Here Come The 123s

The release date is early February, but it’s hard to imagine a more hotly anticipated kids’ CD arriving all year. Here Come the 123s, the companion piece to 2005’s Here Come the ABCs, is among the buzziest properties to hit kid-land since Laurie Berkner started shaking things up in the late ’90s. That’s because the [...]

Good Time

A friend of mine who is 99 44/100% into opera and musicals once said on hearing Strait singing something I forget which in my office that Strait had remarkable voice production and sat down and listened to the rest of the album with considerable pleasure. I think he was a little shocked at himself, rofl, [...]

Vampire Weekend

This NY four-piece draw on their diverse backgrounds and interests, experimenting with African guitar music, the Western classical canon, hazy memories of Cape Cod summers, winters in upper Manhattan, and reggaeton. “Equal parts shruggy New York indie strumming and groovy Afro-pop, Vampire Weekend’s organ-and-drum runs highlight narratives about relationships, punctuation, and sometimes both” – Spin. [...]

Solo Acoustic, Vol. 2

A sequel to the 2005 Grammy nominated Vol. I. Twelve songs culled from Browne’s extensive and critically acclaimed solo acoustic concerts around the world over the past few years. Like its predecessor, it captures both spirited and humorous exchanges between Jackson and his audiences, making for a truly intimate listening experience. It reaches back to [...]

The High Kings

FROM THE CREATORS AND PRODUCERS OF THE IRISH PHENOMENON CELTIC WOMAN COMES THE NEXT GENERATION IN IRISH BALLAD MUSIC, THE HIGH KINGS. Finbarr Clancy, Martin Furey, Brian Dunphy and Darren Holden – renowned vocalists and musicians – have come together to form the hottest Irish folk and ballad group to emerge since The Clancy Brothers [...]

Back to Black

Amy Winehouse’s second album, Back to Black, is one of the finest soul albums, British or otherwise, to come out for years. Frank, her first album, was a sparse and stripped-down affair; Back to Black, meanwhile, is neither of these things. This time around, she’s taken her inspiration from some of the classic 1960’s girl [...]

Juno

Fox Searchlight Picture’s December 2007 coming-of-age comedy Juno, directed by Jason Reitman (Thank You For Smoking). The narrative centers on whip-smart Juno (Ellen Page, in a breakthrough role), a teenage girl faced with an unplanned pregnancy from an afternoon with the charmingly unassuming Bleeker (Michael Cera). Juno finds her unborn baby the perfect set of [...]

Little Voice

For many listeners, Little Voice will be their first exposure to this soulful singer/songwriter, but it’s actually Sara Bareilles’ second record. Her first, the self-released Careful Confessions, led to a deal with Epic. Since then, Bareilles has opened for Marc Broussard and Maroon 5. She’s also become a bonafide soundtrack queen with tracks featured in [...]

Detours

Thematically, Detours may not seem like much of a detour to Sheryl Crow fans. Her politics pour out of these songs the way you might expect them to if you caught wind of her epic cross-country bus trip, with the activist Laurie David, to promote environmental awareness months prior to this release. From the quiet, [...]

Raising Sand

Perhaps only the fantasy duo of King Kong and Bambi could be a more bizarre pairing than Robert Plant and Alison Krauss. Yet on Raising Sand, their haunting and brilliant collaboration, the Led Zeppelin screamer and Nashville’s most hypnotic song whisperer seem made for each other. This, however, is not the howling Plant of “Whole [...]