Archive: 2010

We first fell in love with Nicole Atkins a few years back when the Neptune, NJ native joined the mighty My Morning Jacket on stage during their epic New Year’s Eve concert at Madison Square Garden for a pair of duets with Jim James. We were again reminded of our admiration for Ms. Atkins more […]

While we found it kind of curious that Paul Simon is scheduled to release his new his new studio album So Beautiful, Or So What next April, when the record’s opening track and lead single is the  Christmas themed tune Getting Ready For Christmas Day. That hasn’t stopped the legendary singer-songwriter from taking advantage of […]

Prime time may be full of repeats, but there’s plenty of new late night programming this week. Dream-poppers Beach House perform on Conan tonight, Brooklyn’s own Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings visit Jay Leno on Tuesday,  crossover success story Grace Potter and the Nocturnals hit the Ed Sullivan Theater stage for Wednesday’s Letterman episode and […]

Ryan Adams can be easily heard in the opening moments of “The Father,” the rootsy, warm and inviting keeper by Vancouver-via-Los Angeles band HoneyChild. Led by Tobias Jesso, the group nails the opener by balancing delicacy with heaviness. Think of an Americana answer to The National and you might get the gist of the first track.

The opening to Regina Spektor’s Live In London DVD highlights an orchestral snippet of Guns N Roses’ “November Rain” before jumping into Spektor’s own “On the Radio,” where she sings – “And on the radio/You hear November Rain/That solo's awful long/But it's a good refrain.”   One wouldn’t expect a classical music prodigy to be a hard rock fan, but we also expect one to be such a good percussive piano player, where her ivory talents make for more a pop rock foundation than sleepy melodies.

Barry’s Maine is one of sun-scorched blueberry barrens, just enough gas to get through the evening (providing the pickup doesn’t end up in the puckerbrush), cheap beer (none of that microbrew stuff), and, yes, drugs. And the thing is, Barry’s Maine is just as real as that postcard version – but you’d have to know about it to write about it.

With all the sprucing up and revamping of past catalogs that is going on today, endless new glossy ways to watch and hear, one can only imaging the amount of re-mastering that the late great Frank Zappa would be doing on his vast history of releases.  The man was constantly tinkering with his music, refiguring it for new formats (CDs at the time) overdubbing; processing and pushing the limits of his technology which makes the new DVD release The Torture Never Stops so surprising in its simplicity.   

Don Van Vliet, known to a generation of music fans as Captain Beefheart, died Dec. 17 in California after reportedly battling multiple sclerosis for the last 20 years. He was 69. His collaboration with Frank Zappa produced 1969’s acclaimed Trout Mask Replica, his best-known work.Van Vliet, who took on the Beefheart personality in 1964, spent […]

Last August, Wilco threw a three-day festival at MASS MoCA in North Adams, MA called Solid Sound and yesterday the group  announced that they will return to the site for a second go at the seemingly annual event on June 24-26. Look for more information on Solid Sound 2011 on January 18th, when promoters expect […]

For this week’s mix, I’ve compiled six songs from albums which made our Best Archival Releases of 2010 list. Here’s your chance to get a taste of these wonderful releases; all of which need to be in your collection. We start off with the solo acoustic Baby, Let Me Follow You Down demo from an […]