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Album of the Week
At 25 I turned out the light
Cause I couldn't handle the glare in my tired eyes
But now I'm back, drawing shades of kind blue skies
It would seem hard to miss the gist of those words from the song "Going Home," one of the highlights of Brian Wilson's new That Lucky Old Sun album. Wilson, of course, famously retreated from the spotlight in his
mid-20s into a darkened world of psychological difficulties, drug use,
the manipulative presence of "advisor" Dr. Eugene Landy and family
conflicts that repeatedly shred the core of the family-rooted Beach
Boys -- emerging in recent years to a remarkable level of latter-day
creative activity, concretizing and acclaim around such projects as the
long-delayed completion of the legendary lost ‘60s album Smile.
"Across the great divide/ Just grab your hat and take that ride," sang another American institution, The Band. Since the late '60s, Glen Campbell has stared across a chasm just as deep and daunting as the Western frontier: the one dividing pop from "rock."
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Not surprisingly 1990's The Best of Van Morrison is among the best-selling albums in Morrison's catalog. After all, it's where the hits are. And, sure, if you've only known Morrison through the FM-band, you've come to know him for "Brown Eyed Girl," "Moondance," "Domino," "Wild Night," "Wavelength" and a handful of others.
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In the final chapter of his great book on Southern R&B, Sweet Soul Music, Peter Guralnick describes a curious phenomenon familiar to any long-term fan of any genre in popular music.
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You can hear nearly everything sad and beautiful and secret
and populist about upstate New York-based Americana
dance combo Donna the Buffalo
in the first couple of tunes on their seventh and best album, Silverlined.
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Modern Guilt is Beck Hansen's fourth album of this decade, following his exquisite 2002 breakup album Sea Change, 2005's scintillating, hook- and groove-packed Guero--my nominee for the quintessential modern-day SoCal album--and the spotty The Information in 2006.
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Music as religion. It's a concept that is often bandied about by those disenfranchised with proper organized faiths and whom also tend to fall into the category of die-heard music fan.
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That Ry Cooder sure has a lot of nerve. First he wanted you to learn about obscure blues music way back in the ‘70s when few people cared about such things. Then he wanted you to tour the world with him, musically speaking, from Okinawa to Texas to Mali to Cuba.
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With rare exceptions, Alejandro Escovedo's best albums are built around themes, even if those themes seem to be expressed subconsciously (as was the case with the 1992 Gravity) rather than consciously (2006's The Boxing Mirror), and even if most are not explicitly "concept" albums.
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TODAY'S BOOM TUNE
SHELF LIFE
