“First Ladies of Disco” by James Arena
The term “disco” has often been associated with a few rhythmically redundant, vacuously arranged uptempo songs which happened to be fronted by capable and inciting singers. But over the span of four decades, the genre otherwise known as dance music has unleashed a wealth of unforgettable hooks, sweeping orchestration, spirited lyrics, and dynamic vocalists of […]
The So Soulful Collection
For those who remember the days of walking into a record store to purchase music, The So Soulful Collection, with its cover photo depicting vinyl albums cascading on shelves piled high, will evoke fond memories. The disc makes you pine for an almost forgotten era when the physical aspect of record buying was part of […]
Retrospectives
The word has been out on Paul Ewing for quite some time. A native of Scotland, Ewing has been on the radar of music lovers in the United Kingdom since 2008. In that year, Ewing made began selling his first EP (although he never officially released it) at his live shows. It was at the […]
Wonder Love Pt. 2
The New Orleans based band Water Seed hoped to initiate an ambitious endeavor for their Wonder Love Parts 1& 2 projects. The group wanted to release both records on vinyl, and tried to finance the project through a crowd sourcing campaign on kickstarter.com. SoulTrackers don’t need an explanation as to the virtues of putting music […]
Grateful
When describing a vessel, it is broken down as an inanimate object and a powerful spiritual messenger. A popular definition is a vehicle used for marine transportation. On the other end of the spectrum, there are illustrations throughout the Bible including II Timothy 2:21, where a person is chosen to be set apart for God’s […]
Ice Cream Everyday
The challenge with creating unconventional songs that stray from the traditional pop song structure is finding a way to make it all musically hang together and not make it sound like a self-indulgent artsy mess only understood by high level jazz musicians and hipsters (who, of course, get everything “deep”). It’s the struggle of a […]
Lucid
When considering Lucid – the new album by Lyfe Jennings – the comparisons I make are not to his hip-hop and R&B age group cohorts. Instead, I look to jazz and R&B artists from a previous era such as Charlie Parker or David Ruffin. Why? Like Jennings, these artists had troubled lives that included addiction […]
Black Radio 2 (2013)
Sophisticated as chilled Moët and as easy as a Sunday morning, jazz keyboardist, arranger, composer and producer Robert Glasper and his company of merry men do it again. Black Radio 2 is essentially a continuation of Glasper’s critically acclaimed, Grammy-winning project, Black Radio. So, it should be no surprise that they decided not to fix […]
Love Junkie
In that candlelight and you vein of soulful lover men, Heston Francis rarely misses. Sounding like a cousin of Kem and Marvin Gaye with a dash of Uncle Beres Hammond thrown in just to remind listeners of his Dominican background, the ATL singer-songwriter delivers a satiny set sure to make the ladies swoon and their […]
Ooh Baby
Cliff Perkins has been in the music business for a very long time, and like many veterans he’s witnessed industry changes on the macro and micro levels. On the macro level, Perkins – the silky smooth falsetto lead vocalist of quartet Soul Generation – saw his mature, classy brand of ballad singing fall out of […]
