Record Reviews
📝 2096 reviews| Artist | Title | Review |
|---|---|---|
| Rosemary Butler | R.O.S.E. | |
| J.J. Cale | Naturally | |
| J.J. Cale | Really | |
| J.J. Cale | Okie | |
| Canned Heat | Live At Topanga Corral | |
| Canned Heat | Living The Blues | |
| Canned Heat | Bullfrog Blues | |
| Canned Heat | New Age | |
| Canned Heat | Uncanned, The Best Of Canned Heat | |
| Larry Carlton | Playing And Singing | |
| Leroy Carr | Blues Before Sunrise | |
| Bo Carter | Greatest Hits | |
| Bo Carter | Twist It Babe | |
| Martin Carthy | Martin Carthy - Ist Album | <p>Carthy's debut album rates a place alongside the album by Bob Dylan, as the debut work of a man who ultimately revolutionized folk music performance in England (Carthy is mentioned as an influence on the notes to Dylan's Freewheelin' album). This is Carthy's purest and simplest folk effort, an all-acoustic recording done in barely an afternoon that includes his version of "Scarborough Fair," awhich Paul Simon learned from Carthy (including the chords and changes from Carthy's arrangement) and transformed into a hit of his own. Also here is "Two Magicians," a song that later entered the repertory Steeleye Span, and "Lovely Joan," a folk song that is most familiar to classical listeners as the source of the counter-melody to Ralph Vaughan Williams' "Fantasia on Greensleeves." The playing and the interpretations are somewhat less ambitious and rather rougher than subsequent efforts, with Dave Swarbrick guesting on fiddle on about half the tracks, and Carthy's guitar covering all but the acapella tracks.</p><p>— <strong>Bruce Eder</strong></p> |
| Martin Carthy | Byker Hill | <p>Byker Hill was the first album on which Carthy and Swarbrick had more than two or three hours' studio time, and, as a result, which was actually rehearsed and programmed weeks in advance. The results are less spontaneous than their earlier work, but also show a level of professionalism that few folk albums of the era ever demonstrated. The differences lie in the careful nuances, and the sophistication of the paired voice and instruments, which are much more studied than anything previously heard. The music is glorious in its own unassuming way--Carthy's acapella performance on the haunting "Brigg Fair" (a Lincolnshire tune originally collected by Percy Grainger, and which was the basis for a classical piece by Frederick Delius), the interweaving of Carthy's voice and Swarbrick's violin on "The Bloody Gardener," the dazzling title track, and maybe the best version of "John Barleycorn" ever recorded, are among 14 of the most prized songs in their careers.</p><p>— <strong>Bruce Eder</strong></p> |
| Martin Carthy | The Definitive Collection | <p>Highpoint is a new label presenting a new budget series of definitive collections of the most important folk singers and musicians in Britain today. They are designed to appeal to the casual buyer as well as those who are already fans. This CD is a fantastic anthology from one of the giants of British music, the most famous English traditional folk musician of his generation. The tracks are drawn from his substantial Topic catalog, which includes all his most important works and features solo recordings, duets with fiddler genius, Dave Swarbrick, and group recordings with Brass Monkey and Waterson: Carthy (including his wife Norma Waterson & daughter Eliza Carthy).</p><p>— <strong>Amazon</strong></p> |
| Pablo Casals | The Art Of Pablo Casals | |
| Johnny Cash | Personal File | <p>Posthumous releases prompt a kneejerk cynicism from many listeners. It's been only three years since Johnny Cash's death, and already we've seen a mythologizing Hollywood biopic, two versions of a sprawling four-disc box set, and a best-selling single-disc greatest-hits that tried in vain to squeeze a half-century career into 22 tracks. The Tupac'ing of the Man in Black stretches into the near future, with a fifth installment of his diminishing-returns American Recordings collaboration with Rick Rubin due in July. But for now, there's another posthumous chapter: the vault clearing.</p><p>Personal File, the first new material released since Cash's death, is two discs' worth of unreleased tracks, mostly acoustic, dating as far back as the early 1970s. The story, which sounds like a legend so is probably true, is that Cash recorded them in his home studio and locked them in his vault. They were recorded ostensibly for his own pleasure or at least for family posterity, not necessarily for public consumption. They sound like he's talking not to himself, but to an audience. All in all, the release feels like a scrapbook of sorts: half entertainment, half autobiography in song.</p><p>It's more than enough to dispel the aforementioned cynicism, which admittedly has more to do with marketing than music. Cash's commanding voice is in its prime, the setting is spare and intimate, and his song choice draws from hymns and hits to reveal a deep and complex inner life—of course, it's great. Occasionally it does seem a little heavy-handed, but that might have more to do with the sequencing than the songs. Plus, Cash is a fine storyteller, introducing these tracks with reminiscences that reveal their roles in his life. He introduces "Drink to Me With Thine Eyes" with a story about singing it for a high school graduation ceremony: "I guess this was when I was looking for myself. But I never forget that because it's one of my first public singing occasions. And I've sung this song mainly to myself ever since I was 17 years old because of those memories."