numero group Archive

Album Review: The Scientists — A Place Called Bad

For American music consumers in the late 1970s and early ’80s, Australia may as well have been in another galaxy as on the other side of the globe; in those […]

Hundred-word Reviews for February 2016, Part 5

This latest week-long dive into my backlog of worthy music for review wraps up with five archival releases. Vulgar Boatmen – You and Your Sister First things first: the album […]

Hundred Word Reviews for May 2015, Part 8

Today, it’s five more capsule reviews. It’s great stuff all, dating from the 1970s. Stories – Stories Untold: The Very Best of Stories The, um, story of Stories in inextricably […]

November Hundred-word Reviews, Part 3

Once again, it’s time for a run of hundred-word reviews. My inbox has been overflowing of late, and even after removing the material that I deem not worth my time […]

Hundred-word Reviews July 2014, Part Five

All this week, I’ve been working to reduce the contents of my in-box to manageable levels; these are the last five of 25 albums in that effort, each review adhering […]

Short Cuts: July Mini-reviews, Part Two

Here’s another entry in my short-review series; these three are instrumental albums. Vince Guaraldi Trio – A Boy Named Charlie Brown An entire generation grew up with the music of […]

Hundred-word Reviews: Deluxe Packages

Each of these is a multi-disc set collecting archival (and sometimes previously-unreleased) music, but other than that, there’s little to connect these releases in any stylistic fashion: Celtic soul, proto-funk/pop, […]

Book Review: Boys Don’t Lie: A History of Shoes

Sidestepping tired allusions to Boston‘s Tom Scholz, Guns’n’Roses and Chinese democracy, Boys Don’t Lie: A History of Shoes was a long time coming. Author Mary Donnelly began work on the […]

Album Review: Iasos – Celestial Soul Portrait

Near the tail-end of the 20th century, I played piano in the “house band” for a monthly coffeehouse in the suburbs of Atlanta. Since my bandmates often played acoustic twelve-string […]

A Really Big Shoes Interview, Part 4

Continued from Part Three… Bill Kopp: So Ignition is the first new Shoes album in 17 years. It’s an obvious question, but why so long? John Murphy (bass/vocals): It sounds […]