Posts by Patrick Flanary

[rating=10.00] You can’t improve a great record by remastering it, but the folks at Dolby claim they’ve gotten close. R.E.M.’s 1992 masterpiece, Automatic for the People, is the first album ever remixed with the technology, best known for its powerful surround-sound in movie theaters. Available only on the four-disc deluxe anniversary package, the Dolby mix […]

David Gray played with barely a pause over two hours Sunday night, racing from piano to acoustic guitar between songs at the Apollo Theater in New York, as he cycled through “a comprehensive retrospective” of his 25-year catalog. Big voices are best suited for small spaces, and the Apollo’s 1,500-seat venue afforded a warm, absorbing […]

[rating=8.00] The jazz-fusion singer Katini reimagines standards as soulful R&B covers and releases rock-inspired originals on Gone, her debut album, released this week on the indie label One Trick Dog Records. With this set, Katini (pronounced “kah-TEENY”) officially transitions from former “X Factor Australia” contender to emerging New York fixture. This month she secured residencies […]

What’s more striking than watching the saxophonist Marcus Strickland work? Watching him rest. It’s his frequent breaks, for stretches of several minutes—time spent not playing—that imply as much gratitude for his band as suspense for the song. In this way Strickland dictates rhythm in respite, allowing his eight-year-old quartet the space to emerge from the […]

Tuesday August 2nd, marked the first onstage reunion for the New Century Jazz Quintet in months, uniting the group for the first time since recording its third and latest album, Arise, in May. The first performance, at Jazz Standard in New York’s Gramercy district, served up a heavy swing set with an urgency and swiftness […]

Sometimes the best gigs are the low-profile, no-frills sets, the ones that don’t charge a cover or require a jacket. Take the respected Hammond B-3 organist Brian Charette, whose dry wit and quick keys fit just as well crammed in the corner of a bar in Flatbush, Brooklyn. Though the Grammy-nominated Charette often plays with […]

Within minutes of Rudy Royston’s second set Tuesday night at the Village Vanguard in New York, the drummer and leader of the band 303 was already apologizing. His impromptu solo brought “Blade,” a new song that thrived on its own suspense, to a sudden halt. “That was not how it was supposed to end,” Royston […]

Herb Alpert promised a “very informal” show Tuesday night at New York’s Café Carlyle, and spent the next 90 minutes delivering a funky, freewheeling set with his wife, the singer Lani Hall, and the couple’s longtime jazz trio. The show opened the band’s fourth Carlyle residency, which runs through June 11, and unfolded as an […]

[rating=9.00] Violent Femmes live up to the title of this first album in 16 years from founding members (and erstwhile enemies) Gordon Gano and Brian Ritchie: given enough time, you can do anything. It’s been a lifetime since their last full-length stab, and that’s part of why this long-awaited product is so satisfying. Not only […]

Sipping from a tall cocktail while sizing up a new setlist, Buster Poindexter (a tuxedoed, pompadoured David Johansen) was deliberately pacing himself. On September 29th in New York, his band opened a two-week residency, their third extended engagement at Café Carlyle since last October. These marathon supper-club bookings are fitting, as Poindexter is as much […]

[rating=7.00] Glen Hansard has achieved that songwriting feat of knowing precisely when to fall apart. Where some grieve, Hansard explodes, and never a moment too soon. Many of his songs are tests of endurance when performed live, for himself as much as the audience, pained narratives that evolve gradually and climax suddenly, with all the […]

Noise and screams stifled any hint of melody, yet elevated a night of moody, lo-fi rock on Saturday at Music Hall of Williamsburg. The lineup, three bands from three different countries, represented a sampling of the 400 groups scattered around Brooklyn for the borough’s seventh annual Northside Festival. Each set somehow produced unnerving excitement, drawing […]

Just one night after Violent Femmes wrapped their most extensive recording sessions since 1998, the band brought rockabilly and heavy bluegrass to a set of favorites and obscure requests in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The show on Tuesday, at the record store Rough Trade NYC, was significant for being the Femmes’s first performance to follow their longest […]

[rating=6.00] In the dead of winter in 2013, Tanlines, a prolific synthpop duo from Brooklyn, decided to record its second album far from home, and make it sound better than the first one. Neither quite happened that way. When the group’s laptop crashed before putting down a single note at guitarist Eric Emm’s childhood house […]

“I’m a Jew who loves bacon,” a chatty Perry Farrell announced with a shrug late Wednesday night in New York. The admission came moments after his oldest band, Jane’s Addiction, played a biting version of “Pig’s In Zen,” ending the latest run-through of the 1988 metal-pop masterpiece, Nothing’s Shocking. The Los Angeles group has been […]

[rating=8.00] Two years ago the Scottish musician Gary McClure released Wreaths, an album he’s convinced that no one ever heard, under his actual name. He has since become someone else. He left the U.K. for the U.S., got a wife and two dogs, cut a handful of songs to 8-track tape, and blasted copies to […]

[rating=6.00] Across six albums, twin brothers Gary and Ryan Jarman, with younger brother Ross on drums, have channeled fuzz and melody from the Weezer and Flaming Lips records they worshipped as teens. That’s nothing new. But what’s remarkable about the Cribs, an English trio now living in Portland, is that they’ve attracted many of the […]

Age and optimism are recurring themes for the jazz trumpeter Herb Alpert this week at the Café Carlyle in New York, where he and his wife, the singer Lani Hall, are performing nightly through March 21. Alpert told a full club on Wednesday that he will turn 80 later this month. He spent only a […]

[rating=7.00] When Oasis taped an MTV Unplugged performance in 1996, it wasn’t meant to be Noel Gallagher’s first solo album. But the stripped-down set was exactly that, an unintended classic that put the band’s songwriter and part-time lead singer front and center. By that point, Oasis was one of the biggest bands in the world […]

Buster Poindexter sang his heart out during a pre-Valentine’s Day set at the Café Carlyle on Tuesday, reviving R&B, doo-wop, and soul covers on the first night of a two-week residency at the New York supper club. The performance marked David Johansen’s latest return as the slick, smarmy lounge-singer character he created in the ’80s, […]