Album Reviews

Singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer Jonathan Wilson had set a high bar for Dixie Blur, coming off his widely acclaimed 2018 Rare Birds and two previously hailed solo albums. He’d taken that sound about as far as he could, realizing he needed to take a completely different tact for both the writing and the recording. The songs […]

The first collaboration between the always recording freak rocker Ty Segall and the monster noise drummer Brian Chippendale (Lightning Bolt) as Wasted Shirt is titled Fungus II and the vociferous record oscillates between artistic/experimental outings and ripping rawness, sometimes measure to measure.  The band opens with the driving clanging feedback of “All Is Lost” and […]

This is an unexpected turn by acclaimed vibraphonist Warren Wolf, acknowledged mostly as a traditionalist and a successor to forbearers Milt Jackson and Bobby Hutcherson. Here the Baltimore-based vibes man returns to the love of R&B and soul that he grew up with during the ‘90s. Reincarnation is also a blissful album of nine Wolf […]

Drummer Ted Poor, best known for his work with folk artists and indie rockers, makes his debut as a leader with this minimalist jazz effort You Already Know, produced by Blake Mills. Besides Poor, whose thoughtful drum parts are clearly heard from the opening “Emilio” through the nine tracks, is saxophonist Andrew D’Angelo who has […]

This is not your father’s organ trio a la Jimmy Smith, Grant Green, Jack MacDuff or others. The music made by drummer Bobby Previte, keyboardist Jamie Saft, and guitarist Nels Cline takes liberties and then some, in keeping with its apt title, Music From the Early 21st Century and the record label name, RareNoise. Don’t […]

Originally released in 2003, the late Ibrahim Ferrer of the Buena Vista Social Club, and the last of the great Cuban son vocalists, released his second solo album, Buenos Hermanos,  produced by Ry Cooder. It went on to win the Grammy Award for Best Traditional Tropical Latin Album that year and was another vital recording […]

In the latest Wannabe, artist Chris Prunckle offers his illustrated commentary on The Unraveling, the new album from the Drive-by Truckers, in his signature six-panel comic strip form. Click on the image for full resolution (best viewed on desktop):

Leveraging her acclaimed Grammy-nominated 2016 Weighted Mind, building off her bluegrass roots and stunning vocal range and tone, Sierra Hull forges new ground on 25 Trips with a stellar cast of musicians. This is a hard one to categorize but it doesn’t matter. Hull’s pure, angelic vocals mixed with superior musicianship and solid songwriting make […]

Robert Cray and producer Steve Jordan are an unbeatable team with a history that’s already produced a Grammy win with 1999’s Take Your Shoes Off and a nomination with the more recent Robert Cray & Hi Rhythm. Cray, of course, has five Grammy wins so he has proven he can do it without Jordan in […]

Man Alive! is the third album from the London based artist King Krule (real name Archy Marshall) and it’s a gloomy mix of everything from hip-hop to noise rock to jazz. Marshall walks a fine line between artistic experimentation and somber passages he combines disparate elements into an urban grey rain cloud of a record.  […]

The joke of the title of Ozzy Osbourne’s Ordinary Man, his 12th solo album, and first in almost a decade, is that there’s nothing ordinary about the 71-year-old metal icon. And it’s true. Who else could release an album featuring Elton John, Slash and Travis Scott? But the title also speaks to Osbourne’s accessibility. Sure […]

Sergio Mendes to some will forever be defined for his Latin pop sound that graced AM radio in the ‘60s and ‘70s, namely his band Brasil ’66; as well as some originals and several hit covers of The Beatles, Buffalo Springfield, Joni Mitchell and many others. But, if you stopped there, you’ve missed tons of […]

In the latest Wannabe, artist Chris Prunckle offers his illustrated commentary on Caught It From The Rye, the new album from “afterfolk” singer-songwriter Tre Burt, in his signature six-panel comic strip form. Click on the image for full resolution (best viewed on desktop):  

Pat Metheny’s From This Place is the best of both worlds. The forward-thinking guitarist/composer/bandleader plays a collection of all-new original material with a quartet of recent and regular accompanists, around which interactions arrangers Alan Broadbent and Gil Goldstein contoured orchestration. The result is deeply evocative music because the production is as restrained as the interplay […]

In 2018 San Diego-based blues singer-songwriter created quite a stir with, A Woman Rules the World. It was not only an impressive debut of sorts, but she has now leveraged it to sign with one of blues’ biggest labels, Ruf, for her follow-up, Stand Up! Here’s how this writer described her approach with the debut, […]

The remarkable story of Sweet Lizzy Project’s debut, Technicolor, is unlike almost any other. Building a strong following in their native Havana, the Cubans did so with scant resources and limits on their freedom. The filming of Havana Time Machine that ran as a PBS special featuring them, traditional Cuban artists, and The Mavericks, led […]

For almost a decade, Agnes Obel has been one of the most independent and original artists in contemporary music. Now she has returned with her fourth album, Myopia. Following the same principles as with her previous albums (Philharmonics, Aventine and Citizen Of Glass), which she completed as a one-woman project in her own Berlin home studio, Obel has been under self-imposed […]

Mother Yeti is a duo from Moscow, Idaho that describes its sound as “experimental rock”. Experimental is a term that sometimes scares music fans away because they equate experimental with weird. That’s not necessarily incorrect, but it does make the assumption that weird is undesirable. If you keep an open mind, you might be pleasantly […]

The Slow Rush, the fourth studio album from Tame Impala, finds the Australian artist further exploring the electronic and dance styles from 2015’s Currents. In the decade since his debut album, Kevin Parker has steadily and constantly evolved his psychedelic style, with the guitar-based psych-rock of InnerSpeaker long gone in favor of slow-burning dance music. […]

The idea of Americana was always built on a false premise: that 21st century, or, for that matter, 20th century, music could be constrained by physical geography. On In This Town You’re Owned, Liverpool’s Robert Vincent has crafted a beautiful piece of Americana, with the trademark fiddles and plaintive acoustic strums, but also with an […]