Album Reviews

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 […]

Country music is the sound of hard-working, country-bound rejects trying to make ends meet. These rejects are misunderstood, but they’re good people. Struggling is part of their everyday life, yet their faith remains consistent. Their backgrounds are as varied as night and day, but there is one thing they all have in common, perseverance.  Fast […]

Germany is probably not the first place that comes to mind when you think of funk bands. After all, Germany isn’t necessarily known for being fun and upbeat. However, the country has produced a great funk band called The Mighty Mocambos. On their new album 2066, the band fuses soul, funk, and hip-hop into an […]

Rebecca Pidgeon celebrates the national release of a new double 20-song full-length album, Sudden Exposure to Light (includes the 10-track album Comfort), with a monthly residency at The Hotel Café (Los Angeles) on October 5, November 2, and December 7, 2019 (all shows at 7pm). Pidgeon’s prolific work as a songwriter and vocalist is akin […]

The packaging for the 25th Anniversary Edition of R.E.M.’s Monster is perfectly appropriate to the turning point this ninth album represented for the group. The five CDs plus a Blu-Ray ae housed in a five-and-a-half-inch hardcover book, the sturdy spine of which mirrors the collective gumption of the band as it deliberately chose to make […]

Since its inception in 1991, The Bootleg Series of Bob Dylan has evolved to the point where each successive release has become distinct and complete unto itself. Yet Vol. 15  is something of an exception to that rule because its contents abuts chronologically with The Complete Basement Tapes and, even more directly, with Another Self-Portrait.  […]

Mike Zito is best known as a blues musician and rightly so considering he has released some blistering blues albums. But he also has a rock n roll side, and he puts it on full display on his new album entitled Rock n Roll: A Tribute to Chuck Berry. If you’re going to do a […]

“Life isn’t always rainbows and unicorns,” explains vocalist Grant Tchekmeian about the new album Salt to Taste by Suck Brick Kid. This album contains all the evidence you need to support that statement. While the melodies might be infectious enough to make you pogo, the lyrics of this album lean more toward the salt mentioned […]

On their sixth studio album, Beach Goth veterans The Growlers continue their patented style of mixing sunshiny electro based pop-rock with darker late-night dance vamps. Natural Affair won’t win over new fans as much as it solidifies what the group does best.  The excellent opening title track sets the tone with lines like, “everyone is […]

Saxophonist T.K. Blue, known earlier in his career as Talib Kibwe, dedicates The Rhythms Continue, an expansive suite of 19 tracks to his long-time bandleader and mentor, NEA Jazz Master Dr. Randy Weston, who passed away a little over a year ago. Comprised of compositions by Blue, Weston and Weston’s long-time arranger Melba Liston, Blue […]

In the latest Wannabe, artist Chris Prunckle offers his illustrated commentary on The Roads to Richmond, the new album from rocker Tim Barry, in his signature six-panel comic strip form. Click on the image for full resolution (best viewed on desktop):

On these pages, we reviewed the pianist/composer/vocalist/bandleader Jon Batiste’s first album culled from his six-night residency in the Fall of 2018  at NYC’s famed Village Vanguard, Anatomy of Angels, which issued this past August. It just seemed inevitable that more was on the way and indeed these fiery performances, entitled Chronology of a Dream: Live […]

Picture two young African-American men and focus on their band name, Black Violin. So much is said in just two words.  Surely, their last album, entitled Stereotypes, puts it right on the line. Let’s face it, most would not expect this duo to be playing violin and viola, yet they are breaking down the barriers […]

This writer would be among the first to admit that The Mavericks are one of roots music’s elite live bands. Yet, there’s too often been a sameness and blandness to their songwriting, which detracts from their stellar musicianship and one of the best voices on the planet, that of leader Raul Malo. So, give this […]

Ruston Kelly does not fit in. He isn’t making purely country music, or rock and roll, or even Americana. Instead, he has embraced genre-bending by creating one of his own: Dirt Emo. And it is the aptest description of the kind of grungy, moody, slightly twangy songs that make up his 2018 debut record Dying […]

The most striking aspect of Harry Connick Jr.’s tribute to Cole Porter, True Love: A Celebration of Cole Porter, is the direct sensuality of Porter’s songs. Connick recognizes this and offers this about one of the album’s prime examples, “All of You” – “so sexy that it simply had to be interpreted as sensually as […]

Prior to the 2005 sessions at Memphis’ Ardent Studios that produced In Space, Big Star did the ideal prep by playing live dates in a lineup comprised of founder members guitarist /vocalist Alex Chilton and drummer/vocalist Jody Stephens along with the linchpins of the Posies, Jon Auer (vocals, guitar)and Ken Stringfellow (vocals, bass, keyboards). That […]

This is the third time the husband and wife team of Grammy-winning trumpeter and fusion pioneer Randy Brecker and his composing/ sax playing wife Ada Rovatti have appeared together on an album but the first time that an album bears both of their names. All ten of the tracks on Brecker Plays Rovatti: Sacred Bond […]

Neil Young & Crazy Horse renewed their musical bond during a handful of impromptu shows in 2018 and then repaired to the Rocky Mountains to make Colorado. It is a similarly spontaneous affair, one that is perhaps too informal for its own good at certain points, but one that nevertheless captures the potent chemistry between […]

Dating back to those halcyon days of the ’70s, Van Morrison has made something of a habit of releasing memorable records in the fall. Three Chords and the Truth is but the latest entry in a tradition including Tupelo Honey and Wavelength and this, the Belfast Cowboy’s sixth LP in four years and forty-first to-date, […]