Posts by Doug Collette

Moving on from the easygoing simplicity of the 2021 trio outing Ancient Grains (with keyboardist Sam Yahel & drummer Dennis Edwards), Will Bernard has now bravely undertaken an expedition into more exploratory realms on Pond Life. Aided and abetted by similarly courageous musicians including John Medeski and Tim Berne, the prolific guitarist/composer leads the way […]

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (released 5/26/67)  may not be the Beatles’ best album, but it’s certainly the most famous. The reverberations arising from its release continue even today, over a half-century after the album came out and while (over?) much has been made of every element of the title from its cover to […]

Time Out Take Five is a regular column comprised of pithy takes on recent jazz releases, spotlighting titles deserving attention that might otherwise go unnoticed. Douglas Cuomo featuring Nels Cline and the Aizuri Quartet: seven limbs – On these arrangements of poignant and provocative compositions, the wide-ranging sounds of guitarist Nels Cline’s instrument, plus electronics, […]

Guitarist Steve Kimock hasn’t so much flown under the radar of contemporary rock as planned inside, outside, around, and through it. His most high-profile position may have been in the post-Grateful Dead group The Other Ones, assembled in the wake of Jerry Garcia’s death, but he’s led more than a few alliances under his own […]

Based on his fifth studio album, Origin, Joey Alexander’s gifts are no less impressive now that he’s progressed past the point of being a child prodigy. In fact, the precocious pianist/composer/bandleader’s talents may be even more daunting now: he’s attained a level of nuanced complexity even as he’s maintained the essentially accessible nature of his […]

Rory Gallagher was the unsung member of the late 60’s British guitar god hierarchy including Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Jimmy Page, but his profile has risen dramatically in the years since his untimely death in 1995. During his lifetime, the man stubbornly eschewed compromise for commercialism’s sake, refusing to allow singles to be pulled […]

The late Chris Whitley seemed to spend as much time touring Europe and Australia as the continental United States, which may explain why he never really expanded the breakthrough he experienced with “Poison Girl” in 1992. Yet his multiple visits to Burlington, Vermont, and its immediate vicinity are indicative of his roots in the Green […]

The Rolling Stones’ Live At The El Mocambo recordings carry plenty of cachet on their own terms as well as in the context of the iconic British band’s history. On the latter front, the previously-unreleased 1977 recordings in Toronto mark the first full depiction of guitarist/vocalist Ronnie Wood’s contributions after he joined the group in […]

With the (dis)advantages of fifty-five years of hindsight, Jimi Hendrix Experience’s Are You Experienced? (released 5/12/67) is all the more striking in its combination of image-making (mongering?) and musical innovation. To be sure, the outlandish persona introduced at Monterey Pop and with this first recording dogged the late contemporary blues-rock icon for the duration of […]

Upon casual listening, a magnificent spontaneity seems to permeate The Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main Street (released 5/12/72). A closer perusal of the sixty-seven some minutes, however, reveals an unnerving sense of psychic dislocation. But then, that’s not in the least surprising given the circumstances of the album’s recording: although began in 1969, most of […]