// Category Archive for: Current Faves

Cannonball Adderley with Bill Evans, Know What I Mean?

By Paul Casey

Cannonball Adderley and Bill Evans worked together on Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue. That should be enough of a reason for you to seek out and listen to Know What I Mean? As the cover reminds us, Bill Evans accompanies that fearsomely moustachioed fellow, Cannonball Adderley, who first transfixed me with his earlier Somethin’ Else album.
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Spectacle: Elvis Costello with . . . (Season Two DVD)

By Danny R. Phillips

Elvis Costello has been good at many things throughout his career as a musician. From the snot-nosed, pissed off, former IBM employee who gave us “Accidents Will Happen,” “Alison,” “New Lace Sleeves,” and “Radio, Radio” to the still-much-loved, still-bitchy-at-times entertainer that he is today, his career has run the gamut. But it seems that some of his most curious work has been as host of the love fest known as Spectacle: Elvis Costello with . . .
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Chet Baker In New York

By Paul Casey

I was drawn to Chet Baker in the same way as so many others: By his voice. A copy of the essential compilation, The Best of Chet Baker Sings, was my companion on the kinds of nights where only a special performer can turn solipsism into artful indulgence. It was not a long haul until his instrumentals joined his whisper voice and became the backdrop to these low and human moments.

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The Chain Gang Of 1974, Wayward Fire

By Less Lee Moore

Based on “Undercover”—the first song I heard by The Chain Gang Of 1974—I was excited, fully expecting the album Wayward Fire to be crammed with lush, moody, ’80s-influenced synthy dance pop. (Even the cover art reminds me of Echo and The Bunnymen’s Songs To Learn And Sing.) Since my teen years were spent listening to the original incarnation of that style of music, I’m glad that so many bands are redefining the sound as a genre of its own, not just some passing fad. Yet, Wayward Fire is not what I expected.

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Iceage, New Brigade

By Less Lee Moore

Iceage is the kind of band that music critics slobber all over (and if you read music blogs, you’ll have heard about them already). This probably sounds like I’m insulting Iceage and music critics in one hastily written sentence, but be patient with me; I had to put that out there to get it out of the way.

Hearing “White Rune” for the first time was invigorating, to say the least. And to be fair to music critics, in part because I am one, there’s an awful lot of crappy music out there, so any hint of potential non-crap is pretty damn exciting to us.

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Wild Beasts, Smother

By Ann Clarke

I was quite fond of last year’s release by Wild Beasts—Two Dancers—so I was quite surprised that they had a brand new album out so quickly thereafter. So does Smother hold up to its predecessor? The short response is: Yes, it does!
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Chris Difford, Cashmere If You Can

By Kai Shuart

This outing from the former Squeeze member finds him in a very reflective mode .The opening song, “1975,” could be taken as a collection of incidents from various periods of the protagonist’s life. This feeling of a walk down Memory Lane is bolstered by the second song, “Back in the Day,” whose protagonist recounts a misspent youth of getting into trouble and hanging with a rough crowd, not sparing unflattering details such as mugging the elderly and accidentally urinating in bed.
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Elysian Fields, Last Night On Earth

By J Howell

Jennifer Charles made me a fan the first time I heard “Mr. Cardiac,” a song she sang on the first Firewater record, Get Off The Cross, We Need The Wood For The Fire.

Charles’ breathy, sultry singing paired with Tod Ashley’s brilliant, incisive lyrics was one of many high points on that record, and I had to hear more. A couple of years later, I found an EP of her band, Elysian Fields, a collaboration with Oren Bloedow and a revolving cast of Downtown New York luminaries, including Marc Ribot.
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Love, Death, And Tragedy: L.A. Noire

By Paul Casey

Click for larger image.

L.A. Noire, released by Rockstar Games on May 17, carries on the grand tradition of the adventure game but does so within an impeccably crafted, open-world vision of 1940s Los Angeles. Its narrative is linear; it does not branch off, resulting in those malformations of character seen in Fable or Fallout. Simplistic questions of morality are not used as a choice between different powers and abilities. Overall, L.A. Noire is an experience unique to its medium and sets a new standard in both writing and performance.

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Sea Of Bees, Songs For The Ravens

By J Howell

I became instantly curious about Julie Baenziger’s Sea of Bees a couple of months ago, after seeing a half-page ad for Songs For The Ravens in every audio geek’s bimonthly bible, Tape Op magazine. Being an almost-obsessive Sparklehorse fan, I knew any band compared to Sparklehorse would quickly make the top of my must-check-out list. After reading a bit about Sea of Bees and checking out a YouTube clip of “Skinnybone,” I had to hear more.

As it turns out, there’s more of a connection between Tape Op and Sea of Bees than an ad.
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