Eef Barzelay’s solo debut is exactly that: a solo album, consisting entirely of one measly voice and one measly acoustic guitar (well, almost — one very short track also features a bit of ambient bird chatter). Stripped down to the barest of essentials, Bitter Honey may lack some of the verve and variety that characterized […]
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A ukulele lady like you
From her preteen songwriting attempts through her graduation from the Berklee College of Music, Victoria Vox dreamed of becoming a professional singer/songwriter. During her Berklee years, the native of Green Bay, Wis., collaborated with other students to record her first CD, the full-band extravaganza Victoria and the Ultra Pink Bicycle Incident. After graduating from Berklee […]
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Reaching beyond his inner geek
Destroyer leader Daniel Bejar is the perfect pinup boy for a small but insanely devoted faction of rock critics, music bloggers, grad-school dropouts, and die-hard potheads. Self-referential and unapologetically literate, Bejar’s lyrics bring out our inner geeks, inspiring record reviews-cum-dissertations larded with academic hokum. Before you can say “Jacques Derrida” or even load up the […]
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Viva Last Vegas
“We’re a modern take on a classic-rock band,” says Adam Arling, guitarist and founding member of the Last Vegas, a young Chicago-based group raised on a diet of Cheap Trick, early Aerosmith, and the Stooges. “There’s not much like this in Chicago, but it’s always good to stick out, I guess.” What’s the significance of […]
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A Kink in the pink
Ray Davies Other People’s Lives (V2) Of all the aging veterans of the ’60s British Invasion, Ray Davies has held up the best. Sure, Mick has harder abs and Sir Paul a fatter wallet, but the former Kinks frontman has something far more important: his dignity. He doesn’t need to strut around in hip-huggers or […]
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Singer-songwriter soirée
The Cabin Concert series opens its spring season with a program called “Illinois Songwriters Special.” Ann Bova and Joe Bohlen, hosts of the bluegrass/acoustic concerts, have booked four folk-oriented Illinois singer/songwriters as a preseries bonus show. The performances are held in the couple’s home, a cabin (hence the name) out in the wilds north of […]
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Not just crying Woolf
From the opening harmonica run to its last acoustic-guitar strum, Cindy Woolf’s Simple and Few radiates a wholesome heart and a caring soul at work. Nothing is angry or rushed or too soothing or pushed, either; the album just seems to flow from an unending source of decency and goodness. “Most everything I do is inspired […]
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Blind Joe Death lives
Is it wrong to look a tribute album in the mouth? It seems nasty, I know, to compare well-meaning musicians to gasbag grandees hogging the dais at a televised funeral (R.I.P., Coretta Scott King), but let’s face it: Are the assembled homage-payers truly interested in honoring the honoree, or are they just hitching a ride […]
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Guided by Pollard
Robert Pollard From a Compound Eye (Merge) Nestled in a black hole somewhere in the unobservable universe, there is a parallel reality in which Robert Pollard is a rock god. In this realm of total awesomeness, there is only one radio station (FM and album-oriented, natch), the human liver is eternal, and no one ridicules […]
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The Peter Principle
So you wrote a couple of funny songs at which people laughed, and now you want to start your own band. You’ve figured out that being onstage is cool — there’s plenty of free beer, and you get lots of attention when once no one knew your name. So what’s a feller to do? Go […]
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Cruisin’ for a bluesin’
What most people hear in their heads when they think of the blues is the electric Chicago style. Perfected in the 1950s and ’60s by such artists as Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters, today it is much imitated, sometimes degraded, and only rarely perpetrated with the heart and soul necessary to achieving the level of […]
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Memphis in Chan
Since 1995, Chan Marshall has been making music as Cat Power, a band in constant flux. Marshall is the only permanent member of this band, the only one who matters. Whether she’s enlisting members of the underground elite (see 1998’s Moon Pix, on which the Dirty Three backed her) or drifting toward the mainstream (see […]
