Reviewed by Eric Saeger Of the three main singers in the Guster-style folk-infused, Brit-alt band Gomez, Ottewell is the one who sounds like Eddie Vedder (Ottewell sang ‘See the World’ and most of their other sellable stuff, thus it’s awful white of him to downplay his importance to the band in the press release for […]

Reviewed by Eric Saeger Given that he’s as comfortable with standards and fusion-workouts as he is with modern experimentation, it’d be correct to tag jazz sax player McCaslin as a firebrand voice of the current New Yawk pack. In this ninth solo record, he’s free as a bird, his flights accelerated by the whizz-bang keyboards […]

Reviewed by Eric Saeger BCC is headed up by D.D. Verni, bassist and founding member of New York thrash metal crew Overkill, which of course spells depleted punk soil and a little bit of kidding around in this band’s first LP in 5 years. The kidding-around part this time – they did a version of […]

Reviewed by Eric Saeger Oft-noisy guitar-jazz for the Touch of Gray set. Berklee-trained Clouser is a Minneapolis native based out of Baja, Mexico, his tastes partial to Monk and ‘70s rock – Curtis Mayfield, too – in equal measure. This LP isn’t the smoothest of listens nor does it want to be. In ‘Meet Me […]

Reviewed by Eric Saeger Attention to hayseed detail helped place this one-off in the Top 10 of the Americana Music Association charts, where Decembrists and Gregg Allman are also holding court at this writing. The EP’s title was an unfortunate choice, as some people might run screaming from anything threatening to be NASCAR-ified ‘Let the […]

Reviewed by Eric Saeger The long and short here is Tom Petty after a total eels bender, some rockabilly, some Pavement chill, overall a very cohesive affair that has some serious high points. Lowery was a co-founder of Camper Van Beethoven, a trivia nugget that never fails to impress a few punk history buffs. But […]

Reviewed by Eric Saeger There’s no lack of cred here – among other things, Cantora Records launched MGMT’s Time to Pretend EP into low orbit – and this SoCal guy-girl duo have their vibe down pat: George Thorogood hijacking White Stripes. This’d be a logical tour pairing with Band of Skulls, whose less rootsy, more […]

Reviewed by Eric Saeger German DJ Apparat is ambient fetishist Sascha Ring, co-owner of IDM/techno specialty label Shitkatapult. Knowing this now, you may be shocked to learn that his contribution to the DJ-Kicks series is comprised mostly of ambient techno with broad hints of IDM. A study in hypnosis through repetition, this album finds Apparat […]

Reviewed by Eric Saeger Perhaps owing to this Frisco-area producer/DJ’s maturity, I don’t have a huge issue with this album, which is normally the case when I’m presented with novo-80s disco. It’s odd to see the words “mixture of Rick James, Scary Monsters-era Bowie, Kool & the Gang, Cee Lo and Snoop” forming on my […]

Reviewed by Eric Saeger With the one-off ‘concept album’ experiment from The Decemberists that was 2009’s Hazards of Love now in the books, the band turns again to the hayloft-indie space while claiming that 3-minute pop songs are more difficult to put together than conceptual magnum opuses. Were he alive, Bach might not agree, and […]

Reviewed by Eric Saeger Seattle-based jazz chick Coss is making waves in New York, based not just on her Presidential Scholorship to William Paterson University but for her vice-like grip on new-jack bebop. Everything is in place on her all-original debut – agreeable moods, impeccable engineering – making this an instant classic for oldbies and […]

Reviewed by Eric Saeger Ronnie James Dio died recently, leaving several generations of headbangers understandably distraught; Dio made Bruce Dickinson seem like a helium-filled piker. The lineup of Black Sabbath in which he was front-guy was a legendary thing, combining Dio’s wizards-and-dragons trip with the hard acid-metal pioneered by Iommi and his peeps. This 2007 […]

Reviewed by Eric Saeger Maybe you knew that Will from TV’s Lost in Space was making blues-rock albums, and if so, may I suggest that you get some semblance of a life, because all that sort of knowledge does is make music writers jealous. For those who have lives but find this curiosity curious, yes, […]

Reviewed by Eric Saeger With 20 years of singing primordial disco-house under his belt, Owens is without question the Barry-White-and-Smoky-Robinson-rolled-into-one of the genre. Are you jealous, though, particularly when you consider that no one most of you know has ever heard of him? I mean, there are major velvet-rope hits and collaborations with people like […]

Reviewed by Eric Saeger One scrap of unkillable rock n roll wreckage you may not be familiar with is Robert Wyatt, who fronted 60s/70s band Soft Machine from behind the drum kit before he summarily quit to immerse himself in other oddball projects in between permanently losing the use of his legs. He’s legendary stuff […]

Reviewed by Eric Saeger I can allow for vanity releases (the press blurb is that this is the record company’s first release), and I can deal with someone wanting to take some of John Cougar’s pie (if there is any – know anyone who bought the latest John Cougar, I mean Mellencamp, album?). I can […]

Reviewed by Eric Saeger This first proper US release from the UK DJ duo is a mix saluting the Fixed night, the diverse weekly party at New York’s Tribeca Grand Hotel. Listener reviews of the pair’s work are usually quite mixed, giving the impression that SMD’s attention is as deficient as that of a kid […]

Reviewed by Eric Saeger Bletch. “Too much clarinet” shouldn’t even be on the list of possible complaints one could have about a non-jazz record. Okay, this being rubber-stamped as an Americana record, pretty much anything organic can pop up in the recipe book (except fricking clarinet, come on), and I don’t envy the road Apollo […]