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  • Thursday, March 22, 2012

    The Black Keys return to NYC for the second of two shows at Madison Square Garden tonight, following their first-ever headlining show at the venue earlier this month, which the AP says "electrified" the place. The band had a homecoming show at The Q in Cleveland Tuesday. "I’ve caught the Black Keys in a variety of settings," says the Cleveland Plain Dealer's John Soeder. "I’ve never known them to put on a bad show. And I’ve never witnessed them put on a better one than they did on this high-stakes occasion." The Chicago Tribune reports from Monday's show at the United Center that the band's sound remains full of "brawny riffs and rolling, tumbling drums that swing hard."

    Journal Topics: On Tour, Reviews
  • Thursday, March 22, 2012

    Release day for Dr. John's new album, Locked Down, is less than two weeks away, April 3. Now you can catch a look inside the studio as Dr. John and producer Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys laid down the album's title track in a new video here. Then head to the Brooklyn Academy of Music's website, bam.org, where the track is streaming in full. Dr. John and Auerbach will premiere music from the album at BAM as part of a three-weekend residency there titled Dr. John: Insides Out, which starts next week.

    Journal Topics: Artist News, Video
  • Thursday, March 22, 2012

    The new album featuring works by Krzysztof Penderecki and those they inspired by Jonny Greenwood itself stemmed from a concert in Poland last fall that paired the composers' works. Tonight, the AUKSO Chamber Orchestra, which performed in the original concert and on the album, will perform the album's music at London's Barbican Hall. "Penderecki's Threnody still has the power to shock," says The Observer, "while Greenwood's Popcorn Superhet Receiver is already a modern classic." Consequence of Sound gives the new album four stars, calling it "one of the most ambitious albums of the year so far"; Greenwood's pieces "fit exquisitely next to the old master’s."

    Journal Topics: On Tour, Artist News
  • Thursday, March 22, 2012

    David Byrne, whose album with Caetano Veloso Live at Carnegie Hall was released last week, has unveiled Get It Away, a new soundwork he created while living in A Room for London, a one-bedroom riverboat installation atop the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London, last month. "I brought along some field recording gear to use while I was staying in the lovely pod/room/boat," Byrne explains. "I went out during the day and recorded sounds that I thought might be useful and evocative." Watch Get It Away here.

    Journal Topics: Artist News, Video
  • Wednesday, March 21, 2012

    Carolina Chocolate Drops, whose new album, Leaving Eden, was release on vinyl yesterday, are featured in a new piece on PBS Newshour's Art Beat that examines the roots of their music. Watch the piece here along with a recent performance at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. Carolina Chocolate Drops "push an appreciation of home grown songs into brand new territory," explains The Morton Report. "It's not unlike jazz musicians who take popular music into the stratosphere. Carolina Chocolate Drops have essentially erased the rulebook and allowed freedom to become their watchword."

    Journal Topics: Artist News, Video, Television
  • Wednesday, March 21, 2012

    Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd opened at London's Adelphi Theatre last night, a West End transfer of the acclaimed Chichester Festival production, directed by Jonathan Kent. The production, starring Imelda Staunton and Michael Ball, opened to rave reviews, earning five stars from the Guardian, which calls it "a superb achievement," and the Times of London, which calls it "an absolute bleedin' triumph." The Daily Telegraph says Sweeney Todd is "Stephen Sondheim’s best show and one of the greatest musicals of all time." Earlier this month in London, Sondheim was awarded the Critics' Circle Award for Distinguished Services to the Arts.

    Journal Topics: Artist News, Reviews
  • Tuesday, March 20, 2012

    The Brad Mehldau Trio’s new album, Ode, with 11 previously unreleased songs composed by Mehldau, is out now. The album is "full of seductive melody, and in its blues and bop references and surging swing, it's explicitly jazzy, too," says the Guardian in a four-star review. "It bears a lot of replaying." The Observer calls the new songs "absorbing," noting that "Mehldau is so brilliant at 'recomposing' standards that his remarkable talent as a composer is often overlooked." The Ottawa Citizen says: "A potent combination of deep lyricism, questing creativity and bar-raising virtuosity, Ode consistently provides the frissons that Mehldau fans have come to expect and that lesser pianists wish they could evoke."

    Journal Topics: Album Release, Artist News, Reviews
  • Tuesday, March 20, 2012

    The film The Hunger Games is due out this week and with it a companion album, The Hunger Games: Songs from District 12 and Beyond, out today. The album, produced by T Bone Burnett, features songs inspired by the film by artists like Arcade Fire, Neko Case, Taylor Swift, The Decemberists, and three Nonesuch artists: Carolina Chocolate Drops, Punch Brothers, and The Low Anthem. "Burnett has managed to create a deftly meditative soundtrack to the movie adaption of the best-selling book," says The Huffington Post, "bringing together big names and indie darlings of all stripes."

    Journal Topics: Album Release, Artist News
  • Tuesday, March 20, 2012

    Punch Brothers' new album, Who's Feeling Young Now?, is now available on vinyl. The LP comes on two discs of 140-gram, audiophile-quality vinyl and includes four additional Punch Brothers–penned tunes available exclusively on the vinyl album. To celebrate the CD's release last month, Punch Brothers gave a special invitation-only record-release show at Rockwood Music Hall in New York City; watch three songs from the set here: "Movement and Location," "Clara," and "Who's Feeling Young Now?"

    Journal Topics: Album Release, Artist News, Video
  • Tuesday, March 20, 2012

    The Low Anthem will support Feist on her US tour this spring, the Canadian singer-songwriter announced today. The band will join Feist for four shows in the Midwest in June, making stops in Minneapolis, Madison, Ann Arbor, and Columbus. Ticket on-sale dates and details are still to come. Today's news follows an unforgettable week of collaborations for The Low Anthem with The Chieftains and a SXSW set with Bruce Springsteen.

    Journal Topics: On Tour, Artist News
  • Tuesday, March 20, 2012

    Carolina Chocolate Drops' new album, Leaving Eden, is out now on vinyl. The LP, pressed on 140-gram, audiophile-quality vinyl, also includes a CD of the complete album. The repertoire on Leaving Eden showcases "the inclusive, always-evolving musical range of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, who since 2005 have emerged as an American roots-music phenomenon," writes the Wall Street Journal. "Exciting audiences as instrumentalists, singers, even as dancers, while digging further into the broad legacy of Southern music, particularly African-American Southern music, the group ... have defied genre classification by charging, fully prepared, into many fields."

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  • Monday, March 19, 2012

    The Black Keys take their North American arena tour to Chicago for a performance at the United Center tonight. At Friday's show at Bankers Life Fieldhouse in Indianapolis, "11,000 attendees rallied around Auerbach's flawless and precise solos and Carney's caveman beats," says the Indianapolis Star. Auerbach tells the Chicago Tribune: "There’s something about those old arenas, where it feels larger than life. It’s like walking into a (big-league) baseball or basketball game, it’s on a different level, and I love that.” At the same time, he tells the Cleveland Plain Dealer, "We don't change anything, whether we're playing on a small stage or a big stage."

    Journal Topics: On Tour, Artist News, Reviews