This post is part one of a Melodic Margin series for people who do not quite hear themselves as country listeners yet. It takes the scenic route through the genre until the music starts sounding bigger and more alive than the stereotype allows. “I don’t like country” is one of those music opinions people often…
Alt-country is one of those genre names that sounds useful right up until you try to pin it down too neatly. Then it starts slipping out of your hands, which is honestly part of the appeal. At the most basic level, alt-country is country music that picked up a little extra grit somewhere along the…
Some albums announce what they are in the first thirty seconds. You know the category, the era, the mood, maybe even the sentence you would use to describe them before the side is over. Terry Callier’s What Color Is Love is not that kind of record. The first thing you notice is probably Callier’s voice:…
I wish more people knew that Simple Minds are not just the Breakfast Club band. Yes, of course “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” is huge. It deserves to be huge and I still love it. The drum hit still lands, the chorus still lifts, and it will probably be attached to that freeze-frame ending forever….
Ranking David Bowie albums is ridiculous. It is a bad idea. It is an impossible idea. It is the kind of thing that seems fun until you are suddenly staring at Hunky Dory, “Heroes”, Scary Monsters, Station to Station, Low, and Aladdin Sane like you’ve been asked to choose a favorite nerve ending. And yet…
Miles Davis did not treat live albums like souvenirs. He used them to prove the music was still changing. The studio records are the monuments, obviously. Kind of Blue, Sketches of Spain, Miles Smiles, Bitches Brew. Those are the albums people reach for when they talk about how jazz changed in the second half of…
Experimental rock is one of those genres everyone recognizes but no one can quite define. Most listeners first encounter it through albums that stretch rock music without completely breaking it. Records like The Velvet Underground & Nico, Remain in Light, or Kid A push at the edges while still sounding like songs in the traditional…
Plenty of singers have good voices, though fewer have voices you recognize instantly. Johnny Cash had one of those. That deep baritone carries a lot with it. Even people who’ve never gone through his albums can recognize the opening of Folsom Prison Blues or the stark final years captured in Hurt. The tricky part is…
Few artists inspire the kind of fascination that surrounds Kate Bush. Her music occupies a strange and wonderful place in pop history—simultaneously accessible and mysterious, theatrical yet deeply emotional. From the gothic drama of “Wuthering Heights” to the widescreen atmosphere of Hounds of Love, Bush built one of the most distinctive catalogs in modern music….
Picture this. You step into a small club sometime around 1981. The lights are low. Everything has that metallic glow you only get from old chrome fixtures and cigarette haze. Instead of a drummer, there’s a drum machine tapping out a steady pulse. A synth line loops in the background. Smooth. Precise. Hypnotic. No guitar…