On first listen to the new Dr. Dog album, Be The Void, the group’s inimitable exultation emerges almost immediately and that, along with a willfully primitive recording style, distinguishes this recording as much as their past work.
The Rolling Stones' 1978 release Some Girls is widely regarded as a watershed moment in the iconic British band’s career. It followed Black and Blue and It’s Only Rock and Roll that sounded like mere holding patterns even if they had not come out subsequent to the alternately raucous and haunting Goats Head Soup recalling "Silver Train,” "Star Star" along with "Coming Down Again.” Some Girls Live in Texas reaffirms the strength of The Stones as a performing unit
Whether Boris Garcia’s band name is an albatross is officially a moot point with Today We Sail. This recording is the work of a band well grounded in their roots and fully into the process of transcending them.
Given the names involved, it stands to reason this is a hard-hitting session
Gov’t Mule concerts are always rife with surprises so why think the tenth anniversary of New Year’s celebrations at New York’s Beacon Theatre would be any different? Well, for one thing because the quartet had made only few select appearances in 2011–ABB’s Wanee festival and their own Mountain/Christmas Jams–as titular leader Warren Haynes spent the better part of his time touring with his own band in support of his Stax solo album Man in Motion.
It’s not quite accurate to call Frankie Miller the unsung hero of British rock n’ soul because he had more than just a taste of mainstream recognition, while the crafts-manlike songwriter in him garnered comparable commercial success via movies and television. Yet the emotional undercurrent in the music included in …That’s Who! makes the case he was worthy of more widespread acknowledgement than the compilation’s title wryly references.
The Felice Brothers had a right to look perfectly bedraggled under the stage lights at Higher Ground. As Ian Felicde related early in the set, their bus had broken down enroute to Vermont while sibling James had been in the hospital earlier in the day with pink eye (hence his intro of a tune later in the set as “the conjunctivitis version).
Known less as a musician and more for his role as producer (Dawes among other collaborations) as well as avatar for the (re-) burgeoning Laurel Canyon music scene in California, Jonathan Wilson aims to equalize the balance with Gentle Spirit, his second full length (and first widely-distributed) solo album. The beauty of the work is that it captures rather than contrives the tranquility implied in its title, not surprisingly with most of the musicianship supplied by Wilson himself
Based on the range of material included in Songs From the South Vol. 1&2, not to mention the uniformly brilliant production throughout the two discs, it’s deeply confounding to consider that Paul Kelly remains sadly unknown outside his homeland of Australia. “”Before Too Long” and “”Look So Fine, Feel So Low” suggest how fully-formed he was as a writer and performer when he began recording. Then as now, he and his work transcend easy categorization or comparisons.
The entire audio discography of Rory Gallagher has been re-released during the course of 2011 under the aegis of the late guitarist’s family, rightfully acknowledging the work of iconoclastic musician whose work is growing in importance with each passing year.
