At times, jazz vocalist Maria Neckam’s music sounds like Joni Mitchell during her mid-70s jazz excursion but with a Annette Peacock stream-of-conscienceness flow and Bjork-like modern sensibility, delivered with pipes as pure as Suzanne Vega.

An overlooked precursor to the current handmade-pop phenomenon, Ram was initially criticized for everything that makes it sound unexpectedly bold, fascinatingly unedited and utterly misjudged today.

Under different circumstances, there is no doubt Homer would have been major players in the hard-rock league.

Remasters for the seminal post-punk godfathers of what would become “industrial.” (Not really industrial, but it inspired bands like Ministry and Nine Inch Nails, who somehow got wrongly lumped in with bands like Einsturzende Neubauten and Skinny Puppy, who really are industrial.) Unique here is the first-time-ever-on-CD Ha! Killing Joke Live, which documents the Revelations era of the band. All [...]

While many a pianist/vocalist duo has surely been influenced by the twin mid-1970s collaborations of Bill Evans and Tony Bennett, it’s another thing entirely to take those albums head on.

There could be no better way to open Bob Wayne’s upcoming album than with the title track, “Till the Wheels Fall Off.” If you don’t know anything about Wayne going into this song, you’ll know everything you need to know about him once it’s over.