Music

A.C. Newman The Slow Wonder (Matador) The problem with the “pop” tag is that it’s essentially meaningless: J.Lo is pop. Elvis Costello is pop. OutKast is pop. Bing Crosby is pop. And A.C. Newman is pop. Of course, a literalist might argue that pop music is popular music, by which standard Newman’s, alas, is disqualified. […]

Getting old sure can blow sometimes. You feel kinda smart and all, telling the shiny-eyed kid that her favorite new band (a) isn’t reinventing music as we know it, (b) isn’t even inventing a new hybrid of existing musics, and (c) isn’t doing anything that someone else didn’t already do better 100 years ago. But […]

Wilco A Ghost Is Born (Nonesuch) Listen closely to A Ghost Is Born, and you’ll discern a faint whooshing noise, the teensiest hiss of concentrated air, silence made sibilant. No, it’s not the sound of 16,000 rock critics preparing to service their lord and master, Jeff Tweedy. It’s not some clever studio gimmick courtesy of […]

Patti Smith TrampinÕ (Columbia) Most artists survive by reinventing themselves. The media, always angling for the snappy lead, demand of their subjects new storylines, and the subjects (who, after all, have stuff to sell) usually acquiesce. But Patti Smith, like God and Edith Piaf, is eternal — exactly the same as she was 29 years […]

When Wanda Jackson began singing country music in the ’50s on an Oklahoma City radio station, her voice had that certain something that caught the ear of Hank Thompson, a popular singing star of the time. He called Jackson and asked her to perform at his next show. ” ‘I’d sure like to, Mr. Thompson, […]

Ike Turner His Woman, Her Man (Funky Delicacies) It was Ike Turner’s curse and blessing that he hooked up with Anna Mae Bullock, a teenage girl from Nutbush, Tenn. The same might be said of her. She started out as a backup singer in Turner’s band, the Kings of Rhythm; was impregnated by one of […]

One of the lesser-known legacies of Ronald Reagan’s years in the White House is a band comprising citizens of the Czech and Slovak republics, formerly Czechoslovakia. It’s probably fair to say that without Reagan’s efforts to end the Cold War, Fragment would not have come together. The band, which formed in 1983, has performed here […]

Paul Burch is one of the craftiest composers alive. A bona fide difference exists between songwriters and composers, and Burch falls squarely into the latter group. Beyond good lyrics with three-chord fare, Burch’s melodies are ripe with subtle nuances and textured intricacy. Tremolo guitar enhances the mood of desolation, muted bass lines demonstrate a man […]

Sam PhillipsA Boot and a Shoe (Nonesuch) “When no one is listening, I have so much to say,” Sam Phillips sings on “How to Quit,” the opening track of her new CD, A Boot and a Shoe. It’s a bit of an exaggeration — some of us have been listening to her obsessively for 16 […]

Alison Krauss has come a long way since her days on the Champaign talent-show circuit. The violin prodigy formed her own band at age 10, won the Illinois State Fair fiddle championship two years later, and scored a recording deal with Rounder Records by the time she was 14. By 16, she’d dropped her debut, […]