Album Reviews

One of the more inspiring and heart-warming trends that have developed as we attempt to navigate through these remarkably uncertain times is that of artists taking to social media and other online avenues to share their music with fans. From grainy footage of live solo performances filmed on a smartphone to full band concerts hosted […]

We’re still waiting for the jury to come back on whether the band name, Music Band, is one of the worst in recent history or pure Meta brilliance. Regardless, the fact that Celebration, the Nashville trio’s third LP, is pure rock and roll bliss is beyond debate. Across 10 tracks, the group flawlessly dips in […]

Modern day folk hero M. Ward has had a very prolific couple of decades. Aside from his own solo career, Ward has teamed up with a slew of other artists the past twenty years. He has put out six albums with Zooey Deschanel as She & Him, performed with other indie folk-rock heroes in supergroup […]

Maybe it’s the impact of the movie Harriet; maybe it’s all the fine work of artists such as Mavis Staples and Rhiannon Giddens and others who have brought more awareness of old spirituals sung in the fields by slaves, some of which later became rallying songs for the Freedom Rides and the Civil Rights era. […]

This is the debut as a bandleader for first-call sideman pianist/composer Chris McCarthy who leads a quintet of improvisers on Still Time to Quit. Little did he know when conjuring the tongue-in-cheek title (there’s still time to quit the often-unsustainable music business) that he’d be releasing the album during a health pandemic that may lend […]

Amidst the backdrop of divisiveness, widespread violence, and angry agitating rhetoric, many of us have every reason to feel rather hopeless and disengaged. Saxophonist Jimmy Greene has more reasons than most of us, having lost his daughter to the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT in 2012. Yet, Greene, as he’s […]

Perhaps the most curious aspect of that headline is “genre debut.” The nearly 18-year-old Canadian singer-songwriter Maya Rae was singing sophisticated jazz at age 12, recorded her first jazz album at 13 and issued another of mostly standards, Sapphire Birds, in 2017.  Apart from her natural gift for vocal phrasing, Can You See Me? is […]

Thundercat has been crafting genre-bending music for years, but 2017’s Drunk was a break out record propelling Stephen Lee Bruner to a higher level. His follow up, It Is What It Is, is even better. Bruner exuberantly deploys his bursting at the seams electro-funk, but also adds a layer of emotional depth showing growth, maturity […]

This may well be a coming-out party for vocalist Berit Ulseth of The Claudettes, a quartet still very much centered on Johnny Iguana’s punk-blues, garage rock piano. High Times in the Dark is the band’s fifth release and by far the best yet. Produced by Grammy-winner Ted Hutt (Violet Femmes, Old Crow Medicine Show, The […]

This writer recalls the scene on New York’s Lower East side twenty years ago when Fiona McBain and Liz Tormes began singing together, witnessing those NYC shows of Ollabelle at small venues, like The Knitting Room, Banjo Jim’s and the club from which the duo take their name, 9C.  Yes, there’s a heap of history […]

In the latest Wannabe, artist Chris Prunckle offers his illustrated commentary on Revolution Spring, the new album from Detroit punks The Suicide Machines, in his signature six-panel comic strip form. Click on the image for full resolution (best viewed on desktop):

When you think about albums for kids, certain themes probably come to mind. There are those that lean toward educational themes, and there are those that teach the value of things like friendship and doing the right thing. Encouraging kids to be rebellious is not something you find very often on albums made specifically for […]

Renowned vocalist Kurt Elling collaborates with acclaimed pianist Danilo Pérez and a few other musicians on select tracks for Secrets Tell the Best Stories. Elling adds lyrics to compositions by Wayne Shorter, Jaco Pastorious, visionary composer/arranger Vince Mendoza and Pérez. Along with these narratives, Elling adapts the works of contemporary poets Franz Wright and Robert […]

The world needs more thinking-man’s rock and roll. Luckily for us, Chicago’s Young Man In A Hurry have injected a strong dose of intellectual fervor into their cinematic indie rock on their debut album Jarvis. Born out of a friendship between songwriter and frontman Matt Baron and drummer Meyer Horn, the band champions a kind […]

Nina Simone’s Fodder On My Wings was initially recorded not long after she moved to Paris in 1982. Simone always loved the album, but it remained rather obscure as it was recorded for a small French label and was often in and out of print. It is now being reissued in CD and LP formats […]

At the time, the 19th studio album from the legendary Canadian singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell was too easily dismissed by some as not measuring up to her iconic albums of the ‘70s. Yet, it is now regarded as her best since that period, rather remarkable in that it was her first set of original material in […]

Nap Eyes is a four-piece from Halifax, Nova Scotia with a very interesting songwriting process. Each song begins with a twenty-minute free form of vocals and guitar from lead singer Nigel Chapman. It is then whittled down by the rest of the band before finally becoming the song that is put on an album. While […]

Over the last thirty years, Pearl Jam has gone through many musical iterations despite the lineup remaining largely the same. Once grunge icons known for its raucous live shows, the Seattle band has constantly evolved, becoming more melodic and increasing its musical diversity over time. The band’s eleventh album, Gigaton, is the band’s most experimental […]

The MTV Unplugged TV show debuted about a year before Tesla’s Five Man Acoustical Jam album, so it’s technically unfair to give Tesla credit for kicking off the 1990s unplugged phenomenon, but Tesla’s chart-topping live acoustic album demonstrated the potential of the unplugged format, if a band was willing to reconsider its catalog in a […]

Alex Dixon is a bassist, producer, pianist and grandson of perhaps the blues greatest songwriter, Willie Dixon. Alex learned the idiom from his grandfather at an early age and has long wanted to deliver a traditional Chicago blues album as he does here with The Real McCoy. Dixon delivers a mix of originals and well-known […]