Album Reviews

Margaux Bouchegnies – known simply as Margaux – is a pop artist originally from Seattle and currently attending school in New York. Her music is classified as bedroom pop. Just hearing the term, you can take it to mean it’s pop music recorded in a bedroom. And that may be the case. However, you don’t […]

Jazz will continue to thrive for years because of all the educational opportunities for talented young players. Evidence abounds but one needs to look no further than the exciting projects taking place at Boston’s esteemed Berklee School of Music. For Listen Up!, the sophomore release from Ralph Peterson’s Gen-Next Big Band, and their first studio […]

This writer saw saxophonist Azar Lawrence in L.A.’s famed Catalina Jazz Club about a dozen years ago and it was surely the closest anyone could get to John Coltrane’s playing at the time. Lawrence, of course, is a Coltrane disciple, having issued more than a few albums covering Trane. Yet, most of us first became […]

Wade Bowen’s latest release, Twelve Twenty-Five, is everything you want on a warm, crisp Christmas morning. Blending traditional tunes with contemporary favorites, this album will quickly make it onto many country Christmas playlists. As a native of Oklahoman now living in New York, I can honestly say, this album takes me straight back to old […]

In the latest Wannabe, artist Chris Prunckle offers his illustrated commentary on Civil/War, the new album from “Jersey Blues” artist Sammy Kay, in his signature six-panel comic strip form. Click on the image for full resolution (best viewed on desktop):

Few things are dearer to a band than playing before their engaged, loyal following in their hometown. Southern rockers Blackberry Smoke make a practice of this annually in their “Brothers and Sisters Holiday Homecoming” show at Atlanta’s Tabernacle, held over Thanksgiving Weekend. This extensive project spanning two CDs, three LPs and a DVD was recorded […]

Joe Henry’s stunning, dark, poetic The Gospel According to Water, as many may know, was written and recorded in the wake of an alarming cancer diagnosis. It’s an album that lends itself to multiple interpretations and its bleak, stark sound point to melancholy, spirituality and mortality. However, Joe Henry doesn’t see it that way and […]

Dave’s Picks Volume 31 continues the unofficial campaign to to nurture the reputation of the late Brent Mydland. Not that the keyboardist/vocalist/songwriter needs his honor restored; in his essay within the booklet inside this three-CD package, chief archivist David Lemieux goes to great lengths to rightly describe how the late keyboardist/vocalist/composer reignited the chemistry within […]

When you see that a band is releasing its first new album in 15 years, you probably have a lot of questions. What has the band been up to in all that time? Why did it take so long to put out a new album? Those are valid questions of course. However, when you hear […]

Since forming in 2008, the Australian psych-rock collective known as Pond has had a revolving cast of musicians and shares quite a few members with Tame Impala. In addition to multi-instrumentalist Jay Watson playing full time for both bands, Kevin Parker used to be the drummer for Pond and continues to produce their albums. Pond […]

One look at the colorful visage of Lulu Fall on the cover of Between Two Worlds suggests she’s not your typical jazz vocalist. In fact, pop her CD into iTunes and “soundtrack” comes up. Look her up in All Music Guide and the descriptor “stage and screen” comes up.  That’s perfectly explicable, however, as Fall […]

The Soul Rebels newest release Poetry in Motion puts their brass band style in the background and shifts to a wide genre encompassing scope, touching on soul, pop, jazz, R&B and most directly hip-hop with a variety of beats and a host of MC’s (including band members). While the outfit has always loved hip-hop and […]

In the latest Wannabe, artist Chris Prunckle offers his illustrated commentary on Get It Together, the new album frompunk rockers MakeWar, in his signature six-panel comic strip form. Click on the image for full resolution (best viewed on desktop):

The Dallas-based sextet Funky Knuckles belong to a new generation of improvising musicians, part of a large movement that includes such bands as Snarky Puppy, Ghost-Note, and the Horne Electric Band, to name just a few. Their sound is a blend of composition and improvisation and, importantly, the sound is much more far-ranging than just […]

Fifteen years from the release of their eponymous debut, Vetiver’s seventh album Up on High, is a return to the bright, airy acoustic folk of their first couple of pre-Sub Pop albums. After the poppy sounds of 2015’s Complete Strangers, the folky, airy sounds of Up on High feels like a return to form. Songwriter […]

Chances are that if you’ve been to Chicago’s popular blues club, Kingston Mines, or to a recent blues festival you’ve seen Joanna Connor perform.   You also hadn’t seen many recent recordings of Connor as it has was a long drought of 14 years until she resumed recording, making a strong impact with 2016’s Six String […]

Inspired by Kanye West’s prolific work as a producer, seeming to release an album every month, Cold War Kids’ seventh studio album is being broken up into a trilogy. The first part, New Age Norms 1, is an improvement upon 2017’s disappointingly uninspired L.A. Divine but still does not reach the greatness of the Long […]

Do No Harm is an enveloping pastoral plea for peace from superb and meticulous record label Keeled Scales’ newest signing The Deer. After starting as a solo project for vocalist and frontwoman Grace Rowland, the Austin five-piece has found its stride, finding itself as at home on festival stages as in the multiple studios where […]

During an international tour back in 1995 Dr. John hopped into the studio while in Germany and recorded a set of tunes with the WDR Big Band. The good doctor returned home and the tapes were archived; now they see the light of day as Big Band Voodoo. The resulting mix of New Orleans tunes […]

Versatile and virtuosic blues guitarist, Delmark Records’ Dave Specter just may have made his strongest, most expressive album in his 35-year career. Proving that it’s never too late, he makes his debut as a vocalist here on Blues from the Inside Out, a date that also features the renowned Jorma Kaukonen who plays on two […]