It’s refreshing to hear new, original music that isn’t self-absorbed and fraudulent like that of so many contemporary singer/songwriters crying into their imported beer. Hellbound for the Highway suffers as a result of weak lyrics—overused stuff—but excels in music that is tough, honest and technically proficient. One can ignore the words and not be burdened...

In the 1960s Ravi Shankar became Mr. Indian Music to a world of young musicians, influencing the direction of the Beatles and psychedelic rock. As noted in the booklet essay accompanying Rare and Glorious, the accomplished sitar player came from a family of musical ambassadors to the West that...

Charlotte Gainsbourg’s near-death experience following a water-skiing accident in 2007 resulted in countless unnerving hours spent in MRI machines, a realization that we all may be living on borrowed time, and Gainsbourg’s most personal and cohesive album to date. While not a songwriter herself, Gainsbourg knows how to pick her creative partners. Her first album, recorded when Gainsbourg was just 13, was conceived...

The New England Conservatory (NEC) has long been at the forefront of jazz education, boasting a sterling staff and many illustrious alumni. ART-i-facts collects a baker’s dozen selections from the school’s jazz studies concert series and includes elegantly rendered swing, energized bebop, moody instrumental ballads...

Milwaukee’s Brian Drow works casual experimentation into the usual introspection and gentle encouragement proffered by his singer-songwriter style. Acoustic guitar and harmonica dominate, along with wispy, bittersweet reminiscences, but Drow mixes it up enough to keep his work compelling. Among the...

Music producer Rick Rubin doesn’t read music or write lyrics. But he feels things deeply. And when you seamlessly weave his gift of intuition with a spiritual yet complicated artist like the late Johnny Cash, one thing is created: an overwhelmingly...

The surprising thing about Valleys of Neptune is that it took more than 40 years for this collection of 1969 Jimi Hendrix recordings to surface. Some songs—“Stone Free,” “Fire” and “Red House”—aren’t new, but new versions appear on this 12-cut CD. Other numbers like “Lullaby for the Summer” and “Crying Blue...

As a performer and composer of country songs, Hank Williams had absolute, rock-solid consistency. Williams’ writing credentials have never been in question, and with Hank Williams Revealed—the second three-CD set of songs intended for one-time radio broadcast—Williams’ abilities as a performer...

Statobahn, founded by Milwaukee music vets David Hucke and Peter Torres, plays heavy rock with a decidedly progressive edge. Bludgeoning guitars agitate against the more celestial tones of organ and other keyboards. The act has a secret weapon, too, in Debbie Seeger's thumping bass. None of the four songs...

Folk music might be best appreciated when one mingles among other folks. Veteran Milwaukee folkie Jym Mooney proves that point on this collection of concert recordings from 1981 to 2009. Whether at The Coffee House, on Wisconsin Public Radio's “Simply Folk” or entertaining at a festival in Shawano...

Several of Gustav Mahler’s monumental and challenging symphonies have become staples in classical music, overshadowing the composer’s more intimate songwriting. Baritone Christian Gerhaher and pianist Gerold Huber would like to raise the prominence of Mahler’s lieder in the concert repertoire by calling...

The language barrier will doubtlessly keep Longital from mainstream American audiences, but open-minded alt rock fans will find reason to enjoy the music of one of Slovakia’s most popular bands. Longital combines the plucked, staccato rhythms of acoustic strings with electric guitar edge on some numbers, while soaring...

Eloy should be a familiar name to progressive-rock fans of a certain age. And now, thanks to the outstanding reunion album Visionary—the German band’s first studio record since 1998 and released to coincide with Eloy’s 40th anniversary—a whole new generation of listeners can hear what all the fuss was...

Richard LaValliere has traipsed through a few musical genres since his pioneering Milwaukee punk and post-punk bands, The Haskels and Oil Tasters. The name of his latest band offers a clue as to LaValliere's unforgotten Brewtown roots. Brooklyn, N.Y.’s Polkafinger revives the idea of melding Eastern European...

Mix-master Moreno Visini has employed many names and guises as a DJ on the New York club scene, including Zeb and his latest incarnation, The Spy From Cairo. His CD under that name is a trance-inducing vision of the Near East transposed to a contemporary dance floor. Unlike some failed efforts in this vein by...

Milwaukee distaff rockabilly foursome Crazy Rocket Fuel make their retro country rockin' danceable while playing up bad girl imagery. Some of the language and metaphor they employ would surely have gotten Wanda Jackson a radio ban in her '50s heyday. These gals, however, work their sass factor...

By now, most of the great recorded performances of classical music have been issued and reissued again. And yet, the archives are being scoured for new discoveries. One recent find is Vladimir Horowitz’s 1986 recital in Berlin, recovered from a German radio archive. Although 82-years old at the time, the great pianist...

Gary Tanin’s name might not ring a bell with all local rock fans. But as a veteran producer, he’s worked with some of the city’s finest and best-known musicians—including the BoDeans’ Sam Llanas, the Violent Femmes’ Victor DeLorenzo and Genesis’ Daryl Stuermer. Natural Selection gathers 18 songs from...

New Orleans has always been America’s most unique city, nurturing great music from the days of Jelly Roll Morton and Louis Armstrong through the present. Galactic, a contemporary Crescent City band, has second-line marching band rhythms and staccato horns in its bones. And like the city itself, Katrina or no...

On any sunny day on the beaches of Santa Cruz, Calif., a crowd might gather to hear a true world music hybrid, SambaDá. Formed by Brazilian immigrants and their Yankee neighbors, the band distills the easygoing lilt of bossa nova into a rock-funk format, with carnival rhythms and echoes of more ancient...

On her second album, Jen Gloeckner digresses occasionally into the elastic whiplash chords of rock, or slips into a harsh-tongued vocal emulation of Americana. Mostly, Mouth of Mars is a layered, largely acoustic sequence of soundscapes involving febrile and agitated strings, percussive echoes and surreal...

Mention Cambodia and the killing fields of the country’s Communist regime still come to mind. But since the toppling of the Khmer Rouge and, later, the restoration of a constitutional monarchy, Cambodians have taken steps to reclaim their culture from the devastation wrought by Pol Pot, one of the 20th century’s most...

On his latest studio album, Odd, veteran one-man band Keller Williams sounds perpetually stoned—just the way his fans like him. Williams receives minimal accompaniment on these dozen tracks, and he keeps the arrangements sparse enough that he’ll be able to handle them just fine at his whimsical solo gigs...

At the heart of The Singing Image of Fire is the poetry of Rumi and other timeless literature from the Near East, India and the Far East. Led by drummer Brian Adler, Prana Trio’s music seems inspired by the atmospheric chamber jazz of the old ECM label—a rippling symphony of orchestral percussion and fluid...

Coco Montoya's new album is a compilation of original songs and covers drawn from three albums released in the mid- to late-1990s, after a 10-year run with John Mayall's Bluesbreakers. All three CDs received critical acclaim, and his debut album earned him a W.C. Handy Award for Best New Blues Artist, along...