Listen Up
Telekinesis
Justin PressTelekinesis’ eponymous (plus exclamation point) debut album is a gem full of simple, straight-ahead tuneage and dumb-happy lyrics, channeling Rivers Cuomo’s torn-windbreaker angst while remaining true to the band...
Obituary: Hosea Robinson
Ken ShimamotoMy friend Hosea Robinson died on July 3 from congestive heart failure. He was 57. I hadn’t seen him in a few years, but back in 1998, we played together for eight or nine months in a blues band – his first – b...
Matt Wilson Quartet
Ken ShimamotoComing up for air in the middle of a period of obsessive listening to the 1964 Charles Mingus band with Eric Dolphy, I slipped this disc into the player and was surprised and delighted to discover a jazz release as fiery and fe...
Bigelf
Justin PressBigelf’s metallic circus-influenced music is a quilt of T.Rex, Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, The Beatles, and Pink Floyd. It’s essentially a six-pack of kick ass. But the foursome, with their stovepipe hats and turn-o...
Nels Cline, Alex Cline
Ken ShimamotoGuitarist Nels Cline makes music in a mind-boggling variety of contexts: from relatively mainstream artsy roots-rock with Wilco, to experimental skronk-skree in variously sized groups with all manner of folks, to a sort of rock...
Justin Townes Earle
Tom GeddieJustin Townes Earle’s second CD, Midnight at the Movies, is not quite country and not quite folk, but it’s as deeply rooted in both of those similar traditions as it is comfortable in its variety, its seriousness, a...
Corey Wilkes & Abstrakt Pulse
Ken ShimamotoSurprise: Band name and title notwithstanding, Cries from tha Ghetto isn’t a hip-hop album. Rather, it’s the second album from a 30-year-old trumpeter who had the unenviable task of replacing Lester Bowie, one of th...
Ray Reed
Ken ShimamotoIt’s a great miscarriage of fortune for the Fort Worth blues scene that Lady Pearl Johnson never released any recordings during her lifetime. Sure, there were some live club tapes she might have opted to release, but sadl...
Jessica Lure Ensemble
KEN SHIMAMOTOSeattle’s all-woman Tiptons Sax Quartet was originally called the Billy Tipton Memorial Saxophone Quartet in honor of the big-band musician who lived as a man for half a century but was posthumously discovered to be a wom...
Unknown Instructors
Ken ShimamotoSorry, kids. This isn’t the resurgence of unsung and never-properly-recorded Dallas outfit Funland. Rather, it’s the third installment of a poetry-rock project with punk rock-turned-experimental musos, helmed by Ohi...