Album Reviews

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Album Reviews
No Jitters From Lee's Coffee
Michael Fremer  |  Jan 01, 2009

Very few singers can get this close to a dry microphone, be balanced way forward of the backup band and sound as good as Peggy Lee does on this series of standards backed by a pair of small ensembles, recorded in 1953 and 1956. Neither the original nor the reissue notes explain the album’s temporal context so perhaps there’s no story there.

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Album Reviews
No Mercury Poisoning For Polly Jean
Michael Fremer  |  Sep 01, 2011

No one has ever claimed PJ Harvey creates music made for easy, or even pleasant listening. Much of it is dark and painful, but even at its weakest, Harvey's music is provocative and worthwhile.

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Album Reviews
No Overdubs Here!
Michael Fremer  |  Jul 01, 2010

Whenever a record shows up I like to look at the lead out groove area to see who did the lacquer cutting. Sometimes there’s nothing to be found and that’s annoying, but with this double set I thought I was hallucinating because in plain view was “TML-M” a stamp not seen on a slab of new vinyl in decades. TML is the acronym for “The Mastering Lab” and the “M” means the main lathe at Doug Sax’s place.

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Album Reviews
No Sophmore Slump For Fleets
Michael Fremer  |  Sep 01, 2011

Paul Simon can't go back to his folk-rock roots. It's too late for him to turn around, but a younger generation surely can use the hybrid genre as a start-up base of operations. The first and second Fleet Fox albums demonstrate that. 

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Album Reviews
No Throwaways in Judith Owen's Lost and Found
Michael Fremer  |  Oct 01, 2005

I turned 50 when the car manufacturer Saab turned 50, so I celebrated my half century, by treating myself to a day at the Skip Barber racing school held in conjunction with Saab's 50th anniversary celebration/annual Saab club convention, which took place that summer (1997) at the beautiful Waterville Valley Ski Resort-no dogs allowed.

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Album Reviews
No, Your Midrange Driver Is Not Blown! That's What's Left of Bob's Voice
Michael Fremer  |  Sep 13, 2012
Does it matter that the rattle and phlegm in Bob Dylan's voice makes it sound as if your midrange driver has blown? No. Hell no. In fact, despite the ragged vocals and 50 years since his debut, this is Dylan's best album in quite some time.
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Album Reviews
Not At All Like The Dallas Symphony's Version
Michael Fremer  |  Mar 01, 2012

This performance and recording with Eiji Oue conducting the Minnesota Orchestra emphasizes the "symphonic" while downplaying the "dance" aspects of Rachmaninoff's composition.

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Album Reviews
Not Like Copland's "A Lincoln Portrait" You Can Be Sure!
Michael Fremer  |  Jun 01, 2010

When Aaron Copland titled his Abraham Lincoln musical tribute “A Lincoln Portrait,” he was using the word “portrait” figuratively.

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Album Reviews
Not So "Hunky Dory"?
Michael Fremer  |  Nov 01, 2015
Hunky Dory introduced a kinder, gentler David Bowie after two heavy albums laden with mythological imagery and pleasant dread—not that this album doesn't also include heavy doses of the latter.

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Album Reviews
Not Your Stevie Nicks Fleetwood Mac!
Michael Fremer  |  Aug 01, 2005

There were good reasons British blues musicians like the original Peter Green led Fleetwood Mac or blues influenced ones like The Rolling Stones wanted to record in Chess's legendary Ter-Mar Studios in Chicago. One, of course, was the possibility of jamming with blues legends like Willie Dixon, Otis Spann, Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolk and, well, you can run down the names yourself, including “Guitar Buddy,” what Buddy Guy had to be called due to contractual obligations. The other reason is to get that fabulous Ter-Mar Sound, which The Stones managed to do on some of their earlier albums.

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Album Reviews
Nova Social's Techno-Pop With a Splash of Wry
Michael Fremer  |  Aug 19, 2012
We like promoting independent vinyl projects so when Nova Social’s Thom Soriano contacted Analogplanet about a review of their new album For Any Inconvenience we bit.

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Album Reviews
Nyro's Early Songs Shine on Audio Fidelity Reissue
Michael Fremer  |  Dec 01, 2011

(Laura Nyro was nominated to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame December, 2011)

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Album Reviews
O'Riley's Second Radiohead Outing Even Better Than the First!
Michael Fremer  |  Sep 01, 2005

Leonard Bernstein was probably the first classical musician to boldly champion rock music when he enthusiastically endorsed The Beatles back in 1964-well before the group's true artistry flowered. Bernstein wrote a short, joyous, almost inappropriately flowery introduction to Geoffrey Stokes's 1980 book “The Beatles,” which you can read at http://www.frederickchorale.org/Beatles_2.asp.

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Album Reviews
Of Course You Should Buy This on Vinyl!
Michael Fremer  |  Aug 29, 2017
"Why buy vinyl cut from a file when you can buy the file itself?". That's easy! If you've worked to get your analog front end to sound glorious, magical and the way you want your records to sound and it sounds better to you than your unyielding, unadjustable digital box, you might have the answer.

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Album Reviews
Off With the Man Buns and Kick Out the Jams With Run Out Groove's MC5 Compilation!
Michael Fremer  |  Jul 18, 2017
The new reissue record label Run Out Groove recently launched with a limited to 2668 copy edition of a gloriously noisy, high energy MC5 compilation sourced from the group's Elektra and Atlantic catalogues. The Detroit-based group (The Motor City Five), which made music that was an invigorating amalgam of garage rock, punk rock and blues with a hint of progressive jazz thrown in, released but three full length albums during its less than a decade long run.

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