MINDY SMITH Taking chances is paying off for one of Americana’s most distinctive talents     “The risk is pretty intense, but it’s worth it.” Mindy Smith is discussing the realities of navigating the music industry as an independent artist. Her new self-titled album is her first after parting ways with Vanguard Records in 2010. “The opportunity to go indie presented itself when my contract was up,” Smith says, “and it felt right... 

TENACIOUS D Playing their music for fun and the industry for laughs How does a comedy duo follow an album that won neither stellar reviews nor sales? Turn it into a joke, of course. Tenacious D’s 2006 film The Pick of Destiny and its accompanying soundtrack garnered a lukewarm reception at best, but it has since gained a cult following. After six years, Jack Black and Kyle Gass have returned with their follow-up, Rize of the Fenix—rife with self-deprecating... 

THE MEMORIALS From Berklee to Berkeley, their art has always been a collaborative effort   When recording their second album, Delirium, the Berkeley, Calif., outfit known as the Memorials employed a wonderfully effective everything-but-the-kitchen-sink sonic philosophy. For the follow-up to 2011’s self-titled debut, band organizer and former Mars Volta drummer Thomas Pridgen, vocalist Viveca Hawkins and guitarist Nick Brewer kept the tempo cranked... 

EVERCLEAR   Life changes bring the inspiration for their long-awaited new album    Everclear fans have been waiting for an album of new material since 2006’s Welcome to the Drama Club. Now that the band has released its eighth studio record, Invisible Stars, leader Art Alexakis explains that it simply took that long before he felt he had something new to say. “I wasn’t writing songs for a while because I didn’t feel like I had anything... 

ALEJANDRO ESCOVEDO Exploring the world around him, from the streets of Mexico to the sky    Austin-based singer and songwriter Alejandro Escovedo often finds himself pigeonholed as an alt-country act. But the man who—lest we forget—was a founding member of pioneering punk band the Nuns and roots-rockers Rank and File and True Believers, is a rocker at heart. “If you look at my solo records and the bands I’ve been in, at the core of it... 

SHAWN COLVIN Feeling at home with some of music’s greatest singers and songwriters It’s been 15 years since Shawn Colvin’s “Sunny Came Home” catapulted the singer-songwriter into the mainstream. Since then the Grammy-winning singer-songwriter has collaborated with artists from James Taylor and Béla Fleck to Mary Chapin Carpenter and Sting. For All Fall Down, Colvin adds to that list producer Buddy Miller (who recorded the album at his... 

JOE BONAMASSA A guitar master enjoys an overnight success decades in the making  Joe Bonamassa nurses a sore neck as he discusses his new album, Driving Towards the Daylight—the result of too much headbanging onstage the night before. “We added a bit of ‘Still of the Night’ by Whitesnake,” he muses. “Maybe that’s what wrenched out my neck.” Bonamassa, 35, isn’t letting a wrenched-out neck slow him down now. He’s an acknowledged... 

  The Governor General’s Performing Arts Award is the highest honor the nation of Canada can bestow upon its artists. The first recipient was Gweneth Lloyd, who co-founded the Royal Winnipeg Ballet. This year the honorees included Stratford Shakespeare Festival artistic director Des McAnuff, classical pianist Janina Fialkowska, choreographer Paul-André Fortier and several other creative Canadians familiar with respectable, best-behavior black-tie... 

SESAC CELEBRATES At 2012 FILM AND TELEVISION COMPOSERS AWARDS SESAC honored its stellar roster of top film and television composers with the annual SESAC Film & Television Composers Awards Dinner. The invitation-only event was held on June 7, at the chic Casa Del Mar Hotel in Santa Monica, CA, and celebrated the composers of music featured in 2011’s biggest films, primetime television shows and cable programs. The SESAC event bestows awards... 

Laura Marling – “I Was Just a Card” – Bonnaroo 2012 LAURA MARLING performs with the 000C Nylon String Martin  Read More →

  KISS WAS A FULL YEAR AWAY FROM SUPERSTARDOM when photographer Norman Seeff shot this L.A. session for the cover of 1974’s Hotter Than Hell. When Gene Simmons, Peter Criss, Paul Stanley and Ace Frehley (above, from left) entered his studio in full costume, says Seeff, “I was incredulous. My first thought was, ‘Are they covering up for mediocrity?’ Of course I was completely wrong about that.” Seeff quickly realized the foursome had... 

