One step in becoming a great band is believing you’re great, and The Smiths had no problem with that. Before playing a single note together Morrissey and Johnny Marr were convinced their music would have ...

Although the Louvin Brothers were a successful country act that released more than a dozen LPs, Satan is Real is easily their most well-known record because of its cover: holding a pitchfork, a buck- toothed ...

This newly reissued 1978 album is a sexy, snarling, cosmopolitan affair steeped in the decadence of the times—the Stones seldom sounded tougher than on “When the Whip Comes Down” or “Shattered.” But many of the ...

There’s a dark pall cast over The Dreamer. The album cover depicts her wan face cloaked in a black shroud-like hood. It’s to be Etta James’ last—she’s been diagnosed with dementia and her 50- year ...

Female Brit singers are tearing up the U.S. pop charts these days, and the latest release from Florence and the Machine will likely extend the streak. While their first album was a bit more spare, ...

When not Flatlanding or being a mesmerizing solo artist Jimmie Dale Gilmore has found a compatible home with the Wronglers, an assured old- timey sextet founded by Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival financier/banjoist Warren Hellman. With ...

As a Punch Brother and on this, his second solo album, Noam Pikelny displays laudable technique, though that’s less the story than the nuanced feeling he invests in making his banjo sing. In an exquisitely ...

Janis Ian first appeared on the music scene as a preternaturally mature thirteen-year-old singing “Society’s Child,” a tale of an inter-racial romance that was swiftly banned on radio stations due to its perceived incendiary content. ...

Examining this SACD’s program, the shrink-wrap still in place, the connection among the four 20th Century works programmed by Oregon Symphony music director Carlos Kalmar seemed apparent. But hearing the music several times through left ...

For the first release on their own label, the wizards at Zenph Sound Innovations reanimate primitive recordings by three preeminent Spanish composer/pianists. Isaac Albéniz was a child prodigy, a seasoned performer by mid-adolescence. The New ...

Three superb quartets for clarinet, violin, cello, and piano, and the Copland Sextet (adding a violin and viola). Libby Larsen’s Rodeo Queen of Heaven depicts a painting of the Madonna and Child in Western dress; ...

Australian Ross Edwards wrote his violin concerto, Maninyas, in the late 1980s, after leaving his “modernist” style for one characterized by rhythmic vitality and chant-like modal melodies, a style he coined the word “Maninya” for. ...

Trumpeter Dave Douglas, who outpaces most of his contemporaries as a prolific bandleader, project developer, and composer, is now at the vanguard of independent music distribution. While hardly the first prominent jazz figure to form ...

Celebrating the great pianist Bill Evans last year at New York’s Blue Note nightclub, Chick Corea recruited two former members of the Evans trio—drummer Paul Motian and bassist Eddie Gomez. Those recorded-live performances are now ...

The most in-demand bassist on the scene since Ray Brown, 39-year-old McBride engages in 13 intimate duets on his tenth CD as a leader that show off the full spectrum of his talent. With Benin- ...