Music

Rhodes scholar. Army pilot. Janitor. Singer/songwriter. Drunkard. Movie star. Kris Kristofferson, who turns 70 this year, has lived enough for 20 men, and he’s not done yet. This Old Road, his first album in 11 years, finds the grizzled troubadour taking stock of a life led well, if not always wisely, and paying tribute to the […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Various Artists Imaginational Anthem: A Guitar Anthology (Near Mint) O glorious guitar, the sound of wood made radiant, the sound of metal made vegetal, a vibrating synthesis of opposing elements housed in a vaguely female-shaped form! Unlike the elitist piano, which costs a bundle to buy and maintain and can’t be lugged around at a […]

Confession time: Until about a month ago, I hadn’t been listening to much Kate Bush, and I’m not sure why. True, she hadn’t put out a record in 12 years, and I tend to listen mostly to new releases, a hazard of the record-reviewing trade. But a quick inventory of my vinyl racks proves that […]

“I love to hear those minor chords and good close harmony.” — from “The Old Songs” (words and music by Geoffrey O’Hara, 1921) Every Tuesday evening, about 40 men meet at the Hoogland Center for the Arts to carry on a local tradition that stretches back to the time when Elvis was a rising star […]

After a hiatus spanning more than two decades, guitarist James “Blood” Ulmer’s Odyssey trio has returned with a new album, a 55-minute tour de force that neatly encapsulates the myriad musical directions that its iconoclastic leader has pursued over the past half-century. Don’t let the CD’s title fool you: An amalgam of free jazz, country-blues, […]

Cast King Saw Mill Man (Locust Media) If fate had dealt Cast King another hand, he might be as famous as the late Johnny Cash. Like his more celebrated contemporary, King toured extensively in the late ’40s and early ’50s and even cut some tracks with Sam Phillips at the legendary Sun Studios. But when […]