Editorial Review

To fake or not to fake: That is the question consumers must answer for themselves in assessing this feat of aural Photoshopping: an "imaginary concert" created by combining recently discovered soundboard tapes of Ray Charles's vocals from a mid-'70s European show and newly recorded backing by the Count Basie Orchestra--the "ghost band," still on the road 22 years after Count's passing. Charles is in exceptional voice, singing the heck out of standards like "How Long Has This Been Going On?," Genius classics like "Busted," and pop covers like Melanie's "Look What They've Done to My Song." His performance is a thrilling corrective to forgettable posthumous albums like Read more

Subjects:  1. Blues    2. Jazz    3. Jazz Blues    4. Piano Blues    5. Pop    6. United States of America   

Editorial Review

It is not just the timbre of Norah Jones's voice that is mature beyond her 22 years. Her assured phrasing and precise time are more often found in older singers as well. She is instantly recognizable, blending shades of Billie Holiday and Nina Simone without sounding like anyone but herself. Any way you slice it, she is a singer to be reckoned with. Her readings of the Hank Williams classic "Cold Cold Heart" and Hoagy Carmichael's "The Nearness of You" alone are worth the price of the CD. Jones's own material, while not bad, pales a bit next to such masterpieces. They might have fared better had she and producer Arif Mardin opted for some livelier arrangements, taking better advantage of brilliant sidemen such as Bill Frisell, Kevin Breit, and Brian Blade; or if the tunes had simply been given less laconic performances. Jones has all the tools; what will come with experience and some careful listening to artists like J.J. Cale and Shirley Horn is the knack of remaining low-key without sounding sleepy--sometimes less is not, in fact, more. Read more

Subjects:  1. Ballads    2. Bass (Upright)    3. Contemporary Jazz    4. Drums    5. Guitar (Acoustic)    6. Guitar (Electric)    7. Guitar (Steel)    8. Jazz Blues    9. Jazz Music    10. Percussion    11. Piano    12. Pop    13. Rock    14. Rock/Pop    15. Slide Guitar    16. Torch Songs    17. United States of America    18. Vocal Jazz    19. Vocals   

Editorial Review

Some singer/songwriters (think Paul Westerberg and Elliott Smith) develop their world-weariness through the unforgiving trials of passing years and the heart-breaking grind of the music business. Others (Van Morrison, Neil Young) seem to have sprung from out of nowhere with the fully formed soul of a life well-lived. Ray LaMontagne belongs with the latter. On this, his debut, LaMontagne has crafted a handful of quietly devastating meditations on life and love--and delivered them with a raspy vocal all his own. The simple, mournful lyrics of "Burn," "Shelter" and the title track recall a Hank Williams ballad, and the reserved production by alt-country/americana genius Ethan Johns (the Jayhawks, Ryan Adams, Kings of Leon) make this a great disc for smoky Saturday nights, and rainy Sunday mornings. Read more

Subjects:  1. Adult Contemporary    2. Modern Electric Blues    3. Pop    4. Pop/Rock    5. Rock    6. Rock/Pop    7. Singer/Songwriter   

Editorial Review

The churchy organ that opens and closes Jonny Lang's fifth album reveals its direction. After 2003's Read more

Subjects:  1. Alternative CCM    2. Blues-Rock    3. CCM    4. Christian Rock    5. Contemporary Blues    6. Contemporary Gospel    7. Guitar Virtuoso    8. Pop    9. Rock    10. Rock/Pop   

Editorial Review

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Subjects:  1. Blues-Rock    2. Boogie Rock    3. Jam Bands    4. Pop    5. Rock    6. Rock/Pop   

Editorial Review

This album's title cut finds the veteran folk-blues troubadour, now in his early 60s, pondering the possibility of living to be 100, thus setting the thematic tone for an uncommonly reflective, meditative set. The ragtime Zen of "Open Up," the philosophical "Seems So Real," and the rock-bottom despair in his cover of Peter Case's "Cold Trail Blues" all suggest that the virtuosic fingerpicker and evocatively smoky vocalist has reached a point in his life where he's pondering the biggest issues of mortality, a perspective that informs the complex relationship in "Father's Day."Not all of the material is that introspective, as the uptempo, electric rock of "Diplomacy" is as sardonic as Randy Newman, while "Origin of the Species" encapsulates Adam and Eve, Charles Darwin, and intelligent design. Smither also pays homage to two seminal influences, transforming Bob Dylan's "Visions of Johanna" into an acoustic, accordion-laced waltz and reviving Lightnin' Hopkins's version of the traditional "Blues in the Bottle." Ollabelle provide harmonies on two cuts, with mandolinist Tim O' Brien also offering instrumental and vocal support. Read more

Subjects:  1. Blues    2. Contemporary Folk    3. Folk & Traditional    4. Folk-Blues    5. Modern Acoustic Blues    6. Pop   

