Various Artists - The Complete Sun Singles, Vol. 6
The sixth and final installment in Bear Family's Complete Sun Singles series doesn't include any Sun records at all. The focus here, instead, is on Sun's sister label, Phillips International, and the 48 singles it released from 1959 to its demise in 1963.
Most
Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver - The Original Band
First, the facts: These two CDs collect four of the most influential bluegrass albums ever made. For anyone with an interest in bluegrass (as opposed to an individual artist here and there), they are required listening. Why? Because Doyle Lawson and his bands created and elaborated on a new sound
Alejandro Escovedo - Bourbonitis Blues
By the standards of a business in which marketing campaigns are measured in years instead of weeks, and new records, even by cult artists, are dropped on us like major position papers, this is a modest effort: a mix of covers and fresh originals, studio tracks and live cuts, bound
Gene Clark - Flying High
One can only hope Gene Clark, peering in from eternity, is chuckling knowingly at the delays and complications that surrounded the release of this all-too-short retrospective. The final postponement, Polydor's dissolution of the U.S. A&M label, makes this one an import. It's all
Paul Westerberg - Beyond misanthropy
"Father. Artist. Midwesterner. Eccentric. Walker..." So begins Paul Westerberg's noun-filled description of himself in the bio for his new album, Suicaine Gratifaction. The order of the words is important, for not only is Westerberg an astute judge of his own character, he's also a
Petty Booka - Country & Far Eastern
Alternative country can have more than one meaning once you get out of Dodge. For Petty Booka, the alternative country is Japan, and their venue is the 24-hour craziness of Tokyo. In the audio wasteland that is Japanese pop, only the strong or really perverse can survive the overwhelming pressure