Music Reviews

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Mike Mettler  |  Jan 15, 2021
The Doors needed a win. Badly. After the, shall we say, appendage-related kerfuffle at a chaotic March 1969 show in Miami, the band was sidelined with legal troubles and limited performance options. Solace was found within the friendly studio confines of Elektra Sound Recorders in Los Angeles, with February 1970's Morrison Hotel the ensuing vibrant result.
Mike Mettler  |  May 21, 2021
The Who had pioneered—and seemingly perfected—the art of the rock opera with May 1969's all-seeing Tommy, but the ever-provocative British quartet's chief visionary Pete Townshend wasn't done with his honing of the overarching story-arc concept just yet. October 1973's magnum opus Quadrophenia—the 81-minute, 17-song cycle chronicling angst-driven youth-culture clashes and a yearning to break free from a preordained societal rut—reinforced how guitarist/ vocalist Townshend was a musical architect of the highest order.
Mike Mettler  |  Apr 24, 2020
Yes may have hit the roundabout motherlode with November 1971's Fragile, but their true zenith came with the following album, September 1972's Close to the Edge. Edge was the perfect intersection of envelope-pushing, multi-movement compositions and beyond-heady lyrical mysticism, permanently cementing Yes' status as top-tier progressive rock progenitors.
Michael Berk  |  Aug 25, 2011

To celebrate Buddy Holly's 75th birthday (coming up September 7th), online music creation marketplace Indaba Music has launched - oddly enough, though it is the business Indaba is in - a remix contest, inviting contestants to take on Jenny O's version of Holly's "I'm Gonna Love You Too."

Grant Clauser  |  Jun 18, 2010

Logitech's latest addition to its Squeezebox family of network music players is the Touch, a small LCD touchpad that taps into your wired Ethernet or 802.11b/g Wi-Fi network and connects to your audio receiver. It resembles the company's Harmony 1100 remote and, like the remote, brings multiple systems, or in this case multiple services, easily under your control. 

Robert Ripps  |  Feb 15, 2012

After becoming music director of the Minnesota Orchestra in 2003 Osmo Vänskä began recording an excellent multi-channel SACD set of Beethoven symphonies with his new group. The Finnish conductor has since returned to the work of his countryman Jean Sibelius (1865-1957), recording this multi-channel SACD of the composer's most popular symphonies, Nos. 2 & 5.

Ken Richardson  |  Nov 03, 2009
Key Features
THE BEATLES IN MONO 13 discs, $300 • Includes every remastered CD from Please Please Me to The White A
Billy Altman  |  Jul 22, 2008
Yep Roc
Music •••½Sound •••½

If you know who Robert Forster is, you no doubt were a fan of Australia's Go-Betweens, the vastl

Mark Fleischmann  |  Aug 04, 2005
Even people who know nothing about Brazilian music recognize the urbane Latin syncopation of the bossa nova beat. The language, of course, is Portuguese, not Spanish. The key names in Brazilian pop music are Jobim and Gilberto; in orchestral and chamber music, Villa-Lobos. Arguably, the most alluring voice in Brazilian music today belongs to Rosa Passos, who partners with jazz bassist Ron Carter on this audiophile release.
Michael Berk  |  Apr 11, 2012

Rush fans...the moment you've all been waiting for has arrived. Not quite like clockwork, but Clockwork Angels is finally and definitely headed your way.

Michael Berk  |  Aug 31, 2011

In a sign of the times for the changing music industry (and an interesting twist in the lengthy tale of the most popular band - 40 million albums sold worldwide and 11 Stateside top tens - to only make it into Rolling Stone magazine once), Canadian prog superheroes Rush have signed with U.S. metal indie Roadrunner (they'll be staying with Anthem/Universal in Canada only).

Mike Mettler  |  Dec 02, 2015
Performance
Sound
“Be cool or be cast out.” So goes one of the pivotal lines in “Subdivisions,” the indelible lead track from Rush’s transitional 1982 album Signals, and it’s also a statement that aptly describes the band’s own fortunes as it navigated a hard-won ascendance from perennial cult favorite to mass acceptance over the course

of its five-decades-and-counting career. The band recently completed a triumphant 40th anniversary tour dubbed R40, celebrating its genuine Rock & Roll Hall of Fame legacy by performing a 23-song set in reverse chronology. (Actually, “Reverse Chronology” sounds like a lost track from the band’s mid-’80s synth-centric period.) I saw Rush’s late-June stop at the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey, and marveled at the ever-present breadth of the band’s sound and how bassist/keyboardist/vocalist Geddy Lee, guitarist Alex Lifeson, and drummer Neil Peart were able to modernize decades-old material like “Jacob’s Ladder” and “Lakeside Park” without compromising each track’s initial, individual compositional integrity and charm.

Mike Mettler  |  Apr 09, 2019
Performance
Sound
Rush was on a roll. After the celebrated Canadian trio had finally broken through the FM ether with 1976's dystopian statement piece 2112, they took the next evolutionary sonic turn with 1977's expansively majestic A Farewell to Kings. The following year, Rush rotated the screws once again by taking their proto-prog metal to the headiest of limits on 1978's Hemispheres, their final mind-altering statement of the Me-So-Introspective Decade before shedding their muso-skins yet again with 1980's forward-thinking Permanent Waves.
Mike Mettler  |  Apr 04, 2011

In anticipation of the 30th anniversary reissue of Rush’s truly seminal Moving Pictures as both CD+DVD (April 5) and CD+BD (May 3) deluxe editions, with PCM 5.1 and DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround-sound mixes by Richard Chycki, I’m dipping into my personal Rush interview archive to present a truly exclusive, incremental look at how the band’s attitude toward bringing its vaunted studio material into the surround-sound arena has literally changed from “no” to “go” over the last decade.

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