Album of the Week
Ain't No Grave is a funeral for fans of Johnny Cash. It's not the kind of service in which a minister prays for salvation, mentioning the high points of a life along the way. This is the funeral Cash delivered on his own mortality: stark pictures of a mean old world, memories too sweet to forget and the universal search for a freedom that can only be defined by the searcher.
More | 0 Comments
A recent study on religion in America shows that there has been a fairly dramatic spike in non-believers over the past ten years.
More | 0 Comments
Ray Charles once told me that the secret to his music was this: If his band was rock-steady, he could do whatever and go wherever he wanted.
More | 0 Comments
On Vampire Weekend’s second album, Contra, the New York Ivy Leaguers shed the skin of Graceland yet retain the grace of that album’s creator, Paul Simon. Overall, VW employs Simonesque wordplay and observational qualities, not to mention his gentle vocal phrasing.
More | 0 Comments
I can’t think of another album that sounds so warm on its surface yet so dark at its core. It’s most definitely an album rather than an assortment of cuts, this first collection of new material in eight years by Freedy Johnston...
More | 0 Comments
Let's hear it for the band! Though live albums are often given short shrift as afterthoughts, career stopgaps or greatest-hits releases with applause, this labor of love represents a four-disc legacy that builds a strong case for the Heartbreakers as America's premier rock ‘n roll classicists...
More | 0 Comments
Buddy & Julie Miller: Written in Chalk (New West):
This
album was born out of trauma. In recent years, Julie Miller has been in
seclusion, coping with her brother's death and a nerve disease...
Rumor has it that R.E.M. had recently considered throwing in the towel, ending a career that was stretching well into its third decade. To help make up their minds, and see if they still cared, they performed over four nights in Dublin in early 2007.
More | 0 Comments
My favorite pop single of the year is Mika's "We Are Golden," a hit in Europe but not here. Who could resist its choral melody as it deliriously declares...
More | 0 Comments
In the trifecta of English guitar greats, Jeff Beck comes in a distant third behind his former Yardbirds alum Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page. His also-ran reputation is, at least in part, his own doing, with the execrable Beck, Bogart & Appice being Exhibit One.
More | 0 Comments
Chuck Prophet has been releasing solo albums for two decades, but little in his past prepares the listener for this powerhouse song cycle.
More | 0 CommentsBENTLEY'S BANDSTAND
SHELF LIFE