Editorial Review

The simple blues-informed pop charms of L.A. songwriter Kevin Moore remain unchanged on his eighth album. All twelve of these songs about romance and its triumphs and failures go down easy, thanks to his unhurried and unmannered singing, and arrangements that run slow and spare. That openness allows Moore's slide playing, perfected on the porch of Mississippi delta bluesman Eugene Powell, to add subtle, pretty decoration to tunes like "Your Love" and "Eileen." He's got a sympathetic cohort in John Porter, who also produced Moore's debut album and is especially adept at capturing the sounds of the acoustic instruments that dominate this disc. After pursuing all the twists and turns of love and its baggage on Read more

Subjects:  1. Adult Contemporary    2. Blues    3. Contemporary Blues    4. Modern Acoustic Blues    5. Modern Electric Blues    6. Pop   

Editorial Review

Jack Johnson has found himself a groove. Indeed, the Hawaiian surfing champion turned alternative pop-folk star really hasn't changed things one iota for his sophomore release. Fans of Read more

Reviews (246)

classic Jack J
If you love Jack Johnson, you will love these tracks. Soothing, fun, simple, and mesmerising to listen to.

On and On
Wonderfully relaxing music; makes you want to turn off the TV and turn on the music.People walk in and say"who is that" and they're off to buy the CD.

Nice melow music
I got this cd after hearing a song of his on itunes.I loved this cd from the first song.Every song is very acoustic and relaxed.For all you people out there who get home from work and are stressed out and need to relax this cd is for you.Just put on some comfortable clothes, get a beer, turn down the lights, turn the phone on low and just feel the music.This is a great cd and each song should grab you and make you want more. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Adult Alternative Pop/Rock    2. Bass    3. College Rock    4. Drums    5. Drums (Steel)    6. Guitar (Acoustic)    7. Guitar (Electric)    8. Percussion    9. Piano    10. Pop    11. Rock    12. Rock/Pop    13. Singer/Songwriter    14. Slide Guitar    15. Vocals   

Editorial Review

Fans of Willy Porter, Ben Harper, and G. Love will all want to check out Jack Johnson's engaging folk- and blues-inflected pop. Born in Oahu, Hawaii, Johnson, a former surfer and film-school graduate, has a knack for acoustic ballads whose calm surfaces hide a subtle but strong lyrical undertow. "It seems to me that 'maybe' pretty much always means 'no,'" sings Johnson on "Flake," which features crony Harper on slide guitar. Production by J.P. Plunier (who also handles Harper's recordings) is simple and uncluttered: acoustic guitar and drum tracks share the foreground with Johnson's easygoing vocals, which evoke everyone from G. Love (who recorded Johnson's "Rodeo Clowns" on his Read more

Reviews (481)

Terrific, as the other reviews say
How can such a seemingly simple, barely instrumented album sound so convincing, so riveting?Great lyrics, sung with perfect (nearly telepathic) intonation by Jack Johnson and great communitative playing come together to grab your attention.You can sense something transcendent, something spiritual while listening to Brushfire.Very special and highly recommended.

Pleasant and light but not a keeper
I'm a big fan of acoustic-based singer/songwriter stuff, so I thought I might like Jack Johnson too. And at first I did. His music is laid back, quite catchy, softly sung, undemanding. Anybody would like it, I guess. But after a while I started to find this CD a bit annoying. When you listen over and over to something really good, it reveals things you didn't see the first few times you played it. But all that's revealed here is a rather `lite' and one-dimensional approach to songwriting and arranging. Lyrics that sound cute at first soon sound empty. It's okay on whimsical songs like `Sexy Plexi', but when he tries to be more serious it doesn't hit the mark. And you may soon tire, as I did, of the crack of the drum that accompanies every song, not to mention that one guitar lick Jack can manage and always does. The band's instrumentation is admittedly fairly minimal, but somebody like Josh Ritter or Garrin Benfield gets more variety with just a guitar and fewer notes.
Another Jack Johnson plus
Love the music - always relaxing and upbeat. Even my 12 year old son thinks the music is great. He really appreciates the fact that most of Jack Johnson's songs have an actual message that is common sense - something we all think and/or understand. Overall Good buy! ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Adult Alternative Pop/Rock    2. Alternative Pop/Rock    3. Bass    4. Drums    5. Drums (Steel)    6. Guitar (Acoustic)    7. Guitar (Electric)    8. Percussion    9. Piano    10. Pop    11. Rock    12. Rock/Pop    13. Singer/Songwriter    14. Slide Guitar    15. Vocals   

Editorial Review

The fact that Read more

Features

• Enhanced

Subjects:  1. Blues    2. Jazz Blues    3. Piano Blues    4. Pop    5. Pop-Soul    6. R&B    7. Soul    8. United States of America    9. Urban Blues   

