Journal
- Tuesday, April 16, 2024
The Black Keys have secured the No. 1 Current Rock Album and No. 1 Current Alternative Album in US sales following the release of their new album, Ohio Players, last week. The album also is the highest debut of the week on Billboard’s Top Rock Albums Chart and Top Alternative Albums Chart, at No. 5 on both charts, and has reached No. 4 on Overall Current Album sales and No. 26 on the Billboard 200. Internationally, Ohio Players is the band’s sixth consecutive top 20 album in the UK, as well as top 20 in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Netherlands, New Zealand, and Switzerland, among others.
Journal Topics: Album Release, Artist News, Reviews
- Friday, July 24, 2009
Youssou N'Dour: I Bring What I Love, the film documenting the making of Youssou's Grammy-winning album Egypt, opens in Canada today. It had its North American premiere at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival and is now returning to the country for a theatrical run, with the first stop in Montreal. Fader spoke with Youssou and calls the film "an intimate portrait of the international superstar, one of the most compelling and important figures in the huge slice of culture we call world music."
Journal Topics: FilmThursday, July 23, 2009
Christina Courtin plays the second of two shows in California this week in a set at San Francisco's Café du Nord tonight. She performed at Largo at the Coronet in LA on Tuesday, a set the Los Angeles Times dubbed "refreshingly un-ethereal." The paper's music blog explains, saying Christina "offered one of the best correctives to the ever more ubiquitous images of wispy, inscrutable hipstresses with a set of completely endearing yet really sturdy and inventive folk-pop."
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Philip Glass and the Philip Glass Ensemble are teaming up with the LA Phil and the LA Master Chorale to present an all-Glass program tonight at the Hollywood Bowl, including "Spaceship," from Einstein on the Beach, described by the Los Angeles Times as "one of the most important and groundbreaking American operas in history," and a screening of the film Koyaanisqatsi, set to a new arrangement of Glass's score for the ensemble and orchestra. The Times says: "Glass's film music has helped make him perhaps the best-known classical composer of the last half-century." LA Weekly writes: "His progressions tend to be brilliantly subtle, forming, like gradated layers of color on canvas, some amazing aural paintings."
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Allen Toussaint recently rounded out some concert dates in Europe with a set at the Jazz Cafe in London this past Sunday. He and his recent Nonesuch debut album, The Bright Mississippi, are the focus of an encore broadcast of Words & Music from Studio-A, from New York NPR member station WFUV. "There is no separating Allen Toussaint from New Orleans or the Crescent City from his music," says WFUV's Claudia Marshall her introduction to the episode, "and on his latest album, Allen looks even further into his hometown history, paying tribute to the forefathers of jazz."
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Wilco front man Jeff Tweedy is front and center on the cover of SPIN magazine's August issue, out on newsstands this week. The issue's cover story aims to answer the question: "So why are they now on top of the world?" Says SPIN: "Since forming in 1995, Wilco have slowly risen to become the greatest small-scale success story in American rock, following the sounds they like wherever they go while deepening and expanding their audience." The magazine names the band's latest release, Wilco (the album), among the year's best so far. Why? It's "the rare rock album about acceptance. And it's fantastic."
Journal Topics: Artist News, ReviewsWednesday, July 22, 2009
Kronos Quartet's performance in Brooklyn's Prospect Park last Thursday offered the sort of program for which the group earned once more the label "groundbreaking" in the New York Times review. The program featured works from Kronos's latest album, Floodplain, to which the Toronto Star gives a perfect four stars. "The Kronos Quartet never disappoints," exclaims the Star, "but on their latest disc they are even better than ever ... There isn't a single musical moment left wanting." The Arkansas Democrat-Gazzette gives it an A-, recommending in particular "the remarkable" album closer by Serbian-born composer Aleksandra Vrebalov.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Gidon Kremer and the Kremerata Baltica's recording of the complete Mozart violin concertos is out in a two-disc set on Nonesuch today. The Scotsman says "there's magic" on this recording from the "brilliant violinist" and gives it a perfect five stars. "This double album is truly sensational," exclaims the review ... There isn't a single moment where the interest pales, or the energy saps, or Kremer fails to surprise us." New Statesman says Kremer "captures the restlessness of the young Mozart," while the Kremerata "plays with tight ensemble and gleamingly honed tone." The double-disc set is currently the CD of the Week on the UK's Classic FM Morning Show.
Journal Topics: Album Release, ReviewsTuesday, July 21, 2009
Christina Courtin is set to perform at L.A.'s Largo at the Coronet tonight. The Los Angeles Times says of her recently released Nonesuch debut that it "is highly polished but still retains a sense of individuality." LAist says "you can't help but be drawn in by her expressive voice, and the 10 tracks reveal a seasoned artist. This may be her first record, but she's developed a confidence, a writing style and a playfulness that many singer/songwriters don't achieve until later in their careers." Her hometown paper, the Buffalo News says: "Like so many of the best records of its type—Joni Mitchell’s midperiod efforts come to mind, as does Norah Jones’ debut—Christina Courtin works its magic on the listener subversively, and over time."
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Sara Watkins celebrated her birthday in style this year: on June 7, the night before her 28th, Sara joined the legendary singer-songwriter Steve Earle and bluegrass masters Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver in a live concert performance at the Chuck Mathena Center in Princetown, West Virginia, for public radio's Mountain Stage. Now you can hear Sara's birthday-eve performance, with brother Sean on guitar, streaming online at npr.org.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Wilco's US tour behind their latest Nonesuch release, Wilco (the album), is due to wrap up this week, with a European tour slated to begin next month, after a set outside Detroit tonight and the 10,000 Lakes Festival in Minnesota on Thursday. Prior to the concerts, the Detroit Free Press talks to Nels Cline about his "head-spinning guitar pyrotechnics" and the Star Tribune talks to Jeff Tweedy about the new record and what's to come. GQ says of last Saturday's show in upstate New York that "the band has never sounded better." Buffalo News says Sunday's set in nearby Lewiston "was simply awesome ... Wilco is certainly the most interesting US band of its generation."
Monday, July 20, 2009
Disfarmer, Bill Frisell's latest Nonesuch release, is out now. The Times (UK) gives it four stars. "Frisell’s filmic themes summon up the ghosts of a lost America. The results are gently beautiful." The BBC calls it "quietly impressive ... a patchwork quilt sewn with empathy, warmth and a sense of weary pathos. The result is a subtle, but moving experience. Jazz Times describes the album as "26 majestic, melodic vignettes evoking bygone honkytonks and tumbleweed towns ... Like a great film score, Disfarmer's success rests on a great motif."
Journal Topics: Album ReleaseMonday, July 20, 2009
The Low Anthem continues to tour the US behind their recent Nonesuch debut, Oh My God, Charlie Darwin, returning to their home state of Rhode Island on August 1 to play the inimitable Newport Folk Festival, celebrating its 50th year. "There is nothing typical about Rhode Island Americana group The Low Anthem," writes Audiophile Audition, which gives the new album four stars, citing the "exquisite acoustics,""naturalistic feeling," and "direct and honest" approach of its recording.
