Reviews of Attainable Hi-Fi & Home-Theater Equipment
- Details
- Written by: Joseph Taylor
- Category: Featured Releases
Warner Music Canada 2-052349
Format: CD
Musical Performance
Sound Quality
Overall Enjoyment
Blue Rodeo has been around for 30 years now, and while a large US audience seems to elude them, they’re enormously popular in their native Canada. Their command of folk, country, and rock is so acute that US fans of alt-country should have flocked to them. But in the end, all that matters is that this band has an extensive catalog of great music and a reputation as a potent live act.
- Details
- Written by: Joseph Taylor
- Category: Featured Releases
Work Song WSD009CD
Format: CD
Musical Performance
Sound Quality
Overall Enjoyment
For more than 35 years, Joe Jackson has refused to be pigeonholed, making records that embrace everything from new-wave rock (Look Sharp! and I’m the Man, both from 1979) to the Latin-jazz influences that crop up on Night and Day (1982) and Body and Soul (1984). He’s recorded a uniquely orchestrated Symphony No.1 (1999), a tribute to Duke Ellington (The Duke, 2012), and a collection of jump-blues tunes.
- Details
- Written by: Joseph Taylor
- Category: Featured Releases
Columbia Records 88875123262
Format: CD
Musical Performance
Sound Quality
Overall Enjoyment
David Gilmour certainly takes his time between recordings. He has released four discs since 1978, and there was a more than 20-year gap between his second LP, About Face (1984), and his next outing, On an Island (2006). He was at the helm for two Pink Floyd records during that period, A Momentary Lapse of Reason (1987) and The Division Bell (1994), both of which sold well but received largely poor notices.
- Details
- Written by: Joseph Taylor
- Category: Featured Releases
Prestige/Analogue Productions APRJ 7180
Format: LP
Musical Performance
Sound Quality
Overall Enjoyment
Although, in his liner note for Rudy Van Gelder’s 2005 remastering of Gene Ammons’s Boss Tenor, Bob Porter calls this 1960 recording a “masterpiece,” he points out that Ammons was not in great shape at the time: “That it came off as well as it did is something remarkable. Take a look at the cover photo. Gene Ammons is as high as a Georgia pine.” Indeed, Ammons looks as if he’ll nod out at any moment.
- Details
- Written by: Joseph Taylor
- Category: Featured Releases
dBpm/Anti- 87438-2
Format: CD
Musical Performance
Sound Quality
Overall Enjoyment
I am always tempted to throw words like “daring” and “experimental” at Wilco, but my favorite discs by them are so tuneful it is easy to forget the thorny guitar sounds that sometimes populate them. Summerteeth (1999), Sky Blue Sky (2007), and The Whole Love (2011) are filled with melodies that stay with you the way the great AM hits of the ’60s did, but with enough noise and edge to make them bracing and challenging.
- Details
- Written by: Joseph Taylor
- Category: Featured Releases
Blue Note/Music Matters MMBST-81595
Format: LP
Musical Performance
Sound Quality
Overall Enjoyment
The current availability on vinyl of many classic albums from Blue Note Records pleases jazz fans like me, but it can be a little confusing to shop for them. About a year ago, when I looked online for a LP of Somethin’ Else, Julian “Cannonball” Adderley’s 1958 recording for the label, I had a choice of pressings. I’d intended to buy the reissue that was part of Blue Note’s 75th anniversary celebration, but instead bought a 2008 pressing mastered by Ron McMaster (Blue Note 7 46338 1).
- Details
- Written by: Joseph Taylor
- Category: Featured Releases
Interscope 20023337 02
Format: CD
Musical Performance
Sound Quality
Overall Enjoyment
On tour, Tame Impala is a five-piece band, but in the studio it’s all Kevin Parker. He plays every instrument and sings all vocals on his recordings, and produces, engineers, and mixes the results. I wasn’t surprised to learn that Parker’s inspiration for Lonerism (2012), Tame Impala’s second full-length album, was Todd Rundgren’s epic 1973 recording, A Wizard, a True Star. Rundgren similarly keeps a firm hand on every aspect of his recordings, on which he, too, has occasionally played all of the instruments.
- Details
- Written by: Joseph Taylor
- Category: Featured Releases
Columbia 88875 08914 2
Format: CD
Musical Performance
Sound Quality
Overall Enjoyment
When I saw the cover of Leon Bridges’s debut CD, Coming Home, I thought I was looking at a compilation of tunes by a little-known regional soul singer from the 1960s whom I’d somehow missed. I expected to find a Wikipedia page that would tell me of his passionate following in England among Northern Soul fanatics. Turns out that Bridges has just turned 26, and hails from Fort Worth, Texas.
