Music Reviews

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Music Reviews
The BBB Featuring Bernie Dresel - The Pugilist
David Vaughn  |  Mar 04, 2022  | 
Performance
Sound
In all honesty, I had never heard the name Bernie Dresel until I was sent The Pugilist, the latest disc from his jazz band, The BBB Featuring Bernie Dresel, to review. The outfit is a collection of studio musicians who play together at Los Angeles-area jazz clubs, but chances are you've heard their various talents before. For example, Dresel has 25 movie credits to his name, with A-list soundtracks such as Mission: Impossible III, Star Trek (2009), and Spider-Man: Far from Home, just to name three. Other members of the band also have extensive backgrounds with various Hollywood productions, and this ultimately brought them together back in 2014.
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Music Reviews
The Beach Boys: Pet Sounds – 50th Anniversary Collectors Edition
Mike Mettler  |  Aug 08, 2016  | 
Performance
Sound
For certain musicians, creativity is sometimes fueled by a deep desire to impress their peers. That was certainly the case with Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys and Paul McCartney of The Beatles, two members of an exclusive cross-continent mutual-admiration society who made adventurous music for the masses with an additional “can you top this” flair.
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Music Reviews
The Beach Boys: Sail On Sailor – 1972 Deluxe Edition Box Set
Mike Mettler  |  Jan 26, 2023  | 
Performances
Sound
In the early-1970s, two new VIP members of The Beach Boys not sporting the surnames Wilson, Love, or Jardine came to the forefront of the band — namely, guitarist/vocalist Blondie Chaplin and guitarist/drummer Ricky Fataar. Though their tenure in The Beach Boys was short-lived, the energy and creative verve these two artists of South African descent injected into this consummate California band’s era-transitional gambits were noticeably palpable for a decade, often overshadowed by the sheer magnitude of their groundbreaking 1960s recordings.
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Music Reviews
The Beatles Love—Apple/Capitol
Steve Guttenberg  |  Apr 13, 2007  | 
We’ve all made mix “tapes” of our favorite tunes, and now the Beatles’ producer, Sir George Martin, has made his—Love was conceived for the Cirque du Soleil Las Vegas stage show. Or perhaps Love was inspired by the infamous Danger Mouse/Jay-Z mashup, The Grey Album, but, whatever the reason, I’m thrilled with Love, it’s all you need, after all.
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Music Reviews
The Beatles: 1+ Deluxe Edition
Mike Mettler  |  Feb 18, 2016  | 
Performance
Sound
How do you improve upon perfection? That is the central question at the very core of the 1+ collection—emphasis very much on the plus—the latest must-have Deluxe Edition to emerge from The Beatles’ empiric vaults. Fifty Beatles classics—all of The Fab Four’s 27 #1 hits, plus 23 additional cuts that include alternate versions of some of those aforementioned moptop chart-toppers—are presented here on two Blu-ray Discs in filmed form, all accompanied by stunning 5.1 mixes done by Giles Martin with Sam Okell at Abbey Road Studios. (The CD is a stereo remaster of the original 1 disc released in 2000, which has sold 31 million copies internationally to date.)
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Music ReviewsMusic and Soundtrack Features
The Beatles: Let It Be Super Deluxe Edition
Mike Mettler  |  Nov 19, 2021  | 
Performance
Sound
Could May 1970's Let It Be possibly be The Beatles' most underrated core studio album—and is such a thing even possible? To be sure, when Let It Be initially dropped as the free-thinking 1960s gave way to the much grittier 1970s, the album was seen as an imperfect endpoint for a once-in-a-lifetime epoch in popular music—whereas September 1969's Abbey Road, which was actually completed after the Let It Be sessions but was still released eight months ahead of that album, actually serves as a better-suited final exclamation point and nod to their fans as the final, definitive statement of the fully active Beatles era.
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Music Reviews
The Black Crowes: Warpaint
Rob O'Connor  |  Jul 31, 2008  | 
Silver Arrow
Music ••½ Sound •••½

In pop music terms, a span of 7 years ain't what it used to be.

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Music Reviews
The Black Eyed Peas: The Beginning
Jaan Uhelszki  |  Feb 28, 2011  | 
 
Interscope
Music ••½ Sound ••••

Call me naive, but I think album titles should mean something. When the Black Eyed Peas unleashed their poptastic The E.N.D.

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Music Reviews
The Blu Album
Ken Richardson  |  Sep 27, 2011  | 

To say "The Blu Album" is not to suggest that Steven Wilson's Grace for Drowning (Kscope) is as wildly diverse as the Beatles' "White Album" - even if Wilson rightly calls his own double-disc set "more experimental and more eclectic" than his previous solo outing, 2009's Insurgentes, with jazz and classical influen

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Music Reviews
The Blu Album Page 2
Ken Richardson  |  Sep 27, 2011  | 

To say “The Blu Album” is not to suggest that Steven Wilson’s Grace for Drowning (Kscope) is as wildly diverse as the Beatles’ “White Album” — even if Wilson rightly calls his own double-disc set “more experimental and more eclectic” than his previous solo outing, 2009’s Insurgentes, with jazz and classical influen

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Music Reviews
The Brain Box: Cerebral Sounds of Brain Records 1972-1979
Mike Mettler  |  Aug 09, 2017  | 
Performance
Sound
Let there be Kraut! So goes the Kampfschrei, or battle cry associated with the Krautrock movement of the 1970s. If you’re unfamiliar with this relatively experimental musical form, it probably won’t surprise you to learn Krautrock’s origins are rooted in, of course, Germany. Rather than follow the more blues-based framework that served as the springboard for much of the rock that came out of the U.K. and U.S. during that era, the progenitors of Krautrock sought to build their music more on the avant-garde and progressive fringes, laying down a free-form template for the post-punk, improv jazz, electronic, ambient, and even New Age tuneage that would follow. Incidentally, the scene also has been referred to as kosmische Musik, or cosmic music—and rightly so, since its practitioners often seemed to shoot for the stars.
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Music Reviews
The Clash
Mike Mettler  |  Nov 21, 2013  | 
Performance
Sound
Punk. Rock. Reggae. Hip-hop. Ska. Dub. Soul. Jazz. Rockabilly. No, this isn’t a listing of all the sections in one of the only remaining cool record stores left standing; this is the breadth of the genre-bending legacy of The Clash. And the sonic scope of Sound System is set to prove The Clash may very well be The Only Band That (Still) Matters.
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Music Reviews
The Decemberists: The Hazards of Love
Brett Milano  |  Apr 26, 2009  | 
Capitol
Music •••• Sound ••••
It's no surprise that, after going semi-conceptual for The Crane Wife in 2006, the Decemberists have now gone al
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Music Reviews
The Derek Trucks Band: Already Free
 |  Feb 24, 2009  | 
Victor/Sony
Music •••• Sound ••••
Guitarist Derek Trucks has long felt suffocated by his Southern heritage and prodigious lineage - and of course, by all t
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Music Reviews
The Doors’ Perception breaks on through.
Steve Guttenberg  |  Apr 16, 2007  | 
Wide Open
The Doors’ Perception breaks on through. The Doors’ self-titled first album was in an altogether darker, more theatrical, sinful, and sexual musical realm than anything heard in 1967. It was one hell of a debut, and, 40 years on, it still sounds incredibly unique. The band functioned with a collective spirit, and its four members—Jim Morrison, vocals; Ray Manzarek, keyboards; Robbie Krieger, guitar; and John Densmore, drums—shared songwriting and arranging credits on most of the tunes.
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