Category: Features

Sarah Borges & the Broken Singles, Love’s Middle Name. The only way to enter the rock & roll fray, no matter what age you start, is to know that nothing is going to go as planned. That can be a huge bonus or it can be a bone-crushing killer. In the end, it’s all about...

The Band, Music from Big Pink: 50th Anniversary Super Deluxe Edition. The first spine-tingling notes on this collection feel, 50 years later, like time has stopped and the earth is shifting on its axis. Rarely before has an album changed the musical world’s momentum so assuredly. Before The Band released their debut album in 1968,...

Joseph Arthur & Peter Buck, Arthur Buck. Rock and roll needs rebels like Saturn needs rings. It’s how things are supposed to be, even though it often feels like those willing to risk it all in music are a withering breed. Not Joseph Arthur and Peter Buck. Arthur has made an undeniable catalog of stellar...

Dave Alvin and Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Downey to Lubbock. Album of the year? Could very well be, because for those who love true blue rootsified music, Dave Alvin and Jimmie Dale Gilmore have combined for a wild-eyed run at greatness. There is such a vivacious joy to these songs—fast or slow, happy or sad—that it...

Marcia Ball, Shine Bright. This woman must have a fountain of youth flowing through her backyard, because after a half-century of ripping and running up and down the highways of America and beyond, Marcia Ball sounds more full of fire than ever. Maybe that’s because she’s discovered such a seemingly endless well of righteous songs...

David Byrne, American Utopia. In rock & roll, David Byrne has long been the King of Quirk. That’s a high compliment, too. Over 40 years since Talking Heads first rolled into CBGB’s to start their run, nobody has outdone Bryne in roping in more influences to fuel his creativity, and trolling world music at the...

Bing & Ruth, No Home of the Mind. As those moments arrive when the only sure-thing bet for a psychic lift is music that turns sound into prayers, Bing & Ruth hear that call. Led by pianist David Moore, this aggregation reaches the heavens with such artful ease there must be some kind of divine...

Ella Fitzgerald, Ella at Zardi’s. As part of the centennial celebrating Ella Fitzgerald’s birth, the lady’s record label went all out with reissues of every stripe and selection. Quite possibly they saved the best for last, when this live album (recorded in a Hollywood nightclub in 1956) was released in December. Oddly enough, it has...

Peter Bernstein, Signs LIVE! At the end of a long and discombobulating year, what could be better than a sheer blowing session by what is surely one of the most knocked-out jazz aggregations on earth. Guitarist Peter Bernstein, pianist Brad Mehldau, bassist Christian McBride and drummer Gregory Hutchinson need no introduction whatsoever. They just happen...

Lynn Castle, Rose Colored Corner. Talk about a marvel of modern determination: singer-songwriter Lynn Castle walked right up to the precipice of stardom in the ’60s and had to watch it remain just out of her reach. Still, the young Los Angeles lady never blinked. She continued to wish upon a star, talk to the...