Features

• Enhanced

Reviews (10)

lemonadeby: G. Love
this is a great cd. yes, a couple of the songs are mediocre at best, but the rest make up for it.Missing my baby is a true groovy ballad. Holla, a bit queer sounding at first, is a really fun and tight song.beautiful is an awsome song as well. Get the cd!

fresh, new,a little funk and soul
this is my first cd by G-Love, I like it and I think it has some
Smooth like GLASS
Solid offering from G. Love.Start to finish, nice record for anyone who like G. Love or Jack Johnson. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Alternative Pop/Rock    2. Alternative Rap    3. Blues-Rock    4. Indie Rock    5. Pop    6. Rock    7. Rock/Pop    8. United States of America   

Editorial Review

Subtlety is both a blessing and curse for Robert Cray. In the studio, his increasingly restrained arrangements have served to frame his growing mastery of classic Memphis soul, allowing his soaring, vibrato-rich voice to carry tunes that directly echo the Stax years. That can work well live, too, and does so here in "Phone Booth" and the funky distillation "Back Door Slam," an ode to sexy down-home belters like Little Johnnie Taylor. But too often Cray downplays his incendiary guitar abilities on stage, which makes long numbers like "The One in the Middle" interminable, and leaves this two-disc live set--recorded during a week of shows opening for Eric Clapton at London's Royal Albert Hall in May 2006--full of cold spots. Things heat up whenever Cray picks up his Stratocaster in earnest, whether he's plucking out fat, singing notes à la Albert Collins in his radio hit "I Guess I Showed Her" or weaving a slow, soulful path through the bridge of the ballad "The Things You Do to Me," using his whammy bar and unpredictable variations on the melody to conjure shades of introspection. Overall, this set will please Cray's die-hard fans, but is unlikely to lure new listeners. Read more

Features

• Live

Subjects:  1. Blues    2. Contemporary Blues    3. Modern Electric Blues    4. Pop    5. Rock    6. Soul-Blues   

Editorial Review

This is Etta James's first full-length album, recorded for Chess Records' Argo subsidiary in 1960. It taps all aspects of her then-blossoming talent. There's the crooning rock ballad "My Dearest Darling" and the elegantly symphonic "Sunday Kind of Love." Her classic, brokenhearted "All I Could Do Was Cry" follows the sweet title track and the bawdy blues stomper "I Just Want to Make Love to You." And there's a version of Harold Arlen's "Stormy Weather," which Lena Horne made famous. James's fine way with such a wide embrace of material wouldn't again be this well displayed on a single album until she was united with producer Jerry Wexler for 1977's Read more

Features

• Extra tracks
• Original recording remastered

Subjects:  1. Blues    2. Blues Music    3. Pop    4. R&B    5. Soul    6. Soul-Blues    7. United States of America    8. Vocals   

Subjects:  1. Acoustic Blues    2. Blues    3. Country Blues    4. Piedmont Blues    5. Pop   

Editorial Review

To listen to Ray Wylie Hubbard's Read more

Reviews (6)

Dirty and Mean with good guitar work
The whole album has that old southern blues rock grind, but it doesn't lose the Ray Wylie effect.Good guitar work throughout the entire album.As most of Ray Wylie's songs they are songs of blood, sweat and grease with a touch of sin and redemption.He and Gurf Morlix really sound like they are having fun playing together and that always makes an album special to me.
Love at first note...
I can't get this cd out of my player. I love Austin music and Ray is the best. The swampy, sultry sound can take you away. The lyrics are amazing and certain lines stick in my head. Amazing stuff and a far cry from 'Up Against the Wall Redneck Mothers' although I like that too.

Middle-of-the-night music, fuel for bonfires, dice, and showdowns
Ray Wylie Hubbard's "Snake Farm" is one evil, growling monster of a record, a finely focused muscular effort that effuses grit, malice, and funk. The sound ripples with thick, raw grooves that compliment the subject matter: the devil, women, redemption and damnation, hexes, and guitars. Clearly, this stuff is middle-of-the-night music, fuel for bonfires, dice, and showdowns.
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Subjects:  1. Americana    2. Country-Rock    3. Folk    4. Folk & Traditional    5. Outlaw Country    6. Pop    7. Rock & Roll    8. Singer/Songwriter    9. Swamp Blues    10. Texas Blues   

