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484 items by Will Hermes Will Hermes’ Profile on
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Get Up! | ALBUM REVIEW
Ben Harper has been hiding in plain sight for nearly 20 years, delivering handsome hybrid folk blues – sometimes politicized, sometimes heartbroken – in his signature high-tenor whisper, while playing slide guitar with flashes of Hendrixian fire....
January 29, 2013 12:15 AM ET -
Anything in Return | ALBUM REVIEW
Though lumped in with the woozy-pop "chillwave" trendlet, Chaz Bundick has always had more cooking: Latin disco, soul jazz, bubblegum hooks and Princely funk shining amid glitchy synth washes and Animal Collective freak grooves. His latest is...
January 28, 2013 3:10 PM ET -
My True Story | ALBUM REVIEW
At 72, Aaron Neville's sweet, high tenor remains in remarkably good shape, and this set of doo-wop-era classics is a perfect showcase. Produced by Don Was and Keith Richards, whose rhythm guitar adds a Chuck Berry fan's...
January 28, 2013 3:00 PM ET -
Fade | ALBUM REVIEW
"Sometimes the good guys lose/We try not to lose our hearts" begins the 13th LP by the sublimely hangdog indie-rock forebears. On an album about staying the course as time passes and things fall apart, producer John...
January 15, 2013 12:15 AM ET -
Lysandre | ALBUM REVIEW
With his now-defunct band Girls, Christopher Owens was a stylistic crate-digger, repurposing classic-rock gestures. On his solo debut, he nails a Seventies-singer-songwriter sound oozing treacle and sincerity, all folk guitar, flutes, supper-club saxes and vintage keyboards. It...
January 15, 2013 12:00 AM ET -
Leaving | ALBUM REVIEW
As Skrillex, Sonny Moore is a fairly astonishing thing – a musical superstar who has never released a proper album. This may suggest a cultural paradigm shift, or simply a DJ with little to say beyond the...
January 11, 2013 3:45 PM ET -
"Judge Jury and Executioner" | SONG REVIEW
The latest track from Amok, the forthcoming debut LP by Thom Yorke's other band, is a bubbling cyber-groove packed with antsy beats – as you might expect from a group that features two world-class percussionists (as well...
January 11, 2013 3:20 PM ET -
"Wagon Wheel" | SONG REVIEW
The former Hootie frontman, now turned country singer, covers this old Dylan outtake, a song fragment Old Crow Medicine Show transformed into their signature. With rousing vocals from Lady Antebellum, Rucker may have just made it his,...
January 11, 2013 3:05 PM ET -
"Where Are We Now?” | SONG REVIEW
Well, it's about time. Posted out-of-the-blue on his website, Bowie's first release in nearly a decade – the first peek from a forthcoming LP, The Next Day, due in March – is a stirring melancholy ballad...
January 8, 2013 2:14 PM ET -
Song Reader | ALBUM REVIEW
Before cylinders or 78s, let alone mp3s, pop songs circulated as pamphlets, with notation, tablatures and lyrics that let people rock the hot new jams – provided they could play them. The latest in a run of...
December 28, 2012 10:55 AM ET -
Fall to Grace | ALBUM REVIEW
The ghost of Amy Winehouse haunts this hit LP, from Paloma Faith’s heady retro-soul vocals, to her Susan Sontag-in-Bride of Frankenstein bouffant, to the lyric “I know a girl who drinks herself to sleep at night/You can’t...
December 3, 2012 5:25 PM ET -
The Evil Empire of Everything | ALBUM REVIEW
"The youth is not youth for long/Rest in peace, Trayvon," declares Chuck D on PE's second 2012 LP, following Most of My Heroes Still Don't Appear on No Stamp. A predictably righteous volley of rhyme grenades on...
December 3, 2012 5:10 PM ET -
"Know Til Now" | SONG REVIEW
"Lost in the world," sings My Morning Jacket's frontman on this single from his solo debut, Regions of Light and Sound of God, due early next year. And lost he sounds, in the most ecstatic...
November 20, 2012 12:30 PM ET -
"Like the Morning Dew" | SONG REVIEW
Recalling a young Joan Armatrading with a taste for Beach Boys-cum-Animal Collective-harmony vocals, this U.K. soul-folk singer builds a swarming chorale punctuated with bell and brass tones, snare rolls and pizzicato bass notes. Like Christmas-pageant...
November 20, 2012 12:00 PM ET -
Three Chords Good | ALBUM REVIEW
One of the sharpest songsmiths of the U.K. rock scene in the late Seventies, Graham Parker always owed more to Dylan and Van Morrison than to his punk counterparts. On his first set in 31 years...
November 20, 2012 10:05 AM ET -
Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend! | ALBUM REVIEW
The latest from this Montreal band arrives per usual like a cryptic, doom-saying tract from an off-the-grid art cult – more or less what it is. Also per usual, it uses low-fi sound bites, neoclassical strings and...
November 19, 2012 3:00 PM ET -
An Omen | ALBUM REVIEW
Nine Inch Nails fronted by a hot femme singer? Why didn't anyone think of it sooner? That's exaggerating the MO of this electro-pop collective (Trent Reznor, his wife, Mariqueen Maandig, NIN cronies Atticus Ross and...
November 13, 2012 12:15 AM ET -
"Untitled New Track" | SONG REVIEW
"The angel of love was upon me, and, Lord, I felt so small!" snarls Dave Gahan on the first taste of Depeche Mode's new LP, due next year; he slithers through some nasty analog synth squelching...
November 12, 2012 10:15 AM ET -
"Don't Rush" | SONG REVIEW
As Taylor Swift goes dubstep, Clarkson veers south with a squishy Eighties-style duet along the lines of Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers' "Islands in the Stream." It's a paean to extended foreplay with a slightly awkward vocal...
November 12, 2012 10:10 AM ET -
"Lysandre's Theme/Here We Go" | SONG REVIEW
This preview of the 2013 solo debut from the ex-Girls frontman is a Seventies soft-rock ballad that would do Gordon Lightfoot proud. "If your heart is broken/You will find fellowship with me," he pledges, and, verily,...
November 12, 2012 10:00 AM ET
