Author: Peter Blackstock
Record Review from web archive May 2, 2009
Model Rockets
(Editor’s note: About a year ago, Model Rockets ringleader John Ramberg dropped me a line to let me know that the band was planning a small-scale reissue of this album, which came out in the fall of 1994. Ramberg had apparently appreciated a review I wrote of the disc which ran in the late, great [...]
Record Review from web archive April 17, 2009
Scott Miller
After three studio albums plus a live disc on Sugar Hill, Scott Miller embraces the full-on indie way forward with For Crying Out Loud – but without any dramatic changes to his musical approach. Fans of his previous records under the banner of Scott Miller & the Commonwealth, as well as his 1990s efforts as [...]
Live Reviews from web archive April 13, 2009
Neko Case
News that Neko Case’s latest album, Middle Cyclone, reached #3 on the Billboard charts upon its release last month signaled the arrival of a new phase in the singer’s gradually building career. No longer is Case a nightclub act; she’s reached the theater/concert-hall circuit now – thus her appearance at the home of the Raleigh [...]
Live Reviews from web archive March 16, 2009
Jake Shimabukuro
“That one hurts my hand a little bit,” Jake Shimabukuro confided as he shook his fingers to cool them down after playing his original composition “Blue Roses Falling” a couple songs into his early-evening set at the fabled Iron Horse nightclub in Northampton, Massachusetts. Watching Shimabukuro cast his four-stringed spell for about an hour and [...]
Record Review from web archive March 11, 2009
Buddy & Julie Miller
[Editor's note: The following review appears in No Depression #77, the second in a series of "bookazines" edited by Grant Alden and Peter Blackstock and published by University of Texas Press. The bookazine can be ordered here.] When news began trickling out that the next Buddy Miller album — the first since 2004′s widely acclaimed [...]
Record Review from web archive February 24, 2009
Randy Weeks
Randy Weeks has described his music as “late ’60s AM to early ’70s FM,” but on his new disc Going My Way, I hear a bit of early-mid ’70s AM in there as well. Which may be parsing eras and frequencies just a little too precisely, perhaps…but to me, the hits that dominated the AM [...]
Column from web archive February 21, 2009
Deconstructing ELO
A confession, to begin with. The first record I ever reviewed – or, at least, attempted to review – was the Electric Light Orchestra’s 1979 album Discovery. As a freshman cub-reporter for The Edition, the Anderson High School newspaper in Austin, Texas, I’d been writing short news and sports articles, and it occurred to me [...]
Live Reviews from web archive February 15, 2009
Mark Olson & Gary Louris
A couple weeks back, we posted my colleague David Cantwell’s review of the new Mark Olson & Gary Louris album Ready For The Flood, and I’ve been thinking about his thesis contention that what was most missed in the work of both artists during their decade of separation was what he called “The Voice: the [...]
Feature from web archive February 2, 2009
And the readers concur…
It’s unanimous, at least among NoDepression.com’s critics and readers: Alejandro Escovedo’s Real Animal was the best album of 2008. Many of you responded to the early-January posting of our annual ND Critics Poll by saying you were interested in having us continue the Readers Poll equivalent that we’d tried out for the first time last [...]
Column from web archive February 1, 2009
A Lowe and Swell evening
It seems warranted today to drop in a brief mention about the latest Austin City Limits episode featuring half-hour segments by Nick Lowe and the Swell Season; it aired last night in our neck of the woods, and perhaps yours as well. (If not, check your local listings for upcoming broadcasts or repeats.) I’ve been [...]
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