Mike Mettler

Music Disc ReviewsMusic and Soundtrack Features
The Beatles: Let It Be Super Deluxe Edition
Mike Mettler  |  Nov 19, 2021  |  1 comments
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.
Continue Reading >
Music and Soundtrack Features
Remaster Class: Roxy Music: Avalon
Mike Mettler  |  Nov 12, 2021  |  1 comments
Considering how much Roxy Music were deemed outliers in the 1970s as a band pioneering the blend of glam jams with progressive elegance, Avalon, their May 1982 masterpiece of rock chic, is truly a musical entity unto itself. Avalon lays bare the aural tenets of the très-cool Roxy aesthetic, taken to their most go-for-baroque extremes—all of it in the most ear-pleasing of ways.
Continue Reading >
Blu-ray Movie ReviewsUltra HD Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Almost Famous
Mike Mettler  |  Oct 15, 2021  |  0 comments
Picture
Sound
Extras
As someone nicknamed "Almost Famous" by the road crew of a band I've been embedded with on scores of their North American tours over the past two decades, I can attest firsthand to the accuracy of every backstage moment seen on unadulterated display in director/screenwriter Cameron Crowe's film of the same name. Indeed, Almost Famous is Crowe's love-letter depiction of his early/ mid-1970s zeitgeist years spent as a geeky teenage scribe desperately trying to act cool while seeking to chronicle the true essence of rock & roll and life on the road.
Continue Reading >
Stream On
Why It’s Time for an Apple Music Refresh
Mike Mettler  |  Oct 13, 2021  |  1 comments
Now that Apple has upgraded its vast music library to lossless audio, is it time to refresh your music library?
Continue Reading >
Music and Soundtrack Features
Remaster Class: Bob Marley & The Wailers: Legend
Mike Mettler  |  Oct 01, 2021  |  0 comments
Calling Bob Marley the king of reggae is a bit like saying Jamaica is a nice place to visit for fun in the sun. It's truly a shame Marley passed away from melanoma at age 36 in 1981 before he could get a full whiff of just how far-reaching the music he helped pioneer has rolled in the ensuing years, but Island Records founder and unyieldingly ardent Marley advocate Chris Blackwell and his forward-thinking label compatriots had the clear foresight to compile 14 of the man's top grooves and singles for inclusion on May 1984's Legend: The Best of Bob Marley & The Wailers LP.
Continue Reading >
Music and Soundtrack Features
Apple Music: Spatial Audio Relations
Mike Mettler,  |  Sep 17, 2021  |  2 comments
Back in May 2021, Apple significantly boosted the appeal of its Apple Music streaming service with the addition of two new features: Lossless Audio (including high-res versions for some albums and tracks) and Spatial Audio. While the term "Spatial Audio" might indicate that Apple has created a completely new surround sound music format, it's essentially Dolby Atmos—the same immersive, object- based mixing technology used for movie soundtracks.
Continue Reading >
Music Disc Reviews
Déjà vu: 50th Anniversary Deluxe Edition
Mike Mettler  |  Aug 27, 2021  |  0 comments
Performance
Sound
As acclaimed as Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young's 1970 magnum opus Déjà vu is, it somewhat helplessly plays perpetual second fiddle to the sea change garnered by the stacked-harmonic conver- gences in evidence on 1969's Crosby, Stills & Nash, which preceded it by 10 months. Granted, CSN was a breath of fresh vocal-arrangement air and instinctual instrumental accompaniment, but Déjà vu fostered the initial intersection of the volatile four-way street of headstrong artistic personalities with the addition of Neil Young into the fold.
Continue Reading >
Stream On
Exploring Quincy Jones’ Qwest TV Streaming Service
Mike Mettler  |  Aug 04, 2021  |  1 comments
Qwest TV steps outside the streaming mainstream to offer up a wider swath of multicultural live concert and documentary selections.
Continue Reading >
Music Disc Reviews
Remaster Class: Elton John: Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
Mike Mettler  |  Jul 23, 2021  |  1 comments
Elton John was in the zone. The piano prodigy and his songwriting partner Bernie Taupin were in the midst of an almost decade-long creative mindmeld, and October 1973's Goodbye Yellow Brick Road was the apex of their collaboration. The initially unintended double album's 17 songs covered the gamut from nostalgic reverie for days gone by (the title track, the indelible "Candle in the Wind") to pumped-up '70s-style electric-boot rockers ("Bennie and the Jets," "All the Girls Love Alice"), and everything in between.
Continue Reading >
Music Disc Reviews
Al Stewart: Year of the Cat: 45th Anniversary Deluxe Edition
Mike Mettler  |  Jul 09, 2021  |  0 comments
Performance
Sound
Al Stewart is the kind of seasoned artist known for being well worth the wait. The Scottish-born and London-bred Stewart initially focused on mining a folk-driven vein when he made his debut with October 1967's orchestrally buttressed Bed Sitter Images, and it took the burgeoning singer/songwriter five more albums and another eight years until he truly hit his stride with March 1975's Modern Times.
Continue Reading >

Pages

X