Editorial Review

Tony Joe White says he always saw the friends he invited to play on his new album--Eric Clapton, Mark Knopfler, J.J. Cale, Michael McDonald, and the late Waylon Jennings--as "keepers of the fire." They're also premier custodians of loneliness and despair, the two emotions that lie at the heart of this hypnotic submersion into country/swamp blues. From the kickoff track, "Run for Cover," with Wayne Jackson of the Memphis Horns, these meditations on mourning--lost lovers, spiritual struggles, anxiety that knows no name and no bottom--grab the listener fast and pull him down into swirling dark waters. For that reason, there's a numbing sameness--on occasion, two songs back-to-back seem to simply be extensions of each other. But while Jennings's effort is more a portrait of the artist testing his chops after suffering a stroke, other collaborations stick in the mind. The dour Knopfler shows up on the most optimistic song, "Not One Bad Thought," but his vocals still sound like the barely uttered words of a depressive on a bad down. Clapton's voice remains characteristically modest on "Did Somebody Make a Fool Out of You," yet his guitar work--measured and full of emotion--proves what you don't play is as important as what you do. Still, the best pairing is that with Michael McDonald on "Baby, Don't Look Down." When White's smoky rumble meets McDonald's bruised, angelic tenor, you'll know why God made music. Read more

Subjects:  1. Country-Rock    2. Electric Blues    3. Oldies    4. Pop    5. R&B    6. Rock    7. Rock & Roll    8. Singer/Songwriter    9. Southern Soul   

Editorial Review

Some inspired music has arrived in the wake of Hurricane Katrina (mainly on New Orleans-themed benefit albums), but nothing as audaciously ambitious as this cross-generational collaboration between Crescent City mainstay Allen Toussaint and former British upstart turned adventurously eclectic veteran Elvis Costello.As a songwriter, producer, and arranger, Toussaint has been responsible for hits from artists ranging from Irma Thomas, Ernie K-Doe, and Lee Dorsey to the Pointer Sisters and Labelle. Costello, long a huge fan of Toussaint's music, sings relatively familiar fare such as "On Your Way Down" and "Freedom for the Stallion" from Toussaint's extensive songbook along with obscurities mainly recorded by Dorsey. Toussaint supplies his distinctive piano and horn arrangements--as well as lead vocals on "Who's Gonna Help Brother Get Further?"--with Costello's Imposters serving as the rhythm section. Yet the real revelation comes from the new material, including the title track (a searing Costello composition in the Toussaint soul-spiritual mode) and five new Costello/Toussaint compositions that spotlight Toussaint's signature sound without diminishing Costello's creative contributions.What could have been a curiosity is instead a hallmark in the catalog of each artist. Read more

Subjects:  1. Adult Alternative Pop/Rock    2. Blue-Eyed Soul    3. England    4. Modern Electric Blues    5. New Orleans Blues    6. New Orleans R&B    7. Pop    8. Pop/Rock    9. Retro-Soul    10. Rock    11. Rock/Pop    12. Singer/Songwriter    13. Soul   

Editorial Review

Just in his mid-twenties when this album was released in early 2006, the guitar tone of Allman Brothers Band guitarist Derek Trucks (nephew of founding drummer Butch) has become one of the most recognizable sounds to be squeezed out of the instrument. Snake-like, swampy, and filled with tense soul, his slide work has been compared to Ry Cooder's, and perhaps inevitably, to Duane Allman's. On his first album of new studio material in four years, Trucks steers his malleable band through a heady blend of jazz, Jamaican, gospel, blues, and world music, occasionally even combining styles in a single track. Any disc that covers deep soul man O.V. Wright, Pakistani music legend Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, and reggae journeyman Toots Hibbert can't help but swim in eclectic waters. But Trucks pulls it all together with a sure sense of flow and arrangements that never let the tunes descend into free fall.Read more

Subjects:  1. Blues-Rock    2. Pop    3. Rock    4. Rock/Pop    5. Slide Guitar Blues    6. United States of America   

Editorial Review

Like a human infusion of chamomile tea, hearing Van Morrison's voice has the effect of instantly soothing even the most stressed listener. That said, some of his releases have been so mellow that they muted the '60s soul influences that had been a part of Van's appeal. Not so with Read more

Subjects:  1. Adult Alternative Pop/Rock    2. Adult Contemporary    3. Blue-Eyed Soul    4. Celtic Rock    5. Contemporary Blues    6. Country-Rock    7. Ireland    8. Pop    9. R&B    10. Rock    11. Rock/Pop    12. Singer/Songwriter   

Editorial Review

This double CD collects not only Brother Ray's best-known '50s and '60s singles, but some choice semi-obscurities (the 1953 jump blues "Mess Around," his 1959 cover of Louis Jordan's "Don't Let the Sun Catch You Cryin'") that earn their places next to "What'd I Say" and "I Can't Stop Loving You." The man's originality and infectious feeling bleed through on each of these 36 tracks, whether he's transforming "One Mint Julep" or "America the Beautiful" or collaborating (separately) with Willie Nelson and Chaka Khan. Read more

Subjects:  1. Blues    2. Country-Soul    3. Jazz Blues    4. Pop    5. Popular Music    6. R&B    7. Soul    8. United States of America    9. Urban Blues