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.
Singer-songwriter
Carrie Newcomer tells about a friend who leads a group of people who
knit for the local food bank. They'll set up somewhere and knit
with a sign that reads, "Knitting for the Food Bank."
It's
apparent both in its publicity materials and in its recordings that
the Chicago-based band Tenki aspires to the epic.
Most
people think of bluegrass as music for old people, and Alex Kirt of
the Woodbox Gang doesn't disagree. He calls it "timeless," but
as a performer that has one big advantage.
When
soprano Janinah Burnett takes the stage with the Quad City Symphony
Orchestra this weekend, she will sing the role of Violetta, a part
she first performed five years ago. But it has taken those five years
for her to really develop this leading role in La
Traviata - one of opera's
most famous works.
The
fills.
Few
people in the United States have heard of it, but the Eurovision Song
Contest might be likened to an American
Idol for songs (rather than
singers) on a multinational scale. The contest
(
The
band's instruments - including mandolin, fiddle, banjo, guitar -
suggest folk and bluegrass. But the centerpiece of Hot Buttered Rum's
second studio album, last year's Well-Oiled
Machine, is "Waterpocket
Fold," an instrumental tune clearly built on the intricacies and
interplay of jazz and classical music.
Rock
and roll, in its conventional hard-rock form, seems to have all but
disappeared. Who practices this archaic type of musical expression,
with its earnest guitar-bass-drums-vocals format and no
acknowledgment of irony or speed metal, alt country, world music, hip
hop, emo, or any other musical fashion of the past 20 years except
grunge? Pearl Jam seems the last vestige of this noble tradition with
both credibility and market presence.
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