Score: 8/10 It seems we’ve all of a sudden come across a little pocket of “Bonnaroo vibes” even in this pandemic-plagued season, with two members of Phish, singer/guitarist Trey Anastacio and bassist Mike Gordon, each issuing new projects in the past 30 days. With really nothing terrible standing out about the former, I’ve chosen to … Read more“DD Review: Mike Gordon & Leo Kottke – Noon.”
Score: 10/10 You have to admit, the plotline plays out like classic cinema: 1970s disco/jazz visionary Roy Ayers recording an album with apparently complete surreptitiousness (which given all the convoluted and obtuse criticisms of it by Pitchfork becomes understandable) in 2018, to then by all rights completely bury the completed project for two years, only … Read more“DD Review: Adrian Younge & Ali Shaheed Muhammed – Roy Ayers JID002.”
Score: 10/10 Inlet is the first album in 22 years from Champaign, Illinois band Hum, who enjoyed minor radio and considerable cult success in the ’90s and hence. On it, the band’s sonic blueprint is decidedly grappled to grunge rock, historically making minimal updates on the sound and instrumentation blueprint of that movement. Astonishingly, too, … Read more“DD Review: Hum – Inlet.”
Score: 9/10 The great rapper Noah23 once said, “Sometimes… you’ve GOT to let go”. You might say, then, if you were like neurotic about allotting specific, designated objectives to all the bands you listen to (which I imagine some John Cusack-akin individuals in the 1990s might have been), that Khruangbin (which I finally figured out … Read more“DD Review: Khruangbin – Mordechai.”
Score: 10/10 Once upon a time this band from LA became the best band on the planet. It happened overnight. They got the right manager. They were on just the right label, which got them mainstream promotion, radio play and even an unlimited music video budget. They belted out Aerosmith-akin guitar riffs over groove-funk rhythmics. … Read more“DD Review: No Age – Goons Be Gone.”
Score: 7.5/10 In April 2016, after the tragic news came in of Prince’s passing, I shared simply the word “Delirious” on Facebook, hoping everyone knew what I meant, which some did. About four days to a week later, I got my next issue of The New Yorker in the mail, which had a purple cover … Read more“DD Review: Prince – Prince and the Revolution: Live.”
Score: 9/10 One side of me gets so up in arms when I see Wire described as “art punk” on Wikipedia. After all, punk rock, at its mid-’70s onset (into which Wire themselves fed a key tinge of reckless abandon), was the anti-art — the dumb, loud and glorious reaction to the contrived, style-over-substance world … Read more“DD Review: Wire – Mind Hive.”
Score: 8.5/10 Elephant Stone is a lo-fi troupe out of Montreal, a Canadian city six hours north of the Big Apple by car and planted pretty much squatly on its line of longitude. Now, this might seem like a random bit of meaningless trivia, but interestingly, listening to their distinctly concise and gorgeously textural new … Read more“DD Review: Elephant Stone – Hollow.”
Score: 9/10 I can’t remember how but somehow probably four or five years ago (it might have been from reading the L.A. Record, likely the raddest online music journal out there) I got to following this Burger Records imprint out of Orange County, which always, whether or not I actually like the music, seems to … Read more“DD Review: Dead Ghosts – Automatic Changer.”
Score: 9.5/10 Like I imagine is the case with a lot of people, my introduction to Lucinda Williams was the critical and commercial 1998 breakthrough that was Car Wheels on a Gravel Road. New offering from this year Good Souls Better Angels travels along similar lines of country-rock hodgepodge but, I think, is more victoriously … Read more“DD Review: Lucinda Williams – Good Souls Better Angels.”