Sweetback Sisters, “Looking For A Fight”, The Virginian Pilot

Old-school country outfit the Sweetback Sisters, who made their lauded 2009 debut with “Chicken Ain’t Chicken,” have no siblings in the band, are two-thirds male and hail from deep in the heart of … Brooklyn, N.Y. They call themselves a “renegade retro-band that mixes country, swing and honky-tonk.”

Truer words were never uttered as evidenced by this sophomore release.

Fronted by singing “sisters” Zara Bode and Emily Miller, the sextet specializes in close girl-on-girl rockabilly vocals like an estrogen version of the Everly Brothers. With nary a hint of irony or postmodernism, these six players revel in ’50s sounds to the point of recording on analog equipment, giving their music an organic warmth. Sporting four songwriters, the band creates originals that sound classic while making tunes by Patsy Cline, Hazel Dickens, Dwight Yoakam and the Traveling Wilburys sound fresh and energized.   Read more...

Gillian Welch, “The Harrow & the Harvest”, The Los Angeles Times

Does the world still remember Gillian Welch? Maybe best known among mainstream listeners for her entanglement with the “O Brother Where Art Thou” soundtrack back in 2000, it’s been eight long years since Welch released an album.

But questions about timeliness lose meaning pretty fast when listening to Welch teamed with her nearly symbiotic collaborator David Rawlings. Long trafficking in a sometimes spare yet intricately drawn sort of Americana that could fit just as comfortably at the turn of the 20th century, their latest delivers the same deceptively simple alchemy of dustily lilting voices, vivid lyrical twists and crisp acoustic flourishes.   Read more...

Michael Franks, Time Together

Jazz vocalist Michael Franks has a new CD (11 tracks) release titled ‘Time Together’ : it’s a well crafted album (great vocals, melody, piano, saxophone & well produced material/music. Stand-out track is “Now That The Summer Is Over” : wonderful guitar, vocals & melody. This is my favourite track from this CD. The remaining 10 tracks are all great jazz tracks with no weak tracks to talk of : they are “One Day In St. Tropez” (great piano, vocals & melody), “Summer In New York” (wonderful saxophone on ‘strange sounds’), “Mice”, “Charlie Chan In Egypt” (a slow track with great piano, saxophone & vocals), “I’d Rather Be Happy Than Right” (great guitar & vocals), “Time Together” (a slow title track with great guitar pick-ups, piano & vocals), “Samba Blue”, “My Heart Said Wow”, “If I Could Make September Stay” & “Feather From An Angel” (a slow closing track with great piano/bass combination). On overall, the talented jazz vocalist Michael Franks is back with a well crafted CD release ‘Time Together’, a highly recommended CD listening.

Death Cab for Cutie

By their seventh studio album, many bands are running out of creative steam and original ideas. But in the case of Death Cab for Cutie, nothing could be further from the truth. Codes and Keys is singular in the quartet’s catalog when it comes to sonic exploration and lyrical ambition. If anything, the band has never sounded more excited to experiment with textures, words, sounds and even the process of recording itself.   Read more...

Bo-Keys, Got To Get Back

Soul music lovers and crate diggers will eagerly await the June 21 release of ‘Got To Get Back!’ on Electraphonic Recordings from Memphis soul music standard bearers the Bo-Keys, their first in seven years. New converts to the genre via Sharon Jones and others will embrace it upon first listen. Powerhouse guest vocalists join the band, including Stax Records hit-maker William Bell, soul/gospel great Otis Clay, classic Atlantic Records singer Percy Wiggins, and blues legend Charlie Musselwhite, who also blows some of his signature harmonica.

In describing the band in a nutshell, The Memphis Flyer puts it best, “[The] Bo-Keys pair great Stax/Hi-era session players with a younger generation of local session aces.”

Hello Music Lovers!

Welcome to Caroline’s Corner. This is the where I will be talking about the newest metal/hard rock releases. I will also be reviewing any shows that I attend. Sometimes I may go off track a bit and review something that might not be metal but it’s my corner and I can do what I want to do.  Also from time to time I may reach back into the vault and blow the dust off some metal classics.   Read more...

Dolly Parton, Better Day

Parton is that rare singer who can make optimism seem like a viable philosophy. When country music goes upbeat, it often traffics in cornball novelty tunes, but Dolly plays her album full of love ‘n’ hope with straight-up sincerity. In the midst of hard economic times, the positive anthems that fill Better Day — all new material, no covers — come off as brilliant strategy, with some equally brilliant vocal performances.

18TH AMERICAN MUSIC FESTIVAL PRESENTS GREAT AMERICAN BANDS

The 18^th Annual Verizon Wireless American Music Festival will feature three great American headline bands on the  5^th Street Main Stage, on one of America’s great beaches. The Festival will be held between Sept. 2-4.

Stone Temple Pilots will be the featured band beginning at 7:30 p.m., Friday, Sept. 2.  With more than 40 million records sold, STP has remained one of the world’s most popular bands for 20 years. They have had eight No. 1 hits and 16 Top 10 records.  VH1 ranks the band at 40^th on its list of All-Time Greatest Artists of Hard Rock.  STP also won the Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock Performance in 1994, the same year they won Best New Artists in the American Music Awards.  Tickets are $15 advance, $20 day of show.   Read more...

BIRDLAND IN-STORE APPEARANCE, JULY1

Come to Birdland and meet the band

Music’s Next Great Biopics, Billboard

No one wants to talk about a Marvin Gaye movie. Or one aboutJanis Joplin, or a Jimi Hendrix biopic.

As film subjects go, they’re problematic. Heirs to the Joplin and Hendrix estates have blocked films by withholding music and image rights. The pieces to the Gaye story are in so many hands that no one has been able to collect them all in one place.

No, the talk these days is about Queen and Sam Cooke, 2Pac and Teddy Pendergrass, Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys, Frankie Valli’s days in the Four Seasons and Brian Epstein’s career managing the Beatles. A key factor — and this is a shift in the movie-making paradigm — is access to life rights and music, a desire by stars and heirs to have their stories told and a new level of proactivity from rights-holders. Securing recordings and publishing rights has become the first order of business rather than the final step in setting up a film.   Read more...