Album Reviews

Sort By: Post DateTitle Publish Date
Album Reviews
Norah Jones Box Set From Analogue Productions: Too Much of a Good Thing?
Michael Fremer  |  Jan 24, 2013  |  21 comments
The issue here isn't Norah Jones, it's the amount. While Jones "burst upon the scene" more than a decade ago while still in her early thirties with her debut album come away with me, she was hardly an overnight sensation. What's heard on that memorable debut is the result of years of live playing at The Living Room, an intimate, lower Manhattan club that encourages artistic growth over headliners.

Continue Reading »
Album Reviews
"What Is There To Say?" (Other Than That This is the Epitome of Cool, Late '50s West Coast Jazz)
Michael Fremer  |  Jan 29, 2013  |  5 comments
Baritone saxophonist Gerry Mulligan's 1959 major label debut features his self-penned liner notes advocating putting the fun back in jazz and not worrying about hipness. Mulligan states that the album is all about fun and he's not kidding.
Continue Reading »
Album Reviews
"It's Monk's Time"—Speakers Corner Reissues Columbia Records Monk Classic
Michael Fremer  |  Jan 30, 2013  |  4 comments
A few months ago my friend and fellow Stereophile writer (not to mention Pulitzer Prize winner, author of a new book "Insurgents" about General Patraeus, etc.) Fred Kaplan and I were lamenting the absence of reissues of Thelonious Monk's Columbia catalog.
Continue Reading »
Album Reviews
"Pink Moon" Reissue Box Set, Is It Worth $70?
Randy Wells  |  Jan 31, 2013  |  15 comments
Nick Drake was born June 19, 1948 in Rangoon, Burma. Such unusual beginnings for a shy singer-songwriter who would die of a drug overdose twenty-six years later might seem exotic to some. But the gentle music he created sounded quite ordinary to most, if they heard it at all.
Continue Reading »
Album Reviews
Van Dyke Parks' "Arrangements Volume 1" Looks Back In Pleasure
Matthew Greenwald  |  Feb 07, 2013  |  1 comments
Van Dyke Parks: singer, songwriter, arranger, session musician, producer, creator of soundtracks, music video audio-visual pioneer...raconteur, (I'm sure I'm missing a few)...and above all, an artist. I can't think of another figure in recorded music for whom the title "Renaissance Man" would be more fitting.
Continue Reading »
Album Reviews
"Monk's Dream" IMPEX Reissue Makes The Most of Master Tape
Michael Fremer  |  Feb 11, 2013  |  2 comments
Yes, yet another Thelonious Monk reissue review. What can I tell you? Love that Monk. Criss-Cross with the same quartet (and in serious need of a reissue) was the second jazz record I ever bought and it made an even bigger impression than Coltrane's My Favorite Things, which was my first.
Continue Reading »
Album Reviews
Ella's in the Room on This Double 45rpm "Clap Hands, Here Comes Charlie!" Reissue From Analogue Productions
Michael Fremer  |  Feb 15, 2013  |  4 comments
Ella's lushly orchestrated songbook albums were popular when first issued in the '50s and '60s and again more recently as reissues. They were not just popular. They were transformational, whether she was re-interpreting Cole Porter, the Gershwins, Ellington, Irving Berlin or Jerome Kern.
Continue Reading »
Album Reviews
"The Allman Brothers Band" Debut Half-Speed Mastered By Mobile Fidelity
Michael Fremer  |  Feb 19, 2013  |  4 comments
A record label forensic specialist might be required to trace how The Allman Brothers Band ended up an Island/Def Jam property issued on Mercury Records, all now owned by Universal Music Group. The original was issued in 1969 on the ATCO division of Atlantic Records. Perhaps it had to do with the sale of the late Phil Walden's Capricorn imprint, through which the ATCO deal had been made.
Continue Reading »
Album Reviews
Counting Crows Debut "August And Everything After" Among the Last of the Great Analog Rock Recordings
Michael Fremer  |  Feb 19, 2013  |  11 comments
With his influences clearly imprinted on his creative sleeve, Adam Duritz and friends created in 1993 one of the last great analog rock recordings. Duritz understood that sound mattered as did producer T-Bone Burnett who continues to treasure the basic sense even when working with diminished budgets.
Continue Reading »
Album Reviews
Prokofiev's "Love For Three Oranges" Plays Cinematic Mind Games
Michael Fremer  |  Feb 23, 2013  |  4 comments
Everyone knows that composer John Williams cribbed Holst's "The Planets" for his "Star Wars" soundtrack. Fewer know that the main theme and even the arrangement for "Star Wars" is almost a complete rip of Eric Wolfgang Korngold's score for the movie "King's Row" starring Ronald Reagan, Ann Sheridan and Robert Cummings. People absolutely freak out when I play it for them.
Continue Reading »
Album Reviews
Richard Thompson's "Electric" Continues Celtic Mayhem Chronicles
Michael Fremer  |  Feb 26, 2013  |  11 comments
Sexual obsession, ugly betrayals, bitter kiss-offs, working men's tribulations, murder and mayhem— all of the traditional British balladry fare continue to preoccupy Richard Thompson as they have for decades. While he's moved on occasion through musical fashion, he always manages to return, as he does here, to his ground zero (dis)comfort zone.
Continue Reading »
Album Reviews
Why Am I Reviewing a CD??????
Michael Fremer  |  Mar 09, 2013  |  6 comments
Why am I reviewing a CD???? The answer(s) are easy. Firstly, this loving tribute to Les Paul featuring longtime trio cohort Lou Pallo and others with whom Les played at Fat Tuesdays and the Iridium is musically fabulous assuming you like the timeless "old school" style.
Continue Reading »
Album Reviews
"Heartworn Highways" May Be Out of Print But Copies Are Still Stocked Somewhere (Or Other)
Michael Fremer  |  Mar 19, 2013  |  4 comments
The documentary "Heartworn Highways" produced and directed in the mid-1970s by James Szalapski but not released until 1981 documented the rise of a generation of singer-songwriters that included Steve Earle, the late Townes Van Zandt, David Allan Coe, Rodney Crowell, Guy Clark, Steve Young and Charlie Daniels.
Continue Reading »
Album Reviews
Cassandra Wilson's "Belly of the Sun" Finally Issued on AAA Double Vinyl
Michael Fremer  |  Mar 19, 2013  |  3 comments
Back in 2002 the adventurous, eclectic jazz singer Cassandra Wilson returned to her home state of Mississippi to record this album in the Clarksdale train depot as well as in a boxcar not far from the now immortalized "crossroads" where, as legend has it, Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil.
Continue Reading »
Album Reviews
Jimi Hendrix Mono Mixes Focus The Action
Michael Fremer  |  Mar 21, 2013  |  37 comments
Phil "back to mono" Spector would be happy. Not about his upcoming HBO biopic starring Al Pacino but about the mono craze sweeping the record business if not the country. True its a single bristle sweep, but it's better than no brush at all.
Continue Reading »

Pages

X