Album Reviews

I once pissed next to Dave Mason in the Cambridge Boathouse bathroom back in 1970 something. That has nothing to do with this review except that it’s a review of a Traffic album and Dave Mason was in Traffic but you wouldn’t know that from the cover of their first American album.

If you want to know what the early 1960’s felt like, listen to this lushly and dramatically orchestrated Sinatra, bathed in opulent, moonlit reverb and surrounded by cushiony strings spread out on an impossibly huge, wide and deep soundstage.

Back in the 1940s the legendary concert promoter, record producer and record company head Norman Granz conceived of jazz performances in a classical music style concert setting.

These loose, swinging 50+ year old sessions recorded in the summer of 1958 and winter of 1959 and sounding incredibly life-like tonally, offer Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn on piano fronting small combos of legendary horn players, some not normally associated with Ellington, Joe Jones on drums and a few added musicians to spice up the mix.

This slab of red vinyl got plopped on the turntable and listened to before the unnoticed press blurb stuffed into the gatefold jacket made returning it from where it came impossible.

The indie rocker Sufjan Stevens brings a surprising and delightful buoyancy and sense of wonderment to his orchestral suite commissioned by the Brooklyn Academy of Music to celebrate the 25th anniversary of its “Next Wave” Music Festival. The original debut performances were in November of 2007.