Tag: Music

On this day in 1956, Elvis Presley made his historic appearance on The Milton Berle Show, his second time on the program. The King's magnetism is on full display, as he relaxes the tempo and turns "Hound Dog" into something close to a strip tease bump-and-grind, which delighted his young fans and scandalized the nation.

This past month there seemed to be a sizeable amount of very good keyboard music, as well as opera or opera-adjacent recordings. Nikolai Lugansky (pictured) gives masterful readings of three of Schumann's large piano compositions, while harpsichordist Pierre Gallon selects pieces to accompany the nighttime hours before dawn, and Claire Huangci plays music by German and American female composers.

Author Daniel de Visé walks on through the first 10 studio albums (and one live album) that make up Neil Young's first Decade (more or less). Where does Harvest rank against Rust Never Sleeps? And how do relatively underground releases like Zuma and On The Beach fit in? Let's take a Journey Through the Past.

Our new reviewers have been thrown into the vast world of new Classical recordings and are finding their footings. Some of the highlights they found this month include literature-inspired music by composer-conductor Daníel Bjarnson, performed by the Iceland Symphony Orchestra.

Thurston Moore discusses how his project with highly collaborative musician, producer, and songwriter Kramer finally took place, and goes into detail about the early years of Sonic Youth, guitar, and an appreciation of a certain classic rock band's early work (which may surprise you).

We recently went though a pass of revisiting classic albums and bumping a deserving handful to five stars. Among these reclassified records is a sweetly quiet indie-electronic milestone with a charming origin story. Check out this Five Star Spotlight.

From time to time, our editors go over the albums that may have come up in the estimation of the listeners, or made a larger impact on the genre than was initially received upon its' debut. The albums are re-evaluated and some get bumped up to the coveted 5-star rating. We asked our writers to pick out some of their favorites from this recent pass, and to tell us a bit about their reasoning.

Guitarist, songwriter, and now author Mike McCready talked to AllMusic about his new graphic novel "Farewell to Seasons" which imagines an alternate history to the Seattle music scene.

We're back with classical music reviews! Thank you all for the kind and supportive messages after the passing of James Manheim last October; they were very appreciated. We've brought on a couple of new writers, and among their first pieces is an evaluation of Hans Zender's orchestration and elaboration of Schubert's Winterreise, sung by tenor Allan Clayton (pictured) with the Aurora Orchestra.

Frontman Gordon Gano spoke with AllMusic about the Violent Femmes' ongoing anniversary shows, the surprising ways fans interpret his lyrics, and why some of the group's darkest songs receive the biggest reactions live.