WOOD WORKS What to look for in an acoustic guitar—from strings to wood, body and beyond Even though someone had the earth-shaking notion to run electricity into a guitar a few decades ago, the acoustic guitar remains just as potent as it ever was. The instrument spans genre and culture, from the Gipsy Kings’ flamenco grace to Bob Dylan’s folk strumming and Jimmy Page’s driving leads. In the right hands, the simple combination of wood and... 

APP HAPPY What can the right music-making mobile applications do for you? Just five years ago, cellphones were just that: phones. Enter the brave new world of smartphones, where the mobile gadgets have evolved into an entirely new category of creative tool—one that can help you create music. With the introduction of the iPhone in 2007 and the iPad tablet in 2010, music software developers have been quick to harness the power of these powerful... 

REC ROOM An insider’s guide to creating a home studio that’s right for you    Not so long ago, recording in a studio was a pricey ordeal. A musician or band had to select a studio, ensure it had a quality engineer—and because the meter was running, hope to capture the necessary tracks without breaking the bank. Enter the digital age: Now nearly anyone can set up a quality studio right in his or her home. Sure, there’s gear to acquire,... 

SYNTH SENSE Dream Theater’s Jordan Rudess lets you in on the secrets to making your synthesizer sounds soar  If you’ve listened to pop music created since the 1960s, there’s little doubt you’ve heard synthesizers at work. Innovators have been trying since the 1800s to create devices to replicate sounds otherwise unavailable to the layman, but it was only in the last four decades that the synthesizer became thought of as an instrument in... 

PLAYING IT BY EAR How the right live monitor can take your stage show to the next level  Whether you’re playing a grungy blues set at a local club or headlining a stadium rock festival, delivering a show to remember is impossible if you can’t hear what you’re doing. What sounds perfectly harmonious to you could sound like a broken chainsaw out in the crowd—and vice versa. So how can you ensure you’re getting the onstage mix that you need... 

DAW DEAL Digital Audio Workstations can help you make a masterpiece—if you use them correctly  For decades making a record meant big studios, big budgets and countless feet of analog tape—but all that has changed. Today nearly any musician can get access to a computer and the necessary software required to craft an entire album in the comfort of his or her own home. So what exactly is this powerful software that makes the magic happen? The... 

LIFT EVERY VOICE How anyone—and we mean anyone—can learn to sing more sweetly Artists as stylistically and generationally diverse as Billie Holiday, Sam Cooke, Roger Daltrey and Lady Gaga have proven again and again that the right vocal performance can touch the listener’s deepest emotions—while the wrong one can abuse the eardrums of innocent bystanders. Learning to channel your own inner songbird can be a challenge, but there are steps... 

NORAH JONES How she made the most unexpected music of her career with some help from Danger Mouse.  In June 2009, Norah Jones was somewhere not many people would expect her to be: in a small Los Angeles studio, cooking up new music with producer Brian “Danger Mouse” Burton. Ten years ago, Jones’ diamond-selling debut, Come Away With Me, established her as a pop icon with a soft, jazzy touch. Each of her follow-up solo albums—all of which... 

Neil Young & Crazy Horse Americana  [Reprise] The stories adults tell children are often sanitized. In the original version (spoiler alert!), Little Red Riding Hood gets eaten by the big, bad wolf after being tricked into cannibalizing her grandmother. The jealous villain who orders Snow White’s murder isn’t her stepmother, but her mother. The same is true of the folk songs we learned as kids, many of which have origins far darker or more... 

JOHN MAYER Born and Raised [Columbia] On his fifth album, John Mayer continues his slow shift away from the pop-rock mainstream and back into the singer-songwriter territory of his early days. The mostly mellow tone evinces some country leanings, with his gentle fingerpicked guitar, pedal steel and even some ’60s folk harmonica. But there are a couple of low-key classic-rock jams with quiet, rambling electric guitar leads and subtle Hammond organ... 

