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Sun Kil Moon, Among the Leaves

2012 | Label: Caldo Verde / Redeye

By Mike Wolf eMusic Contributor

05.29.12 Attention younger folks: All that really happens as you grow older is you learn to roll with everything better. Just listen to the gently undulating “Sunshine in Chicago,” from Sun Kil Moon’s fifth album — Mark Kozelek barely breaks stride or even distinguishes the good and bad from the mundane as he drily lists observations in his fine-grained, road-weary voice: “My band played here a lot in the ’90s when we had/ Lots of female fans…Now I just sign posters for guys in tennis shoes.” The directness is refreshing, but… more »

Randy Newman, The Randy Newman Songbook, Vol. 2

2011 | Label: Nonesuch

By Nick Marino eMusic Contributor

07.01.11 Casual fans rely upon Randy Newman for little more than Pixar soundtracks and quip-laden Oscar speeches. That’s too bad. In a career dating back to 1968, Newman has written some of the smartest, funniest songs in pop history, jaunty one-act plays about American life, sung by deranged characters to the melody of a showtune. In Songbook, Vol. 2, a companion to his 2003 voice-and-piano retrospective, Newman conjures a litany of memorable narrators: For starters, there’s the smarmy cad (“The Girls In My Life”), the regretful lover (“Losing You”), the Alabama… more »

Norah Jones, Come Away With Me

2002 | Label: BLUE NOTE

By David Raposa eMusic Contributor

05.18.11 It helps to make a good first impression — hence enjoyably bittersweet debut single "Don't Know Why" — but with a voice like Norah Jones's, success was inevitable. Airy without being insubstantial, warm and comforting as an old sweater and blessed with just the right amount of character, Jones's singing could make an accounting textbook sound fantastic. Thankfully, the songs on Come Away With Me are of a slightly higher caliber, as well as a surprising variety that should make folks think twice about filing Jones under "Jazz."

The originals, which… more »

The Wave Pictures, Beer In The Breakers

2011 | Label: moshi moshi records / !K7 Records

By Chris Nickson eMusic Contributor

04.09.11 By rights, this album from British trio the Wave Pictures shouldn't work. At its heart it's made of up two very different, opposing strands: On one hand there are the mundane, dear-diary lyrics, delivered in the casual, naïve style favoured by indie bands since time immemorial. On the other hand there's the forceful, stripped-down power trio behind these lyrics, eager to stretch out and play hard. These two tendencies rarely play well together, but the Wave Pictures' rumpled charm and studied diffidence act as the glue; the result is an… more »