Album Reviews

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Album Reviews
No, Your Midrange Driver Is Not Blown! That's What's Left of Bob's Voice
Michael Fremer  |  Sep 13, 2012  |  14 comments
Does it matter that the rattle and phlegm in Bob Dylan's voice makes it sound as if your midrange driver has blown? No. Hell no. In fact, despite the ragged vocals and 50 years since his debut, this is Dylan's best album in quite some time.
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Album Reviews
"Another Side of Bob Dylan" Sounding Better Than Ever
Michael Fremer  |  Sep 06, 2012  |  10 comments
Bob Dylan cracks himself up performing some of these songs. Producer Tom Wilson must have gotten it, but recording engineers Roy Halee and Fred Catero might have been ready to stop the tape. After all, this was staid, but still pre-corporate Columbia Records. It was “straight” and at that point Halee was more experienced recording Percy Faith than Bob.

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Album Reviews
Cluster & Eno: Eno Seeks Country Krautrock Comfort
Michael Fremer  |  Sep 03, 2012  |  5 comments
Brian Eno's early influences include John Cage, Steve Reich and other minimalists. He was more art than rocker. In 1971 when he joined forces with Bryan Ferry's Roxy Music he was more a knob twiddler than a musician. He worked saxophonist Andy Mackay's VCS3 synthesizer and along with a pair of Revox A77s provided the electronic sounds and "tape treatments" that on the group's first two albums, helped create Roxy Music's unique sound.

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Album Reviews
Alejandro Escovedo Cranks Out Another Great One!
Michael Fremer  |  Sep 03, 2012  |  8 comments
The great Mexican-American roots-rocker Alejandro Escovedo is back with yet another great, hard rocking yet deeply thoughtful album, his second with veteran producer Tony Visconti. Visconti goes all the way back to David Bowie's epic The Man Who Sold the World and if you hear echoes of that album on some tracks here, like the haunting background voices on "Sally Was a Cop", the album's most powerful song, it's not a coincidence.

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Album Reviews
Is "The Soft Parade" Too Soft?
Michael Fremer  |  Aug 30, 2012  |  7 comments
The fourth Doors album was not particularly well-received when first issued in 1969. The inclusion of horns and strings was for many a deal breaker, but what really made more pull back was the sense of a less than fully integrated ensemble appearing to come apart at the seams.

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Album Reviews
Dr. and Mrs. Willke Make Complete Sense on LP 2 (revised after a good night's sleep!)
Michael Fremer  |  Aug 26, 2012  |  7 comments
Mrs. Willke does not perform the first version of "#9" on the second album of the two LP set How To Teach Children The Wonder of Sex. However, both she and Dr. Willke make a lot of sense on the second album of this two LP set.

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Album Reviews
"Perhaps You Can Help Us Raise Socially Retarded Teenagers So They Will Marry Happy"
Michael Fremer  |  Aug 25, 2012  |  5 comments
Dr. and Mrs' J.C. Willke's double LP set "How to Teach Children The Wonder of Sex" is taken from a videotape of a lecture given by the couple to the faculty and staff of the University of Kentucky Medical Center back in 1966.

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Album Reviews
The Beach Boys Deliver a Great Twenty Ninth Album
Michael Fremer  |  Aug 23, 2012  |  7 comments
Watching the aged PBS fund raising audience creep ever closer to my demographic has been a thirty year creepy creep. First it was fund raising aimed at the WWII big band consuming generation.

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Album Reviews
Oscar Peterson's "Jazzified" Blues Album Reissued on Double 45 by ORG And Speakers Corner
Michael Fremer  |  Aug 21, 2012  |  1 comments
Canada-born pianist Oscar Peterson was among jazz's most popular performers. HIs lyrical appeal crossed musical boundaries so that many people who didn't consider themselves jazz fans were fans of Oscar's.

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Album Reviews
Nova Social's Techno-Pop With a Splash of Wry
Michael Fremer  |  Aug 19, 2012  |  3 comments
We like promoting independent vinyl projects so when Nova Social’s Thom Soriano contacted Analogplanet about a review of their new album For Any Inconvenience we bit.

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Album Reviews
Bill Evans Live Set Issued For First Time
Michael Fremer  |  Aug 14, 2012  |  3 comments
Over the past few years, jazz fans have been treated to some astonishing, heretofore unreleased treasures. Unlike in the rock world, where such finds, along with “bonus tracks” usually tell you why they weren’t released in the first place (with Bob Dylan being a notable exception), these jazz releases have felt like un-mined diamonds, only occasionally in the rough.

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Album Reviews
Mo-Fi Adds a Touch of Grey-tness To a Superb Sounding Recording
Michael Fremer  |  Aug 06, 2012  |  6 comments
The Grateful Dead's "Touch of Grey" was a spirited 1987 marching order to an aging Baby Boomer generation to "get by" and its assuring affirmation that "we will survive" was a stroke of timing and musical genius. The song became an unlikely hit for a group that didn't have or need hits and helped propel the band to further heights of both popularity and creativity.

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Album Reviews
Fiona Apple Having a Fight With Her Brain!
Michael Fremer  |  Aug 06, 2012  |  2 comments
All of Fiona Apple's albums have been been personal and confessional (some might say "self absorbed") but this one is really personal and confessional and attractively self-absorbed too.

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Album Reviews
British Blues/Psych Classic Reissued by Audio Fidelity
Michael Fremer  |  Aug 03, 2012  |  9 comments
Why listen to "purist" British blues bands recreating what they've heard on record or in clubs, when you can hear the real thing? That's how I've always felt about it. This album by the British blues band Ten Years After is something else and perhaps in retrospect it's unfair to tag TYA as a "purist blues band."

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Album Reviews
Clare and the Reasons' Berlin Adventure
Michael Fremer  |  Jul 27, 2012  |  2 comments
This is the third album from Brooklyn based Clare and the Reasons and its first to be issued on vinyl. Movie, the group's 2007 debut features Van Dyke Parks and Sufjan Stevens to give you an idea of what's going on here.

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