by Tom Johnson Three-part harmonies, a verified guitar-god genius, and some of the lowest, thickest, sludgiest bass around — King’s X is like the Beatles of metal, but they go year-after-year depressingly ignored. They scored a few minor hits in the early 1990s and then pretty much sunk off theRead More

by Tom Johnson The great Grant Lee Buffalo may have been long gone, but the heart was always just the voice and guitar of Phillips anyway, wasn’t it? In between takes as Gilmore Girls’ resident town troubador, Phillips found a few free moments to record this stripped down tribute toRead More

by Tom Johnson Paul McCartney has managed to document each of his more recent tours, yet insists on releasing them not as actual concert videos but more as documentaries of the show. This would be fine if he’d do as others have done, such as Peter Gabriel with Still GrowingRead More

My favorite period of Genesis’ history — the years just after the iconic Peter Gabriel had left the group, when the band shouldn’t have been able to be a success, but drummer Phil Collins stepped up the mic and brought his own brand of iconic, if short, stature to theRead More

by Tom Johnson I am convinced that Wainwright is this generation’s finest melodist. I can’t think of a single young artist who so beautifully crafts vocals in such a way that it simply doesn’t matter what he’s singing about: You just want to hear the melody he’s singing. And thereRead More

by Tom Johnson It’s hard not to wonder how bassist Gerard Smith’s fight with cancer during the recording of Nine Types of Light affected the group. After all, the end result is a decidedly different affair than past TV On The Radio efforts, sounding all the more mature and, admittedly,Read More

by Tom Johnson My dad introduced me to Robert Cray long ago and, even into a new century, little had changed with Cray: He was still putting out dependable, if unspectacular, albums of his smooth brand of blues — a sound that fills in that overlooked category of music thatRead More

by Tom Johnson Bassist Tony Levin has made an incredible career for himself backing some of the finest musicians in the world, but his most notable contributions have been with Peter Gabriel and the ’80s and ’90s incarnations of King Crimson. He left, then returned around this time when TreyRead More

by Tom Johnson Aimee Mann, the former ‘Til Tuesday frontwoman, turned in yet another amazing performance, this time in the form of a concept album centered on boxing as a metaphor for relationships. Or something like that. It doesn’t really matter; what matters was that Mann’s songcraft is once againRead More

Dave Grohl has, for the most part, put aside his throat-bleeding yell. Thank the gods. Oh, it’s still there, to be sure: “Bridge Burning” comes tearing out of the speakers at full bore, Grohl hollering away, but that gives way to singing pretty quick, and then he sticks with itRead More