Gavin B.

"Rainy Seasons" Showcases Cale, the Minimalist, Jun 30 2004

Fragments of A Rainy Season" has graced my CD player more than any other album in the twelve years since it's release. This is the after-hours incarnation of John Cale, not the menacing sabatouer personna that Cale created for himself in the Seventies. This live album focuses on all of Cale's strengths, his lyrical song craft, his tender and anguished voice, his instumental wizardry and his larger-than-life stage presence.

"Rainy Seasons" is ample evidence that Cale's post-Velvet career has outlasted those of his bandmates, even Lou Reed. Cale has always maintained his avant gardist sensibility while Lou Reed, for better or worse, has stuck with his original black… Read more

In the Best Tradition of Classic Noir, Jun 25 2004

Any character named after the great surrealist painter Hieronoymous Bosch will automatically get my attention. The fact that Harry Bosch has exquisite taste in music, leaning toward 1950s bebop jazz, almost gets me liking the guy. What wins me over is that Harry Bosch is an anti-cop, anti-hero in the best tradition of the hard-boiled noir mysteries. He is a post-modern version of Raymond Chandler's Phillip Marlowe or Dash Hamiett's Sam Spade, the tough guy exsisitential detective in a corrupt world where there is little difference between ethics of the cops and the killers. Los Angeles with it's phony glitz and glamour amid sqaulor and depravity is the setting of choice for many of the… Read more

Escondida: One of the Best Releases of 2004, Jun 17 2004

"Escondida" has become to me what Nora Jones' debut album was a couple years ago...a constant visitor to my CD player in the after hours of on the right side of midnight. Jolie Holland sings in sleepy Texas drawl that often understates her command of blues and jazz singing. Some have compared her languorous phrasing to that of jazz great Billie Holiday. Jolie's talent is common to most great interpreters of jazz, she knows how to savor precisely the right syllables and words to craft her own distinctive style. Like Ma Rainey or Billie Holliday, she understands that style is as much about what you don't sing, as what you sing.

Jolie Holland was a co-founder of the Vancouver based… Read more