In September 2008, Saadiq released his third album, The Way I See It, which landed him the #1 position on iTunes Top Albums of the Year, a spot on Rolling Stone's Best Album's of 2008 and three more Grammy nominations.
Recently, Broken Social Scene began the Broken Social Scene Presents series of albums, where one member takes the reins, starting with front man Kevin Drew’s Spirit If. . . And more recently, bass player Brendan Canning released the next album in the series, Something for All of Us. . . The album has all the telltale marks of BSS – the multi-layered sound, the unbridled genre-hopping, the rough edges and spontaneous moments – but also lets Canning step into the spotlight.
In a recent interview with Hidden Track, Allman Brothers Band founding member and drummer Butch Trucks touched on a number of topics, including such hot potatoes over whether this is the start of an Allman Brothers Band scale-back (yes and no), some hints on what’s to come at the Beacon, and of course, Moogis – a brand new piece of the Beacon experience that will bring streaming, near-high-definition video to Web subscribers to capture each night of the run live.
Joshua Redman returned to the acoustic realm of modern jazz in 2007 with Back East where his playing carried a definite sense of breaking free from preconceptions, self-imposed and otherwise. The saxophonist’s new album Compass extends that sensation of abandon in no uncertain terms.
Saying you’re from Wasilla, Alaska these days is like painting a giant bulls-eye across your face – you’re going to get stuff flying at you from every direction. For Portugal. The Man, the up-and-coming band from—you guessed it—Wasilla, this can be a wondrous thing. Take their latest album, Censored Colors, as an example. Around its release, lead singer John Baldwin Gourley posted this blog to the band’s MySpace page, which centered around Wasilla’s most famous figure—you guessed it (again)—Sarah Palin.
Crazy Engine is one of Kimock's most curious lineups yet: his old pal and legendary Hammond B3 player Melvin Seals, his son, John Morgan Kimock, on drums, the sturdy Janis Wallin from Family Groove Company holding things down on bass, and a vocals section consisting of Cheryl Rucker and Shirley Starks, affectionately dubbed "The Girls."
At this very moment, in every college town, in every city, in every state, there is at least one functioning rock band with a lead singer/pianist. Blame Ben Folds. Like Elton John before him, Folds has redefined the piano as a lead instrument.
It’s hard to fathom that back in the ‘90’s Snow Patrol, a student band from Scotland, was teetering on thin ice. So thin that frontman Gary Lightbody had to sell his record collection to meet his monthly nut. Yet in the next 14 years, they not only reached land, but crossed over the universe…a story that unfolds through their albums, particularly the last three
Jason Collett’s latest record, the 2008 release Here’s To Being Here (Arts & Crafts) is a marvelous thing; it’s personal enough to put on when drinking with friends becomes an option. It begs for authenticity through conversation. He pens lyrics like “The perennial fatigue of the times/when you’re long in the tooth/short in the sleeve/there’s nowhere left to hide” which let you into a world you only feel like sharing with your best friend. All this coming from a guy with three children. And when he’s not getting personal, he’s still littering his albums with references to joints and cigarettes.
He's consistently a good interview, but no matter how many times you get the privilege, you come away with the same sense of wonderment: Warren Haynes is mentally organized. Granted, he's a lot of things, and you have to expect as much, given how many projects he's been juggling for how many decades now—and how in the next six months alone he'll be on tour with Gov't Mule and the once-again-reconstituted Dead, as well as play solo shows and hold it down with the Allmans for the just-confirmed 2009 Beacon Theater run.