- Details
- Written by: Joseph Taylor
- Category: Featured Releases
TOSOD Music
Format: CD
Musical Performance
Sound Quality
Overall Enjoyment
Rickie Lee Jones moved to New Orleans a few years ago, and the city’s spirit and rich musical heritage have obviously inspired the music on The Other Side of Desire, her first disc since 2012’s The Devil You Know. She recorded it in studios there, with local musicians. She writes warmly of New Orleans in her liner notes and she seems to have been revitalized by her time there -- The Other Side of Desire is Jones’s first disc of all new songs in ten years.
- Details
- Written by: Joseph Taylor
- Category: Featured Releases
Concord CRE-35380-00
Format: CD
Musical Performance
Sound Quality
Overall Enjoyment
James Taylor hasn’t recorded an album of new songs since 2002’s October Road, although he released a Christmas album in 2004 (reissued by Columbia in 2006), and a collection of material by other songwriters, Covers, in 2008. In his liner notes to his new disc, Before This World, Taylor says he took 2013 off to write. He found somewhere to isolate himself, and began writing lyrics to melodies that had begun as demos he recorded with his band in 2010.
- My Morning Jacket: "The Waterfall"
- Canned Heat with John Lee Hooker: "Carnegie Hall 1971"
- Dizzy Gillespie: "Live at Ronnie Scott's, Volume 1"
- Mark Knopfler: "Tracker"
- Van Morrison: "Duets: Re-working the Catalogue"
- Justin Kauflin: "Dedication"
- Bob Dylan: "Shadows in the Night"
- Steve Gadd Band: "70 Strong"
- King Crimson: "Live at the Orpheum: Los Angeles 2014"
- Various Artists: "The Blues & Salvation"
- Smashing Pumpkins: "Monuments to an Elegy"
- Jeff Beck: "Live in Tokyo"
- Eric Johnson and Mike Stern: "Eclectic"
- Eric Clapton: "Planes, Trains and Eric"
- Leonard Cohen: "Popular Problems"
- Adam Cohen: "We Go Home"
- Chick Corea Trio: "Trilogy"
- Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers: "Hypnotic Eye"
- Sheryl Bailey: "A Meeting of Minds"
- ZZ Top: "Live at Montreux 2013"
- Chrissie Hynde: "Stockholm"
- "Common Ground: Dave Alvin & Phil Alvin Play and Sing the Songs of Big Bill Broonzy"
- The Rippingtons: "Fountain of Youth"
- Alice Cooper: "Super Duper Alice Cooper"
- The Black Keys: "Turn Blue"
- The Robert Cray Band: "In My Soul"
- Gord Downie and the Sadies: "Gord Downie, the Sadies, and the Conquering Sun"
- Neil Finn: "Dizzy Heights"
- The Hold Steady: "Teeth Dreams"
- Neneh Cherry: "Blank Project"
- Beck: "Morning Phase"
- The Sadies: "Internal Sounds"
- Rickie Lee Jones: "Rickie Lee Jones"
- Judy Wexler: "What I See"
- Archie Shepp and Attica Blues Orchestra Live: "I Hear the Sound"
- Billie Joe + Norah: "Foreverly"
- Nick Lowe: "Quality Street: A Seasonal Selection for All the Family"
- Elvis Costello and the Roots: "Wise Up Ghost and Other Songs"
- Allen Toussaint: "Songbook"
- Moby: "Innocents"
- Bob Dylan: "Another Self Portrait (1969-1971) -- The Bootleg Series Vol.10"
- Joe Barbieri: "Chet Lives!"
- Steve Gadd Band: "Gadditude"
- Smith Westerns: "Soft Will"
- Kanye West: "Yeezus"
- Vampire Weekend: "Modern Vampires of the City"
- Black Rebel Motorcycle Club: "Specter at the Feast"
- Daft Punk: "Random Access Memories"
- Elias Haslanger: "Church on Monday"
- Michael Feinstein: "Change of Heart: The Songs of André Previn"
- David Bowie: "The Next Day"
- Hiromi/The Trio Project: "Move"
- Atoms for Peace: "Amok"
- Patricia Barber: "Smash"
- Yo La Tengo: "Fade"
- Orchestre National de Jazz: "Piazzolla!"
- Lifehouse: "Almería"
- War Poets: "Dulce et Decorum Est"
- Luka Bloom: "This New Morning"
- Poncho Sanchez and His Latin Jazz Band: "Live in Hollywood"
- David Chesky: "Dr. Chesky’s Sensational Fantastic and Simply Amazing Binaural Sound Show!"
- Father's Children: "Father's Children"
- The xx: "Coexist"
- The Gaddabouts: "Look Out Now!"
