Album Reviews

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Album Reviews
Rick Rubin's Road to Ruen—The Ruen Brothers' "All My Shades of Blue"
Michael Fremer  |  Aug 20, 2018
The faded Crown (or Coronet) Records cover art, the borrowed “360 Sound” “Stereo” arrows in the top strip where “Ruen Brothers” replaces “Stereo” and the retro attitudinal looks on the faces of the two brothers, one wearing string tie, one not, hint at what’s in the grooves of this audacious Rick Rubin produced debut of the brothers RUpert and hENry Stansall also known as the Ruen Brothers. They are not poseurs. They are serious. They are on a “wake up” mission that’s been developing for four years.

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Album Reviews
Ricki Lee's Cover Album Covered By Analogue Productions
Michael Fremer  |  Apr 01, 2008

This lovely set of intimately arranged and meticulously recorded covers, originally issued in 2000, is precisely the kind of semi-obscure album in need of a quality all-analog reissue.

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Album Reviews
Rickie Lee Jones Returns A Winner
Michael Fremer  |  May 01, 2005

Even if you generally find Jones's voice too nasal, too cat-like, too small, too thin, too whiney and especially too nasal, her cool, slinky and smartly laid-back vibe on this impeccably arranged and played double LP set will surely win you over.

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Album Reviews
Rickie's Pop Pop On Double 180g Vinyl!
Michael Fremer  |  Mar 01, 2009

Calling Ricki Lee Jones’s Pop Pop an “enduring” audiophile classic would be an understatement, though getting a copy on vinyl has been difficult until now.

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Album Reviews
Righting a Rolling Stones Catalogue Wrong: The New Rolling Stones "Studio Album Collection 1971-2016" Box Set
Michael Fremer  |  Jun 29, 2018
The irony wasn't lost on Stones fans when ABKCO and Universal simultaneously issued Rolling Stones vinyl box sets back in 2010. ABKCO, which owned the group's British Decca-era catalog, hired legendary mastering engineer Bob Ludwig to handle mastering of its catalog while Universal, which controlled the group's own label, released a box set with no mastering credits.

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Album Reviews
Rilo Kiley Front Gal Steps Out And Steps Up!
Michael Fremer  |  Sep 01, 2006

Former child star and Rilo Kiley front-gal Jenny Lewis may present herself as a latter day Charo, but she’s not afraid to plant serious concerns within her art, both in Rilo Kiley and in this earnest solo setting backed by Louisville natives The Watson Twins.

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Album Reviews
Ringo Starr Wants To Zoom In  On The Unloving World
Nathan Zeller  |  Apr 28, 2021
“Peace and love” is the defining mantra of Ringo Starr, one of two surviving Beatles. It’s sappy, cheesy, and agonizingly overused, but in all seriousness, it’s a message the world desperately needs. Though there’s a lot to hate, love is, in my mind, the true meaning of life. Keep in mind, I say this having learned it from others, namely the musicians I admire. Ringo, now 80 years old (he really doesn’t look it), is one of many who gather conclusions from a long, rich life. It’s here, on this EP, where the superstar shares his wisdom.

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Album Reviews
Roadmap to Brooklyn's Soul
Michael Fremer  |  Mar 01, 2010

The indie rocker Sufjan Stevens brings a surprising and delightful buoyancy and sense of wonderment to his orchestral suite commissioned by the Brooklyn Academy of Music to celebrate the 25th anniversary of its “Next Wave” Music Festival. The original debut performances were in November of 2007.

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Album Reviews
Robert Johnson Gets a Centennial Edition
Michael Fremer  |  Feb 01, 2012

A funny thing happens as you age: time compresses. When I was 20, music from the 1940s seemed old. Robert Johnson was positively pre-historic, and to my ears the sound was equally cobwebbed. Oh, like everyone else, I bought CL 1654 after seeing it on the cover of Bringing It All Back Home and reading one of the breathless cover dissections in a magazine. Back then every cover prop "meant" something. 

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Album Reviews
Robert Plant's "Carry Fire" Simmers But Still Provokes And Produces Plenty of Heat
Michael Fremer  |  Jan 29, 2018
Howard Stern is probably today's best interviewer still standing now that Charlie Rose is sidelined, though his recent Robert Plant sit-down was among his least effective. Stern was so looking forward to having Plant in the studio that he sort of forgot why Plant agreed to visit in the first place. Plus his usually crack research team dropped the ball.

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Album Reviews
Robyn Hitchcock Reunites With His Former Bandmates
Michael Fremer  |  Mar 16, 2003

By the end of the '70s, rock was dead, prog-rock had grown grotesquely self-indulgent, and the angry punk/new wave deconstruction had begun. It was a long-overdue musical cleansing. The Sex Pistols and The Clash were at opposite ends of the dividing line: one unabashedly stupid, the other worldly and literate. The late Joe Strummer was anything but working class, but he kept his upper-class roots tightly wrapped beneath a veneer of growling anger and disgust. He was hardly alone in towing the image line.

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Album Reviews
Rock Veteran Makes Intro to Moptop Generation
Michael Fremer  |  Dec 01, 2011


No, this is not up there with After School Session or Berry is on Top but this Chuck Berry album, his first after being released from prison for having violated the Mann Act (transporting minors across state lines to have sex) and issued as Beatlemania swept the world, has plenty of hits along with a lot of filler.

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Album Reviews
Roland Kirk and Tommy Flanagan Drum Up Support For Haynes
Michael Fremer  |  Apr 01, 2008

This 1962 release is a pick-up session plain and simple, made interesting by the presence of the adventurous multi-instrumentalist Roland Kirk and the always-tasteful pianist Tommy Flanagan&#151not that the snare-popping Haynes isn’t a superb and exciting drummer and Henry Grimes doesn’t acquit himself well on bass.

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Album Reviews
Rolling Stones Box Sets: Deal or No Deal? Part II
Michael Fremer  |  Apr 01, 2011

Still, some might find the new records too aggressive. I’m not in that group, but it sounds as if Mr. Grossinger mastered the original LPs, manipulating the tonal balance as he saw fit, whereas it sounds as if the GZ folks just took the files they were sent and cut. I’m just surmising that. It could be the ‘soft’ lacquer versus the ‘hard’ copper.

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Album Reviews
Rollins in Quartet With Hubbard and Former Coltrane Rhythm Section
Michael Fremer  |  Feb 01, 2008

Sonny Rollins sparring with Freddie Hubbard (title tune only) backed by the reunited Coltrane drum’n’bass section of Elvin Jones and Jimmy Garrison sounds like an enticing lineup for this May, 1966 session at Van Gelder’s and it is!

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