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Tuesday, June 30,2009

Crimson Jazz Trio

King Crimson Songbook, Volume 2 (Inner Knot)

By David Luhrssen
The strength of great songs can be measured by how well they stand being reinterpreted, especially in ways that might not have occurred to their authors. Could Robert Fripp have imagined his prog rock epic, "In the Court of the Crimson King," as a post-bop instrumental, opening an album of jazz renderings of music by King Crimson?
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Tuesday, June 30,2009

Monks

Black Monk Time (Light in the Attic)

By Casey Bye
Dubbed the "Anti-Beatles," the Monks were formed in 1964 by five American G.I.'s stationed in Germany. 1966 saw the release of Black Monk Time followed by a quick slip into obscurity, their garage-psych-punk and chant call and response vocals remembered mostly by obsessive collector weirdos. Luckily, most of those weirdos started bands of their own. And the 35-page liner notes that accompany this lovingly...
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Tuesday, June 30,2009

B. Reith

The Forecast EP (Gotee)

By Jamie Lee Rake
Brown Deer native Brian Reith has moved to Tennessee, but raps with such sweet soul that his hometown should be proud. Fellow white R&B crooners such as Justin Timberlake and Robin Thicke may want to watch their backs for B.'s honeyed tenor. Alongside his religious and social concerns, Reith excels...
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Tuesday, June 30,2009

Elvis Costello

Secret, Profane & Sugarcane (Hear Music)

By David Luhrssen
Elvis Costello's frequent collaborator T-Bone Burnett produced Secret, Profane & Sugarcane, an Americana-inflected album working with country and folk traditions for images of sawdust floors set to mandolin and fiddle. Costello intended one song, "Complicated Shadows," for Johnny Cash, but the Man in Black died before recording...
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Tuesday, June 30,2009

Grizzly Bear

Veckatimest (Warp)

By Casey Bye
Remember when bands cared about albums as an art form? Instead of slapping together a dozen tracks because, hey, they'll just end up on everyone's iPod shuffle anyway, musicians considered how their songs might congeal as a whole or form some sort of dramatic arc. Allow Grizzly Bear to reintroduce you to...
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Tuesday, June 23,2009

Mediterranean Music

New Songs from Points East

By David Luhrssen
With the rise of nationalism, the music of the Eastern Mediterranean was categorized according to political borders, ethnicity, the languages of the singers. But despite many local variations, the continuities in a region marked by the common heritage of Hellenism, Byzantium and Islam are important...
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Sunday, June 21,2009

Van der Graaf’s Latest CD

By David Luhrssen
At times dreamy, at other moments urgent, the organ leads the way on Trisector, the 11th album by British progressive rock band Van der Graaf Generator. One is tempted to say legendary prog rock band, and for once, the word legend is more than mere hyperbole. Van der Graaf Generator has kept the integrity...
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Friday, June 19,2009

Michelle Shocked

Soul of My Soul (Mighty Sound)

By Morton Shlabotnik
Covering miles of musical ground on Soul of My Soul, Michelle Shocked works the tougher precincts of alt country and vulnerable balladry, and ventures toward old-school soul and new-wave rock, leading the way with her strong, confident vocals. Topically, Shocked opens painful personal wounds, searches for spirituality and...
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Friday, June 19,2009

Lily Storm

If I Had a Key to the Dawn (Songbat)

By David Luhrssen
By her account, Lily Storm has no village roots in the Eastern European/Western Asian region whose music she loves, yet If I Had a Key to the Dawn suggests she's native to the dozen or so lands whose repertoires she performs. Based in San Francisco and working with a band that includes accordion, wooden flute and a bevy of string instruments, Storm has gained mastery over the octave-gliding sustain, the melancholy...
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Friday, June 19,2009

Douglas King

Resonant Hush: Deceptively Simple Melodies Vol. 2 (Mindworm)

By Jamie Lee Rake
Every now and again, a recording artist knows exactly how to describe his or her music. Milwaukee's Douglas King calls his gentle way with a piano "new age classical ambient acoustic keyboard music." The 37 selections on Resonant Hush last about 76 minutes, and King delivers motifs with just enough embellishment to give his miniature melodies a heft that might otherwise escape them. King calls the tunes...
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Friday, June 19,2009

Damon Fowler

Sugar Shack (Blind Pig)

By Sonia Khatchadourian
In an era when individual songs, rather than albums, are the preferred choice of many music consumers, it seems no longer necessary, or even desired, for an album to be stylistically consistent and cohesive. Perhaps to adapt to a changed market, record companies previously known for promoting one type of music have been diversifying, which may be liberating for musicians who prefer to record a variety of songs...
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Monday, June 15,2009

John Sieger

Live at Bob’s (Faux Real)

By Blaine Schultz
In the '80s, when John Sieger was in the R&B Cadets, you might have labeled his songs revisionist. Later, with Semi-Twang, the band's heartland sound would be seen as a precursor to alt-country. But as the times catch up with each solo album, it becomes clear that the Milwaukeean's songs are simply timeless. Taking his cues from the...
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Monday, June 15,2009

J.J. Cale

Roll On (Rounder)

By Todd Lazarski
Opening studio album No. 15, Roll On, with some rapping about modern-day angst ("Who Knew") and a reflection on his advancing age ("Former Me"), J.J. Cale might hint at a wizened, changed outlook. Yet besides a couple of digital bleeps and embellishments (who showed the old guy Pro Tools?), this is but another installment...
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Thursday, June 11,2009