- Easy Star All-Stars: "Easy Star’s Thrillah"
- Return to Forever IV: "The Mothership Returns"
- Mike Stern: "All Over the Place"
- Sam Cooke: "The Best of Sam Cooke"
- Esperanza Spalding: "Radio Music Society"
- Ahmad Jamal: "Blue Moon: The New York Session"
- Leonard Cohen: "Old Ideas"
- Pink Floyd: "Wish You Were Here"
- Jeff Campbell: "Stop and Go"
- Miles Davis: "Miles! Live at Montreux: The Definitive Miles Davis at Montreux DVD Collection 1973-1991"
- Ray Charles: "Live in France 1961"
- Coldplay: "Mylo Xyloto"
- The Hollies: "Look Through Any Window 1963-1975"
- Doug Munro and La Pompe Attack: "A Very Gypsy Christmas"
- Chris Bauer: "In a Yuletide Groove: Harmonica Jazz for the Holidays"
- Paul Motian: "The Windmills of Your Mind"
- Three to Close 2011
- Josh Nelson: "Discoveries"
- Patricia Barber: "Café Blue"
- Mindy Canter: "Fluteus Maximus"
- Steve Cropper: "Dedicated"
- Andrea Wolper: "Parallel Lives"
- The Left Banke: "Walk Away Renée/Pretty Ballerina"
- Cooler Days
- Peter Erskine, Bob Mintzer, Darek Oles, and Alan Pasqua: "Standards 2 -- Movie Music"
- Zach Williams and the Reformation: "A Southern Offering"
- The Mike Eldred Trio: "61 and 49"
- Aimée Allen: "Winters & Mays"
- Maeve Gilchrist: "Song of Delight"
- Spectacle: Elvis Costello with . . . (Season 2)
- Summer Sounds
- Hiromi: "Voice"
- Ben Waters: "Boogie 4 Stu -- A Tribute to Ian Stewart"
- Nat "King" Cole: "After Midnight"
- Paul Simon: "So Beautiful or So What"
- Eliane Elias: "Light My Fire"
- Esperanza Spalding: "Chamber Music Society"
- Something New
- Gordon Goodwin’s Big Phat Band: "That’s How We Roll"
- “Stan Kenton: Artistry in Rhythm”
- David LaFleur: "Them Bones . . ."
- Gregg Allman: "Low Country Blues"
- Manhattan School of Music Afro-Cuban Jazz Orchestra: "Tito Puente Masterworks Live!!!"
- The Underground
- Jeff Beck: "Rock’n’Roll Party Honoring Les Paul"
- Jovino Santos Neto: "Veja O Som"
- The O’Farrill Brothers: "Giant Peach"
- Michael William Gilbert: "I Can See From Here"
- Selmer Saxharmonic: "Flying Saxophone Circus"
- Andy Farber and His Orchestra: "This Could Be the Start of Something Big"
- Eli Degibri: "Israeli Song"
- Jazz Shortlist
- Joey DeFrancesco, Robi Botos, Vito Rezza, and Phil Dwyer: "One Take, Volume Four"
- Treasa Levasseur: "Low Fidelity"
- Spin: "Believe"
- Michael McDonald: "This Christmas -- Live in Chicago"
- Berlin Voices: "About Christmas"
- Mike Mainieri / Marnix Busstra Quartet: "Trinary Motion / Live in Europe"
- Latin Flavor
- Marcos Amorim Trio: "Portraits"
- Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers: “Classic Albums: Damn the Torpedoes”
- David Bixler & Arturo O’Farrill: “The Auction Project”
- Miles Davis: “Someday My Prince Will Come”
- Frank Sinatra: “Sinatra at the Sands”
- John Mellencamp: "No Better Than This"
- Sons and Brothers
- Otis Taylor: "Clovis People, Vol 3"
- Steve Cropper & Felix Cavaliere: "Midnight Flyer"
- New Latin Quarter Presents: "The Jazz and Blues Collection, Volume 1"
- The Grip Weeds: "Strange Change Machine"
- Lawrence Lebo: "Don’t Call Her Larry, Volume 3: American Roots"
- The Rolling Stones: "Exile on Main Street: Deluxe Edition"
- The Nomad's Song
- Ray Charles: "Genius + Soul = Jazz (Expanded Edition)"
- Sebastian Sternal Trio: "Paris"
- Frank Sinatra and Antonio Carlos Jobim: "Sinatra/Jobim: The Complete Reprise Recordings"
- William Orbit: "My Oracle Lives Uptown"
- Catherine Russell: "Inside This Heart of Mine"
- Dusty Springfield, Small Faces, Herman’s Hermits, Gerry and the Pacemakers: "British Invasion"
- Freedy Johnston: "Rain on the City"
- "The Hot Spot" (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
- David Olney: "Dutchman’s Curve"
- Jason and the Scorchers: "Halcyon Times"
- The Music Will Find You
- Lin McPhillips: "My Shining Hour"
