pop Archive
04 Sep 2021
Album Review: Explorer Tapes
As someone who follows such things – and as such ought to know better – I nevertheless continue to be amazed whenever I learn about a promising act that recorded […]
01 Sep 2021
30 Days Out, September 2021 #1: Deltaphonics, Avatar, Sylvan Esso, Connells
Things are back to normal, but it’s a new normal. Live music has indeed returned, but if you go, plan on wearing a mask, showing proof of vaccination or negative […]
27 Aug 2021
Album Review: Joe Jackson & Todd Rundgren featuring Ethel — State Theater New Jersey 2005
It was more than sixteen years ago that two of popular music’s most iconoclastic artists decided to work together (sort of). Todd Rundgren and Joe Jackson teamed up for a […]
26 Aug 2021
Album Review: Anton Barbeau — Oh The Joys We Live For
Over the course of his career, Anton Barbeau has confounded those who would pigeonhole him. But there is a consistency of creative vision that connects his varied works. Whether as […]
16 Aug 2021
30 Days Out August 2021 #2: Jason Ringenberg, Magic City Hippies, Bill Frisell, Steve Earle, Los Lobos
Ohhh…kayyyy… Here we go again. There are some great live music shows scheduled over the next 30 days in and around Asheville. But scheduled isn’t the same thing as “guaranteed […]
15 Aug 2021
Album Review: Laura Nyro — Go Find the Moon
Standing in sharp contrast to the sharp and seasoned performer of 1994 found on Trees of the Ages is the Laura Nyro heard on Go Find the Moon: The Audition […]
14 Aug 2021
Album Review: Laura Nyro — Trees of the Ages
Laura Nyro was a talent of staggering dimensions. Not only was the New York singer-songwriter possessed of a preternatural ability to write enduing melodies – many of which were hits […]
13 Aug 2021
Album Review: Mumps — Rock & Roll This, Rock & Roll That
American pop culture consumers of a certain age (aka television viewers) will recall An American Family, a groundbreaking PBS documentary series that first aired in 1973. Setting aside the fact […]
09 Aug 2021
Album Review: Various Artists — Higher Than a Mountain
It can’t have been easy being Andy Gibb. It would be challenging enough to have a famous older sibling scoring hit after hit and then trying to have a music […]
24 Jul 2021
Album Review: Various Artists — Big Stir Singles: The Tenth Wave
And the hits just keep comin’, as they say. It’s too easy to label Big Stir as a power pop label. And in fact doing so is (a) too limiting […]