These two Paul McCartney albums show a willingness to strip down what had become a varnished sound. But they haven’t aged in the same way.

by Mark Saleski The news reports have been (necessarily) very sketchy at this point. All we know is that Clarence Clemons has suffered a stroke. You May Also Like: Reevaluating Bruce Springsteen’s ‘The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle’ Patti Scialfa Once Again Showed She Could Stand onRead More

This remarkable lost classic was not released until 2000 — because the tapes were thought to have been destroyed … until they were found in a warehouse in 1999. Done just three weeks before Otis Spann’s death from liver cancer, Muddy Waters‘ most sympathetic pianist is featured primarily with hisRead More

Black Country Communion may not invented any new formulas but they are executing the old ones closer to perfection than anyone else.

by Mark Saleski I have to purchase my Peter Brötzmann only very occasionally because it takes a while to get over the blatant intensity. Recorded at the Molde International Jazz Festival, this is really what European improvised jazz is all about. Well, maybe not all, but certainly a side ofRead More

There aren’t a whole lot of lyrics to this Steely Dan song, but I’ve never been quite able to decipher them. No one else seems to be too sure what they mean, either.

by Tom Johnson This trio is basically Bill Frisell’s home away from home, it seems. If he’s not putting out his own solo album, it seems like you can almost count on something from this trio sooner or later, where he indulges his more straight-ahead jazz tendencies. The joy inRead More

Americana singer-songwriter Mike McGuire travels a land of heavy weather, echoing church bells, sad tales and long memories. But he never lets go of the one thing that binds us together: Faith, in ourselves, in our future paths, in our country. It’s something that adds a sustaining power to BeyondRead More

Like an aging boxer making an heroic late-round stand, James “Superharp” Cotton brilliantly tangles on a timeless favorite from his 1960s tenure with Vanguard, giving fellow harp master Billy Branch all he can handle. You May Also Like: James Cotton, Shemekia Copeland, Gary Clark Jr. + others – Muddy WatersRead More

I know what I like, but you won’t find me setting any rules. This is as close to a “philosophy of music” as you’re going to get out of me. That idea has been the driving force behind most of the stuff I write about, especially when there’s “musical evangelism”Read More