Music Reviews

Sort By: Post DateTitle Publish Date
Music Reviews
Art for Rock's Sake
Ken Richardson  |  Mar 10, 2003
Click here to read the article (PDF)
Music Reviews
Bartók—The Miraculous Mandarin, Dance Suite, Hungarian Pictures—Bournemouth Symphony Chorus and Orchestra, Marin Alsop (Naxos) [DVD-Audio, SACD/CD, CD]
Mark Fleischmann  |  Aug 26, 2005
Imagine the score for a 33-minute film noir with nonstop action. That's Béla Bartók's The Miraculous Mandarin in a nutshell, although it's actually a one-act dance suite. The story concerns three thugs who use a young woman as bait to rob a series of victims, culminating in the Mandarin. They murder him—but not before he consummates his passion for the girl. The plot had enough sex and violence to get it banned immediately upon its 1926 debut in Köln, Germany.
Continue Reading »
Music Reviews
Beatles For Sale
Mike Mettler  |  Nov 20, 2012

Original Studio Album Remasters Stereo Vinyl Box Set

The Holy Vinyl Grail, Part 1 officially arrived in stores November 13. I was blessed to get the Beatles' original studio album remasters stereo vinyl box delivered to me a full month early, and I still feel that I haven't spent enough time with the 14 albums contained therein.

Continue Reading »
Music Reviews
Beatles For Sale Page 2
Mike Mettler  |  Nov 20, 2012

Original Studio Album Remasters Stereo Vinyl Box Set

The Holy Vinyl Grail, Part 1 officially arrived in stores November 13. I was blessed to get the Beatles’ original studio album remasters stereo vinyl box delivered to me a full month early, and I still feel that I haven’t spent enough time with the 14 albums contained therein.

Continue Reading »
Music Reviews
Beatles For Sale Page 3
Mike Mettler  |  Nov 20, 2012

Original Studio Album Remasters Stereo Vinyl Box Set

The Holy Vinyl Grail, Part 1 officially arrived in stores November 13. I was blessed to get the Beatles’ original studio album remasters stereo vinyl box delivered to me a full month early, and I still feel that I haven’t spent enough time with the 14 albums contained therein.

Continue Reading »
Music Reviews
Beatles For Sale Page 4
Mike Mettler  |  Nov 20, 2012

Original Studio Album Remasters Stereo Vinyl Box Set

The Holy Vinyl Grail, Part 1 officially arrived in stores November 13. I was blessed to get the Beatles’ original studio album remasters stereo vinyl box delivered to me a full month early, and I still feel that I haven’t spent enough time with the 14 albums contained therein.

Continue Reading »
Music Reviews
Beethoven-Piano Trios Nos. 2 and 5 (Ghost Trio)—Storioni Trio (PentaTone) [SACD/CD]
Mark Fleischmann  |  Oct 04, 2005
Isn't it a little odd to squeeze a whole symphony orchestra into a living room? The great thing about chamber music is that it's designed to be played in the home, correctly scaled to your personal space. It's best heard live, of course-but, if you can't invite musicians over for tea, the next best thing might be to feed your universal disc player this well-recorded pair of Beethoven chamber works.
Continue Reading »
Music Reviews
Bela Fleck—Drive (Mobile Fidelity) [SACD]
Adrienne Maxwell  |  Jan 11, 2006  |  First Published: Jul 11, 2005
I don't know how many banjo players you can name, but I can come up with two: Bela Fleck and Roy Clark (and I had to cheat to get Roy Clark-before a trip to IMDB.com, it was "that guy from Hee-Haw"). Even if you've never heard of Bela Fleck, you've probably heard his music, as he's appeared on a ton of pop and jazz albums. He's won Grammys in the country, jazz, classical, and pop categories, but his roots are pure bluegrass.
Continue Reading »
Music Reviews
Best 5.1 Surround Sound Music Tracks
Mike Mettler  |  May 07, 2020
Okay, you got me. I freely admit before all my fellow music lovers and audiophiles alike that I had a very specific ulterior motive when I noted in a recent Remaster Class column that the title track to Yes' September 1972 magnum opus Close to the Edge was my "second-favorite 5.1 mix." Following my primary intention of encouraging listeners to marvel at the fully enveloping scope of that song's truly amazing surround sound mix, I figured the next thing anyone reading said comment might wonder would be along the lines of, "Yeah, cool cool cool, that's great and all—but what's No. 1?"
Continue Reading »
Music Reviews
Billy Joel: A Matter of Trust: The Bridge
Mike Mettler  |  Jun 20, 2014
Performance
Sound
“What did you do in the Cold War, Daddy?” It was a question Billy Joel felt his daughter Alexa would ask someday, and at the height of the most decidedly chilly U.S.–Russian relations in the ’80s, Joel didn’t have an acceptable answer. So he packed up all of the gear, crew, and machinations behind his mammoth Bridge Tour and headed to Russia to spearhead the largest-scale tour a Western musician had ever done in the Soviet Union. A Matter of Trust is the four-disc box set that serves as an extended chronicle of the time in July and August 1987 when an animated American piano man opened the eyes and ears of an Eastern Bloc country just beginning to experience the rise of freedom.
Continue Reading »
Music ReviewsBlu-ray Movie Reviews
Blu-ray Review: Treme
Ken Korman  |  May 06, 2011

Consider the dense, multi-layered, centuries-old, and sometimes impenetrable culture of New Orleans — especially in the months just after Hurricane 

Continue Reading »
Music Reviews
Bob Dylan: Fragments – Time Out of Mind Sessions Deluxe Edition Box Set
Mike Mettler  |  Apr 04, 2023  |  First Published: Apr 05, 2023
Performances
Sound
Bob Dylan hit a bit of a rough patch as the freewheelin’ 1980s gave way to the dour 1990s. Dylan ended the MTV decade on a high note with September 1989’s Oh Mercy—a visceral, smoky triumph produced by Daniel Lanois—but he stumbled out of the new-decade gate with the half-hearted mish-mosh sheen of September 1990’s Under the Red Sky.
Continue Reading »
Music Reviews
Bob Dylan: The Rolling Thunder Revue – The 1975 Live Recordings
Mike Mettler  |  Jul 17, 2019
Performance
Sound
Bob Dylan has long seen the value in releasing extensive historical collections befitting his anointed artistic legacy. The latest entry in the Dylan archival canon is a massive 14-CD box set via Columbia/Legacy, The Rolling Thunder Revue: The 1975 Live Recordings, a 148-song, 10-hour collection that focuses on the first, late-1975 leg of the touring Revue. The box contains all five of Dylan’s full first-leg sets that were professionally recorded between November 19 and December 4, 1975 as spread over 10 discs…
Continue Reading »
Music Reviews
Bob Dylan: Together Through Life
Billy Altman  |  May 04, 2009
Columbia
Music •••• Sound •••½
Before delving into anything pro or con about Bob Dylan's latest album - a collection that, right out of the
Continue Reading »
Music Reviews
Bob Dylan: Trouble No More: The Bootleg Series Vol. 13 / 1979-1981 Deluxe Box Set
Mike Mettler  |  Jan 31, 2018
Performance
Sound
No other artist in the rock era has followed his own muse as deliberately and as singularly as Bob Dylan has. Right from the dawning of his career at the outset of the 1960s, Dylan has chosen his own lane and then merged into it full-on, regardless of any external pressures or expectations. Whether the message is parlayed with his voice backed only by an acoustic guitar or translated with full band accompaniment, the foremost poet of our times has known exactly what information he wants to share with us every step of the way, critics and cognoscenti be damned.
Continue Reading »

Pages

X