albumreviews
John Oates is having a full-circle moment after leveraging a canny mix of new-wave soul to reach multi-platinum heights with Daryl Hall in the ’80s. His sixth solo album is titled Reunion, but if anything it’s a homecoming with Oates’ former self. This is the John Oates from before Hall and Oates, the one who wrote two songs and co-wrote four others on 1972’s jangly Whole Oats. You may associate him with flashy MTV videos, but the first things we heard from Oates featured pedal steel. His similarly rootsy turn as a solo artist has echoes in the past. A move to Nashville in the 2000s drew Oates...
Ultimate Classic Rock
Little Feat, like any other good gumbo, is a rich, dark stew of influences. They’ll stir in folk, rock, blues, country, gospel and a bit of funk. The secret spice in this strange concoction was originally the late Lowell George, a man of both prodigious talents and appetites. He oversaw their transformation from an off-kilter post-Frank Zappa hybrid group into a rollicking, rootsy delight before he was felled by a massive heart attack on June 29, 1979, at just 34 years old. Little Feat had already begun drifting away from him, turning a little more jazzy, but promptly broke up anyway. Next cam...
Ultimate Classic Rock
From a cover painting by his artist father David Bierk to songs that chart a pathway to adulthood, Sebastian Bach‘s Child Within the Man is partly about reconciling with the past. Not that the former Skid Row singer has regrets or a keenly wistful sense of nostalgia, or at least any he shares across the 11 tracks on his first album in 10 years, but this is about as personal as the man who was recently disguised as a giant tiki cup on The Masked Singer has ever gotten on record. Chalk it up to getting older and uncovering a social awareness that was all but buried three decades ago when Bach wa...
Ultimate Classic Rock
From a cover painting by his artist father David Bierk to songs that chart a pathway to adulthood, Sebastian Bach‘s Child Within the Man is partly about reconciling with the past. Not that the former Skid Row singer has regrets or a keenly wistful sense of nostalgia, or at least any he shares across the 11 tracks on his first album in 10 years, but this is about as personal as the man who was recently disguised as a giant tiki cup on The Masked Singer has ever gotten on record. Chalk it up to getting older and uncovering a social awareness that was all but buried three decades ago when Bach wa...
Ultimate Classic Rock
Keeping up with the Melvins‘ catalog is a full-time job. Since their debut LP in 1987, the Washington state band has released more than two dozen studio albums, another 20 or so EPs and a dozen live records. In the past decade alone there have been 20 releases bearing the Melvins name. So which ones are worth hearing? It depends on what you want from the group. There are tossed-off records like 2021’s Five Legged Dog, an acoustic covers set of songs from their past as well as cuts from other artists; randomly disassembled and reconstructed, but still relatively straightforward, albums like Wor...
Ultimate Classic Rock
Mark Knopfler‘s One Deep River is an album of lyrical poignancy, with a depth of world-weariness that almost becomes dreamlike. His vocals and most certainly that guitar connect back to Dire Straits, but only in their quietest, most reflective moments. It’s as if he left simply to downshift. In this enduring quiet, Knopfler has done a lot of looking back – but not to his hitmaking former group. No, he’s looking much further back – back into the histories of aging figures and long-ago characters, connecting their struggles, heartbreaks and (only very occasional) triumphs to the present. He’s al...
Ultimate Classic Rock
Blue Oyster Cult has kept busy this decade, releasing their first new studio album since 2001 in 2020 and issuing live records recorded at various tour stops this century. They’ve also remained on the road nonstop since their 1972 debut album. All this has made them one of the most reliable legacy acts of the 21st century, with co-founders Eric Bloom and Donald “Buck Dharma” Roeser still fronting the band. Their 15th album – fittingly titled Ghost Stories – finds inspiration from the spirits in the shadows. Collecting unreleased songs dating to the late ’70s – most made by the original quintet...
Ultimate Classic Rock
Since their breakthrough 14 years ago with Brothers, the Black Keys have held steady with a string of albums that have simultaneously tried to expand their limited musical palette (initially only singer-guitarist Dan Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney played on their records) while not straying too far from the primal blues-based rock ‘n’ roll that made them famous. All this has made the five albums released since Brothers‘ tightly packed follow-up El Camino a bit similar on the surface, including their 12th LP, Ohio Players. Only on repeated listens do intricacies reveal themselves, and, mor...
Ultimate Classic Rock
So much has been made of Chris and Rich Robinson’s public spats over the past couple of decades that it’s easy to forget that the Black Crowes were once among rock’s greatest revivalist bands. Their bluesy swagger and strutting riffs drew comparisons to Faces and peak period Rolling Stones; at their best, the Black Crowes reminded fans that before indie and before grunge, there was simply rock ‘n’ roll. The last time the Black Crowes recorded an album of new songs in a studio was 2008’s Warpaint; since then they’ve released several live records (including 2009’s Before the Frost … , which pres...
Ultimate Classic Rock
Since the release of Judas Priest‘s previous album, 2018’s Firepower, the metal legends were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, one of the few genre artists to be acknowledged by the institution. Even then, they were instated as part of the “Music Excellence” category rather than as official class inductees. It’s an unneeded reminder and clear example of metal’s often shuttling to second-class citizenship by rock highbrows. Priest’s 19th album, Invincible Shield, probably won’t change too many minds outside of the already converted, but it’s a deserving addition to the esteemed catalo...
Ultimate Classic Rock
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