by Tom Johnson This tiny little pop-rock band took something like 8 years off between albums and returned in 2004 with one of those albums that periodically appears on the musical horizon and feels like it’s saving your life. So enveloping was its warmth that it found itself heavily and repeatedly in rotation — something that rarely occurs anymore because [...]

Supertramp was many things over its too-brief period of hitmaking — art-rockish proggers, post-Beatle popsters, kinda-classical rockers, memory-defining radio monoliths. There was much to love as they moved, over the course of the early-1970s to the early-1980s, from the esoteric to the very top of the charts

by Mark Saleski This album had two strikes against it before I heard a single note: 1. the almost nude shot on the back cover, Barsh covering what mama gave him with a melodica and 2. keyboards.

by Tom Johnson It had been four long years since Ween graced us with a new album of weirdness. In that time, they did slip out the fantastic Shinola Vol. 1, a collection of odds and ends that includes their Pizza Hut jingle that apparently didn’t go over so well

by Tom Johnson Where I liken 2002′s darkly beautiful, but depressing Yankee Hotel Foxtrot to the sound of a man about to hit bottom, 2004′s A ghost is born is the sound of someone at the bottom, looking up: It’s hopeful, in other words.

by Tom Johnson My favorite guitarist released, at long last, his second live album in 2005. How a guitarist this amazing and talented had gone so long between live releases is beyond me. Whereas his first live album, the intriguingly titled Live, captured Frisell at the peak of his noisy period, East/West found Frisell at the far end of the [...]

by Mark Saleski As record stores vanish, as more and more people get their music digitally, as the physical medium is phased out, well … honestly, I don’t know what the heck is going on out there.

by Tom Johnson I like to think of Isis as the band that Tool wishes it could be. Call me jaded, but by this time, Tool had become entangled in plots created to baffle and obfuscate rather than intrigue and draw listeners in, being what they think is clever but what really winds up being just tiring and boring after [...]

In a way, the Who has no one to blame for a slow and steady slide into overlooked rock-god status.

by Mark Saleski Fans of pianist Bill Evans will probably bristle at the comparison here, but that was the first connection that popped into my head with The Ground.