Part one (albums edition) is here. I’ve done a separate list of my favourite songs for the year because a bunch of these tracks show up on albums that didn’t make the other list. Plus, given we all live in an iTunes kind of world, you might like to purchase these one-off tracks instead of [...]
Johnny’s in the Basement is barely six months old so it seemed it a bit pretentious to get all preachy about the best albums and songs of the year. (I try not to do “preachy” at the best of times!) Nonetheless, there is something irresistible about looking back over the year (or half-year in this [...]
Pretty decent album download via roots/folk/blues specialists, Vanguard Records, if you are willing to give out your email address.
CD Review Devendra Banhart What Will Be Will Be (Warner) I agree with the good folks over at All Songs Considered that Devendra Banhart benefits greatly from his shift from indie artist to the warm embrace of major label, Warners. This new album is beautifully produced and doesn’t suffer from the sort of production overkill [...]
The “legend” of how guitarist Robert Johnson became the greatest bluesman in history by selling his soul to the devil is one of the of the most famous tales of music myth (and I offer a variation on it in the novel I have just finished writing). On a more mundane level, the story of [...]
In a further sign that music distributors think that the future of music is in streaming — that is, in online music services where you pay a fee to play a song rather than own it — Apple has just announced that it has purchased California-based streaming company Lala: Lala Media Inc. is a nearly-four-year-old [...]
I know a bunch of you don’t need any convincing about the pleasures of vinyl, but after my post about the death of the record shop in New York, I was somewhat heartened by this article in the NYTimes: At a glance, the far corner of the main floor of J&R Music looks familiar to [...]
I saw the new (almost old by now) Michael Jackson concert doco, This Is It, the other day and I have to say I was pretty enthralled. Yes, we have to allow for the fact that it was edited to show him at his best, that it is part of propaganda push to secure his [...]
CD Review Dave Rawlings Machine A Friend of a Friend (thru Shock Records) As part of the the duo with Gillian Welch, Dave Rawlings has been jointly responsible for some of the most sublime and memorable music of the past decade. People say that novelist James Joyce is unique amongst writers in that he only [...]
…and it is China, apparently. NPR recently ran a story about photographer Matthew Niederhauser who has spent some time investigating China’s burgeoning underground music scene. His basic contention should warm the cockles of the heart of anyone who grew up on the idea of rock n’ roll as rebellion: According to photographer Matthew Niederhauser, simply [...]
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