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Showing posts from May, 2007
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With The Village Voice having canned Robert Christgau , I thought I’d start my own little Consumer Guide. Each month I’ll do 8 to 10 reviews, split up into two entries. There will also be the odd feature or two as I feel the inspiration come over me. Here goes nothing. Lily Allen: Alright, Still (Capitol, 2007). It would be easy to dismiss this 21-year old child prodigy – she’s the daughter of prominent British actor Keith Allen – as just another privileged brat of excess. But you’d be wrong. In deed it is Allen’s upbringing – attending 13 schools in 12 years and being expelled from many of them, running away from a boarding school when she was 14, and various sundry relationships with folks obviously not of her class, that sets the theme for this album. The girl is pissed, and with a maturity that belies her age, she transcends her rage and rebellious past and comes up with an album that her contemporaries could only pray to deliver. She’s Ani DiFranco with a rhythm section,...
2006 - A Final Look! 1. Bob Dylan: Modern Times (Columbia) 2. Ghostface Killah: Fishscale (Def Jam) 3. The Klezmatics: Wonder Wheel (JMG) 4. Tom Waits: Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers and Bastards (Anti) 5. Rosanne Cash: Black Cadillac (Capitol) 6. Ornette Coleman: Sound Grammar (Sound Grammar) 7. The Streets: The Hardest Way to Make an Easy Living (Vice/Atlantic) 8. Joanna Newsom: Ys (Drag City) 9. Outkast: Idlewild (LeFace) 10. Todd Snider: The Devil You Know (New Door) 11. Maria Muldaur: Heart of Mine: Love Songs of Bob Dylan (Telarc) 12. The Coup: Pick a Bigger Weapon (Epitaph) 13. Dr. John: Right Place, Right Time (Hyenna) 14. Wussy: Funeral Dress (Shake It) 15. Frank London’s Klezmer Brass Allstars: Carnival Conspiracy (Piranha) 16. The Gothic Archies: The Tragic Treasury: Songs From a Series of Unfortunate Events (Nonesuch) 17. Clipse: Hell Hath No Fury (Zomba/Star Trek/Re-Up Gang) 18. Jesus H. Christ and the Four Hornsmen of the Apocalypse ( www.jesushchristrocks.co...