Aimee Mann - The Forgotten Arm
It's easy to see how, if a song you wrote served as the primary inspiration for a movie -- as Aimee Mann's "Deathly" did for Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia, the soundtrack of which was fleshed out with more of Mann's
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Maria McKee - Peddlin' Dreams
Within the wistful romantic reverie of the folkish, album-opening "Season Of The Fair", the first words from Maria McKee are "Will you remember me?" She sings the song to a former lover, yet she could just as easily be addressing the question to the audience that
Various Artists - Dirty Laundry: The Soul Of Black Country
In the liner notes to this 24-song anthology, compiler Jonathan Fischer shares history and insights that overlap with such works as Bill C. Malone's Country Music, U.S.A., Barney Hoskyns' Say It One Time For The Brokenhearted, John Lomax III's Nashville: Music City USA
Doug Sahm & The Sir Douglas Quintet - The Complete Mercury Recordings
If sales figures were a guiding compass, Doug Sahm was at best a minor regional artist who enjoyed brief pop chart success in the mid-to-late 1960s. But given his sphere of influence as a Texas musician -- he was the Texas musician who could play all the roots sounds, from
Charlie Poole - You Ain't Talkin' To Me: Charlie Poole And The Roots Of Country Music
Lord knows Charlie Poole deserves a box set; he's only the father of country banjo, more or less. But at first I questioned whether he deserved this box set. That's because Poole is on only 43 of the 72 tracks gathered here; the others are by
Chip Taylor & Carrie Rodruiguez - Red Dog Tracks
Any recording that begins with invocations of whiskey, the devil, a full moon and mountains rolling to the sea to the accompaniment of a banjo industriously plinked in counterpoint to a fiddle and a harmonica is worth paying attention to.
When that first song is topped by the next song,
Lucinda Williams - Live At The Fillmore
Live albums have a tortuous history, serving all too often as mere tour souvenirs, stopgaps between studio works, or fulfillments of contractual obligations. It's a rare live album that stands on its own as a complete and significant artistic statement.
Lucinda Williams' first concert album, Live At