Phish - At The Roxy

Artist:
Phish
Review:
Recorded in 1993 during a three-night run in Atlanta, this
mammoth eight-disc box captures Phish right when they were putting
a spit-shine polish on the live improvisation that would make them
kings of the Nineties jam-band scene. At the Roxy is a must-have
for one reason: the second show on February 20th, where Phish
unleashed their most experimental set to date. On Disc Five,
guitarist Trey Anastasio, keyboardist Page McConnell, bassist Mike
Gordon and drummer Jon Fishman play for 60 nonstop…

Rating:
4 Stars

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Guns N’ Roses - Chinese Democracy

Artist:
Guns N’ Roses
Review:
Let’s get right to it: The first Guns n’ Roses album of new,
original songs since the first Bush administration is a great,
audacious, unhinged and uncompromising hard-rock record. In other
words, it sounds a lot like the Guns n’ Roses you know. At times,
it’s the clenched-fist five that made 1987’s perfect storm,
Appetite for Destruction; more often, it’s the one
sprawled across the maxed-out CDs of 1991’s Use Your Illusion
I and II, but here compressed into a convulsive
single disc of…

Rating:
4 Stars

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Parts and Labor - Receivers

Artist:
Parts and Labor
Review:
The Facebook generation just got its own spectacularly overblown
epic in the tradition of Pink Floyd’s The Wall. Channeling
the motorized grooves of Can and the industrial experiments of
Throbbing Gristle, these Brooklynites deliver a chilling,
post-apocalyptic concept album about failing to keep up with
capitalism and technology. On the synth rocker “Nowheres Nigh,”
singer Dan Friel shouts, “Consumption is our plight/These wasteful
Westerns of our time.” And “Satellites” is a rush of electro…

Rating:
3 Stars

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Genesis - Genesis: 1970-1975

Artist:
Genesis
Review:
At first, Genesis were five English ex-boarding-school mates
playing complex songs about hogweed and Greek myth. They slimmed
that audacity into platinum pop as members left: guitarist Anthony
Phillips (1970), singer Peter Gabriel (1975) and guitarist Steve
Hackett (1977). But bassist Mike Rutherford, keyboardist Tony Banks
and drummer Phil Collins were never as compelling later as they
were in the band that made the five LPs in this box. The
country-cathedral air of 1970’s Trespass and the…

Rating:
4.5 Stars

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Arthur Russell - Love Is Overtaking Me

Artist:
Arthur Russell
Review:
Arthur Russell was the secret link between New York music scenes of
the Seventies and Eighties — an experimental composer, a
pathbreaking disco producer, a rocker in Talking Heads’ orbit, a
wildly original singer. His downfall, though, was a perfectionism
that kept him from finishing his recordings. Culled from his ample
archives, this set collects unheard pop songs from 1973 to 1991, a
year before his death from AIDS-related complications. Russell’s
lighter-than-air voice, murmuring about…

Rating:
3.5 Stars

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Hank Williams - Hank Williams Unreleased Recordings

Artist:
Hank Williams
Review:
In 1951, if you were awake at 7:15 in the morning and your radio
was within the long reach of Nashville’s WSM-AM, you had Hank
Williams with your farina, singing with his Drifting Cowboys and
selling sacks of flour for his sponsor, Mother’s Best. Williams
wasn’t in the WSM studio at that hour; he prerecorded the shows on
days off from touring. But the 54 performances in this three-CD set
pack a magical, concentrated immediacy that is, in its time and
way, as electrifying as Johnny Cash’s Sixties…

Rating:
4.5 Stars

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The Replacements - Tim

Artist:
The Replacements
Review:
Released in 1985, Tim caught a great American garage band
stretching out, working Big Star pop and Fifties-style rock into a
mix of punky abandon and regular-dude romanticism. This version
— reissued along with three other ‘Mats albums, none of which
is quite as tuneful as Tim — brightens the sound and
adds six bonus cuts, including a bare-bones version of “Here Comes
a Regular,” Paul Westerberg’s moving acoustic ballad about
directionless barflies. Rarely did Westerberg write so…

Rating:
4 Stars

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Otis Redding - Live in London & Paris

Artist:
Otis Redding
Review:
Otis Redding didn’t simply “play concerts.” The soul giant was a
human Mount Vesuvius: He erupted. Redding was at the height of his
fame in March 1967, when he played these two brief shows in London
and Paris. (He would die in a plane crash in December that year.)
And the audience’s reaction is ecstatic — it’s a fair bet
that few of these Europeans had ever witnessed a spectacle quite
like Redding and the all-star Stax house band, Booker T. and the
MG’s and the Mar-Key horns, tearing into…

Rating:
4 Stars

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Lou Reed - Berlin: Live at St. Ann’s Warehouse

Artist:
Lou Reed
Review:
Upon the 1973 release of Berlin, a Rolling Stone critic
deemed the record “patently offensive.” Thirty years later, Lou
Reed’s concept album about speed freaks on a downward spiral of
infidelity, spousal abuse, parental neglect and death ranked 344 on
this magazine’s 500 all-time-greatest-albums list. Reed has always
fed upon this kind of irony, and in 2006 he staged a concert
adaptation of his rock musical in Brooklyn. (Painter-filmmaker
Julian Schnabel shot the performances.) Where Reed once…

Rating:
4 Stars

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The Delta Spirit

So I caught Delta Spirit on Conan Wednesday night, and they played like true pros, so I had to wonder: can they do it again that well live?  I went to see them at Mercury last night and the answer is: definitely.  They delivered a truly captivating set of melodic, impassioned rock.  Delta Spirit are the real deal: they’re good looking, fun to watch, and really talented.  Their songs are rootsy without being country, radio-friendly without being bubblegum, and heartfelt without being cheesy.  Singer Matthew Vasquez looks like a dangerous Shia LaBeouf and really knows how to hold an audience captive.   These guys are too good to not be famous, and soon.

Openers Action Painters turned in yet another tight, powerful set.  Their show was bottled lightning, sweaty and high-energy, and their new wave/old soul hybrid is infectious — I’m looking for them to break big in the coming year.  Also performing was Salt and Samovar, a five-piece band that played theatrical rock, like the Decemberists on drugs.  They played a strong set too, despite some unfortunate sound issues.  Overall, a solid night, top to bottom.