Album Reviews

Saying that Alex Maas has had a huge hand in the modern psych rock movement is by no means an overstatement. Besides fronting the Austin-based psych rock band The Black Angels and collaborating with artists like UNKLE and Mothman, he also cofounded the creative collective The Reverberation Appreciation Society. This collective is responsible for the […]

It’s been seven years since Sigur Rós’ last studio album, Kveikur, and in that time the band has remained notoriously quiet. While it seemed unlikely that any of the group’s members would be producing any music amongst the worldwide lockdown, we still managed to get a new album from lead singer and guitarist Jónsi Birgisson and something […]

On Stumbling Home, the upstate New York-based indie folk duo The Sea The Sea beautifully blend male/female harmonies that would have fit perfectly on any of Fleetwood Mac’s classic mid-‘70s run of classic albums. The LP, their fourth, is simply sublime. Just two songs in, with the unforgettable “A Thousand Years,” with Chuck E. Costa […]

Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders’ May 21st, 1971 Keystone Korner derives from the early days of the longstanding collaboration between these two deeply kindred spirits and covers what is, in retrospect, very familiar stylistic ground in the nascent stages of exploration. Back cover disclaimer on audio quality aside, Fred Kevorkian’s mastering of Jeff Ziegler’s mix […]

Ley Line is a group that came together at the Telluride Folk Festival in 2013. It is described as “miltilingual folk”, which sounds like the title of a Putumayo collection. It is a correct if incomplete description. The music of the group is based in world folk but goes much deeper than just that.  The […]

Even the most casual jazz fan likely has a copy of the Dave Brubeck Quartet’s 1959 record Time Out in their collection. It’s long been one of the highest-selling jazz albums in history with the title track claiming the honor of the largest selling single. The album has been associated with at least three Presidents […]

Composer/pianist/producer, Lisa Kristine Hilton is back after almost exactly a year later with her follow-up to December 2019’s  Chalkboard Destiny that featured her longstanding bandmates: Rudy Royston on drums, and Luques Curtis on bass, as well as the imposing JD Allen on tenor sax. (Note this is the first time that Hilton is making her middle name, Kristine, prominent). This […]

Movie Club is an instrumental duo from Venice Beach, California. That in itself tells you a couple things. It tells you that this duo isn’t interested in traditional band structure or in the typical rock-song structure. They recorded two EPs Kraken and Hammerhead in collaboration with producer Matt Wignall and Lettuce bassist Erick “Jesus” Coomes. […]

The Jimi Hendrix Experience concert played on July 30th, 1970 during The Cry of Love tour dubbed Rainbow Bridge has always been a bit confusing for Hendrix fans. The 1971 film only contained a bit of Hendrix playing while the album titled Rainbow Bridge actually had no music from this concert at all. Now a […]

Smashing Pumpkins has always been a band that bucks trends, incorporating psychedelia and metal at a time when it was anything but cool in the alternative world, using densely layered sounds when the rock landscape was all about raw simplicity, and otherwise defying expectations. Starting with 1998’s Adore, the band defied its biggest trend, working […]

Pianist/composer Eric Reed delivers one of the year’s most deeply spiritual, soulful works with For Such A Time Like This, written against the backdrop of the pandemic, social unrest, and anxiety of a new election. Reed, for more than three decades now, has built his reputation as one of the most influential and beloved jazz […]

Tori Handsley brings a unique sound through this accessible long-awaited debut – As We Stand. Her trio features Mercury Prize 2020 drummer and producer Moses Boyd and Melt Yourself Down’s Ruth Goller on bass. Handsley’s signature instrument is the electric harp which by turns sounds like a guitar, an electric piano, or conventional acoustic harp. […]

Portland, OR-based guitarist, composer and producer Chance Hayden returns with Grab & Go, his sophomore album on the Ropeadope imprint Atlanta Records, a follow-up to his 2018 label debut, Get Somethin’.   He brings more of the percolating jazz-funk heard in that debut with a new set of ten originals. With over a decade of […]

Imagining Marvin originally appeared to sold-out audiences in NYC in 2019. Of course, Marvin Gaye was one of the most universally appealing artists of our lifetimes. Many of Gaye’s most loved songs were born out of political and social unrest in the sixties so it’s rather fitting to see them given new life in these […]

Ah, Black Friday is here. This set of Sonny Rollins discoveries from the Dutch Jazz Archive is one of his four efforts (also George Coleman, Monty Alexander, Bill Evans) for Record Store Day from the “Jazz Detective” Zev Feldman.  Three are on the Resonance label and the other (stay tuned) will also be covered here. […]

Ah, Black Friday is almost here. This features NEA Jazz Master tenor saxophonist George Coleman in an explosive set from Baltimore’s famed ballroom, the Left Bank in 1971. It is yet another discovery from the “Jazz Detective” Zev Feldman and is one of his four efforts (also Sonny Rollins, Monty Alexander, Bill Evans) for Record […]

Katarina Pejak is a classically-trained pianist who released three albums in her native Serbia. Through a variety of avenues, her attention turned to the blues, with influences like Otis Spann, and Ray Charles, among others. On her new EP Outside Looking In, you can hear some of that blues influence, but you certainly can’t call […]

King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard have released a new album. That already sounds like a tired statement; any article written about one of their new releases over the last few years can seem almost instantly stale. To be fair, most of their albums have at the very least has been good and a lot […]

Chico Mann was a member of Antibalas, so it’s fair to say that he knows his way around funk. In fact, when he moved from New York to Los Angeles, his goal was to start an Afro-rock band called Here Lies Man. “What you’re hearing on this record is music I wrote for that band, […]

Matt Lorenz, the western Massachusetts-based musician who tours and records as the one-man band The Suitcase Junket, calls the music on his new album “The End Is New” ‘doom folk’, a fitting genre name for 2020 it there ever was one. “The End Is New” is Lorenz’s sixth album and first for the new Americana/roots […]