Throw Down Your Arms is a respectful and sincere tribute, and a lovely piece of music, but except for the respect—cross-cultural, intergenerational, beyond gender—it represents, it is not radical or transformative. Such a comment may be suggesting an impossible standard. It might be simpler if I just said that I like the album very much: without having any inclination to affirm the recording’s view of god-centered spirituality or nationalistic politics, I enjoy the album’s singing and music very much.
Drama and Energy: Rob Thomas’s Something to Be
We’re all looking for something, something to be,” sings Rob Thomas in the collection’s title song. Thomas, a member of the popular band Matchbox Twenty, has worked with various musicians, and this is his first solo album, and it is…
Nature and Love: K.D. Lang’s Hymns of the 49th Parallel
The song that follows, co-written by K.D. Lang with David Piltch, is a ballad affirming the simplicity of love, and what it is like to hold it. Most of the songs on Hymns of the 49th Parallel are about nature and love,…
Respecting & Adding to Tradition: the San Francisco Jazz Collective
Who can bring together the fragments of our perceptions—and of our experiences—but an artist? And to do it without words, but in a language of sound, is difficult. By Daniel Garrett SF Jazz Collective (self titled recording) Producer: Jeff Cressman…
A review of Cassandra Wilson’s Thunderbird
Despite Wilson’s singing, which is always expressive, never bland, I thought there was something calculated and unyielding, something inexpressive, about the music. The more I listen to the music, the better I can hear it—but I think there is often…
Respectable Disappointment: Bob Mould’s Body of Song
Rock music is associated with cool temperaments and hot passions, with firm masculinity and anti-establishment ambivalence, with noise and with peace—with so many contradictory attitudes and states that it is no wonder musicians feel the need to pose before playing. That is not healthy.
Mixed Musical Methods: TV on the Radio
There are discrete elements of folk, rock, and subtle dance music, and even world music, in the work of TV on the Radio. (I think also of Bobby McFerrin and Nona Hendryx.) It is fascinating that the band has been acclaimed for producing rock music (I sometimes think that whatever certain critics like they call rock music—until they stop liking it).
Disillusionment and Extreme Pleasures: the Rolling Stones’ Forty Licks
There is something still wonderful about Jagger being so compelling a figure—desired, envied, respected—without being likable. Mick Jagger’s sensuality has no savoring softness and his sorrow has no sensitivity—his is a very modern temperament. (It is possible he synthesized the eloquence of British literary tradition with the hedonistic license of the blues and the experimental openness of modern art.)
A review of Neil Young: Heart of Gold
The film is directed in a restrained, unostentatious manner, with the camera serving the music as it rests on Young, Emmylou Harris (a guest artist here) and the musicians in the band. The camera’s focus is straight and direct. It…
A review of The Visitor by Maeve Brennan
Brennan writes this kind of emotional turmoil with lightness and depth, evoking the wrenching fear and panic that true loneliness induces. Neither excusing nor explaining Anastasia’s heightened sense of self-preservation, Brennan’s is a powerful and compassionate voice, one that haunts…