LOVE FOR SALE (Universal) 7/10 Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga would make good poker players. By waiting seven years to record their second album together, they also waited until Bennett was 94 (he’s since turned 95). Think about that for a moment. The credulity-defying achievement of still having a voice…
Category: Album Reviews
JESUP WAGON (TAO Forms) 9.5/10 The inspiration is moving enough, and that’s before we reach the music, itself. Saxophonist James Brandon Lewis has penned a suite in tribute to US visionary, scientist, inventor, educator and artist George Washington Carver. In 1906 Carver hit upon the idea of the Jesup Agricultural…
ALTER EGO (Orenda) 7/10 Don’t you love being lulled into a false sense of sonic security? Here it’s silvery guitar arpeggios and quivering flute doing the lulling, before the reverie is brutally gate-crashed by a descending ensemble figure and then one of those intriguingly ambiguous grooves that flirts with swing…