SANTIGOLD Master of My Make-Believe [Atlantic] Four years is an eternity in pop music, yet Santigold sounds as distinctive on her second album as she did on her first, 2008’s Santogold. (Born Santi White, she changed her stage name slightly in 2009 to avoid legal entanglements.) Like her debut, Master of My Make-Believe is a mix of styles, blending elements of new wave, dub reggae and electro-rock into a compelling hybrid, with writing and production... 

BEACH HOUSE Bloom [Sub Pop] On their first three albums, Beach House architects Alex Scally and Victoria Legrand built one of the more recognizable sounds in modern indie rock. With the fourth, they don’t change things up so much as they focus and improve them. As always, the songs mix drum-machine beats with the dizzying slo-mo whoosh of keyboard, echo-rich guitar and Legrand’s stately, often unintelligible vocals. It’s a recipe for gloriously... 

THE CULT Choice of Weapon [Cooking Vinyl] It’s been more than 20 years since the Cult achieved platinum success with Electric and Sonic Temple, records that appeared to establish the band as goth-metal’s reigning power. Unable to sustain the momentum, the group ultimately disbanded in the mid-’90s, with frontman Ian Astbury going on to gain notice as the fill-in for Jim Morrison in touring configurations of the Doors. The group’s latest album... 

SHAWN COLVIN All Fall Down [Nonesuch] Procuring master guitarist and Nashville alt-country staple Buddy Miller as producer ensures authenticity in the Americana world—just ask Robert Plant, who tapped him for 2010’s Band of Joy—but Shawn Colvin needs no such thing for her first new album in six years. Her history with Miller is very different. She sang in his band early on and later toured with him, Emmylou Harris and Patty Griffin as Three... 

SIGUR RÓS Valtari [XL] Sigur Rós’ indefinite hiatus certainly didn’t last long. A mere two years after the Icelandic quartet publicly questioned its own future (and frontman Jónsi released a solo album), they have returned with a sixth studio album. Clocking in just shy of an hour, Valtari is in many ways a more subdued affair than previous efforts. Tones are soft, and anything remotely raw is muted into a subtle buzzing in the background.... 

ALABAMA SHAKES  Boys & Girls [ATO] Alabama Shakes plays in a pocket deep enough to lose your keys in. It’s like a protective bubble for the quintet, which has managed to ignore inflated industry expectations to record this fierce, compelling debut LP. Although the band insists it’s not a retro-soul act, Boys & Girls is drenched in guitar, organ, round bass and edge-of-the-beat drums. What truly elevates Alabama Shakes, though, is Brittany... 

 DVD/BLU-RAY  GEORGE HARRISON  Living in the Material World   [UMe] From the relatively tender age of 20 until the day he died from lung cancer in 2001 at age 58, the world’s eyes were locked on George Harrison. At the same time, he was looking at the world—from the early days of Beatlemania, through his worldwide journeys in search of spiritual enlightenment and musical enjoyment, Harrison was rarely without a camera in hand. His personal... 

JOEY RAMONE …Ya Know? [BMG Rights Management] Joey Ramone embodied rock ’n’ roll at its most joyous and elemental, from the mid-’70s—when he and his fellow Ramones basically invented punk—to his death in 2001. The lovably gawky frontman bleated fast and catchy songs about loving pop culture and living the life of a weirdo outsider. His second posthumous solo album revisits these ideas, and if “Rock ’N’ Roll Is the Answer”... 

PAUL THORN What the Hell Is Goin’ On? [Perpetual Obscurity]  Its title comes from one of the songs contained in this set of covers, but Paul Thorn has earned such a reputation for his own singular, sometimes autobiographical material that its existence might well provoke the titular question from fans. What’s going on, according to Thorn himself, is simply an effort to paint beyond his usual palette. The results turn out to be as idiosyncratic... 

MARTY STUART AND HIS FABULOUS SUPERLATIVES Nashville, Vol. 1: Tear the Woodpile Down [Sugar Hill] Over the course of his four decades in Nashville, Marty Stuart has transformed from 13-year-old bluegrass prodigy to radio hit-maker and finally elder statesman. He’s one of the genre’s protectors now, amassing a museum’s worth of memorabilia, hosting his own TV variety show and championing a sound that’s all but vanished from mainstream country.... 

