Jazz Articles

Paul McCartney: New

by Mike Perciaccante
October 26, 2013

Welcome back Paul McCartney. For lack of a better phrase, he's back to where he once belonged. He's released a collection of songs that is all at once lyrically pleasing, Beatlesque, forward-thinking, modern, vintage and above all else rocking. On New, Sir Paul sounds re-energized. Gone are the introspective, reflective and somewhat somber lyrics and music that plagued Memory Almost Full (Hear Music, 2007), his last collection of original offerings (2012's Hear Music release Kisses On The Bottom was a ...

Paul Simon: So Beautiful or So What

by John Kelman
April 28, 2011

After successful run at self-producing, yielding hits like Graceland (Warner Bros., 1986) and The Rhythm of the Saints (Warner Bros., 1990), Paul Simon reunites with Phil Ramone for So Beautiful or So What, the singer/songwriter's first album since the largely overlooked Surprise (Warner Bros., 2006). Ramone last worked with the singer/songwriter on One Trick Pony (Warner Bros., 1980), but was responsible for producing many of Simon's early hits from the 1970s. After breaking out with the iconic ...

John Mellencamp: Life, Death, Love & Freedom

by Mike Perciaccante
July 17, 2008

Packaged in an environmentally friendly cardboard sleeve, Mellencamp has called this his CD of “modern electric folksongs." Life, Death, Love & Freedom contains 14 tracks, most of which are about life, death and love--hence the title.

Bluesy, but in a different manner than 2003's superb Trouble No More (Columbia), Life Death Love & Freedom is very much Mellencamp writing and creating his own folk/country blues songs rather than covering classics by Robert Johnson, Willie Dixon, Son House, Memphis Minnie and ...

Joni Mitchell: Shine

by John Kelman
October 25, 2007

With a remarkable career that includes the near-perfect Asylum triptych of Court and Spark (1974), The Hissing of Summer Lawns (1975) and Hejira (1976), it's almost beyond reasonable expectation for Joni Mitchell to produce an album that, more than three decades later, lives up to those early classics. Still, while Shine doesn't quite have the magic of those three releases, it's certainly one of her best since.

It's also an album where Mitchell admits, in the ...

Herbie Hancock: Possibilities

by John Kelman
August 31, 2005

First things first: Herbie Hancock's new record is unabashed pop. A “project in the truest sense of the word, Possibilities was built by Hancock from the ground floor up by enlisting a group of singer/songwriters—some older, some younger; some established, some up and coming—as the spirit moved him over a lengthy period of time. This isn't a case of Hancock and rhythm section bringing some singers to a session; instead, Hancock went from place to place, going where the music ...