XTC was a band that gave pop music a good name. Since their bare, new wave/punk beginnings, melody always mattered.

All music borrows from something else (even though I wonder if that’s really true when I listen to some of the whack jazz I encounter). The difference between a visionary artist and a hack is how creatively the borrowing occurs. No-Man is a band that borrows more creatively than most.Read More

by Nick Deriso There was no reason to believe that the Rolling Stones, 30 years into their dangerously debauched rock career, would make anything worth a damn out of the 1990s. In fact, the preceding decade — one in which, by far, the Stones’ best new thing was actually aRead More

by Nick DeRiso “Come Together,” a concert first envisioned as a benefit to raise anti-violence awareness through the work of John Lennon, was scheduled to be held on Oct. 2, 2001, at New York City’s famed Radio City Music Hall. Then came Sept. 11. This rangy event, featuring recorded snippetsRead More

by Pico Now with Thanksgiving and and that bloody shopping ritual called Black Friday behind us, the Christian season of Advent has begun. For the Catholic faith at least, it starts this Sunday, and lasts until Christmas Eve. This observation of the impending birth of Christ (and his second coming)Read More

The finest of the tracks here point to a musical sensibility that’s a touch too ribald for Crowded House. Tim Finn, who had recently left after a short association with brother Neil’s band, experiments with a number of far-out sounds: A processed background vocal on “Can’t Do Both”; the fuzzyRead More

NICK DERISO: “Whatever happened,” Van Morrison, erstwhile pop singer, old-soul blues gypsy, entertainer-slash-provocateur, sings here, “to the way it’s supposed to happen? And whatever happened to me?” Much, in fact, has happened. Morrison, it’s worth noting, could have settled in as a fixture on pop music’s hit-machine dead end afterRead More

by Nick Deriso Hall and Oates are, of course, the poster boys for what happens when hair gel meets R&B. Funny thing is, they were originally anything but polished. Hall had reportedly been in an early Philly band with Thom Bell, later a central figure in that city’s R&B legacy.Read More

There’s so many records just coming out that I’d love to cover but there’s only time for three at the moment; next week promises more. Two of these three are what we like to call “baby boomer bliss,” in that even though they’re new, they conjure up the spirit ofRead More

by S. Victor Aaron James Taylor went through most of his career without putting together records that have a strong, overall theme to them. That’s changed of late: in 2006 there was a Christmas album and last year it was a live album with little accompaniment. This time out, it’sRead More