Music Reviews

Sort By: Post DateTitle Publish Date
Music Reviews
Paul McCartney: Flowers in the Dirt Super Deluxe Edition
Mike Mettler  |  Jun 07, 2017  | 
Performance
Sound
Paul McCartney was on quite the rollercoaster ride as an artist in the 1980s. He started the decade strong with the mostly one-man effort McCartney II and its on-the-mark hits like the pure pop perfection of “Coming Up” and the still influential electronica of “Temporary Secretary.” (I can also confirm firsthand that the latter track has been an early-set highlight of Sir Paul’s recent 2015-16 Out There! and One on One tour outings.)
Continue Reading »
Music Reviews
Peter Gabriel: Back to Front – Live in London, Deluxe Limited Edition Blu-ray
Mike Mettler  |  Dec 17, 2014  | 
Performance
Sound
Peter Gabriel has made a career out of being a restless chameleon, a man perpetually interested in pushing sonic boundaries rather than remaining in stasis. The roles he’s chosen to inhabit over the last five decades are as varied and forward-thinking as they come: art school rocker. Progressive pundit. Alternative icon. Video vanguard. Electronic interpreter. World music leader. If there are new musical frontiers to discover and master, Gabriel is consistently among the first to dig into the aural dirt.
Continue Reading »
Music Reviews
PG or Not PG?
Ken Richardson  |  Dec 14, 2005  | 

It's been nearly two years since the Janet Jackson Offense at the Super Bowl, so the music industry must be chaste by now. Not exactly! Check out THE LOVEMAKERS, who make rock/electronic dance music with "sexually charged fury," says the bio for their CD, Times of Romance.

Continue Reading »
Music Reviews
Phil Collins: Take a Look at Me Now – Retrospective Reissue Series
Mike Mettler  |  Jun 15, 2016  | 
Performance
Sound
Phil Collins required rehabilitation, and stat. Not only did the noted drummer/vocalist have to deal with a bout of sudden deafness, a lingering hand injury, and recover from back surgery, he also needed to tend to the state of his image. No one could fault the man’s acuity behind the drum kit—a reputation initially forged by his creative deployment of odd time signatures with progressive rock giants Genesis and the fusion improv collective Brand X—but his level of ubiquity on the charts as a solo artist in the ’80s and beyond ultimately served to tip his musical-reputation scales in a not-so-favorable direction.
Continue Reading »
Audio Video NewsMusic Reviews
Picking Up Good Vibrations
Michael Berk  |  Aug 31, 2011  | 

One of the most famous (and probably most bootlegged) unfinished albums in rock history is about to see the light of day in an offical release, authorized by the band, including Brian Wilson (who had in 2004 released - with Van Dyke Parks - his

Continue Reading »
Music Reviews
Pink Floyd: P.U.L.S.E Restored & Re-Edited - Deluxe Edition
Mike Mettler  |  Jun 10, 2022  | 
Performances
Sound
I continue to feel blessed I was able to see Pink Floyd's Division Bell Tour, their last jaunt around the world, at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey on July 17, 1994. Even though I was in the nosebleeds, way up near the top of the back of the stadium, I quite enjoyed the band's overall visual spectacle and the live quad sound system to their intended effects.
Continue Reading »
Music Reviews
Pink Floyd: The Division Bell--20th Anniversary Edition Box Set
Mike Mettler  |  Oct 02, 2014  | 
Performance
Sound
Which one’s Pink? It’s a debate that’s polarized fans ever since Pink Floyd principals David Gilmour and Roger Waters split up their creative partnership in the mid-’80s. Waters went on to build an unprecedented solo live Wall of epic visual and auditory proportions, while Gilmour retained the rights to the band name and constructed two diverse, divergent studio albums and subsequent tours with his other two Floydmates in tow, keyboardist Richard Wright and drummer Nick Mason. The latter of those two LPs, 1994’s admittedly divisive The Division Bell, now comes back to life with a 20th anniversary deluxe celebration in box set form, and thanks to a brilliantly stunning surround sound mix, material initially perceived as B-level reveals itself to have been A all the way.
Continue Reading »
Music Reviews
Pink Floyd: The Later Years - 1987-2019
Mike Mettler  |  Feb 21, 2020  | 
Performace
Sound
Which one's Pink? It's a question the mighty members of Pink Floyd have answered more than once throughout their unmatched 50-plus-year career. No matter who's been at the helm—the wide-eyed lysergic-minded guitarist/vocalist Syd Barrett, the uncompromising iconoclast bassist/vocalist Roger Waters, or the melodic linchpin guitarist/vocalist David Gilmour — the mantra of delivering music that's always high fidelity, first class has been at the core of Pink Floyd's production values from the very beginning.
Continue Reading »
Music Reviews
Porcupine Tree: Lightbulb Sun
Ken Richardson  |  Jul 15, 2008  | 
Porcupine Tree: Lightbulb Sun

Kscope/Snapper

Continue Reading »
Music Reviews
Prince 1999 - Super Deluxe Edition
Mike Mettler  |  Apr 17, 2020  | 
Performance
Sound
Prince was determined. While he had made some inroads on both the sales charts and urban radio with his first four hot-button, mostly one-man-show albums of the late-'70s and early-'80s, an opening slot on The Rolling Stones' 1981 tour exposed the narrowmindedness of many concertgoers who outright booed and/or threw things at Prince and his band while they were onstage.
Continue Reading »
Music Reviews
R.E.M.: New Adventures in Hi-Fi: 25th Anniversary Deluxe Edition
Mike Mettler  |  Feb 25, 2022  | 
Performance
Sound
R.E.M. were the undisputed kings of American-bred alt-rock by the time the mid-1990s rolled around. Emerging from the college-town kudzu of Athens, Georgia, with the game-changing jangle of July 1981's "Radio Free Europe" single and August 1982's subsequent Chronic Town EP, the underground quartet perfected a more fully realized signature sound on their April 1983 full-length debut, Murmur.
Continue Reading »
Music Reviews
Rachmaninov—Piano Concerto No. 2, Paganini Rhapsody—Lang Lang, Orchestra of the Mariinsky Theatre, Valery Gergiev (Deutsche Grammophon) [SACD/CD]
Mark Fleischmann  |  Oct 04, 2005  | 
Sergei Rachmaninov's second piano concerto demands both a virtuoso pianist and a huge, supple orchestral sound. It gets both in this multichannel recording from Deutsche Grammophon, which pairs Lang Lang with a venerable Russian orchestra.
Continue Reading »
Music Reviews
Rave On, Raveonettes
 |  Jun 09, 2011  | 

My current favorite all-format album is the Raveonettes' Raven in the Grave (Vice), which sounds smoky-fab whether I'm listening to it via CD, MP3, or LP. I asked Raveonettes co-founder Sune Rose Wagner, 38, how the band (Wagner and co-conspirator Sharin Foo) corrals the backbeat for its 21st-century-cool Wall of Sound. Read on for his answers (and for a listen to "Forget That You're Young," a track from the new album.)

Continue Reading »
Music Reviews
Red Hot Chili Peppers: Stadium Arcadium
Billy Altman  |  Jul 05, 2006  | 
Stadium Arcadium Warner Bros.
Music •••• Sound ••••
Topping two hours, this double CD is almost too much of a good thing - espe
Continue Reading »
Music Reviews
Reference CD Review: Band of Horses
Rob O'Connor  |  Dec 03, 2007  | 
Cease to Begin Sub Pop
Music •••• Sound •••••

By turning down the reverb, punching up the melodies, saying goodbye to co-fou

Continue Reading »

Pages

X