Cuban-born pianist/ composer Gonzalo Rubalcaba’s follow-up to the Latin jazz Grammy Award-winning “Supernova” finds him working in a quintet setting with Marcus Gilmore, Matt Brewer, Yosvany Terry and Mike Rodriguez. These seven tunes share an impressionistic vibe within frameworks that suggest a good deal of improvisational latitude. “Peace” is a sustained meditation between Rubalcaba […]
When it came time to record its eighth album, Blue Highway decided to hunker down at storied Maggard Sound in Big Stone Gap, Va., hoping to conjure the magic that Ralph Stanley and others have made there. History will show that the group made a fine decision. Self-penned and self-produced, the album builds on […]
The fourth studio album by talented Nashville hunk Chris Cagle starts strong and rhythmic: heartland country-rocker (and current chart hit) parsing several competing definitions of the adjective “gone”; funny talking-blues-inspired country-rocker about a barfly who requests everything but love songs; boy-is-back-in-town country-rocker funky enough to pass for Big & Rich. Beyond that, the power […]
At first glance, Simple Plan’s teaming here with A-list producers Max Martin and Nate “Danja” Hills appears to be a move born of desperation: a last-ditch effort to compete with the younger, prettier dance-pop stars more capable of keeping up with the times than a rusty old pop-punk band. (That’s not a new role […]
Though this is her 11th Rounder album, you could be forgiven for thinking of Carrie Newcomer as a newcomer herself. The singer-songwriter is deeply rooted in her native Indiana, and she finds artistic inspiration and personal comfort in the Midwest. She may be a regional artist, but she has a universal vision and appeal. […]
The first half of the legendary saxman’s two-disc live set with Germany’s WDR Big Band is a rollicking tribute to Ray Charles. The second half goes — and let’s turn it over to Maceo Parker here — “Back to Funk,” and the two sides demand, with equal ferocity, that you get out of your […]
The three music school grads in this daffy London-based trio have a longer memory than their demographic peers in the Pipettes. Rather than revive the sounds of ’60s-era girl-group pop, the Puppini Sisters bring back the close-harmony ’40s-era stylings of the Andrews Sisters, precarious hairdos and all. As on their 2006 debut, “Betcha Bottom […]
Academy President Sid Ganis and actress Kathy Bates announce the nominees in the best actress category for the 80th Academy Awards at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Beverly Hills, January 22, 2008.
Like 2000’s “The Covers Record,” Chan Marshall’s second go at a (mostly) covers album imparts her unique, husky-voiced stamp on songs from such greats as Hank Williams, James Brown, Joni Mitchell and … Lil Wayne and the Hot Boyz. But rather than the stripped-down, bare-bones approach employed previously, “Jukebox” follows in the vein of […]
The dizzying tom-tom runs and shining buzz-saw guitar blasts that launch “Mission Control” opener “Like a Vibration” demand you sit up and take notice, but it’s the track’s pop-hook heart and Parker Gispert’s guy-next-door voice that make the two-and-a-half-minute sprint stick. Therein lies the beauty of the Whigs: Not only is the band mercifully […]
Yes, some of Natasha Bedingfield’s oft-delayed sophomore effort sounds like more fresh-feeling pitch music for women’s hygiene products (”A face without freckles/Is like a sky without the stars”). But all the tinkering — the album shares a mere five songs with the U.K. version released in April 2007 — gave “Sunshine” what her 2005 […]
Hands down, this bassist/composer’s newest is the primo jazz release of 2008 so far and promises to stand tall as one of the year’s best. It’s lyrical, colorful, edgy and teems with inspired exuberance. Conceived with careful architectural attention and grounded in the tradition of alchemic improvisation, Ben Allison’s music has all the earmarks […]
Not as aggressively experimental as 1999’s “Guerrilla” or 2005’s “Love Kraft,” the latest from this genre-bending Welsh band is largely a smoothed-out pop record, reining in some of Super Furry Animals’ more left-field tendencies and tenderly nurturing the catchy, chart-friendly hooks of Gruff Rhys and company. “Run Away” is an uptempo number about amnesia […]
Drive-By Truckers’ seventh album is a sprawling scorcher, and while these guys certainly aren’t strangers to long records, “Brighter Than Creation’s Dark” is one of the meanest, leanest 19-track albums you’ll ever spin. Yet where DBT usually hits the ground running, “Dark” is deliberately slower to burn, full of beautifully considered stories of soldiers […]
