In the fall of 2014, an expansive group of artists – from Brian Wilson to Butch Walker – got together for two concerts in Los Angeles honoring George Harrison. George Fest is a concert album put on by Best Fest, the traveling tribute-show series that has convened all-star tributes to Bob… Source: RollingStone Link: George Fest: […]
Willie Nelson may be the king of outlaw country, but the LP that made him a household name was Stardust, his quintuple-platinum 1978 set of old-school pop standards like “Georgia On My Mind,” “All Of Me,” and “Blue Skies.” Blue-jeaned badasses might’ve sneered that their Whiskey River-running hero had gone… Source: RollingStone Link: Summertime: Willie […]
Zen master music producer Rick Rubin has played Yoda to countless musicians over the last decades. So he’s the perfect guy to executive produce an album of Star Wars-themed EDM. The possibilities for such a project are pretty limitless, and the best tracks here approach the beloved source material with… Source: RollingStone Link: Star Wars […]
Will Khalifa be the Wiz Khalifa album listeners make it all the way through? Perhaps, but it won’t be an especially memorable task. Even as the Pittsburgh rapper builds on the darker, trap-influenced vibe of 2014’s Blacc Hollywood, his lyrics cling to the themes that have worked for him in the past: his success and… Source: RollingStone Link: Khalifa
“How many more of these sad songs can one boy write?” Aaron Maine asked on an early release in 2011. It was almost like he was giving himself a dare. He’s written a boatload of sad songs over the last few years (as Porches and under other aliases) – good… Source: RollingStone Link: Pool
Vince Gill is an encyclopedia of country tradition, whether he’s reviving western swing with the Time Jumpers, producing new standard-bearer Ashley Monroe, or wrapping his Oklahoma high tenor around “Sad One Comin’ On (Song for George Jones)” – a note-perfect honky-tonk weeper about the king of honky-tonk weepers. That’s the… Source: RollingStone Link: Down to […]
Elton John opens his 32nd studio album by looking back in delight. “Some things you don’t forget/Some things just take a hold,” he sings with relish in the title song, a jaunty recollection of lasting love at first sight. The music framing that glee – “Loose clothes and a cool,… Source: RollingStone Link: Wonderful Crazy […]
Subtlety and economy aren’t words that typically come to mind when pondering a new Dream Theater album, much less one that arrives in the form of a double-disc epic with 34 tracks spanning two-and-a-half hours. Yet counterintuitively, those qualities help the veteran prog-metal quintet’s 13th album, The Astonishing, live up to its… Source: RollingStone Link: The Astonishing
When Nineties alt-rocker Juliana Hatfield started working with Paul Westerberg last year, she soon realized that much of the Replacements singer’s greatest work remained unreleased. “She brought a lot of this to life that otherwise would have just sat down in the basement and sort of rotted,” the notoriously reclusive… Source: RollingStone Link: Wild Stab
Brooklyn duo Chairlift have attained the synth-pop holy grail: They’re the Yaz of our time, filling their albums with perfectly sculpted, searchingly lovely tunes wrought from tense, tugging intimacy just as Vince Clark and Alison Moyet did on classic songs like “Bad Connection” and “Only You” 30 years ago. Yet… Source: RollingStone Link: Moth