Album Reviews

If you search the musicangle data base for “Dolly Varden,” you'll find a review of Forgiven Now, also issued on Diverse Records 180g vinyl. The Dumbest Magnets is the group's previous album, not the follow up to Forgiven Now. Therefore it can't and doesn't demonstrate musical growth, or greater chance-taking. It does prove that the group's previous album is yet another exquisitely turned out pedal steel drenched acoustic/electric album of introspective country-rock.

“She brushes off comparisons to Billie Holiday,” according to Mobile Fidelity’s online blurb. Why? That’s like denying the elephant in the room. Peyroux’s squooshy vibrato and top of the throat delivery produce sly vocal timbres that just about channel Billie Holiday between your speakers. Even the miking and equalization have been carefully chosen to sustain the Holiday allusion and almost mimic the mellow recording quality of the time, just as the inner gatefold photography and Peyroux’s outfits reprise the visuals of the ‘40s. It’s canny but I find it distracting and mannered.

Good luck finding a copy. They're pretty much sold out and the price of used copies is only likely to rise for this iconic grunge-rock album with the "sell-out" cover.

In February 1977, Elektra released Marquee Moon, the debut LP by New York’s groundbreaking art rock group Television — but finding a good-sounding vinyl copy of such an acclaimed album has historically been a bit of a challenge. But now, the new AAA 180g 1LP Rhino High Fidelity (RHF) edition of Marquee Moon may have just changed that distinction forever. Read Mark Smotroff’s review to see if this RHF edition finally helps Marquee Moon achieve the untethered, uncompromised, and uncompressed all-analog glory it so richly deserves. . .

John Cale's guitar-fueled, angry yet nostalgic first Island release from 1974 is easily his finest solo effort in my book. It's certainly his most consistently well written and performed record.

Funky, bluesy electric guitarist Mel Brown, now 78, is still at it. He was 27 back in 1967 when Impulse released this showcase for his super-clarified style of electric funk/jazz blues guitar.