REISSUE PANTERA   Vulgar Display of Power (Deluxe Edition)   [Rhino] Few albums in rock history have boasted a cover that so perfectly matched the contents. Pantera’s groove-metal landmark Vulgar Display of Power is indeed a musical blow to the head—and the fist that delivers it was never more tightly clenched than in 1992. Singer Phil Anselmo, guitarist “Dimebag” Darrell Abbott, bass player Rex Brown and drummer Vinnie Paul Abbott together... 

LOUDON WAINWRIGHT III Older Than My Old Man Now [2nd Story Sound] Wainwright’s latest finds the singer, songwriter and satirist typically wry and reflective, contemplating mortality and musing about life’s tangled trajectory. Mirth and melancholy are present in equal measure, from the humor infused in “My Meds” (“If the side effects don’t kill me, meds might save my life”) and “I Remember Sex” (a brassy duet with the wacky Dame... 

VIOLENS True [Slumberland] Two prevailing indie trends of the day come together on Violens’ second album—with sexy, sexy results. The guitars are crisp, cool and prismatic; set against bouncing bass and snappy beats, they recall the finest U.K. jangle bands of the ’80s. But mastermind Jorge Elbrecht paints from memory, and memories are unreliable. His songs are abstractions, and thus the album’s leadoff single and not-quite-title-cut “Totally... 

EVE 6 Speak in Gold [Fearless]  It’s been a while since the members of Eve 6 were rocking Gen-X radios with hits like “Inside Out” and “Promise,” but the band’s first new album in nine years proves they never surrendered their knack for creating hard-driving pop songs. In fact, they’ve gotten even better at it—tracks like “Victoria” and “Situation Infatuation” could pass for a sped-up Fountains of Wayne minus a little wit.... 

THE WACO BROTHERS AND PAUL BURCH Great Chicago Fire [Bloodshot] Great Chicago Fire comes to us, so the story goes, as the serendipitous result of Paul Burch and members of the Wacos knocking back margaritas together at an industry gathering. What they’ve whipped up brings together the characteristic Waco Brothers strum und twang with Burch’s melodic classicism. The jointness of this joint undertaking doesn’t extend to songwriting (with one... 

THE DB’S Falling Off the Sky thedbsonline.net In power-pop, there’s no success quite like failure. For whatever reason, the genre’s best and brightest tend to be cult heroes rather than the Top 40 superstars their tunefulness would seem to suggest—and this is certainly true of the dB’s. During their original 1978-1988 run, the North Carolina-born, New York-based foursome played earworm ’60s rock with an arty New Wave bent, influencing... 

JOEL HENDERSON Locked Doors & Pretty Fences joelhenderson.com The sound of a heartland rocker losing heart, Locked Doors finds Joel Henderson shuffling begrudgingly into middle age. On opener “Growing Up (Is Hard to Do),” he sets the tone, trying in vain to remember even the previous night’s dreams. On “Heartless Kisses” he stews in the ashes of a once-blazing romance, and on “This Time of Year” not even the onset of spring can brighten... 

J.D. BLAIR 2012? vixrecords.com Only one song on the latest from this groove master comes with the parenthetical “(Smooth Mix)” appended to the title, but the tag could apply throughout. An ace session and touring drummer, Blair has played with everyone from Bootsy Collins to Yo-Yo Ma, earning special recognition for his country work. It all comes together on 2012?—an album that, true to its title, transcends time and place. Blair’s Nashville... 

CHARLENE SORAIA Moonchild charlenesoraia.com The debut from this British songstress begins with high, wordless vocals, equal parts Karen Carpenter and John Carpenter. As “When We Were Five” progresses, the line between love song and horror flick only grows blurrier. “I’ll declare you’re mine,” sings Soraia (who attended the same performing-arts school as Adele), but then Moog synth creeps in and she’s making that pledge from The Twilight... 

