Listening to Neneh Cherry’s 1992 album Homebrew 26 years after its release, I’m even more impressed than I was back then.
In 1992, Homebrew felt ahead of its time, a fusion of rap, jazz, pop, electronic and rock unlike pretty much anything I’d heard before. But somehow, it still feels ahead of its time today. What artists, male or female, are working in this space today?
Today’s Random iTunes Selection comes at a good time.
I’ve been a bit down on Belle and Sebastian lately due to the uncharacteristic mediocrity of their most recent release. The band’s first new material since 2015’s Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance is a collection of EPs that combine to form a 15-track album titled How to Solve Our Human Problems. And for my money, it’s the weakest thing they’ve ever recorded.
Broken Bells is a band formed in 2010 by James Mercer of The Shins and producer/songwriter Brian Burton (better known as Danger Mouse). The two share songwriting credits and play all of the instruments on their songs, with Mercer as lead vocalist and Burton handling production duties.
They released a self-titled album in 2010 and sophomore effort After the Disco in 2014. No word on whether they will collaborate again.
The Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers is album three in one of the greatest four-album runs in music history.
It starts with 1968’s Beggar’s Banquet, then 1969’s Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers in 1971, and finally Exile On Main St. in 1972. Five years, four stone-cold classic albums featuring some of the most indelible rock music ever recorded.
Sting gets a bad rap for being both too middle-of-the-road and too pretentious. He has earned that criticism to a degree (the man released a lute album, for crying out loud!) but any sensible music fan would be silly to dismiss him.
Even setting aside his groundbreaking work with The Police, you need look no farther than his sophomore release, 1987’s …Nothing Like the Sun, for evidence of his greatness.
Meet Me In Montauk 