Recordings

As of press time, the identity of mystery rapper Captain Murphy was still unknown. But, man, the Internet can speculate. All year, tracks have been cropping up now and again with a deep-voiced rapper spouting ...

Conductor Valery Gergiev is not a bar-shaper who smooths each moment of music that emerges from under his baton. In the context of so many who pursue an interpretive identity through fussiness, Gergiev’s performances can ...

Three men of a certain age in Hawaiian shirts and a woman in a purple dress peer out at you from the CD cover, their upright index fingers pressed to their lips enjoining silence. That’s ...

The effect that Jed Davis’ liner notes can have on the unsuspecting reader is not unlike the effect his actual music can have on the uninitiated listener. Like, really? Tunes on this album were written ...

It used to be that when a new record by a major band was approaching its release date, a few first-glimpse reviews would begin to appear in major publications thanks to the preferential advance copies ...

I don’t know if it’s the fact that his originals are so damn original, or the fact that he takes unlikely pop tunes and makes them sound like they were always his, that makes me ...

You know when you hear something really refreshing and you can’t stop listening to it? Matt Garrison’s sophomore release spun with me on my car rides for weeks because it just wouldn't get dull. Each ...

Shrugged off by some cynics as just a crossover move and a play for cred on the part of the Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach, Dr. John’s Locked Down is soulful and funky in such an ...

One of the first post-grunge bands to pick up on what dudes like Gene Clark and Gram Parsons were putting down (namely, a soulful melding of country, folk and rock that some have dubbed Cosmic ...