I want to love this album. Gately is a talented artist and producer. The songs honor her mother’s death. The album was released on one of my favorite labels. I have a soft spot for anyone named Katie. I want to love this album, but I don’t. This is Gately’s mourning album. We all mourn differently. Some of us fall… Read more »
I was 12 years old and I was enamored with “Juke Box Hero.” Not just the song, but the story. That one guitar that blew him away and felt good in his hands and was a one-way ticket to the top. My mom drove me through the Southwestern snow to the local Sears. We stood among the tents and the… Read more »
Valerie June’s voice drew me into this album. I’ve never heard a voice like hers. It’s a little Dolly and a little Erykah and nothing like either. Her voice is wracked with vulnerability yet has the chops to run with any classic girl group. Her songs and lyrics made me stay. The songs are beautifully crafted and move us through… Read more »
This record reminds me why I love music. It reminds me that music can transform our minds and our souls and the way we see the world. Each of its eight songs is an improvised duet between Carter’s violin and Sorey on either piano or drums. Each song is like a conversation between two people who are connecting for the… Read more »
The first 180 seconds of A Call to Arms is an intense journey. You are wrapped in a blanket of noise. Perhaps it’s an echo of long-abandoned factories, perhaps traffic roars amongst construction beneath your window, perhaps a raging river is tearing away your bedroom walls. Westminster Quarters begins to chime and the sound devolves into a fever dream of… Read more »
My first musical memory is watching Arthur Fiedler’s Evening at Pops with my dad when I was 2 or 3 years old. I don’t remember anything other than the closing credits, where sad music played over images of the theater emptying. Somewhere, there is a recording of me crying hysterically because that closing sequence devastated me. Yet I was hooked…. Read more »
Released: February 26, 2021 Years ago, my friend Kelly and I would listen to music and dance for hours on the roof of his Greenwich Village apartment building. It was a celebration of music and movement and friendship on starry Saturdays when we had no money or cloudy Mondays when the city that never sleeps was sleeping. Looking back, dancing… Read more »
Released: 1985 The Paul Stolper Gallery is showing the video for Thursday Afternoon in their front window and on their website (with a helpful write-up) from February 24 through March 15, 2021. Reverb Machine has an interesting analysis of the music. Thursday Afternoon is a single piece of music (60 minutes on album or 82 minutes in the video) that… Read more »
Released: November 22, 2019 Amelie Lens’ first mix for Fabric opens with the kind of ebb and flow that makes me love electronic dance music. The ambient soundscape in “Theory of Relativity” drops into a beat that makes your heart rush a little faster, and the retro techno melody of “Limits of Real” builds and evolves and builds and evolves… Read more »
Released: December 1978 When I think of Kenny Rogers, I think of a storyteller. He wasn’t known for being a songwriter, and a 2020 Billboard article quotes him as saying, “Most (of the story songs that writers sent me) were stupid and not well-written, but boy, when you found a good one, it made it all worthwhile.” There are some… Read more »