Fairly or not, Manfred Eicher’s ECM Records has long been saddled with a reputation for producing airy and cavernous Euro-jazz, best exemplified by Keith Jarrett’s…
Few things rankle a Southerner quite like the feeling that they’re being condescended to or underestimated by an outsider, and Good Old Boys toes a very fine…
Purple Rain begins with a funeral, but not with mourning: It’s a celebration — a gateway into new life and a new world, where “you can always see…
Though the cumulative impact of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan is considerable, and its achievement is towering, it remains a strangely difficult record to discuss by way of…
The boozy, bloozy, cacophonous conclusion to Bob Dylan’s mid-60s “electric” trilogy, Blonde on Blonde feels every bit the culmination of…something. A wild fever dream of an album, owing…
Though lauded today for lending traction in the then up-and-coming genre of jazz fusion, In a Silent Way was received as heresy on its release. Miles Davis’s most…
Samuel Gene Maghett entered Cobra’s recording studios in 1957 as “Good Rocking Sam,” and luckily for all of us, some other Samuel was already laying…
In late 1992, a newly formed Rage Against the Machine released their self-titled debut. In doing so, they created something that was considered unmarked territory up to…
Pretty much all songs on all of Elliott Smith’s released recordings are immaculate on both the structural and engineering fronts, which doesn’t make them any less…
Beginning with its titular event and ending with a funeral, Prince’s Parade is obsessed with love, sex and death. If that weren’t enough baggage, Parade also serves as the soundtrack…
Wide Open Spaces can be counted more as a reboot than as a debut. Sisters Martie Seidel and Emily Robison had originated the Dixie Chicks with vocalist Laura…
The debut album from America’s greatest songwriter contains a scant two originals alongside 11 covers, ensuring that it will always be somewhat overlooked or written…
In a career marked by artistic triumphs, one might just as easily track Cecil Taylor’s long journey by highlighting his periods of exile. He was still…
Erick Sermon and Parrish Smith nicked expensive names to big up their first effort as EPMD on debut Strictly Business. That was just how it was done back in…
“Let’s approach this like it’s our last album,” Billy Corgan claims to have said to his bandmates, in so many words, before work began on…
There were country music concept albums before In Search of a Song and there would be many after, from modern sounds in country & western music to…
Recorded at the height of her powers, Mack the Knife — Ella in Berlin is the definitive answer to the question “Who is Ella Fitzgerald?” It’s an education spread across…
“The cat record” is how I identified Tapestry at the age of five — initial fascination with my mother’s scruffy vinyl copy stemming less from its warm musicality and…
When first stumbling my way through the world of jazz, falling in love with Thelonious Monk seemed only natural. His choices from note to note are ubiquitous,…