Album Reviews

Patti Smith shows she’s still capable of conjuring up powerful visual images with words on Banga. More inspired by ideas now than by personal experience, she artfully explores the connections between art, history, and religion across the centuries. If she’s grown more reflective in the process, it’s understandable. She’s earned it.

The powerpop of Sacramento, California-based sisters Sarah (guitars and vocals) and Stephanie Snyder (drums, background vocals) is a joy to listen to. They fill their songs with a kinetic energy that is palpable and likely to make you dance. With help from the Bissonette brothers (Matt produced the EP and famed session drummer Gregg guests on the track “Millionaire”), this collection of ditties will make you think as much as it will get you moving.

Long before they conquered American radio with their super corny smash "You Sexy Thing", London's Hot Chocolate were assumingly unaware that during their days recording singles for Apple Corps and being mentored by Mickie Most they shared their name with the funkiest group in Cleveland, Ohio at the time–led by one of the greatest voices to emerge from the Midwestern soul movement of the 1970s.

Bear Creek is a demonstration of Carlile and her band’s incredible musical talent, but it’s also a jumbled mess of genre and poor sequencing.

It is a trance-rap record full of cadence and soul, but one that might seem unappealing to the many who would otherwise embrace this type of avant-garde experimentation.

Gossip’s fifth studio album A Joyful Noise embraces their disco-funk fervor and turns pop inclinations into full-on infatuation.

Any music lover who relished Billy Martin's collaboration with John Medeski, Mago, will not only anticipate the master percussionist's self-produced work with Wil Blades, but be eminently satisfied with it as well.

Like a lot of young string bands, Caravan of Thieves looks to the past for inspiration – but unlike many of their peers they do not revel in bluegrass or old-timey music.  This is one band that digs in a different direction, grabbing their influences from Django Reinhardt, swing, tango, and even scary old movies.  Add to that the contemporary sounds like the Beatles, 1960s folk and the theatrical production “Stomp” and you have a sense of the crazy mixed bag that is Caravan of Thieves.

Earlier in the year, some fans were worried about the direction Grace Potter and the Nocturnals were heading. Bassist Catherine Popper had recently left the band. Then the band announced a tour opening for country artists Kenny Chesney and Tim McGraw. The release of The Lion The Beast The Beat should alleviate those worries, though.

Neck of the Woods is a compelling reminder that bands can successfully blend personal expansion and experiments while paying homage to years gone by.

Fulero//Lehe is the brainchild of keyboardist Asher Fulero and guitarist Sean Lehe. Having met on the west coast festival circuit the two road warriors found time to spend three days recording with bassist Mark Murphy and drummer Zach Bowden in Sacramento in 2011. Their self-released debut, Cocoon, is out now and is a creative amalgamation of Phish-influenced jams and Steely Dan jazz-rock. Fulero and Lehe split the writing duties on six originals and the band wisely chooses a cover of Radiohead’s “In Limbo”.

Produced by Galactic’s Ben Ellman, who assembled the group, the album features Anders Osborne (guitar), George Porter Jr. (bass), Ivan Neville (keys), and Simon Lott (drums) – an elite group by any standard. One look at the lineup and there’s no doubt that there will be funk found throughout this record. The album’s real charm, though, is in its restrained playing and in Montbleau’s astoundingly expressive voice.

To proclaim that Lettuce avoids the usual pitfalls of contemporary funk is a left-handed compliment for sure, but it does say more than a little about the power and cohesion of Fly. In the diversity of material and arrangement, not to mention the savvy musicianship and production by which the band parlay their skills, this album is the sound of a group full of the confidence that comes with validation of their chosen style.

It’s wonderful to have a new album from Joe Walsh. He’s a true musical innovator and that by itself makes him worth hearing. His newest project has some great moments. At its best it succeeds in the same way Walsh’s work has always succeeded: sounding like nobody but himself. After all, it’s about personality.

And for Americana, Young's 13th studio LP with Crazy Horse, the team rekindles the spirited looseness that embodies them at the peak of their powers as they crank the Fender stacks to the max and ravage through some of the most well-known folk standards we learned from elementary school music class, claiming them as their own. They transform such day camp singalong fare as "Oh Susannah", "Clementine" and "Jesus' Chariot" (perhaps better known as "She'll Be Comin' 'Round the Mountain") into full-throttle blasts of classic Crazy Horse, giving more gravity to the history behind the lyrics through their electrified execution.

Julian and Sean Lennon, Dhani Harrison, Jakob Dylan. All of them share the surnames of some of rock’s biggest icons and thus all have had to forge their own career from under a huge (and at times almost unfair) shadow that John Lennon, George Harrison and Bob Dylan have created. But if you’re father still is known in rock circles but doesn’t quite have that stratosphere level of fame, you can still carve your own road. And a perfect example of that comes in Chicago singer-songwriter Miles Nielsen.

While Amos Lee managed to give the world one of 2011’s most notable releases—Mission Bell—he didn’t give us everything. The As the Crow Flies EP features six more cuts from the Mission Bell sessions and if nothing else, these tracks demonstrate just how fruitful and creative those sessions were because any of these songs could have justifiably landed on the original release. More of a companion piece than a separate album, fans who dug Lee’s Billboard Top 200-topping Bell will enjoy Crow because it plays to the same strengths.

The Walkmen have been on an incredible winning streak, composing stellar albums and putting on electric shows for well over a decade now.  Their star has risen to the point where they have attracted a strong enough fan base that allows them to follow their life changes in song as well as in real time.  They’ve moved from chronicling the unpredictability of twenty-something life to meditating on a new set of challenges that accompanies a new chapter of life.  Here, they march right along without skipping a beat.

Choice of Weapon is The Cult’s first full-length release of new studio material in five years. Judging by the album’s dark lyrical content and heavy duty riffs, during that half-decade the band has seen some harrowing times.

Bloom does exactly what its title announces: open up and reveal a maturity and depth to the work that the band has certainly hit before, but never yet in such a cohesive, constant and compelling way.