Issue Articles
The Best of the Beat, 2008
At this year’s Best of the Beat events, the big winner was Irma Thomas. On the Wednesday celebration of business and individual achievement at Harrah’s Casino, she was named Female […]
Justin Peake + Robin Boudreaux, Submerge (Independent)
Percussionist Justin Peake is behind these two albums of adventurous music—sound sculptures, as he refers to them, and the term is appropriate here. The metaphor often feels needlessly artsy and […]
Chris Darrow, Under My Own Disguise (Everloving)
The Chris Darrow bio is one of a guy who played with a lot of cool people in the late 1960s and early ’70s, but the people he played with […]
Buddy and Julie Miller, Written in Chalk (New West)
Buddy Miller has mastered the sound of ruralness. He and wife Julie sound like hill folk singing to each other in metaphors that resonate—they’re gasoline and matches, they say—and he’s […]
Miles Davis, Kind of Blue Legacy Ed. (Columbia/Legacy)
The 50th anniversary reissue of Miles Davis’ landmark Kind of Blue raises the question of how you review reissues. In some cases, albums are ripe for reappraisal, but Kind of […]
John Scofield, Piety Street (EmArcy/Decca)
For Piety Street, guitarist John Scofield assembles a New Orleans band that includes Jon Cleary, John Boutte and George Porter, Jr. and honors one of the city’s crucial musics—gospel. “Although […]
Banu Gibson, Banu Gibson Sings More Johnny Mercer (Swing Out)
Johnny Mercer’s songs are American treasures—clever, lively and relentlessly well constructed. Banu Gibson treats them as such on her new album, giving them the care and loving treatment they deserve. […]
Mark Olson and Gary Louris, Ready for the Flood (New West)
The two principal figures in the Jayhawks reunite, and they’re good for each other. The songs they perform together seem far more effortless than those they have made independent of […]
Tom Jones, 24 Hours (S-Curve)
He made ersatz bachelor pad soul for years, and it’s what he makes here. And the results are just as much fun, if just as secondhand. Only the modern-sounding “Sugar […]
Raul Malo, Lucky One (Fantasy)
On Lucky One,former Maverick Raul Malo scales down his commercial ambition and ups his artistic ones. There’s no chart for his map-of-Texas music to top, but he and co-producer Steve […]
