Bob Dylan: Inside the Jesus Years

My review of Bob Dylan: Inside the Jesus Years, a new documentary that sheds light on one of the more baffling and misunderstood phases of Dylan’s career, is posted at CT Movies.

People

Barry Adamson begins his new album, Back to the Cat, with a dream– a feverish, apocalyptic fantasy about “The Beaten Side of Town.” It’s either nightmarish or utterly euphoric– or perhaps a little of both– depending on your perspective. In it, our shady narrator emerges from the shadows and recalls a vision he had of [...]

Ryan Adams & the Cardinals: “Cardinology”

Loudon Wainwright once recorded a song called “Muse Blues,” a witheringly funny and blunt account of writer’s block and creative frustration. At one point in the song, the singer seem to throw his hand up in the air, in abject desperation, as he moans, “I eat and drink and smoke stuff– I don’t know what [...]

Aaron Parks: “Invisible Cinema”

There’s an oft-cited statistic that jazz sales make up less than 2% of all record sales– the point being, one assumes, that jazz is something of a niche, a genre for musical elitists and sophisticates. All things considered, though, that’s a pretty narrow view to take of an American music idiom that has always been [...]

Cardinology 101

I’m not sure if there are any musicians who I genuinely hate, but, if there is one, it’s very possible that it’s Ryan Adams. Between his frustrating, erratic concert performances and his insistence on recording and releasing every stray thought that comes into his head– resulting in some mightily uneven albums, containing just enough memorable [...]

Lucinda Williams: “Little Honey”

There is indeed something a bit unusual about Lucinda Williams’ new album, Little Honey, but it’s not the thing critics and fans seem to be harping on. Yes, Williams, though known for her melancholy lyrics of unrequited affection, cracks a few smiles on this album, writing from a place of romantic contentment and peace, letting [...]

Ezra Furman & the Harpoons: “Inside the Human Body”

If Ezra Furman were really as much like Bob Dylan as he’s sometimes made out to be, then his second album, Inside the Human Body, would, hypothetically, be met with more than its fair share of derision and scorn. After all, on his debut, 2007’s Banging Down the Doors, Furman proved to be a folksinger [...]

Back to Barry Adamson

As elusive and intoxicating today as it was when it released several months ago, Barry Adamson’s fantastic album Back to the Cat remains in heavy rotation here at Hurst Headquarters. Don’t let the year end without drinking of Adamson’s heady musical brew; here’s a quick taste:

Bob Dylan: “Tell Tale Signs: The Bootleg Series Volume 8″

Who knew, at the time of their release, that Good as I Been to You and World Gone Wrong, two albums of traditional blues cover songs, would turn out to be two of the landmark recordings in Bob Dylan’s career? Little-heard and often dismissed as stopgags between the real Dylan albums, the two records are [...]

Bob Dylan’s Tell Tale Signs

The eighth volume in Bob Dylan’s official “bootleg” series, Tell Tale Signs, arrives in stores today, handsomely packaged and sounding for all the world not like a collection of leftovers, but like a lost Dylan masterpiece. Its 27 songs– including outtakes, alternate recordings, soundtrack material, and live cuts from 1989’s Oh Mercy all the way [...]