The first time I heard The Black Keys they opened for Sleater-Kinney. For a fan of raw and dirty electric blues they were an immediate delight, playing with an urgency that reminded me of early ...

I never loved Zep’s singles (plus they’re overplayed): the Druid strain didn’t interest me, the earlier stuff was better, Plant’s vocal gymnastics got old, and who wants live recordings that amount to greatest hits facsimiles? ...

Neil Young has long had a talent for writing lyrics that are elusive yet compelling. Although many of the lines in “Tell Me Why” from After the Gold Rush elude me, that doesn’t make it ...

Except for a few unobtrusive overdubs, Silent Movies is a solo jazz guitar record that casts a quiet but powerful spell. The tempos are slow, the playing sparse, the mood somber. The “compulsory distortion, rude ...

Although recorded within two weeks of each other, Chet Baker Quartet 1 and 2 are quite different records. Because pianist Dick Twardzik was calling the tunes, 1 consisted of Bob Zieff compositions that shared a ...

During Steely Dan’s first go-round—the period from Can’t Buy a Thrill (1972) to Gaucho (1980)—I remained dubious about the increasingly popular and steadily shrinking band. To me their reluctance to tour symbolized a growing distance ...

When Bob Dylan retreated to Woodstock in 1967 and began writing and recording songs with The Band, those oft- bootlegged sessions soon became the stuff of legend. The new material had deep roots and was ...

Fully appreciating what an anomaly the Windham Hill music label really was requires some honest musical history. Think back to the 1980s, when the California-based label achieved enormous popularity. Was there ever a decade when ...

The truism that bands lose their creative spark after a few records doesn’t apply to Over the Rhine. In fact, twenty years into OTR’s recording career The Long Surrender actually ups the ante, with Grammy- ...

As reissues of obscure recordings continue to rain down upon us, one might wonder if there’s anything left worth rediscovering—but the fact that Michael Chapman’s Fully Qualified Survivor is only now being re-released in America ...

Basically a solo artist (Sam Beam) with a group name, Iron and Wine had a rustic sound on its first two full-length releases; sonically The Shepherd’s Dog broadened the palette, and now Kiss Each Other ...

The Walkmen use vintage equipment and evoke earlier musical styles, but have a unique sound, and Lisbon does a fine job of capturing it. Drummer Matt Barrick sticks to simple rhythms, but none of them ...

Often functioning on a shoestring budget and then eking out just enough surprise successes to stay afloat, Arhoolie is a small Bay Area record label that by the early 1960s cast a much larger shadow ...

The first Feelies album in twenty years, Here Before reaffirms what their debut LP, Crazy Rhythms, made clear in 1980: although The Feelies have various influences (the Velvet Underground in particular), they’ve forged a unique ...

Philosophical and musical differences created such a volatile atmosphere around the time Santana recorded Caravanserai that lineup changes seemed nonstop. Musically the chemistry among band members remained, however, as did the Latin fire, the rhythm ...