No one is likely to mistake Billy Talbot and Ralph Molina for Wyman and Watts, but with the right leader (Neil Young, say), their irregular pulse and off-kilter kerplunkety provide crucial warmth and character. Crazy Horse’s 1971 self-titled debut, with Danny Whitten, Nils Lofgren and Jack Nitzsche, remains a roots-inflected, heavy-rock touchstone, boasting a uniformly [...]

The standard cant among Deadheads is that the band was never truly comfortable in the studio, that their particular gift could never adequately be captured in such inhospitable environs. But for the first half-decade or so of their career, in some sense, they were the best kind of studio musicians. Anthem Of The Sun and [...]

Almost since its release, Sgt. Pepper’s has been lauded as the best, most influential album in pop history — by now, a received opinion of arguable import. But even if true, the Beatles touchstone was more the culmination of an era than a signifier of things to come. In its wake, Dylan encamped with the [...]

Per the standard text, Ray Charles is soul’s prime architect, first fusing the gospel of his youth with the blues he loved, and then demonstrating his creation’s remarkable flexibility and breadth — a form conversant not only with its cousin R&B, but with country, standards, pop and, well, schlock. Though Al Green shares little with [...]

The Faces rank as one of music’s great conundrums. Their loose, high-spirited assault qualifies as the very essence of rock ‘n’ roll, and with a front line boasting Rod Stewart, Ron Wood and Ronnie Lane, they were among the most talented bands of the early ’70s. Yet their albums never entirely gelled; even their strongest [...]

Whether driven by corporate beneficence or, more likely, greed, the encyclopedic box set is as ubiquitous in digital’s mature phase as label consolidation or file sharing. As an unintended sop to the patient and/or fiscally circumspect, such completist collections are inevitably followed by more affordable distillations. So if you balked at last year’s Camper Van [...]

A husband in Europe on business, the children off to school and another long day ahead. She stares blankly out the window bathed in morning sunlight, a glass of white wine in her hand; a vague sense of disappointment pervades. She reflects, “The life that I’ve fashioned is not what I wanted.” It’s the stuff [...]

As with most major artists, the lion’s share of Neil Young’s Reprise catalog was converted to CD in the late 1980s, digital’s frontier days, with little consideration given to sound quality, presentation or artistic intent. At the time, not much was made of the six unreleased titles: the four above-mentioned, as well as the essential [...]