LOGAN MIZE Nobody in Nashville loganmize.com Had Tom Petty anticipated Shania Twain’s savvy marketing strategy of releasing country and pop versions of her 2002 Up! for his 1989 classic Full Moon Fever, he’d have come up with something like Nobody in Nashville. Logan Mize doesn’t have Petty’s sarcastic seen-it-all wit, but he’s still young—and besides, his outlook is fundamentally sunnier. Mize bucks rock clichés and yearns for the simple... 

ARCHIE POWELL & THE EXPORTS Great Ideas in Action archiepowellandtheexports.com  The big idea on Great Ideasis pairing crisp power-pop hooks with complex lyrics about careening into adulthood. Powell puts this particular notion in motion by spewing nervous words nearly as quickly as he strums his palm-muted chords. Conjuring riffs that somehow recall both the Stray Cats’ “Stray Cat Strut” and Richard Hell’s “Blank Generation”—twins... 

PEELANDER-Z Space Vacation peelander-z.com No band relishes outsider status quite like Peelander-Z, sci-fi-loving Japanese musicians who came together in New York City but claim to hail from outer space. The group makes vibrant B-movie rock in the spirit of Devo and the Ramones—wearing costumes like the former, using pseudonyms like the latter and absorbing musical ideas from both. Here it adds up to a synth-punk concept record about surfing the... 

WHITEJACKET Hollows and Rounds whitejacketmusic.com “Let me take you down,” Whitejacket mastermind Chris McDuffie sings on “River’s Song.” His next words aren’t “… ’cause I’m going to Strawberry Fields,” but they might as well be. The former Apples in Stereo keyboardist paints with Beatlesque brushstrokes on much of his debut, recreating George Harrison’s guitar tones, Paul McCartney’s “Blackbird” picking (on “Single... 

WALTER TROUT Blues for the Modern Daze waltertrout.com What would Blind Willie Johnson have thought about Facebook and Occupy Wall Street? Guitar great Walter Trout ventures his best guesses on his 21st album, using Johnson’s country-blues style as a jumping-off point. The fun is hearing where he lands. On “Money Rules the World,” the former John Mayall sideman busts out his wailing wah-wah and rails against politicians and fat cats. With “Lonely,”... 

BALKAN BEAT BOX Give balkanbeatbox.com From Jamaican dancehall and American hip-hop to Arab Spring street chants, the music of the oppressed shares a certain rhythmic and lyrical toughness. As Israeli musicians based in New York City, the members of Balkan Beat Box are well positioned to take it all in. On its fifth album the trio aims for mass mobilization, lobbing hand-grenade slogans—“Money leads to more money!” “Fight the urge to be violent!”... 

PEASANT Bound for Glory iampeasant.bandcamp.com From the sound of things, Damien DeRose is having a few problems with the ladies. They leave him standing on street corners and “laying on the carpet” (as he notes in “The Flask”), and he’s not quite sure how to put things right. The young Doylestown, Penn., native spends his third album under the Peasant banner sorting out his girl troubles, setting heartbreak and confusion to hushed indie-folk.... 

WORLD BLANKET 2012 worldblanket.com When not fronting World Blanket, Mike Pomranz writes for Comedy Central and blogs about beer. It’s funny, then, just how sober (in both senses of the word) he sounds on 2012, his Brooklyn-based band’s first album since 2008. With more electric guitar and less violin, these songs would hit like bar-rock anthems. Instead they push ahead with pensive energy, their downcast strings contrasting nicely with Pomranz’s... 

THIRD WORLD LOVE Songs and Portraits thirdworldlove.com Make no mistake, this international foursome plays jazz—all cool-cat bass, dynamo drums, lyrical trumpet and color-splash piano—but rock fans will find plenty to dig. Amid sonic trips to Spain and the Middle East, the players stay melodic and direct. On “The Abutbuls,” they’re positively psychedelic.  Read More →

THE McEUEN SESSIONS For All the Good themceuensessions.com John, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s enduring “string wizard,” teams with his sons on this warm and virtuosic country-folk affair. Bittersweet covers “Long Hard Road” and “Leader of the Band” could have been written by the youngsters to their dad; Jonathan’s rose-tinted instrumental “Banjormous” almost certainly was.  Read More →