Tag: Music

For newcomers, few rock catalogs are as rewarding – or admittedly, as intimidating – as Rush's. Across five decades, the Canadian trio evolved from a hard-rock band influenced by Led Zeppelin into progressive-rock pioneers, synth-era innovators, and one of the most respected acts in rock history. With 19 studio albums spanning multiple musical eras, deciding where to begin can be a challenge.

Few songs have become as inseparable from a band as "Tom Sawyer" is from Rush. More than four decades after its release on 1981's Moving Pictures, the song remains the Canadian trio's defining statement: a blend of progressive ambition, hard-rock power, and lyrical depth that introduced countless listeners to the band's music. Yet despite its status as Rush's signature track, "Tom Sawyer" was anything but an easy victory.

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.