Album Reviews

Krall’s cool, detached yet available look on the front and back covers of this popular 2002 release let you know from whence the emotions flow here. She sells these standards intimately yet barely rising above a warm smolder, leaving you to crack the code.

Chris Darrow may not be a name familiar to you, nor might Kaleidoscope, the ‘60s psych/folk band on Epic of which he was part. That band passed me by back then. Maybe I didn’t like the cover art, or thought Epic wasn’t in the same solid A&R league as was Elektra for instance, so I didn’t want to chance it. I never heard them on the radio and Epic probably did a crappy job promoting them.

On his eight or ninth album in little more than a decade, young Chicago native Andrew Bird continues on his smart way, singing, whistling and fiddling bemusedly but sincerely about life’s conditional conditions.

Sergio Mendes’s frothy Brazilian pop reinterpreted for the hip-hop generation serves as the high concept for this 2006 release produced by The Black Eyed Peas’ will.i.am who also performs solo and with a guest list that includes Erykah Badu, Stevie Wonder, Q-Tip, John Legend and Justin Timberlake, among others.

Careening between sweet Beatlesque pop delivered via three part harmonies and dexterous rhythms and edgy blues-boogie that channels Alex Chilton’s inner Marc Bolan via Memphis country/soul, Big Star’s second album is even more thrilling and satisfying now, 35 after it’s 1974 release. The album hasn’t lost a step.

The mid-sixties may not have been Monk’s most creative period but it was arguably his strongest and most focused both in the studio and onstage. If any jazz musician was poised to withstand the rock era it was Monk the performer and Monk the composer.

While two of the three previous jazz records guitarist/arranger Anthony Wilson made with producer Joe Harley were guitar/drum/organ sessions, this one also featuring those instruments is much different.