review Archive
03 Apr 2014
Festival Review: Big Ears 2014, Day 3 (Part One)
Dean and Britta I had already seen Dean Wareham and his wife/collaborator Britta Phillips on Day One of Big Ears 2014. But what was advertised for their Sunday performance – […]
01 Apr 2014
Festival Review: Big Ears 2014, Day 2 (Part 1)
Marc Ribot (Again) The second day of Big Ears 2014 kicked off with a most unusual event: Marc Ribot seated in total darkness, armed with only a classical acoustic guitar. […]
31 Mar 2014
Festival Review: Big Ears 2014, Day 1
Dean Wareham We arrived in Knoxville in plenty of time to grab front-row seats in the beautiful Tennessee Theatre. It certainly helped that attendance for Wareham’s set was light (the […]
27 Mar 2014
Album Review: Lisa Loeb — No Fairy Tale
Last weekend I was wandering about in an antique/ephemera mall that also housed a coffeehouse (this is Asheville; you routinely find such things here). There was an acoustic guitar singer-songwriter […]
26 Mar 2014
Album Review: Barry White — Can’t Get Enough
James Brown might have been Soul Brother Number One, but it was Isaac Hayes who brought soul into the mainstream with his lush, romantic workouts such as his cover of […]
25 Mar 2014
Album Review: Bethlehem Records Reissues
For several years in the decade of the 1950s, Bethlehem Records released some fine jazz albums. Recently Verse Music Group has licensed those albums, and is in the midst of […]
24 Mar 2014
EP Review: Marshall Crenshaw — Driving and Dreaming
By now, most have either been hipped to the songwriting genius of Marshall Crenshaw, or they haven’t and sadly probably never will. With Crenshaw’s releases stretching all the way back […]
21 Mar 2014
Album Review: American Professionals — We Make It Our Business
Opinions vary – they’re in fact quote polarized on the issue – but people seem to either love or hate powerpop. While at its worst, it’s weak and derivative, at […]
20 Mar 2014
Album Review: Dave Van Ronk — Inside Dave Van Ronk
I’m not a folkie. When it comes to acoustic based music of the folk sort, my tastes are fairly limited: I own a decent-sized stack of Bob Dylan albums, that […]
18 Mar 2014
Album Review: Various — The Del Shannon Tribute: Songwriter Vol. 1
The history of rock’n’roll is littered with artists who — for one reason or another – never quite got their due. Del Shannon is on that list. Best known as […]