Dreamin’ Big (2013)
Think back to season two on NBC’s The Voice and try to picture the tall handsome guy with the ?uestlove fro and the gleaming smile waltzing through Bruno Mars’s pop candy lullaby “Just the Way You Are.” The occasion was a milestone for the Honolulu native and Austin, Texas transplant, Tje Austin (pronounced “tye”). Not […]
To Dust (2013)
If this were the ‘60s, Alice Russell would either give Dusty Springfield or Ethel Merman a run for her money. Maybe both. This Essex-born Brit is all boom, brass and soul. Like Jennifer Hudson and Aretha Franklin, this belter never met a holler she didn’t like. This has never been truer in the Russell catalog […]
Illuminate:Blue (2013)
Kael Mboya Bradley and Michael Lockett, the longstanding members of the band Ascendant, shut down a generation of conspiracy theorists by explaining that the name of their latest record, Illuminate Blue, has absolutely NOTHING to do with the illuminati. The Illuminati, for those of you who don’t know, is one of those secret groups along […]
TYRA (2013)
There will be some listeners who will listen to TYRA, the latest album from Nebraskan Lucas Kellison, and they will swear that they are listening to Justin Bieber. Then, they’ll play “Wonder of the World” and they’ll realize that this ain’t Biebs. There is no way that a major label would allow its biggest star […]
Left of the Right Direction (2013)
A lot has changed for Cleveland pop/soul band Winslow since their debut album, Crazy Kind of Love in 2008. There’s been a change in band’s lineup: only three original members, lead vocalist/songwriter Maurice Martin, saxophonist Matt Tieman, and keyboardist Curtis Tate remain from the band’s first album. Winslow has gotten older and, according to its […]
The Reworks (2013)
After several seminal releases from their camp’s ever-changing cast, a new album from The Foreign Exchange is officially an event. The fifth F.E. release under the group’s lead moniker is a gorgeous retrospective of the major works and highlights the last nine years of the entire F.E. family, past and present. Favorites get flipped and […]
A Love Surreal (2013)
The problem with developing a cult classic is that you develop that product out of a particular set of circumstances and point in your talent and creative life. These circumstances and critical life juncture cannot, and perhaps should not, ever be repeated, and yet the finicky public’s appetite for artistic stagnation is unyielding when something […]
Random Thoughts (2013)
Curtis L. Clark, the man who performs as Homemadesoul, never strays too far from his gospel roots. Those spiritual roots are so ingrained that they regularly branch into his secular songs, which is the case on his new record, Random Thoughts. The gospel influences might be apparent on a tune such as “All She Needs” […]
She (2013)
When you have influences as wide-ranging as alternative, afro-punk and bluesy-tinged pop, oscillated between homes in Georgia and Washington DC and have a vocal range that recalls a Fiona Apple rather than a Ledisi, it’s practically a given that you are not a cookie-cutter R&B artist. And over the past seven years too many listeners have been […]
This is Neo Ragtime (2013)
The Harlem Renaissance was one of the most dynamic periods of the Roaring Twenties and Thirties, an era that exploded with the ragtime stride piano, swing bands and plenty of hot dance crazes. Those days are fondly remembered in the past few decades with the dazzling production of Ain’t Misbehavin’, a revue that still tours […]
