Music Disc Reviews
Categories in section: Music Disc Reviews
| Audio CD (1116) | DTS 5.1 CD (26) | DualDisc (38) |
| DVD-Audio (88) | SACD (37) |
Monday, 08 September 2008 |
Written by
Matt Fink
|
Never a particularly prolific artist, Jason Pierce was, after 15 years and four full-length studio albums, nonetheless, burned out. Having completed a critically acclaimed exploration of gospel, blues and roots rock variants with 2003’s Amazing Grace, by the summer of 2005 nothing was sounding right. In an attempt to get outside of his songwriting persona, he was writing a series of songs based on character-driven vignettes, but nothing was adding up to an album – just a bunch of disparate pieces. To make matters far worse, just as he was getting ready to pull the plug on the album, he nearly died himself, ending up in the hospital with pneumonia that left him weak and skeletal and with little ambition to make music. But only then did he see the connecting thread for the album -- death.
Having never shied away ...
Friday, 08 August 2008 |
Written by
Jonathan Easley
|
The thing about a scene is that it requires a moment, and a prerequisite for that moment is a group of people jacked together to unveil the existence of some phenomenon that always seems obvious in hindsight. Disco’s moment has reanimated accordingly, although it begs a few questions. Like, how exactly did a soulful, woulda-been Warhol-scenester reincarnate to lay vocals for the next big dance outfit, at the critical hour when house was looking to fill its remaining vacancies before proceeding to its next phase of evolution? And how is there a disco-revival amongst a generation that was too young to experience it firsthand, and perhaps more shockingly, grew up in a time when disco was manifestly un-cool?
The fact that disco could uncover itself with such aplomb in 2008 is evidence of a paradigm-ic shift in the way music ...
Friday, 08 August 2008 |
Written by
Matt Fink
|
Largely a reaction against the beautiful and well-produced sounds of the ‘60s and ‘70s, punk rock championed the bad vocalist, giving highest priority to the integrity of the performance and generally equating good singing with selling out. The indie rock movement that was born from the ashes of punk rock largely continued that dictum, and the last 30 years have been filled with vocalists who were so blessed with the common touch that they could have been pulled off any street corner in the United States, with vocals that emphasized energy and idiosyncracies over the ability to stay in tune or produce a vocal range of more than three or four notes. But as the last 10 years have brought indie rock increasingly in line with mainstream aesthetics; powerhouse vocalists and better harmonies have come back into style, leading to ...
Friday, 08 August 2008 |
Written by
Jonathan Easley
|
If Boris seems to bristle at the success of their cool-rock, straight metal albums, it’s not necessarily a reactionary recoil to the prospects of commercial prosperity. If that were the case, it’s doubtful that the band would have been available for profile to a print medium as trend-trailing as the New York Times. And besides, there’s a language barrier that probably makes their words come across a little rougher and more direct than intended. Boris is a Japanese trio (two skinny, long-haired dudes and one skinny, long-haired chick, all well into their 30s) who’ve been exploring the fringes of psych-metal since the mid-‘90s. They didn’t gain large-scale exposure with the stateside indie crowd (where they are infinitely more popular than in their homeland) until their well-received 2006 album Pink was released on Southern Lord records. Southern Lord is fast becoming ...
Friday, 01 August 2008 |
Written by
Matt Fink
|
Always regarded as a great craftsman and tunesmith, Neil Diamond has occupied an unusual place in the American songwriting canon, utilizing his undeniable gifts to sell millions of records but remaining just on the cusp of counterculture acclaim throughout his now 50-year career. With a catalog stuffed with memorable hooks and clever turns of phrase, he nonetheless has remained a terminally un-hip artist, a man whose overwrought self-examination and melodramatic phrasing has kept him from ever achieving the sort of stoic gravitas that has come so naturally to the Bob Dylans and Leonard Cohens of the singer-songwriter world. As such, he provided a particularly daring choice for Rick Rubin, the uber-producer who revived the moribund Johnny Cash 15 years before he attempted a similar renaissance for Diamond on 2005’s 12 Songs. And while Diamond didn’t become an overnight icon for ...
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