by Pico Like mistletoe and egg nog, the “Best Of” lists has become a holiday tradition here. 2010 has been a very good year at Something Else, and not just because we got to listen to a lot of swell tuneskis: we added to our ranks someone whose writing we’veRead More

Lucinda Williams brings a brave, riveting vulnerability to Essence — and, for me, it’s her masterpiece. Yet you are more apt to find it in the cutout bin at a big-box department store than at the top of most people’s desert-island lists. Perhaps the sensual melancholy of Essence was tooRead More

by Mark Saleski One way to define a categorical number line of female jazz vocalists would be to put artists like Ella Fitzgerald (full of insistent smolder, fire & brimstone) at one end, and balance that with voices of pure subtlety at the other — Billie Holiday, Shirley Horn, andRead More

Keith Jarrett and Charlie Haden hadn’t played together in over 30 years before getting together in Jarrett’s studio to work on these duets. The two men went their respective ways in the late 1970s. In the interim, there has been a lot of music-making. What’s particularly amazing about the just-releasedRead More