Music
Dr Mary’s Monkey: Velvet Dreams (Audio Platters)
On the surface, there’s some serious psychedelic damage in this band. Most of their tracks could pass for buried treasures on some little-known Pebbles or Nuggets compilation, and lovers of late-’60s garage/psych will latch onto it right away. Especially since the reverb-drenched recording makes it all sound like it’s emanating from some long-ago bat
cave.
Vick LeCar: Vick LeCar’s Gallus Rex (Righteous Path)
Not many people seem to write love songs for their guitars anymore. Vick Lecar’s “My Guitar and I” is probably the first song of this nature I’ve really enjoyed since Dash Rip Rock’s “String You Up” a couple of decades ago. Like that one, it’s full of hot licks and double entendres, with a suitably climactic solo at the end.
Marc Stone: Shining Like a Diamond (Independent)
If I were Marc Stone, I’d have a hard time telling people what kind of music I played. He’s certainly a bluesman, but one of the more eclectic ones around. And his latest shows how many ways there are to make a hip, modern blues record without relying on the obvious guitar-slinging thing.
Shawn Williams: Sulking in Love (Independent)
Singer/songwriter Shawn Williams has been prolific in recent years, and this is the least strictly country album she’s made—and the most strictly herself. If you know her previous albums, you […]
Give Me Back My Loving: Leo Nocentelli’s stripped-down and soulful other side
Give Me Back My Loving: Leo Nocentelli’s stripped-down and soulful other side. There’s one side of Leo Nocentelli that everybody knows. That would be the funk cornerstones he laid down as a member of the Meters, songs that one band or another will inevitably play at Jazz Fest.
Blurring Boundaries: Molly Tuttle is respectful of tradition but is not bound to it
Molly Tuttle & Golden HighwayFriday May 5 at 1 p.m., Alison Miner StageFriday May 5 at 4:15 p.m., Fais Do-Do Stage Getting back to her roots proved a winning move […]
Hey Hey, All Together: Ivan Neville’s Touch My Soul is his first solo album in 19 years
If you’re a renowned New Orleans artist and you want to write a song about the need for everyone to get along, it will probably come out funky and uplifting. But if you’re Ivan Neville, you can also pull out your address book and get a dream team of guests to perform it with you.
A Forever Family: For the Continental Drifters the story is not over
The Flatlanders once claimed they were “more a legend than a band,” but the Continental Drifters are a little of both. Anyone who followed the Drifters in the ’90s-’00s can vouch for the volume of terrific songs, the onstage spirit and camaraderie, and the inexplicability that a band this good never got massively big.
Homegrown Indie Pop: Joe Adragna and The Junior League’s melodic songs
Any talk with Junior League mastermind Joe Adragna is bound to come around to the glories of classic pop. He’s been immersed in that world since he heard “I Want to Hold Your Hand” on the radio at age four, and his knowledge of pop’s back pages informs his savvy as a songwriter. Name a deep track by the Monkees or the Cyrkle and he can probably sing you the chorus hook, and then he might go off and write one of his own.
Unapologetically Rock and Roll: Michael Mullins and Zita channel rock and roll energy
The first time Zita frontman Michael Mullins heard the classic Led Zeppelin track “The Ocean,” he wondered why these English guys were stealing a song from his dad’s band Bonerama.
