, borrowing elements from Britpop and 70s punk rock. The group’s ability to craft stadium anthems, such as “I Predict A Riot” and the... Read More

“Ambient is the space, the afterglow left when the centre has collapsed. It’s in the amorphous, beatless oscillations of post-rock, the multiple releases of abstract electronica which criss-cross the twenty-first-century skies like fading vapour trails. It implies an absence of subject.”David Stubbs, “Mars by 1980, The Story Of Electronic Music”, Faber & Faber, 2018, p304 Kieran Hebden (aka Four Tet) is an English electronic producer who does not necessarily make... Read More

Not since Veronica Swift's This Bitter Earth (Mack Avenue MAC1177LP) has a record cover been so at odds with what's in the grooves as this filled with funky covers Groove Note title from Vanessa Fernandez. Think of it this way: there are eleven tunes here from Childish Gambino, Prince, Lenny Kravitz, Barry White, Maurice White and a few others and the mostly celebratory funk is in the air (with a mellow stop over in Bill Withers territory), produced by a... Read More