06
Jun
2007
One
reviewer has called Sky Blue Sky
the best Eagles record the Eagles didn't make, and it's
impossible to shake the timeless soft-rock vibe in the sound, the
vocals, and the easy pace.
"A Ghost Is Born was to me really jagged ... abrasive," Stirratt said of his band's last studio album. "And this record has a certain warmth."
But while Sky Blue Sky at first sounds like a retreat for the band that embraced noise and electronics on Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and A Ghost Is Born, Wilco hasn't abandoned experimentation. "Side with the Seeds" features guitar and Mellotron detours that, combined with slightly muffled drums and throbbing bass spikes, recalls King Crimson's disparate In the Court of the Crimson King and Red.
The lyrics that open Low's Drums & Guns are as forceful as singer/guitarist Alan Sparhawk is tentative.
An
unscientific survey of River
Cities' Reader employees
revealed that many people have never heard of Richard Thompson.
When
I put the album from the electronic duo EOTO in a CD player at work,
my office mate Mike Schulz asked - after about five seconds of
music - "You're not watching porn, are you?"
You'd
never know it by listening to him, but every time Chris Botti picks
up his instrument, he's wrestling with it.
Most
everybody knows that Blur song
as "Woo Hoo," even though its proper title is "Song 2."
Neither is particularly meaningful.
A
country-music performer's decision to move to Nashville is
typically the product of a dream. For Suzy Bogguss, it was eminently
practical.
The
concept of record-label samplers is to introduce a listener to the sound
and artists that a label offers. But too often, these compilations
are nothing more than a hodge-podge of material tied together by a
company name: Either everything sounds the same, making it difficult
to tell one artist from the next, or the compilation is so disparate
that it's impossible to settle in and sit through all of the songs.
Returning
with its most pop-friendly album to date, The Marlboro Chorus knocks
out nine rock-and-roll numbers on American
Dreamers. Drawing influence
from Buddy Holly, Pink Floyd, and Bill Haley, American
Dreamers sees The Marlboro
Chorus putting aside art rock in favor of a straightforward album
complete with guitar solos, magnificently simple lyrics, and a raw
sound. From the black-and-white cover to the title of the record
itself, American Dreamers
feels so easy, but it was a long time coming.
