Chickenfoot III is a hint that the band is skipping through the second chapter, but if a quad level wants to be reached successfully, the collective might need to further define the musical mesh.
Kudos to Life Is Good for putting together what has to be the best run outdoor event on the calendar.
It is highly unlikely the Fab Four considered the possibility of infusing Abbey Road with the rhythms of Jamaica when they recorded the landmark album at the end of their career in 1969. It takes a lot of gusto for a young band of white musicians from the east coast of America, named Yellow Dubmarine no less, to attempt a full-fledged reggae reinterpretation of an album long considered one of the greatest records of all time and a pinnacle of the LP format.
Carefully selected by archivist David Lemieux from various tour stops on the Grateful Dead’s first trip abroad, this package is deliberately conceived as a companion piece to the original Europe ’72. As such, Volume 2 functions brilliantly as a complement to that seminal inclusion in the Grateful Dead discography.
Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (OMD) has defied the odds. With many of their 80’s art-rock and synth-pop peers disappearing into novelty and nostalgia, childhood friends Andy McCluksey and Paul
Tripper has more of a narrative focus than previous Fruit Bats efforts. On his fifth album, Eric D. Johnson consciously shifts to story-based songs. While he leans more toward the storyteller brand of songwriter, though, he steps away from the sunny folk pop that is most identified with Fruit Bats releases.
Journey is not just out there promoting old songs via a new voice. They have a new CD out called Eclipse which sounds like the Journey everyone knows and loves but carries a harder-edge punch. They played two new songs, “City Of Hope” and “Edge Of The Moment”, which teased the crowd that this band is moving forward in the right direction and not standing still.
WSP haven’t been able to sustain the rejuvenation that took place when Jimmy Herring joined the band, and they’ve transitioned to the 6000 capacity Raleigh Amphitheatre after routinely drawing 15,000-plus people in the area just ten years ago. While smaller venues aren’t necessarily a bad thing for the fans, the decline in attendance certainly seems to coincide with many longtime fans’ feelings that the quality of shows has declined as well.
Alex Schaaf recorded his debut album, The Mistress, alone in his Wisconsin bedroom. Under the moniker Yellow Ostrich, Schaaf’s music has the intimate feeling of poetry reverberating off the four walls of his confined space. The minimalist song structures use instruments to fill in gaps in the open-ended tracks. An occasional thud of a kick drum or piano chord have a jarring effect, seeming out of place with the flowing vocal melodies, but it is those vocals that provide the meat of the album.
With a careful editing eye and a reinvestment in the tools that made him so innovative as a male singer-songwriter, Howie Day can really go far again, despite the many blunders of recent memory.
