Eric Saeger Lofty street-wise hard rock blurring the lines between grunge and air-punch-indie. Arthur Shepherd’s voice is half Chris Cornell on the good side and Scott Stapp on the bad but does avoid the hickish inflections that made Creed so hateable for a large segment of the music-listening public – it’d be fair to say […]
Thelonious Monk – Brilliant Corners (Remastered)
Eric Saeger Considered the jazz pianist’s breakthrough album (a popular 1955 collection of Duke Ellington covers generally doesn’t count in the snobby view of Monk completists), this 1956 classic is one of a handful of monumental albums that recently received the 24-bit remaster treatment at the hands of Riverside Records label owner/producer Orrin Keepnews, who […]
Flogging Molly – Float
Eric Saeger One notices something a little not-quite-as-cool-as-Dropkick-Murphys about Celtic rock goons Flogging Molly, maybe something a little 80s metal. Drilling down, past the ridiculously tight musicianship and primed-for-80s-metal engineering, we discover ex-Fastway singer Dave King running the show, which explains everything, including the Dio-like scream-fest fadeout of the title track. If you can deal […]
Kevin Ayers – The Unfairground
Eric Saeger It’s been 15 years since Ayer’s coughed up an album. At 63, he’s officially a legend, having essentially started the psychedelic rock movement of the 60s with his old crew Soft Machine. Until this luring-out, he was living an obscure life in France, wallowing in his own eccentricities, lunching with Elton John, that […]
Anne Michaels & Jeremy Padewsa – Fugitive Pieces
“…Transferring literary bestsellers to the big screen is never an easy business. Some adaptations get it right, and some get it wrong. Luckily Jeremy Padewsa’s Fugitive Pieces falls into the first camp…”
Ministry & Co-Conspirators – Cover Up
Eric Saeger So adamant are many listeners nowadays in their opinion that all hard rock made after 1978 is utter sewage that they miss a lot of good stuff. But they don’t care, so here’s to you, retro-heads: the first (of hopefully many) post-retirement Ministry albums gathers together Al Jourgensen’s favorite cover tunes, some lifted […]
Jason Spooner – The Flame You Follow
Eric Saeger It’s always refreshing to see contemporary singer/songwriters deviate from the I’m-emotionally-ruined-but-naturally-gifted steez of today. New England-based Spooner’s second album is all business with a natural steez of its own stemming from an updated Stephen Stills vocal sound and a precise grasp of just how much hookage one is supposed to cram into a […]
Black Hollies – Casting Shadows
Eric Saeger Nu-mod gets a royal nipple-tweaking from the Black Hollies’ meticulous reconstruction of the 60s sound; this stuff is way beyond genre obeisance, bordering on obsession. Given this, it’s not clear where their market is unless your grandparents are smack-dab in it, although of course the anything-goes college-music crowd may have room for them. […]
Michael Palin – Himalaya interview
“…Dodgy dentists. The Dalai Llama. High-altitude polo players. Maoist rebels. Yak herders. Imran Khan. Just a few of the diverse personalities professional funnyman turned adventure traveller Michael Palin met on his epic 125-day journey across the world’s greatest mountain range…”
Ian Rankin – A Question of Blood interview
“…Not many punk rockers will tell you it was a copper that made them what they are today, but bestselling British author Ian Rankin is an exception to this rule. He owes his livelihood to one Detective Inspector John Rebus, a hard-nosed Edinburgh cop….”
Tony Parsons – Stories We Could Tell interview
“…The life I lived at the end of the 70s was 24 hours a day, 365 days a year – you can only do that for so long… I was glad to get out before I was 25, and happy to get out alive…”
Chris Patten – Not Quite the Diplomat interview
“…People sometimes talk and write about foreign affairs as though it was the sort of subject that can only be understood by a secret society of diplomats and politicians. In fact they should be accessible to all of us…”
Jonathan Raban – Surveillance
“…When even Green Day can achieve international success with a Bush-whacking album, then you can be sure that something’s going on in the public consciousness. Jonathan Raban takes a slightly different approach to the subject with his new novel Surveillance…”
Christopher Brookmyre – All Fun and Games Until Someone Loses an Eye
“…
Unlike most people, Jane Flemming, the protagonist of Scottish author Christopher Brookmyre’s novel All Fun and Games Until Someone Loses an Eye, can pinpoint the exact turn of events that transformed her life. A drunken, awkward, and most importantly unprotected bout of unsatisfying sex with her Catholic boyfriend Tom… ”
Tarja – My Winter Storm
“…Europe has yielded a few glum-faced, overly metalized coveters of the Evanescence throne – Norway’s Octavia Sperati, Austria’s hapless, underrated Visions of Atlantis for two….”
Neptune – Gong Lake
Eric Saeger In case you haven’t already done so – these guys have been around since 1995 – add Boston band Neptune to the list of art-experimentalist novelty acts whose more heavily promoted icons include Blue Man Group and Recycled Percussion. Neptune was born, innocently enough, as an experiment in sculpture in which all the […]
Baumer – Were It Not For You
“… Fresh off a one-song soundtrack appearance in the Winona Ryder vehicle “Sex And Death 101″ come North Carolina’s Baumer bearing a drywall-bucket full of curveballs….”
Iain Banks – Interview
“…A disturbed teenager slaughtering rabbits and torturing wasps; A futuristic religious leader decapitating his nemesis, keeping the head alive as he uses it daily as a punch bag; A serial killer intent on murdering those who represent the excesses of Thatcher’s Britain.
Just a few examples of the dark, warped and, often perversely funny themes that run through the works of Iain Banks….”
Willits + Sakamoto – Ocean Fire
“…In this, Grammy award-winning piano soloist Ryuichi Sakamoto hooked up with newcomer guitar experimentalist Christopher Willits in one-take improvisations bent on soundtracking the ocean world….”
George Monbiot – The Age of Consent
“…Monbiot, best known to the reading public for his campaigns against global warming, was aiming far beyond “green issues” with this 2003 projected manifesto for the future of the planet. His objective with the book was nothing if not audacious….”
Air Traffic – Fractured Life
“…You know what’s funny these days, you take a band like this, strip off one guitar layer and all the hooky stuff and it’s Instant Bowery Ballroom Indie-rock with no chance in hell of ever getting mainstream love…”
Jeffrey Archer – Interview
“… To say that disgraced politician cum author, Lord Jeffrey Archer, is a controversial character is an understatement. He has been imprisoned for perjury and perverting the court of justice; breached parole conditions; stolen coats in Canada; been accused of insider trading and ripping off charities; and was implicated in Simon Mann’s planned coup in Equatorial Guinea. The list goes on….”
Tangria Jazz Group – Tangria Jazz Group
“…An oddity in terms of both jazz stylings and band makeup, TJG is headed up by dreadlocked drummer Sheryl Mebane, an experimentalist in the arts of smoky-bar-jazz and African beats…”
Amos Tutuola – The Palm-Wine Drinkard
“…The Palm-Wine Drinkard is unlike almost anything else in print. Nebulous comparisons might be made with Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Kafka’s inconclusive parables or Alice in Wonderland, but things behave very differently from even these european gargoyles in Tutuola’s twilight world….”
David Baker – It’s Mawdsley
“…The central concept/main gimmick of It’s Mawdsley is essentially how a book would read if written by the kind of person who would never write a book, a stream of consciousness from someone who is barely conscious…”
