Shelby Lynne I Am Shelby Lynne (Island Records) Insecurity can be a good thing. Take the example of Nashville chanteuse Shelby Lynne. Judging from the title of her mightily impressive sixth album, Lynne has one hell of a self-esteem problem. It’s hard to see why, though. Like Dwight Yoakam and…
Bruce Springsteen’s career, on stage and on record, is arguably the most consistently brilliant of any artist of the last 30 years. But his latest tour is unlike the recent embarkments by rock’s other aging legends: the biannual Rolling Stones and Who wingdings or the contrived revenue-raking regroupings of Fleetwood…
The The Naked Self (Nothing) Matt Johnson must be a patient man. It’s been six years since the last album of new The The music (and four since the all-Hank Williams covers set, Hanky Panky) but he continues to sound very much like himself. As the one constant of the…
MC Paul Barman It’s Very Stimulating (Word Sound) Prince Paul will do anything for a laugh. As a producer he invented the hip-hop skit, a tool he’s employed consistently to generate laughs for himself (his first official solo release, Psychoanalysis: What Is It? is a weird and funny series of…
Stores in Miami’s Overtown neighborhood were looted and set on fire in January 1989, after a Hispanic police officer fatally shot a black man in the area. Just a week later, a young college student named Eric Kline — a white kid originally from suburban Boston — headed into Overtown…
D’Angelo Voodoo (Virgin) Young, gifted, and sleazy, D’Angelo is what you get when you cross Prince with a used-car salesman. Like Prince, Michael “D’Angelo” Archer possesses an uncanny ability to incorporate his influences while never being overwhelmed by them. Unfortunately the singer’s formidable musical skills are offset by an oily…
Goodie Mob World Party (LaFace) At least as significant as the advent of grunge or R&B’s takeover of the pop charts in the ’90s was the rise of Southern rap, starting with Arrested Development in 1993. That groundbreaking hip-hop crew soon fizzled. But Southern rap has not only grown in…
Malachi Thompson Rising Daystar (Delmark) Neither an avant-garde terrorist nor a traditionalist bopper, Chicago trumpet veteran Malachi Thompson operates somewhere in jazz’s vast middle ground. A late-’60s alumnus of the revered Association For the Advancement of Creative Music and an early member of Lester Bowie’s Brass Fantasy, Thompson has been…
Various Artists INCredible: Sound of Drum ‘n’ Bass Mixed by Goldie (Ovum/Ruffhouse) The first thing you should know is that Goldie is an artist. Don’t be surprised if, after he tires of making drum ‘n’ bass records, he becomes a superstar actor, sculptor, or painter — because he’s not just…
Bogotá, 1998. It was another bummer of a Valentine’s Day. In Colombia the lovers’ holiday is known as the Day of Love and Friendship, and though it falls in October instead of February, the end result is just as likely to be as disappointing as Uncle Sam’s celebration of the…
Fu Manchu King of the Road (Mammoth) There are, of course, the great intro riffs: Sabbath’s “Iron Man,” Led Zep’s “Whole Lotta Love,” B.*Ouml;.C.’s “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper,” Neil Young’s “Cinnamon Girl.” Oft copped, rarely topped. Instinctively grasping this, Fu Manchu delivers a brand of high-octane, hard-pounding psychedelia that’s instantly…
Morphine The Night (Dreamworks) If there ever was a band for listening to late at night, drunk and feeling sorry for yourself while reviewing all the wrong choices you’ve made, it’s Morphine. The band’s sound is built around singer Mark Sandman’s noirish baritone and two-string slide bass, drummer Billy Conway’s…
Afro-Cuban All Stars “Distinto, diferente” (World Circuit) By now you know the heartwarming story of the Buena Vista Social Club: American guitarist Ry Cooder goes to Cuba, locates almost-forgotten elder statesmen of classic Cuban music, records album, watches album become worldwide smash. Said Cuban musicians receive long-overdue recognition, adulation, and…
Clinton Disco and the Halfway to Discontent (Astralwerks) A Cornershop side project seems almost unnecessary. The British band — best known for its hit “Brimful of Asha” — merges Indian melodies and instrumentation with Western rock, folk, punk, and dance music. The Cornershop banner, in other words, covers a lot…
Ruby Baker sits in her white Mercedes-Benz, resting her forehead against the steering wheel. She has just finished the first of three sets at South Beach’s Jazid, where she performs every Wednesday. The show has not gone well. “I’m just not feeling it,” Baker says. She leans back in her…
Four years ago, in the thick of the last presidential campaign, MTV broadcast one of its “Rock the Vote” specials, during which one of the station’s vee-jays stuck a mic in Snoop Doggy Dogg’s face and asked for his views on the impending election. I don’t remember the exact wording…
Ken Vandermark’s Sound in Action Trio Design in Time (Delmark) From concept to execution, Design in Time is a visionary marvel, an album that pays homage to jazz innovators as it steps boldly into the genre’s future. The maiden release by Sound in Action, a Chicago trio led by Ken…
Chuck Prophet The Hurting Business (HighTone) Rapping and scratching on an album released by HighTone? HighTone? The torchbearer for all roots music? What’s going on here? No, it’s not a hip-hop album, but it is something remarkable. Call it roots music with soul. And it may be only January, but…
Various Artists Fire & Skill: The Songs of the Jam (Ignition/Epic Records) This probably seemed like a good idea back in the old days, when the world gave a steaming crap about Oasis: Bros Noel and Liam Gallagher would assemble and bookend a tribute to their rave fave that isn’t…
Dance-club DJs ply their craft obscured by clouds of billowing fog and flashing lights, hidden behind banks of equipment. It’s no surprise, then, that the rest of us have no clue what all the mysterious knob-twiddling is about. Truth is, DJs do a lot more behind the turntables than put…
Jay-Z Life & Times of S. Carter, Vol. 3 (Roc-a-fella/Def Jam) Essential listening for anyone curious about the evolution of rap, Jay-Z’s 1998 hit, “Hard Knock Life,” was the last great hip-hop single of the ’90s. With its kids-choir choruses — sampled from the soundtrack to the Broadway musical Annie…
Guns N’ Roses Live Era ’87-’93 (Geffen) Ten years ago, Guns N’ Roses was the biggest rock band on earth, a can-do-no-wrong quintet that made mincemeat out of every tressed and spandex-clad nightmare act on the Sunset Strip. And they didn’t even seem to be trying. Although it would be…