Traveling Music

Rough Sounds From Milwaukee and Elsewhere

By David Luhrssen
Music composed from recordings of seemingly random sounds or with the debris discarded by mainstream society is almost inevitably imperfect. Then again, is perfection more than an approximation or an ideal in an imperfect world? Milwaukee's Jeff Winkowski and Jason Mohr were fascinated by the value of imperfection when they organized the record label and book publisher Imperfect Music...
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Monday, June 8,2009

Mariachi Real de San Diego

Mariachi Classics (Mardi Gras)

By David Luhrssen
Somehow, mariachi became synonymous with tourist trade Mexico. But in origin, it was a deeply rooted folk music of Mexico's poor, coalescing a century ago around the time the blues was born a little further north. Mariachi Real de San Diego reclaims that heritage, scouring thrift stores for scratchy old records and learning the old songs before they are forgotten. Their new CD, Mariachi Classics, is full of the...
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Monday, June 8,2009

Marshall Crenshaw

Jaggedland (429 Records)

By David Luhrssen
In the '80s Marshall Crenshaw could find a bittersweet shadow of melancholy on the sunniest day. He was a pop-rock classicist imbued with the verities of smart but not intellectualized words and melodious music, supple and never wimpy as he addressed the human heart. On his first album in several years, Crenshaw's core sound remains intact, sometimes delivered with a harder guitar edge than in the...
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Monday, June 8,2009

Christopher’s Project

No Deposit No Return

By Jamie Lee Rake
Traditional and free jazz purists may deride it, but lite/fusion leaves room for versatility. Take Milwaukee saxophonist Christopher Pipkins and his Christopher's Project. No Deposit NoReturn starts off with the usual suspects of his genre: silk bathrobes, aromatic candles, chocolate-coated strawberries and nights of intermingling limbs. But the Project goes from strength to strength in tackling samba, reasonably...
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Monday, June 8,2009

Tony Bennett & Bill Evans

The Complete Recordings (Fantasy)

By David Luhrssen
Tony Bennett emerged as a pop singer from the end pages of the era that produced the Great American Songbook. Growing up in the 1940s, he loved the craft of the songwriters and the melodic inventiveness of jazz. Pianist Bill Evans emerged a bit later as an important figure in the jazz world for his work with Miles Davis...
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Monday, June 1,2009

The Pale Figures

Memphis and Chicago (Peacefist)

By Jamie Lee Rake
Chicago Americana band The Pale Figures recorded part of their debut CD in their hometown, but the lure of Memphis drew them to Tennessee to record other numbers. What might have been intended as a stark contrast comes off instead as a progression from laconic, lyrically quizzical fits of slacker twang to experimentation...
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Monday, June 1,2009

Carbon Leaf

Nothing Rhymes With Woman (Vanguard)

By Michael Popke
Not many words may rhyme with "woman," but the Virginia-based quintet Carbon Leaf still finds plenty to say on its eighth CD. Treading the squiggly line between indie rockers and jam band, the appeal of these casual dudes-particularly verbose vocalist/lyricist Barry Privett-lies in their ability to not get too worked up about...
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Monday, June 1,2009

Pete Seeger

American Favorite Ballads (Smithsonian Folkways)

By David Luhrssen
Pete Seeger, who turned 90 last month, can look back on a life of accomplishment. Many tributes marked his birthday, including this five-CD box set comprised of the traditional American folk tunes he recorded for the Folkways label between 1957 and 1962. Seeger was always more folklorist than folk singer in the strictest sense. The product of a comfortably well-off New York family...
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Friday, May 29,2009

Happy Birthday, Luaka Bop

David Byrne's World Party

By David Luhrssen
During the 1980s, the Talking Heads broke out from their brittle, avant-punk, art-funk origins into a wider, world-conscious sound. Leading them on was David Byrne, a cultural omnivore drawn to obscure local music traditions from all over. Leveraging his commercial success with the Talking Heads, Byrne founded one of the world's best, most diverse boutique labels, Luaka Bop. Twenty-one years later, Luaka Bop...
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Monday, May 25,2009

Various Artists

Classic Protest Songs From Smithsonian Folkways (Smithsonian Folkways)

By David Luhrssen
American protest songs have a long history, especially on the picket lines of bygone labor struggles. During the 1950s and '60s they confronted popular culture as part of the folk music revival that nurtured Joan Baez and Bob Dylan. Culling from the archives of a label that was at the forefront of the folk revival, Classic Protest Songs presents...
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Monday, May 25,2009

Various Artists

The Complete Motown Singles Vol. 11B (Hip-O Select/Motown)

By Jamie Lee Rake
The 12th volume of the ambitious, luxuriously appointed multiple-CD set collecting every single released on Motown Records and its many imprints marks something of an event for Milwaukee music collectors. The label's sporadic cracks at the rock market were especially evident at the dawn of the '70s, and...
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Tuesday, May 19,2009

Rehyn

A Time to Fly (Funtup)

By Jamie Lee Rake
It would be too easy to compare Milwaukee's Rehyn to Carole King in her Tapestry prime. Considering her age, however, it's fair to believe that Rehyn's softly sung vocals with piano were influenced by contemporaries such as Vanessa Carlton. On her debut EP, Rehyn plumbs some philosophical depths, appears a tad emotionally masochistic and-no surprise-sounds like she's loved and lost. Rehyn...
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