Author: Bill Adams
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Birds – Everything All At Once LP
Birds’ new album, Everything All At Once, rightly commands attention It might sound contrived to someone who has yet to experience it themselves, but the idea that great music is capable of moving a listener spiritually and emotionally is a very real thing. On the right day, the first listen to a record can excite…
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Justin Townes Earle – Kids On The Street LP
After being toasted first and then either critically maligned or flat out ignored for a little while thereafter, Justin Townes Earle has made a sound on his seventh album (first for New West Records) that any critic worth his sand simply cannot ignore. After all the hard luck, Earle had some addiction issues and he…
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Crim – Blau sang, Vermell cel LP
The catch, when it comes to working within any pop music-based form (and, as inconvenient as it is to say, punk rock definitely falls into that category), is that language plays a key role in the music’s accessibility. Simply said, if a band’s not speaking the mother tongue of the country they’re playing to, they’ve…
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L7: Pretend We’re Dead (DVD/Blu-Ray)
In the twenty-first century, it’s so unusual to simultaneously feel excited and infuriated as one watches a movie – but that’s what happens when one watches Pretend We’re Dead – the documentary film which chronicles the rise, fall and rebirth of L7. The reason for the excitement and, really, the joy of this film is…
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Various Artists – American Epic (5CD Box Set)
It might sound like a bit of a reach on the surface, but the first thing that listening to American Epic reminded me of was my university experience and how music like that which can be found on this box set changed my life. My first full-time year, I took – in addition to the…
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Elvis Presley – Boy From Tupelo (3CD box set)
It’s strange but, now forty years after his death, the image of Elvis Presley hasn’t faded but has become pretty two-dimensional. For many, the popular images of Elvis are basically that of the man who swivelled his hips and made women swoon as he sang “Heartbreak Hotel,” and that of the fat man who ate…
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Jane’s Addiction – Ritual De Lo Habitual Alive at 25 CD/DVD
I love live concerts. But I find something about just focussing on a single album – a band playing that and only that at a show – a little hard to take. In that situation, what one is witnessing ceases to feel like a show or a concert and sort of feels like a clumsy…
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North Mississippi Allstars – Prayer For Peace
The terms and conditions for being regarded as an “artistic dynasty” are vague and often vary from band-to-band but, without question or argument, the Dickinson family fits the bill. First, there was Jim Dickinson. For forty-six years, Jim Dickinson was present in one capacity or another (either as an “artist” or as a “producer”) to…
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The Chemical Brothers – Born In The Echoes (2LP reissue)
After over a quarter century of holding dance clubs hostage with some of the most well-known club-pop ever to also grace radio airwaves, the question has become how The Chemical Brothers have held the the venerable position they have. They are some of the most visible purveyors of dance club music and culture after all and, in…
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Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers – Into The Great Wide Open (vinyl reissue)
Abraham Lincoln once said (to a delegation from the National Union League who were urging him to be their presidential candidate) that, “It is never wise to swap horses in mid-stream”. After the popular breakthrough that his solo album made in 1989, Tom Petty clearly took that adage to heart when it came time to…