Guided By Voices Styles We Paid For Rockathon Records The new Guided By Voices album wasn’t supposed to be like this. At the beginning of the year, band mastermind Robert Pollard was plotting an album recorded entirely with analog equipment, [...]
Chris Cornell No One Sings Like You Anymore Universal Music Few, if any, can take a cover and adapt it in a manner quite like Chris Cornell could. This was previously apparent through his 2007 transformation of Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean”, [...]
Coco Reilly Coco Reilly Golden Wheel Records The number of current artists trying to channel music from the bygone years of rock grows by the day. In most cases, they try to mimic certain genre or genres concentrating more on style than [...]
Mary Hopkin A Christmas Chorale Mary Hopkin Music Mary Hopkin made a welcome and surprising return to the music world in 2020 with Another Road. Now, she is back with A Christmas Chorale. Here, Hopkin works with her two children, Morgan [...]
Lee Fields & The Expressions Big Crown Vaults Vol. 1 Big Crown Records “Genre: Soul/ Funk” this download states, and ain’t that the truth. Field’s soul roots go back to the classic era of the ‘60s, and it is apparent on this “from the [...]
The White Stripes The White Stripes Greatest Hits Third Man Records/Columbia Records It happens to the best of the best of them–and the dynamic Detroit duo of Jack and Meg White, who performed under the moniker of The White Stripes, [...]
Edward McCormack Rest In Place Independent Rest In Place is McCormack’s follow-up to Astral/Aphotic, released in June 2020. With McCormack quantity does not affect quality, quite the reverse actually. He presents a collection of 15 moving [...]
The Dave Brubeck Quartet Time Outtakes Brubeck Editions If ever there was a single album that acted as a gateway to the genre for generations of jazz school students while also managing to push the style forward, so much so that it’s lasting [...]
Bastille Goosebumps Republic Records/ Universal Music Bastille continues to push the possibilities for electro-pop music on its surprise EP Goosebumps. While the title track is a perfect single to entice listeners, “survivin’” is actually better [...]
Nils Frahm Tripping With Nils Frahm Erased Tapes Saying these days that the music of an artist belongs to the category of modern classical doesn’t mean much, mainly because the word ‘category’ sticks out. Many of such artists, [...]
Audio Visceral Gnu Two Ewe Tarantula Tapes Hailing from Vankleek Hill, Ont., Audio Visceral, is a three-piece punk outfit of beer drinking deviants. They have just released Gnu Two Ewe, after having partnered with Tarantula Tapes. The album is [...]
Smudge All Stars Smudge All Stars Pegdoll Records Back in the ‘90s, an Australian rock band called Smudge, was raved about by Lemonheads main man Evan Dando. Frankly, quite a good band that should have had more exposure. Smudge All Stars? [...]
Luca Wilding Luca Wilding Abbey Records Another new day, another singer/songwriter, another debut EP. Sounds too familiar? In most cases, yes. In others, however, you sense that there might be something substantial on its way. Luckily for London [...]
The Smashing Pumpkins Cyr Sumerian Records The latest double album release by The Smashing Pumpkins, Cyr, featuring 20 new songs written by leader Billy Corgan, was bound to be a hit-and-miss affair with [...]
The War On Drugs Live Drugs Super High Quality Records When The War On Drugs released their rightfully acclaimed Lost In a Dream album back in 2014, they were confirmed as certainly one of the best bands of the last decade. A Deeper [...]
JORDAN REYES SAND LIKE STARDUST American Dreams Records Ambient country might be a relatively new category for some, and it seems to be developing in popularity. After listening to Sand Like Stardust, new album by experimental artist Jordan [...]
Lindstrøm & Prins Thomas III Smalltown Supersound After 11 years, Norwegian electronic duo Lindstrøm & Prins Thomas release the latest installment in their grand musical adventure. As a follow-up to their 2009 album II, III features [...]
Dr. John Gumbo Blues Cleopatra Records Dr. John was a raspy-voiced, early ‘60s, New Orleans born, rock ‘n’ roll and R&B guitarist and arranger, late-’60s night-tripping voodoo rock king, piano-playing ‘70s walking encyclopedia of Crescent [...]
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard Live In San Francisco ’16 ATO Records It has become standard in modern music to say that a certain artist or band is “on a roll”. Usually that means that they have issued a series of releases or have [...]
Dan Mangan Thief Arts & Crafts “I get sick of the same taste in my mouth and sometimes I need to sing someone else’s song to cleanse my palate.” A good cover song ought to sound as if the artist has connected to the beauty that exists in [...]
Blinker The Star Juvenile Universe Independent Jordon Zadorozny is one of those one-man musical operations that always surprises but never lets down. Juvenile Universe, his latest album as Blinker the Star, is no exception in either of those [...]
Terry Draper Lost Magentalane Music This seemed to come out of the blue, a second album from Terry Draper in 2020. Lost follows on the heels of Sunset On Mars, released by the former drummer and songwriter of Klaatu earlier in 2020. It seemed [...]
Young Marble Giants Colossal Youth (40th Anniversary Edition) Domino Records There are only two questions concerning Colossal Youth, the seminal album by the British trio Young Marble Giants. The first one is asks “was this album evolutionary or [...]
AC/DC Power Up Sony Music Despite the running joke that all of their albums sound the same, AC/DC remains among the biggest bands in the world, a seemingly unwavering position they’ve held since ‘80 that has survived over 10 records, countless [...]
