Review: After 20 years of soulful and authentic rock & roll blues, Eli Paperboy Reed definitely had a right to celebrate. Originally recorded in a basement in Allston, Massachusetts, completely live onto and direct to analogue tape in mono, this collection was first released on a limited run of 300 CDs, self-released, and mostly sold by hand on the streets of Cambridge, close to Harvard University. Now redone, pressed-up and polished for 'proper release', you get all 12 original tracks and another 14 that never saw the light of day before. Four of those were recorded at the time of the others, the remainder come from a radio session the following year. All of them are incredible, and prove that it's not only the Deep South that can make these raw and unflinchingly honest sounds.
Review: For fans of Iron & Wine, Michael Nau, and Leonard Cohen, Reverend Baron's Overpass Boy offers a surely irresistible meditation on Los Angeles. Danny Garcia, formerly a pro skater and Drugdealer band member, created this album with a spontaneous mindset. It has worked to date with over 4.4 million streams and 135.4k monthly listeners on Spotify which proves his blend of soul, doo-wop, and East LA grooves is loved far and wide. This album was recorded at various LA locations and tells the story of a young wanderer through poetic observations and longings. Featuring stacked harmonies, gentle percussion, and Garcia's own instrumentals, it captures the city's essence and emotional depth and comes on limited Coke bottle clear vinyl.
Review: Marc Ribot's latest LP draws on decades of work and reflection, gluing fragments recorded over years back together to form a coherent whole, and finally foregrounding Ribot's own voice in the process. Sparked by a memory of one of his daughter's childhood drawings, Map Of A Blue City perambulates states of disorientation and openness, tracing the emotional topography of loss. Stark truths pivot against tender storytelling, at once producing an intimately distant space. "Recording production is really complicated," he says, "but it all boils down to what kind of room the listener feels they're standing in." Not quite autobiographical, it's a record built on the long, unresolved tension between what changes and what doesn't.
Review: Now pushing a terrifying fifty-five years into their career, one would be forgiven for thinking there would be precious few tricks up the sleeves of the so-called 'Strollin' Bones'. Yet they've confounded expectations by not only returning to their blues roots but in delivering their best record in at least half that stretch. Who knows whether the grit and raunch that originally inspired the ingrates back in the early-'60s has infused these readings with a timeless charge, or whether the band chemistry has simply been re-ignited by this old-as-the-hills yet fresh-as-a-daisy approach. All we can tell is that Keith and Ron's guitars have rarely sounded as sharp, nor the band this electrifying this century, and the 73-year-old Mick Jagger in 2016 has the strut and self-possession of a man one third his age.
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