Generally, I leave the reissue-oriented stuff to my brother Mike Duquette and his site The Second Disc , but occasionally, there is a compilation or reissue that catches my eye enough to want to write something about it. I’ve got to say, Hip-O Select has been killing it with the reissues of late. Pulling from the archives of Universal Music, the company that distributes (or has distributed) MCA, Geffen, Def Jam, A&M and Motown (among other influential labels), they certainly have plenty of source material […]
Posts tagged "album reviews"
Spin Cycle: The Knux’s “Eraser”
The merger of rap and rock is a notoriously dubious proposition: sure, sometimes you get surefire party-rockers like Run-DMC and Aerosmith’s legendary “Walk This Way” team up, Anthrax and Public Enemy’s raucous “Bring the Noise”, or the entire righteous-anger-fueled career of Rage Against the Machine. But more often than not you get Crazy Town. You get Quarashi. You get Limp Bizkit. You get Lil’ Wayne’s Rebirth album, the sound of leaping headfirst into a blender and turning it on. Enter The […]
Spin Cycle: Phonte’s “Charity Starts At Home” // 9th Wonder’s “The Wonder Years”
In the reasonably notable absence of the classic line-up of North Carolina hip-hop trio Little Brother, we’ve been fortunate enough to hear from the individual parts; frontman Phonte made waves as one half of the critically-acclaimed Foreign Exchange, and producer 9th Wonder’s been nothing short of prolific behind the boards. And, of course, there’s Big Pooh, who’s been… well, Pooh’s been doing something, probably. There were even a couple of 9th-less Little Brother albums that totally don’t count because they’re […]
Spin Cycle: Tori Amos’ “Night of Hunters”
Tori Amos’ latest album is high-concept, a little obtuse, and often very, very pretty. At this point, you’d do well to note the date, as that sentence could have been written about every Tori Amos album that’s ever been made. It’s interesting, though, to follow the trajectory of Tori’s career. Early records like Little Earthquakes and Under the Pink are justly heralded as classics – even as, looking back on them, they’re hardly emblematic of the artist Tori would turn into. They’re […]
Spin Cycle: Lady Antebellum’s “Own The Night”
Somewhere along the line, Lady Antebellum changed from just another country group (albeit one with a regrettable choice of name) into the hottest group in music, period. A hit single and a couple of Grammys has a way of doing that for you. At the beginning of 2010, the single and album Need You Now elevated the co-ed trio (consisting of Hillary Scott, Charles Kelley and Dave Haywood) to cross-genre superstardom (it even had a dance remix). With their third […]
Spin Cycle: Mogwai’s “Earth Division” EP
Mogwai is a giant name in the post-rock genre, and rightfully so. They’ve been putting out great music since ’97 and show no signs of stopping any time soon. Earth Division displays a quieter side to Mogwai, leaving the pounding drums and fuzz-soaked guitars (though not entirely) out, making for a much different listening experience. Though the sound isn’t necessarily what one would expect from a Mogwai album the general feeling is still there, as Earth Division still manages to […]
Spin Cycle: Apathy’s “Honkey Kong”
I’m an old school/classic era hip hop junkie, straight up. Since Christmas day, 9 years old when I got my JVC boombox with Run DMC & the Fat Boys self-titled debut tapes to go with it, I was hooked for life. The next ten plus years were great to me, but somewhere along the line the game changed, and not for the better. With few exceptions, since the great era of the mid 90’s I’ve been pretty apathetic towards the […]
Spin Cycle: Hugh Laurie’s “Let Them Talk”
Hey, who wants to read a formulaic paragraph about how actors who turn to music typically churn out vanity projects that nobody ends up liking, citing Bruce Willis and Keanu Reeves as particularly egregious examples? …Good, because I’m not interested in writing it. In other news, House M.D. made a blues record. As it turns out, Hugh Laurie – star of television’s hugely-popular House, among other things – is both an accomplished musician and a tremendous fan of the blues. His […]
Spin Cycle: Brett Detar’s “Bird in the Tangle”
The amazing thing about people (and musicians are, despite the rumors, also people) is that we are rarely static entities. Time and age have a funny way of sculpting our tastes and experiences, to the point that we may not even recognize ourselves in a decade or so. Brett Detar’s debut solo album Bird in the Tangle is a sonic testament to this truth. After turns as a guitarist in metalcore pioneers Zao and as lead vocalist for the indie/alternative […]
Spin Cycle: Puddle of Mudd’s “Re:(disc)overed” // Powerman 5000’s “Copies, Clones & Replicants”
Almost universally maligned as a once-relevant band’s career-twilight last-ditch stab at relevancy, the all-covers album more often than not allows a bereft-of-inspiration artist to court a last gasp of sweet, sweet mainstream success by promising songs the listener already knows and loves, and not those pesky tepid originals that said artist has been peddling for the past twenty years or so to increasingly-diminishing returns. And all under the guise of “paying tribute to our idols, man”. Seems like, to court […]
Spin Cycle: “Black & White America” by Lenny Kravitz
Since his debut in 1989, Lenny Kravitz has been pretty consistently pelted with scorn. Initially, it was because most people (the few who knew who he was, anyway) knew him as the hippie-dippy husband of The Cosby Show’s Lisa Bonet. Even as Lenny built up successes as his own entity (and divorced Bonet), the criticisms continued. Whether it was his deliberately retro sound, his lack of originality, or his occasionally banal lyrics, Lenny couldn’t (and still can’t) seem to catch […]
