R.E.M.’s first album in four years shoehorns 11 tracks of jagged guitars, quick and dirty drums, and Michael Stipe’s gruff keen into 34 minutes, rocking with a blacker, blunter edge than “Document,” “Green” or “Monster.” Armed with deadpan “wow’s” and “T-Rex moves” honed from 1996’s “Wake-Up Bomb,” Stipe limns politics, the media and […]
Moving from stadiums to ballrooms, the Rolling Stones performed two shows at New York’s Beacon Theater in October 2006, filmed by Martin Scorsese for this documentary, which opens April 4. The accompanying live album captures the pure magic of a high-energy rock show performed in a small venue, offering a mix of crowd-pleasers (”Jumpin’ […]
George Strait is one of music’s most consistent hitmakers for a reason — he knows a hit song when he hears one, and he sings it only if it fits him. “Troubadour” is chock-full of classic Strait. “I Saw God Today” is a perfect example of a track that speaks to the country core, […]
With a Modest Mouse covers collection out of his system, Mark Kozelek is back to sketching his signature tales of love poisoned by expectation on his second album as Sun Kil Moon. Evenly divided between the distorted guitar epics of the last two Red House Painters albums (”The Light”) and spartan voice-and-acoustic confessionals (”Lucky […]
Madonna, Seal: Big pop stars who started as dance artists have circled back to the floor on their latest albums. But “Last Night,” Moby’s homage to/reconstruction of New York dance music over the course of his 42-year lifetime, is the only one that causes the desired effect: making you feel about the artist the […]
Forty years on, a new Van Morrison album is still welcome. “Keep It Simple” is his first collection of all-new material since 2005, and as the title hints, there’s not a lot of embellishment, just a kind of basic, rhythmic and melodic flow. “That’s Entrainment” is one of the better tunes, the title referring […]
Throughout four proper albums, the Black Keys hewed to a no-nonsense formula: guitar, drums, vocals, period. It was so satisfyingly simple and raw, it’s likely that the duo could successfully have deployed it again. But, to paraphrase the old saying, you can’t know what you’ve been missing until you’ve had it, and on “Attack […]
This sibling duo of brothers Sergio and Francisco Gmez broke ground nearly a decade ago by blending traditional banda beats with rap and hip-hop. Here, the brothers expand their sound by incorporating a broad variety of regional Mexican rhythms — from norteno to cumbias adorned with rippling accordions — as the basis for tales of […]
Apple scores again with its latest choice for sweet-voiced female ad singer. The airy vocals behind those MacBook Air promos are a French-Israeli import whose spare coffee shop of a U.S. debut feels pleasingly Euro, while maintaining enough spunk to pull off a Britney Spears cover and appeal to the Norah Jones/Sia set. “Yael […]
While the several nods to a perfectly realized, contemporary gospel sound (”With All Heart,” “I’m Going Up,” Kirk Franklin’s “Why We Sing”) come across just fine on Dionne Warwick’s latest, it’s the down-home, classic Sunday-morning songs that delight. She shows an unparalleled master’s touch on a fervent array of unapologetically seminal gospel (”Old Landmark,” […]
Denver-based Devotchka delivers another batch of aching, spacious and histrionic tunes on “A Mad and Faithful Telling.” Still included are sweeping strings and frontman Nick Urata’s dusty, quivering narration, taking the ever-crescendoing melodies through alternating universes of international influence, from mariachi to the Balkans. A good example of this is “Transliterator,” a hypnotically […]
Last year, Atlanta’s Rodney “Rocko” Hill told Billboard that money was his main incentive when he made the transition from artist development executive/producer to rapper. Today, riches are a recurrent theme on his debut album, which features head-bopping, neck-jerking production from Drumma Boi (Young Jeezy, Yung Joc) throughout. On the guitar-based “This Morning,” Rocko […]
Five years in the works, the Garifuna Women’s Project is the brainchild of producer/musician Ivan Duran, a native of Belize. The Garifuna people are the descendants of African slaves who intermarried with Carib and Arawak Indians. They live primarily along the Caribbean coast of Belize, Honduras, Nicaragua and Guatemala. Duran traveled the region, […]
The careworn ambience of Shawn Mullins’ 11th studio album comes honestly. Since 2006’s “9th Ward Pickin’ Parlor,” the Georgia-born troubadour lost his mother and had his favorite guitar and songwriting computer stolen in a home burglary. And his dog died. But while “honeydew” has its share of laments, they’re not necessarily Mullins’. As on his […]
