New Ali Farka Touré Music Surfaces on Star-Studded ‘Voyageur’
Voyageur is as complete and wondrous an album as anything Ali Farka Touré put out during his lifetime, in no small part due to the work of his son, Vieux.
blues
Fleetwood Mac’s First LP Shows a Hungry, Irreverent Approach to Chicago Blues
Surprisingly, Fleetwood Mac began life as a blues-rock band before morphing into the pop/rock juggernaut that ruled the charts in the late 1970s.
Fantastic Negrito Reimagines His 2022 Album with ‘Grandfather Courage’
Fantastic Negrito’s Grandfather Courage is a compelling, affecting work of acoustic blues and roots music, speaking to the deep currents of blues as an American art form.
Barbara Blue Sings the Blues for These Times on ‘From the Shoals’
Barbara Blue’s From the Shoals is your basic gutbucket, spill my heart on your sleeve blues, recreating Memphis blues with a cosmopolitan sensibility.
Rock ‘n’ Stroll: Robert Cray’s Blues Stormer ‘Midnight Stroll’
Robert Cray plays subtly with basic blues convention on Midnight Stroll, turning it into a brand-new face for listeners who have heard it all before.
Ellen McIlwaine Made Music For ‘We the People’ 50 Years Ago
By combining multiple styles, playing techniques, and cultural influences, Ellen McIlwaine challenged notions of genre classification and embraced music as a “universal language”.
The Crowning Glory of Chicago’s Blues King Muddy Waters
Muddy Waters’ Hard Again is his best studio album. It’s a glowing monument to him and to what electric Chicago blues can be at its very best.
Reissues of Tinariwen’s Early Albums Recall the Saharan Group at Their Most Iconic
Unimpeachable in both technique and sincerity, Aman Iman and Imidiwan are potent assemblages of the qualities that make Tinariwen’s music evergreen.
Hiding in Plain Sight: Bob Dylan’s ‘Good As I Been to You’ at 30
Good As I Been To You was warmly received by critics, but a Bob Dylan album of covers with a stripped-down, rough-edged acoustic aesthetic did not satisfy fans’ hunger for new Dylan material.
Through the Eye of a Needle: The Unlikely Success of Son House’s ‘Father of Folk Blues’
Son House is the most important Delta blues rediscovery of the 1960s, and his Father of Folk Blues LP is the best blues rediscovery studio album.
Bob Stanley’s Book on the Birth of Pop Music Spins One Helluva Playlist
Bob Stanley provides an utterly comprehensive and much-appreciated reference guide for the world of pre-rock pop music. We just need to carve out a million hours to stream the music.
Bob Dylan Remains Hard to Pin Down with ‘The Philosophy of Modern Song’
In The Philosophy of Modern Song, Bob Dylan conveys his thoughts in his signature styles, as in his lyrics, he can be plainspoken, gnomic, and over the top.