review Archive
10 Sep 2012
Concert Review: Hopscotch Festival, Part 1 – Zammuto, Built to Spill
The Hopscotch Festival was a three-day event (September 6-8, 2012), but my schedule only allowed me to make a single-day trip to the festival in Raleigh, NC. I made the […]
07 Sep 2012
Hundred-word Reviews: September 2012
Here’s another installment in my occasional series of capsule reviews, generally covering indie releases. My self-imposed limit for this particular exercise is 100 words on each album. The Spiracles – […]
06 Sep 2012
Album Review: Ernie Kovacs Presents Percy Dovetonsils…thpeaks
Critics and other observers of pop culture have a number of labels to which they (and by “they” I mean “we”) turn when attempting to classify works of entertainment. One […]
31 Aug 2012
Album Review: Donny Hathaway – Live + In Performance
Take the crowd command of Isaac Hayes in his prime, the soulful melodicism of Steve Wonder at his peak, and the musical chops of, say, Billy Preston, and what do […]
30 Aug 2012
Album Review: The Electric Prunes – The Complete Reprise Singles
Rock historians have rightly made the point that one of the many ways in which The Beatles changed the music business was by ushering in the era of the self-contained […]
29 Aug 2012
Album Review: Joe Jackson – The Duke
Tribute albums are, quite often, dodgy things. Many are ill-conceived and/or put together with profit as the only motive. I know of one recent tribute album in particular that really […]
24 Aug 2012
Album Review: Grateful Dead – Dick’s Picks #31
I had a minor epiphany recently. After years of slagging The Grateful Dead and their fans, I found a live album that led me to say to myself, “Aha…so this […]
22 Aug 2012
Album Review: The Higher State – The Higher State
It is with some amusement that I turn to the words of that 21st century philosopher: “There’s an old saying in Tennessee — I know it’s in Texas, probably in […]
20 Aug 2012
Album Review: Galahad – Battle Scars
File Galahad under that growing list of accessible progressive rock acts that had (up to now) escaped my notice. Apparently they’ve been around for some years; their debut In a […]
19 Aug 2012
Bootleg Bin: Guided by Voices – 09-03-02 Case Western Reserve University
Here’s a thick slab of irony. These kings of the lo-fi aesthetic have released a myriad collection of studio and live discs, and their general approach to recording betrays an […]