Checking in with our thoughts on a few of tonight’s winners from the 2011 Grammy Awards, including the Black Keys – the top-rated Something Else! Reviews record from last year — as well as Buddy Guy, Neil Young, Stanley Clarke, Paul McCartney and Mavis Staples, among others. Click through the album titles for more … THE BLACK KEYS, BROTHERS (winner [...]

Editor’s note: Here’s a repost of our review of 1978′s City to City by Gerry Rafferty, who died today in London from liver failure after a lengthy battle with alcoholism. Rafferty scored Top 10 hits first with Stealers Wheel (“Stuck in the Middle”) and then with his own “Baker Street” from this recording. City to City sold more than 5.5 [...]

by Nick DeRiso Equal parts Summer of Love songcraft and heartland soul, the Shamus Twins’ Garden of Weeds is as apt to jangle as it is to twang. That’s reflective of the Los Angeles-based band’s founders, guitarist Jerry Juden and bassist Tim Morrow, two halves of the same genre-busting whole. They take turns with songwriting duties, recalling the long-ago heyday [...]

by Nick DeRiso Cassandra Wilson, who consistently defies convention as this restless chanteuse, doesn’t disappoint with Silver Pony — issued today on Blue Note as the long-awaited part-in studio, part-live followup to her celebrated Loverly. She has the vocal phrasing, the dusky intellect, of Charlie Parker and the elastic intuition of Betty Carter. Yet, Wilson is no throwback. She writes [...]

Paul McCartney’s “Band on the Run” still represents the creative highpoint of his career away from the Beatles, nearly four decades later. So, to paraphrase a tune here, what’s the use in repackaging the thing again? Well, a brilliant remaster of the original tapes, which have always been a little muddy, additional never-before-seen home movies from the exotic recording sessions, [...]

by Pico When you look at what the pianist from Palermo, Sicily has already accomplished, any new release by Salvatore Bonafede should be a highly anticipated one. A Berklee grad, Bonafede has played with Jerry Bergonzi, John Scofield, Joe Lovano, Tim Berne, John Abercrombie, Lester Bowie, Tom Harrell, Dave Douglas and fellow Italian Enrico Rava. He’s led records that has [...]

by Pico Since we’re on the topic of Austin-based acts, why not shift our focus to one of the most acclaimed and yet most elusive since the death of Stevie Ray Vaughan? I’m talking of course about the Arcangels. It would be impossible to discuss the Arcangels without a discussing their sometimes-volatile history, since Living In A Dream is about [...]

by Nick DeRiso On “Y Not,” his 16th album, Ringo Starr offers a Beatles collaboration that closes the circle started with his solo career-making turn on George Harrison‘s “It Don’t Come Easy” from 1971. “Walk With You,” a duet with fellow bandmate Paul McCartney, finds the friendly bravado of Ringo’s best early records melting into a sadly appropriate melancholy — [...]

by Nick DeRiso What does Paul McCartney, after five decades in music and an astonishing seven previous concert recordings, still have to tell us in yet another multi-disc live offering? Turns out, more than I thought. “Good Evening New York City” (Hear Music/Concord Music Group), out today, commemorates McCartney’s three-night concert event to open New York’s new Citi Field, played [...]

by Nick DeRiso There is, inside of Gerry Rafferty’s most famous album — and, as a solo artist, his most famous song — this sense of rebirth, of finding one’s way again. “When you wake up, it’s a new morning,” he sings on “Baker Street,” “the sun is shining, it’s a new morning … you’re going, you’re going home …” [...]