Rating: ★★★★★ (out of 5) With Turnstiles, Billy Joel experienced a creative breakthrough. One album later, with The Stranger, he experienced a commercial breakthrough to match it. Peaking at #2 and ultimately going 10× platinum, his 1977 smash catapulted him to stardom he’s maintained for 35 years. From the first listen, it’s not hard to see…
This is part of my 2011 wrap-up series, A Few of My Favorite Things, in which I discuss what I enjoyed the past year, regardless of when it was released. Hammersmith Odeon, London ’75 Album, 2005 In his retrospective of The Arctic Monkeys’ first three albums, Grant cites a theory about artists’ third albums. As Coldplay…
Need a last-minute Christmas gift for yourself? Look, Jews et al., any occasion you can come up with is fine — Scientologists have Freedom Day to look forward to on the 30th — just find a reason and make sure you’ve got The Whole Shebang ready to tap on New Year’s Eve. This is the…
When was the last time you heard a band credit their breakthrough to PureVolume? It almost feels as if that site was a phase, something you love in high school and then grow out of. Nowadays we’ve got oodles of options like Spotify, Pandora, and MoonPlayer to help us find new music and Bandcamp, SoundCloud,…
I was very lucky to be offered a lovely piece of property to build a career on. I started building a house on it, but it wasn’t necessarily a house I would want to live in. So I ripped down that house, and I worked with these great lumberjacks to build a really cool cabin…
“I know what I’m needing And I don’t want to waste more time I’m in a New York state of mind” -Billy Joel, New York State of Mind Rating: ★★★★★ (out of 5) There’s a beautiful scene near the end of the 2009 movie Adventureland in which Jesse Eisenberg takes a bus-ride to New York City,…
Rating: ★★★ (out of five) Piano Man is such a satisfying album in part because it’s so obviously a full-hearted, emotionally-draining effort. That makes it less surprising — though no less disappointing — that Streetlife Serenade sounds exhausted and depleted. Streetlife Serenade crystallizes the faint western hints on Piano Man and ends up with a…
Rating: *** (out of five) Billy Joel’s solo debut, which he released at the age of 22 after taking part in a few failed bands, is something of a mixed bag. Compositionally, this is a 4-star album, showcasing a young songwriter coming into his own emotionally and poetically. Performance-wise, this is a 2-star album, with…
Suck It and See: 4 stars (out of 5) One of these days, Alex Turner and the Arctic Monkeys will release a bad album. At least, that’s what history and convention would tell us. One might have predicted that the mediocrity would have come with Favourite Worst Nightmare, the follow-up to their debut monster Whatever…
Rating: 3 and a half stars (out of 5) Neon Trees opened for The Killers in 2008, inviting a natural comparison to a band they clearly respect. A couple years later, the Trees are playing a gig at the upcoming Lollapalooza concerts, their lead single “Animal” gets some radio play, and…they’re also plugging Las Vegas…