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Album Reviews
Sufjan's Second of Fifty Looks At America
Michael Fremer  |  Dec 01, 2005  |  1 comments

A trademark dispute with National Periodic Publications (D.C. Comics) over the original cover art postponed the release of this record. Because Metropolis, Illinois is officially recognized by D.C. Comics as “the home of Superman,” Mr. Stevens references it in the lyrics and had the cover art show the man of steel flying in front of Chicago’s John Hancock Tower. D.C. Comics sued, in what definitely gets the company “dick move of the musical year” award from me. The legal problems delayed the release of the album. While it was originally in the November “In Heavy Rotation,” I’ve moved it here because of the delay.

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Album Reviews
A "Tatooed Beauty" Recommended This One to Our Correspondent and It Was Love at First Listen!
Brent Raynor  |  Dec 01, 2005  |  1 comments

Having a good music dealer is as important as having a great accountant who knows all the funky tax loopholes, because both can steer you down the right path and save you money. Lets get real here for a minute: even if you were to spend months on end reading all the music rags out there, there's bound to be a lot of albums that'll fly well below your well-heeled radar. Add to that the sheer volume of new music coming down the pipe, and you can be forgiven for not knowing what's the latest album that'll blow your mind.

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Album Reviews
Sundazed's John Wesley Harding Mono Reissue Confounds Our Correspondent
Mike McGill  |  Dec 01, 2005  |  1 comments

How long have I been waiting for a good-sounding version of this mysterious and magical music? Since way back before I knew anything about Good Sound as we formally know it, that's for sure!

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Album Reviews
Major Label Debut For Acclaimed Alternative Band
Michael Fremer  |  Dec 01, 2005  |  0 comments

Death Cab For Cutie's Benjamin Gibbard probably reads “Romeo and Juliet” as light comedy. Calling him a “hopeless romantic” would be an understatement of Grand Canyon-like proportions. If Bryan Ferry wears his heart on his sleeve, Gibbard wears it on a Times Square billboard with a seriousness I can't recall hearing expressed outside of opera.

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Album Reviews
Young Gets Old, But Not In The Way
Michael Fremer  |  Dec 01, 2005  |  0 comments

“If you follow every dream, you might get lost,” Neil Young admonishes lovingly on “The Painter,” the opener to his new, excruciatingly personal album—his first since Old Ways to be recorded in Nashville. Young isn’t advising against following every dream, just to be prepared for unexpected turns in the road and to take it as it comes.

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Phono Preamp Reviews
Pass Aleph Ono phono preamplifier
Michael Fremer  |  Nov 06, 2005  |  First Published: Dec 31, 1969  |  0 comments
If compact discs are so damned dynamic and vinyl is so dynamically limited, why do they sound just the opposite? Why do LPs sound so "live," so explosive, so "there," and CDs so dead? Even the best CDs usually sink to second-rate when you switch to their vinyl versions. I've heard it, you've heard it. Only those in deep denial, those who refuse to listen, don't. They'd rather read the published specs and consider the actual listening some kind of mass delusion among Luddite LP fans.
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Album Reviews
Zu! Zu! Zu! Speakers Corner Reissues Early Esquivel Album
Michael Fremer  |  Nov 01, 2005  |  0 comments

For sound adventurers in the early days of stereo, no one’s musical arrangements fit the bill like Esquivel’s. They make Enoch Light’s close-miked percussive stuff on Command sound like punk-rock.

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The Duke in a Trio—All In An Afternoon's Work
 |  Nov 01, 2005  |  0 comments

As on Money Jungle, a United Artists release recently reissued by Classic and reviewed on this site, this record puts Duke Ellington in a rare trio setting, this time with the percussive anchor Sam Woodyard on drums and Aaron Bell on bass—the Ellington orchestra’s rhythm section.

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Album Reviews
Acoustic Sounds' Third Series of 180 gram, 45rpm Double LPs Doesn't MONK-ey Around!
Michael Fremer  |  Nov 01, 2005  |  0 comments

Analogue Productions’ third series of limited edition 45rpm 180 gram “twofers” will surely be as popular as the first two sets, with key titles selling out and fetching big bucks on the used market. The musically well-balanced offerings from the Riverside, Pablo and Prestige catalogs controlled by Fantasy Records include The Tony Bennett Bill Evans Album, Bill Evans’ How My Heart Sings and Interplay, Miles Davis’s Workin’ and many other long sought after jazz and blues titles.

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Album Reviews
Lanois's Latest Is an Ambient Guitar Extravaganza
Michael Fremer  |  Nov 01, 2005  |  0 comments

Daniel Lanois begins this instrumental excursion with a great wash of flanged psychedelic backwash, ribbed with pedal steel guitar in an upward thrust of musical birth that oozes from the speakers like sonic Cool-Whip.

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