Music Reviews

Music & Culture

Box Set Illustrates Clifford Jordan's Impeccable Taste In Musicians

2:05pm March 12, 2014

by Kevin Whitehead

Starting in the late 1960s, the jazz saxophonist produced a series of recordings that came out on the musicians-owned Strata-East label. Those seven albums are now collected in a box set.

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Music & Culture

Angel Olsen: A Voice Of Confounding Power

1:31pm March 11, 2014

by Ken Tucker

Olsen has often been called a folk singer, but Ken Tucker says her new album — her first with a backing band — takes her music into an unclassifiable realm.

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Music & Culture

Album Review: 'English Oceans,' By Drive-By Truckers

7:50pm March 06, 2014

by Robert Christgau

Music critic Robert Christgau says it has been six years since Southern rock band Drive-By Truckers put out a great album. That wait ends this week with the release of the excellent English Oceans.

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Pharrell, sporting more conventional headwear.

Music & Culture

Pharrell Williams: Just Exhilaratingly Happy

4:03pm March 06, 2014

by Ken Tucker

To hear G I R L, you'd think Pharrell's world consisted of grooving on catchy beats and flirting with women. It's a lightweight image that draws gravitas from his prolific work ethic.

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Music & Culture

Chuck Mead: Gleefully Sinister Country Serenades

2:25pm March 03, 2014

by Ken Tucker

Mead hooks the listener, eager to show us the bleak side of what seemed like a bright scenario. That's the way he operates during much of Free State Serenade.

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Music & Culture

Still 'Out To Lunch' 50 Years Later

5:15pm February 25, 2014

by Kevin Whitehead

Eric Dolphy's creativity was exploding early in 1964, and he was finding more players who could keep up. Out to Lunch is free and focused, dissonant and catchy, wide open and swinging all at once.

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Music & Culture

Vertical Scratchers: Slashed Chords, Fractured Poetry

2:15pm February 24, 2014

by Ken Tucker

Daughter of Everything is a superb pop album with one foot in the past and another in the future.

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Music & Culture

Rosanne Cash: Seeking A 'Thread' Through Southern History

9:02pm February 21, 2014

by Ken Tucker

Ken Tucker says The River & The Thread is a travelogue; a timeless work of comfort and quiet joy.

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Eleven-year-old Jaron "Bear" Williams practices trumpet before marching in his first Mardi Gras season. The Whole Gritty City follows young student marching bands as they prepare for coveted spots in the New Orleans parade.

Arts

In 'Whole Gritty City,' Marching Bands Vie For Coveted Mardi Gras Spots

4:51pm February 13, 2014

by David Bianculli

"New Orleans buries too many of its young," Wynton Marsalis says in the documentary's introduction. The Whole Gritty City, airing Saturday on CBS, follows young students who take refuge in New Orleans marching bands.

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Album Review: 'Sun Structures,' By Temples

8:00pm February 12, 2014

by Tom Moon

Listening to Temples, a four-piece band from England, one might be reminded of another British iconic band — The Beatles. But on their debut album, Sun Structures, the group does not create copycat music. Critic Tom Moon says the Fab Four's inspiration lives on in surprisingly creative ways in the music of Temples.

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