Album Reviews

From the second the stylus hits the…er I mean the laser hits the pits, you'll know this is a stunning sounding live recording of a jazz trio. You'll feel as if you're in the Up Over Jazz Café, where this set was brilliantly recorded by Kato Hideki.

Analogue Productions’ third series of limited edition 45rpm 180 gram “twofers” will surely be as popular as the first two sets, with key titles selling out and fetching big bucks on the used market. The musically well-balanced offerings from the Riverside, Pablo and Prestige catalogs controlled by Fantasy Records include The Tony Bennett Bill Evans Album, Bill Evans’ How My Heart Sings and Interplay, Miles Davis’s Workin’ and many other long sought after jazz and blues titles.

For some reason, audio enthusiasts have a need to latch onto female vocalists with a passion that borders on the fanatical. Once they find her, they never let go. The careers of Amanda McBroom, Jennifer Warnes, Diana Krall and Janis Ian have all benefited from this compulsive/obsessive behavior. I have nothing against it. I just find it fascinating.

These ten acoustic tunes cut by Buddy Guy on 6 and 12 string guitar, and Junior Wells on harmonica back in 1981 during a visit to Sysmo Studios in Paris, France states the case for the acoustic blues as well as any album I can think of, but if you’re not into the genre, don’t expect this reissue to pull you around. Well, take that back: the sound may drag you in.

Having a good music dealer is as important as having a great accountant who knows all the funky tax loopholes, because both can steer you down the right path and save you money. Lets get real here for a minute: even if you were to spend months on end reading all the music rags out there, there's bound to be a lot of albums that'll fly well below your well-heeled radar. Add to that the sheer volume of new music coming down the pipe, and you can be forgiven for not knowing what's the latest album that'll blow your mind.

Death Cab For Cutie's Benjamin Gibbard probably reads “Romeo and Juliet” as light comedy. Calling him a “hopeless romantic” would be an understatement of Grand Canyon-like proportions. If Bryan Ferry wears his heart on his sleeve, Gibbard wears it on a Times Square billboard with a seriousness I can't recall hearing expressed outside of opera.