</p><p>His conversational, unpolished performances keep the mood loose and often add levity to the proceedings. On the Louvin Brothers' "When I Stop Dreaming" he can't quite sustain the notes that they held so effortlessly, but the attempt is endearing. Midway through the hymn "Have Thine Own Way Lord", his voice booming low and grave, Cash stumbles over the tune and has to start again. Poking a bit of fun at himself—how often has he sung this particular song?—he jokes, "Okay. 'Have Thine Own Way', take five."</p><p>Listening to Personal File feels like reading an artist's journal or an author's correspondence. These 49 songs reveal depths about Cash, although at times they seem almost too personal, as if they actually were never intended for a public audience. The first disc contains secular material: love songs and tour songs and covers and country laments. The second disc is entirely spiritual, including two back-to-back songs about Mary Magdalene—"If Jesus Ever Loved a Woman" could be a Da Vinci Code tie-in. Given the solitary nature of the recording, this second disc sounds like a form of prayer and praise, as if the Man in Black is talking directly to the Man Upstairs. For Cash singing these songs became a form of worship, which makes this second disc undeniably moving.</p><p>Still, the decision to separate the secular and the spiritual on Personal File seems a little disingenuous and misrepresentative. There's already been a collection of discs that categorized Cash's songs under the headings Love, God, Murder, and the vague addendum Life. That set worked because the distinctions were the point of the compilation, revealing the breadth of Cash's interests and output. On Personal File, this same distinction seems a little suspect: Anyone with a passing knowledge of Cash's career should surely realize that he did not keep his spiritual side separate from his work. His hard-won Christian faith played a crucial role in all of his songs, lending them a moral gravity. Conversely, his secular concerns lend his songs of praise a powerful conflicted quality, making them sound like the humble prayers of a repentant sinner. On Personal File, this separation restricts these songs and their meanings and melodies: Why wouldn't "Have a Drink of Water", about Jesus in Samaria, fit right alongside Cash's take on John Prine's "Paradise"? Or "The Engineer's Dying Child" alongside "My Children Walk in Truth"? What would this tell us about such a complex American figure? I recommend you shuffle the tracklist and find out for yourself.</p><p>— <strong>Stephen M. Deusner, Pitchfork</strong></p> |
| Johnny Cash | The Johnny Cash TV Show | <p>Between 1969 and 1971, Johnny Cash spent his Saturday nights hosting a variety show for ABC. "The Johnny Cash Show" was shuffled in as a summer replacement for another song-and-skit show, "The Hollywood Palace", and featured Cash and his touring company: His wife June Carter, various members of the Carter Family, Carl Perkins, the Tennessee Three, the Statler Brothers, and a series of rotating guest stars (beginning, rather auspiciously, with the camera-loving Bob Dylan). Each of its 58 episodes were shot before a live audience in Nashville's legendary Ryman Auditorium, the former home of the Grand Ole Opry. It was the first network television show ever produced out of Nashville.</p><p>At the time, Cash was hitting his popular and personal apex: At Folsom Prison had enjoyed a remarkable 92-week run on the pop charts, a Grammy (Best Male Country Vocal) gleamed on his mantle, he was newly married, he was sober and devout. Johnny Cash was a rehabilitated outlaw, a Christian, a husband, a real, earnest American. And for home viewers in 1969, Cash was a welcome antidote to flag-draped coffins.</p><p>A 2xDVD best-of featuring 66 of the show's musical performances was released in September; the punctuated CD version features 16 songs, including nine that didn't make the cut for the DVDs. The Best of the Johnny Cash TV Show is a remarkable collection, featuring live performances by Cash's country peers (Waylon Jennings, Bobby Bare, George Jones, Tammy Wynette, Kris Kristofferson) and, perhaps more compellingly, tracks from folk, pop, and rock superstars (Ray Charles, Joni Mitchell, Roy Orbison, Derek and the Dominoes). The CD's production is impressively fluid, given the source material (8-track reels operating at half-capacity, recorded from scattershot stage mics), and was lovingly remixed and remastered after the tapes were pulled from Cash's personal vault.</p><p>Some of the best bits include the pre-song banter—before Waylon Jennings performs "Brown-Eyed Handsome Man", the former roommates rib each other gently: "He was my cook," Jennings explains. "Can you imagine Johnny Cash in a black suit with baking powder all the way down and gravy in the hair?" "I was a good cook," Cash retorts. "You couldn't do nothing." Ray Charles' rich, sultry rendition of "Ring of Fire" is stunning, riddled with organ, piano, and brash horns; Charles' transforms the song from an obtuse acoustic tale into high drama. Joni Mitchell duets with Cash on "Girl From the North Country" (ironically, the same song Dylan performed for the show's opening night), while Cash and Lynn Anderson kick out a sprightly version of Geoff Mack's "I've Been Everywhere". Still, Cash's rendition of Carl Perkins' "Daddy Sang Bass" is the record's highlight. The track, which, occasionally dips into the Carter Family's legendary "Will the Circle Be Unbroken?", works as a parable for the entire two-season run of "The Johnny Cash Show", with Cash intoning: "We'd get together in a family circle, singing loud/ Daddy sang bass, Momma sang tenor/ And me and little brother would join right in there/ Cause singing seems to help a troubled soul."