// Category Archive for: Music Reviews

Carole King, Pearls: Songs of Goffin and King

By Emily Carney

Some context on Carole King: This singer songwriter, who is rather unfairly relegated to oldies radio stations in the US, had serious credibility within the world of girl-groups in the 1960s. At age 18, she co-wrote “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow” with her then-husband Gerry Goffin, which was performed by the Shirelles. This song was covered beautifully in recent years by the late Amy Winehouse.
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Paul Weller, Sonik Kicks

By Jemiah Jefferson

This is Paul Weller’s eleventh solo album and “The Modfather” shows no signs of becoming complacent, stymied, or anything less than a phenomenal songwriter and musician. Sonik Kicks contains almost too much variety in style and approach, and while it doesn’t necessarily smoothly flow from track to track, there is excellence aplenty to admire.
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Frank Sinatra, The Concert Sinatra

By Melissa Bratcher

I believe that there are Dean Martin people, there are Frank Sinatra people, and that they are rarely the same sort of people. I love Dean Martin for the thread of good humor that runs through his music, but I’ve always thought of Frank Sinatra as immensely talented, yet a bit dour. The Concert Sinatra changed my mind.

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The Melismatics, Mania!

By Danny R. Phillips

There are many things in life that I find perplexing, things that occur or don’t despite what the world thinks or needs. Why did MTV give Pauly D. from The Jersey Shore his own show while still ignoring videos? How can someone listen to Skrillex for more than two minutes without committing ritual suicide? How in the world is Keith Richards still alive? Why aren’t the Minneapolis, Minnesota band The Melismatics famous yet?
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School Of Seven Bells, Ghostory

By Less Lee Moore

“So fair, yet so cold like a morning of pale Spring still clinging to Winter’s chill.”
—The Two Towers, 2002

Althouth the name of the band is from a “mythical South American school for pickpockets,” School of Seven Bells could just as easily reference singer Alejandra Deheza’s magical vocals. On Ghostory, the band’s latest release, Deheza’s voice is crystalline, like ice fragments melting and freezing, re-melting and re-freezing. From a musical standpoint, too, Ghostory has a much chillier sound than the band’s previous albums. However, it is anything but off-putting. Ghostory is so marvelously seductive that I have listened to nothing else for the past week. I am in love with this album. It is the perfect soundtrack to the spring and perhaps even the rest of 2012.

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Dirty Three, Toward The Low Sun

By J Howell

It somehow doesn’t feel like it, but Toward The Low Sun marks the first proper full-length from Dirty Three in seven years, as well as the Australian trio’s first record for Drag City. For better or worse, it may be exactly what fans of the band were expecting: It sounds . . . well, pretty much exactly like a Dirty Three record—any Dirty Three record. After such a long wait though, it’s surprising how predictable a record it is. While there’s no denying that Toward The Low Sun is an achingly beautiful piece of work, it doesn’t expand much on the band’s aesthetic or break any particularly new ground for them.
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Maggie and Terre Roche, Seductive Reasoning (Reissue)

By Chelsea Spear

One could pinpoint 1975 as one of the first years of “The Woman in Rock.” Patti Smith’s Horses had just hit the racks; Heart released their first single and began recording their debut album; and The Runaways and Blondie had just formed. All these artists and bands created fierce and highly idiosyncratic rock, and their various images—tough, cathartic, slightly cartoonish—would inspire many girls to start making music.
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Tony Bennett, Isn’t It Romantic?

By Melissa Bratcher

Tony Bennett‘s Isn’t It Romantic? hit my doorstep on Valentine’s Day. It is fair to say that there isn’t a finer collection of romantic, swoon-worthy songs than this. Isn’t It Romantic? is an excellent, entry level primer of Tony Bennett’s catalog for those whose interest may have been piqued by his recent Grammy win for Duets II.

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Otis Taylor, Contraband

By Danny R. Phillips

The blues are a strange animal; there are many styles, variations, colors, creeds, speeds, and levels of bluesdom. Though he took 18 years off from music in the 1970s, Otis Taylor has spent a long time perfecting his style known as “trance blues.” While he has made some great albums like Respect The Dead, perfection is not quite there when it comes to his latest release, Contraband.
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The Explorers Club, Grand Hotel

By Cait Brennan

You’ve got to admire Jason Brewer, the founder of Charleston, South Carolina’s The Explorers Club. Barely 30, Brewer has mastered the language of 1960s pop songwriting with the kind of heart, skill, and creative ambition that would be the envy of any musician, especially those who were old enough to have been there in the first place. His band’s well-reviewed 2008 debut, Freedom Wind, echoed some of the Beach Boys’ most gorgeous moments; it was such a grand love letter to Brian Wilson that Brian Wilson’s own 2008 album That Lucky Old Sun was probably only the second-best Brian Wilson album that year.
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