Category: Album Reviews

November 11, 2016 / Album Reviews - Archive

UNSONGS (Propeller/Caroline) 8.5/10 By the 1980s music largely ceased to be the voice of protest and the force for change that it had been in the ’60s. Now Norway’s Pal Moddi Knutson has gathered together 12 songs from across the years and around the world that were banned or censored,…

November 5, 2016 / Album Reviews - Archive

FRONTIER LULLABY (cdbaby.com/Artist/AlesaLajana) 7.5/10 This was eight years in the making, with Alesa Lajana wandering Australia, researching post-invasion interaction between blacks and whites. The lunar right and their shrill apologists will hate it. They prefer using terms like “black armband view of history” to sweep away inconvenient truths about atrocities.…

October 30, 2016 / Album Reviews - Archive

TAKE ME TO THE ALLEY (Blue Note) 8/10 Gregory Porter’s singing and song-writing may have been spawned by a love of jazz, but r&b elements have grown ever stronger until Marvin Gaye now seems at least much of a precursor as Nat King Cole. The lavishly romantic streak present in…