wvortix.blogg.se - Phil cook all these years vinyl

Steinfeld weighs in on the year that’s just about done.For Phil Cook, it all started with piano. Picks to click: Amanda Palmer (pictured above), Durand Jones, The Monroes, Tom Petty, Natalie Walker, and more.

Amanda Palmer - T here Will Be No Intermission (8 Foot Records/Cooking Vinyl).

These days, it’s easy to throw around phrases like “his/her most personal work to date.” But in Amanda Palmer’s case, if anything, this is an understatement. There Will Be No Intermission is Palmer’s first solo outing in nearly seven years - and it indeed her most personal work to date. Palmer throws it all out there on Intermission : losing her best friend to cancer, talking another friend through an abortion, not to mention being a new Mom in these apocalyptic times. It adds up to a song cycle about loss that can be harrowing at times but is ultimately uplifting. There is no one else like Amanda Palmer - not in the music she makes, not in the way she delivers that music to the public.

Durand Jones & the Indications - American Love Call (Dead Oceans).

If you didn’t know better, you’d swear that Durand Jones & the Indications recorded this album in the early ‘70s. This Indiana-based band has already perfected the kind of soul that The Delfonics and The Stylistics popularized back then. It doesn’t hurt that they have two lead singers (Jones and Aaron Frazer) whose voices compliment each other.

This album is comprised mainly of love songs, but there are a couple of moments - like “Morning in America”- where the band tackles more topical material with fine results. The Monroes - The Monroes 2.0 (Tugboat Music).The Monroes are best known for their 1982 hit “What Do All the People Know,” one of the great songs of the New Wave era. Now, frontman Bob Monroe returns with a new album and lineup more than three decades after the fact. Mary Lambert - Grief Creature (Tender Heart Records).2.0 covers a lot of ground - from the radio-friendly rocker “Midnight in Hollywood” to the unabashedly vulnerable ballad “Made for You” to the Beatlesque pop song “Tell Me Tonight.” Then there’s the great opening track, “White Lace and Blue Jeans,” an ode to a woman who is “sometimes wild and crazy, sometimes so austere.” File under “Comeback of the Year.” The resulting album confirms that he had more than one great song in him. Mary Lambert came to prominence in 2012 when she sang the hook of Macklemore’s #1 hit “Same Love” - one of the few hip-hop songs to support same sex marriage. Her own music couldn’t be further from hip-hop, though. Lambert is a singer-songwriter who writes on piano. Grief Creature is her first album since 2014 and it’s a great one, tackling everything from breakups (from both sides of the coin) to living with bipolar disorder to surviving rape. It It’s a testimony to Lambert that she can cram 17 tracks onto an album and not overstay her welcome.

Magdalene is the long-awaited sophomore set from English artist Tahliah Barnett (better known as FKA Twigs) - and it was worth the wait. This is a concise masterpiece, drawing equally from Kate Bush and urban music. The album’s centerpiece is a haunting meditation on Mary Magdalene, repurposed for the trip-hop age. The Highwomen are a country-rock supergroup - a female answer to ‘80s band The Highwaymen. The women in question are Brandi Carlisle, Amanda Shires, Maren Morris and Natalie Hemby. The Jellybricks - Some Kind of Lucky (Wicked Cool Records).Each of the four gets at least one moment in the spotlight on their self-titled debut, and the album is alternately introspective and rocking.

The latest disc from this veteran Pennsylvania-based band is straightforward power pop. The Jellybricks aren’t reinventing the wheel, but on songs like “Corner of My Eye” and “Mrs. Joslyn & the Sweet Compression (Robert Hall Records).Misery,” they polish that wheel until it shines.