Music Reviews

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Music Reviews
Lil Tecca: “Bad Time” Music Review
Mike Mettler  |  Sep 13, 2024  | 
LIL TECCA: “BAD TIME” IN ATMOS ON APPLE MUSIC

Queens rapper/producer Lil Tecca is back in a bad way with his upcoming fourth LP Plan A (which drops in full on September 20)—and one of its lead tracks, “Bad Time,” clearly sets the table for what’s to come, especially in its Atmos mix on Apple Music.

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Music Reviews
Lily Allen: It's Not Me, It's You
Jaan Uhelszki  |  Feb 26, 2009  | 
Capitol
Music •••• Sound •••••
Lily Allen gives bad girls a good name.

On her flashy debut, Alright, Still (

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Music Reviews
Listening in High-Res: Phish Out of Water
Philip Ryan  |  Sep 12, 2011  | 

Can't make it to the gig? These days, that won't stop you from listening in high resolution - soundboard recordings aren't the cassette tapes of yore anymore. FLAC HD is the format of choice nowadays, and our new blogger Philip Ryan (who in his spare time serves as the technical editor of S+V's sister publications Popular Photography and American Photo) will be checking out a wide range of high-res recordings to see how close he can get to being there.

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Music Reviews
Live at the Union County MusicFest
Dan Bracaglia  |  Sep 21, 2011  | 

This past weekend, the Union County MusicFest brought an impressive roster of local and national acts to the Union County Fair.

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Music Reviews
Lou Reed: The RCA & Arista Album Collection
Mike Mettler  |  Mar 29, 2017  | 
Performance
Sound
“Isn’t that amazing? I mean, there it actually is. I can’t believe it. I lived long enough to hear it right.” That’s Lou Reed, lifelong audiophile, commenting to his longtime friend and producer Hal Willner while listening to the in-studio playback of the remastered version of “I Wanna Be Black,” from his landmark 1978 album, Street Hassle.
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Music Reviews
Love: Forever Changes - 50th Anniversary Deluxe Edition
Mike Mettler  |  Aug 31, 2018  | 
Performance
Sound
Always the pauper, never quite the prince. Such was the case for Love, the racially integrated Los Angeles psychedelic/folk-rock hybrid who were always on the cusp of breaking through the ether during those heady revolutionary times of the late 1960s, but just couldn’t totally get there. While the sounds of other SoCal Sunset Strip brethren like The Doors and The Byrds made the leap into mass consciousness, Love’s impact initially came at more of the cult-favorite level—though their multicultural influence has only grown over the ensuing years, especially within the British alternative scene of the early ’90s.
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Music Reviews
Marillion: Misplaced Childhood: Deluxe Edition
Mike Mettler  |  Nov 29, 2017  | 
Performance
Sound
I hate to admit it, but I didn’t “get” Marillion when I saw them open for Rush at the Rosemont Horizon just outside of Chicago on March 21, 1986, playing their 1985 breakthrough album Misplaced Childhood in its entirety. While I was properly enamored with the uplifting performance of their touchingly seductive FM hit “Kayleigh,” I just wasn’t able to connect with the rest of the set for some reason. Apparently, I wasn’t alone in that feeling, since I also heard a good bit of the crowd boo/catcall Marillion throughout their performance, the first time I had heard such a thing occur at a live show.
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Music Reviews
Marillion: Sounds that Can’t Be Made — Special Edition
Mike Mettler  |  Apr 23, 2014  | 
Performance
Sound
Some bands sputter and wither after major personnel changes, and then there’s Marillion. The British neo-progressive collective’s first incarnation crested with 1985’s concept-driven Misplaced Childhood, which featured original mercurial lead singer Fish and the hit guitar-driven lament, “Kayleigh.” Act II commenced with 1989’s transitional Seasons End, featuring new vocalist Steve Hogarth (a.k.a. “h”), who has since helped fuel the band to greater compositional heights over the last two decades.
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Music Reviews
Mark Knopfler: Privateering
Mike Mettler  |  Jan 02, 2014  | 
Performance
Sound
Finally seeing a stateside release after being available internationally for over a year, Privateering, Mark Knopfler’s seventh solo offering (and first double album of all-original material) is a showcase of Americana, as innately authentic as anything produced by any artist born on U.S. soil. Somewhere, Chet Atkins, Johnny Cash, John Lee Hooker, and Muddy Waters are all picking, grinning, and haw-haw-hawing their collective approval. (Me, I suspect Knopfler was spiritually born on the Mississippi Delta and then transplanted to the moors of his native Scotland.)
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Music Reviews
Marshall Chapman: Big Lonesome
Steve Simels  |  Mar 02, 2011  | 
 
Tall Girl
Music •••• Sound •••

 

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Music Reviews
Mastodon: Crack the Skye; Lamb of God: Wrath
Jeff Perlah  |  Apr 22, 2009  | 
Reprise
Music ••••½ Sound ••••
Review
Epic
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Music Reviews
Maximum Impact
Mike Mettler  |  Jul 07, 2011  | 

Dave Grohl and I are crouched together on a hot blacktop driveway that encircles the SoCal locale where the photo session for this exclusive S+V cover story is taking place. To the onlookers who shuffle past us and sometimes hover at a respectful distance, it appears as if these two hunched, animated, close-talking bearded longhairs are plotting to take over the world — and perhaps that’s not an entirely wrong assumption.

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Music Reviews
Michael Bloomfield
Mike Mettler  |  Apr 10, 2014  | 
Performance
Sound
“Best guitar player I ever heard.” Some hip muso waxing on about the next Hendrix? Nope, that’s Bob Dylan on the late Michael Bloomfield, and the Bard’s ears are some damn fine arbiters. This three-CD/one-DVD Bloomfield box set reclaims a master guitarist’s legacy that’s as deep as the Delta, by way of the Windy City and the City by the Bay. Disc 1, subtitled Roots, sets the tap. The instrumental take on Dylan’s iconic “Like a Rolling Stone” is revelatory, keeping the focus on the as-it’s-happening creation of the now-familiar melody via Bloomfield’s chiming Telecaster riffs intermingling with Al Kooper’s wheedling Hammond B3.
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Music Reviews
Midnight Oil: Full Tank: The Complete Album Collection
Mike Mettler  |  Aug 23, 2017  | 
Performance
Sound
It was one of the most galvanizing live experiences of my life. The instant WNEW-FM announced Midnight Oil would be performing live on a flatbed truck on Sixth Avenue in the heart of New York City in front of the Exxon Building around noontime on May 30, 1990 to protest the mishandling of the March 1989 Exxon Valdez oil-spill disaster in Prince William Sound, Alaska, three colleagues and I sprinted the entire length of the two long city blocks from the Stereo Review and Audio offices at 50th and Broadway to get as close as we could. Success! Each of us wound up standing no more than 10 people deep from the flatbed’s perch upon our out-of-breath Sixth Avenue arrival.
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Music Reviews
Monster Music
Steve Guttenberg  |  Aug 16, 2006  | 
It's not just cables anymore.

It was in the late 1970s when Noel Lee, a laser-fusion design engineer, started a little company, Monster Cable, which soon spawned, well, the entire high-end audio-cable industry. Over the decades, Monster maintained their dominance in the cable market as it branched into power conditioners and M•Design home theater furniture. Now, with Monster Music, they're jumping into the record business with a line of High Definition Surround SuperDiscs. Noel Lee's passion for multichannel music—and frustration with the stillborn SACD/DVD-Audio formats—pushed him to extract the best sound from Dolby- and DTS-encoded music. Monster Music claims that the SuperDiscs are the first music releases certified by THX for sound quality.

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