I’m pretty sure this is my final staff note for Recess — not that I’ve written many — and I’m going to use this soapbox to advocate for country music, and, more specifically, Townes Van Zandt.
Neil Young is no stranger to unreleased albums, with apocryphal knowledge of would-have-been classics like “Homegrown” and “Chrome Dreams” lurking in the back of fans’ minds and scores of demos and recordings languishing in Young’s archives.
Barely two weeks after LCD Soundsystem released their first song in more than five years, “Christmas Will Break Your Heart,” David Bowie, the idol of LCD mastermind and sole consistent member James Murphy, died.
2016 has been insane—but there’s no sense in rehashing it, because a) it’s already been talked about at length, and b) I have a word count.
The Weeknd got a haircut. Too bad he can’t invest a similar amount of time in cutting down his album. The Weeknd dropped his third album “Starboy,” this weekend, and, clearly, he needs more time than a year and a few months between albums to produce a well-crafted work.
Under the name NxWorries, producer Knxwledge and the ascendant Anderson .Paak have teamed up to deliver an album that somehow falls short of the sum of its parts. “Yes Lawd!,” the debut album from the collaboration, follows the duo’s “Link Up and Suede” EP, released in Dec.
It’s been quite a year for folky soft-rock revivalism, with artists like Whitney and Cass McCombs aping the mellower, but not completely psychedelic, sounds of the early 70’s with strong results. But none of them manage to match what singer/songwriter and producer Natalie Mering—who performs under the name Weyes Blood—has created with her fourth album, “Front Row Seat to Earth.” Mering’s delicate arrangements move the album’s chamber pop closer to the sounds of a bygone era than most other releases manage to do, and authenticity and sincerity come from her gracefully elegiac voice. Nowhere is this more apparent than in lead single “Seven Words,” which begins with Mering almost whispering over organ and bass.
The melodica is a unique instrument. Similar to a harmonica in that it uses a free reed, but airflow is controlled by a keyboard instead of relying only air blown through a mouthpiece.
Elephant Revival is a band hailing from Colorado that covers a wide range of musical genres, with strong folk, bluegrass and indie rock influences in their music.
Jimmy Page has had enough communication breakdowns in his life. He must have, because with the latest Led Zeppelin reissue includes not one, but two versions of the proto-punk song—bringing the album’s total up to five, out of only 33 tracks.
