While we found it kind of curious that Paul Simon is scheduled to release his new his new studio album So Beautiful, Or So What next April, when the record’s
With all the sprucing up and revamping of past catalogs that is going on today, endless new glossy ways to watch and hear, one can only imaging the amount of re-mastering that the late great Frank Zappa would be doing on his vast history of releases. The man was constantly tinkering with his music, refiguring it for new formats (CDs at the time) overdubbing; processing and pushing the limits of his technology which makes the new DVD release The Torture Never Stops so surprising in its simplicity.
Ryan Adams can be easily heard in the opening moments of “The Father,” the rootsy, warm and inviting keeper by Vancouver-via-Los Angeles band HoneyChild. Led by Tobias Jesso, the group nails the opener by balancing delicacy with heaviness. Think of an Americana answer to The National and you might get the gist of the first track.
The opening to Regina Spektor’s Live In London DVD highlights an orchestral snippet of Guns N Roses’ “November Rain” before jumping into Spektor’s own “On the Radio,” where she sings – “And on the radio/You hear November Rain/That solo's awful long/But it's a good refrain.” One wouldn’t expect a classical music prodigy to be a hard rock fan, but we also expect one to be such a good percussive piano player, where her ivory talents make for more a pop rock foundation than sleepy melodies.
Barry’s Maine is one of sun-scorched blueberry barrens, just enough gas to get through the evening (providing the pickup doesn’t end up in the puckerbrush), cheap beer (none of that microbrew stuff), and, yes, drugs. And the thing is, Barry’s Maine is just as real as that postcard version – but you’d have to know about it to write about it.
Prime time may be full of repeats, but there’s plenty of new late night programming this week. Dream-poppers Beach House perform on Conan tonight, Brooklyn’s own Sharon Jones and the
Don Van Vliet, known to a generation of music fans as Captain Beefheart, died Dec. 17 in California after reportedly battling multiple sclerosis for the last 20 years. He was
Last August, Wilco threw a three-day festival at MASS MoCA in North Adams, MA called Solid Sound and yesterday the group announced that they will return to the site for
For this week’s mix, I’ve compiled six songs from albums which made our Best Archival Releases of 2010 list. Here’s your chance to get a taste of these wonderful releases;
Last Saturday, Levon Helm was hospitalized with a severe cold that was only made worse by his COPD condition. After a near week-long stay in a New York City hospital,