</p><p>Although anyone who's checked out the DVDs will find themselves maniacally restructuring the track list (it's not hard to assume that the label wanted a hook to get fans to buy both documents, padding the CD with a handful of second-tier, if still outstanding, cuts), The Best of the Johnny Cash Show is still a tough testament to the grand fluidity of American music. Cash acted as a perfect conduit for cross-genre pollination, and the class, race, gender, and regional divisions that plagued America in the late 1960s are rendered perfectly irrelevant here.</p><p>— <strong>Stephen M. Deusner, Pitchfork</strong></p> |
| Johnny Cash | American III: Solitary Man | <p>We're constantly bombarded by noise. Especially for those of us who live in city, there's no escaping it; the noise of dense humanity has become a part of our lives. We accept and ignore it just to survive. But sometimes the noise becomes so overwhelming that the brain can no longer shut it out. That's when we do one of two things: lose ourselves, or lose our geography. Earlier in the day on which I wrote this, I woke up to a busy hammer just ten inches from my head, flooding through the porous plaster wall. I swore at someone whose face I'd never seen. Then, the alarm clock joined in, providing a grating beat that lasted all day, accompanied at times by the horn blasts of sedate cabdrivers, the parade of victors and their drunk fans, and the deafening screech of the old red 6 train. The noise got so loud as to erase my memory of it having never existed. Isn't it amazing, then, that I arrive home only to subject myself to more noise: music that to virgin ears would sound like a drowning robot or a greenhouse explosion? Yes, and understandable, too: the heightened stimulus threshold must be met. But just as silence makes clearer the urban noise I live through, so too does listening to Johnny Cash expose my mostly stentorian music collection. Like 1994's American Recordings and 1996's Unchained, American III was produced by Rick Rubin and includes covers of well-known and lesser-known songs. On the opening number, for instance, Cash boils down Tom Petty's "I Won't Back Down" to its essence, employing just two guitars and a barely audible organ. The only important instrument here, though, is Cash's voice. As deep and heavy as a mudslide, it raises the dead, the lonely, and the heartbroken. What makes this not just a covers album is that, as Cash explains in the record's liner notes, he makes the songs feel like his own. Sure, Petty wrote it, but its hard to deny that, "You can stand me up at the gates of hell/ But I won't back down," is a quintessential Cash sentiment. They're not his words, but they are. Call it a vocal strongarm. And he does this again and again, from Neil Diamond's "Solitary Man" to Egbert Williams' "Nobody", from David Allen Coe's "Would You Lay With Me (In a Field of Stone)" to U2's "One". But American III's high point is its two-song centerpiece. The first is Will Oldham's "I See a Darkness", on which it becomes clear that, perhaps because of his neurological disorder, Cash's voice isn't as sure and strong as it once was. When he quavers, with Oldham singing backup, "Is there hope that somehow you can save me from this darkness?" the effect is absolutely devastating. You won't listen to the song the same after this. The shivers will eventually leave your spine, but the residue remains. That song's transcendent power also stems from its production, which, although still sparse, is relatively lush. The organ and piano that rise to match the guitar remain in use for Nick Cave's "The Mercy Seat". Chronicling the first-person thoughts of a man being executed, this song, more than any other on the album, was written for Cash. Building to a rumbling crescendo, he belts out, "And the mercy seat is smokin'/ And I think my head is meltin'." This would've brought even Gary Gilmore to tears. The second half of the album features mostly original compositions. Sparse like the early tracks, "Field of Diamonds", "Before My Time", "Country Trash", and "I'm Leavin' Now" prove that Cash hasn't lost his songwriting step, and they show why he can temporarily lay claim to other artist's songs. While some critics take issue with Rubin's underproduction, none of the songs on American III require ornate instrumentation. Whether they've been fluffed up or stripped raw, at the core of each is a compelling statement from one of our greatest humanists. I keep telling people that I'm going to leave the city and move westward to the country or the mountains. I've done it before, and did so with enough success that I didn't concurrently sentimentalize the journey in an effort to reduce cognitive dissonance. It may be in two months or twelve, but sooner or later, I'll hit my breaking point, when I either lose the noise or it loses me. The survival instinct requires that I move. Guess who's going to be guide?</p><p>— <strong>Ryan Kearney, Pitchfork</strong></p> |
Showing 161–180 of 2096 reviews
· Page 9 of 105