Ron Gallo got his musical start during his eight-year stint as leader of the Philadelphia combo Toy Soldiers. The band began as a guitar/drums duo, evolving into a sprawling 12-piece and eventually settling into a more manageable quintet before calling it quits in 2014. Most of the songs on HEAVY META were written in a Philadelphia bedroom over the course of a multi-year relationship with a woman experiencing heavy personal struggles.
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The opening track “Halloween Out Walking” combines minimal and beautiful folk rock arrangements with otherworldly Moog synthesizer gurglings to awe-inspiring effect. Other highlights include “Watery Shreds”, a piano ballad that transforms itself into an explosive an unexpected distorted guitar drone freakout, sounding like an unlikely marriage of
Read more →GOV’T MULE returns with some gnarly blues-psych-rock common sense on REVOLUTION COME, REVOLUTION GO.
“It was very poignant that we went into the studio in Austin, Texas, to begin recording on Election Day,” Grammy Award-winning vocalist and guitar legend Warren Haynes recalls of the November 2016 recording sessions. “Like most people, we really had no idea that the election was going to turn out the way it did. That changed everything – from a lyrical perspective. It’s not a political record, per se, but there are political connotations. There are also love songs, relationship songs, and songs about working together to make this a better planet.
Read more →It was 50 years ago this June 1st when The Beatles’ John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr astonished and delighted the world, ushering in the Summer of Love with Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, a groundbreaking masterwork that became popular music’s most universally acclaimed album. To salute the occasion, The Beatles will release a suite of lavishly presented ‘Sgt. Pepper’ Anniversary Edition packages on May 26 (Apple Corps Ltd./Capitol/UMe). The album is newly mixed by Giles Martin and Sam Okell in stereo and 5.1 surround audio and expanded with early takes from the studio sessions, including no fewer than 34 previously unreleased recordings.
Read more →Our story opens w/a jowly narrative enunciated by singer/guitarist Paul “Top Dollar” Major (as Aaron Burr) callin’ out all them sissy Dem-Rep blaggards, letting ’em know he’s on his own path. Naturally what follows is some tasty sun zoom riffage a’tween TD ‘n Jesper “The Governor” Eklow and the wily Dollar, backed solidly by the Marc Razo/Harry Druzd rhythm union. In fact, through the whole of this opus, Druzd effortlessly marshals through the sonic undertow while Razo rudders his bass like a brilliant pulse in a spasmodic vortex. Top Dollar, the aforementioned Herr Sween & The Governor gnash, morph, crystallize while the jams flow; it’s ‘Mirror Man’ bum-rushin’ ‘Pretties For You’. Before ya know it, we’re at track 5 (‘Back In ’74’) where the plot ostensibly takes us to a memory of Burr enterin’ college, but is surreptitiously more about the year Top Dollar gave up on Grand Funk in favor of Josefus. You’re followin’ all of this, right?
Read more →On studio album number twelve (there have also been five official live sets), Weller slings out another ten examples of what he once coined “heavy soul.” His booming, instantly recognizable voice drives songs that run the gamut from the sweeping, Beach Boys inflected widescreen pop of “The Impossible Idea” to the retro folk/pop with somewhat cheesy horns of the strummy “Hopper” and the funky, string enhanced R&B/jazz “She Moves with the Fayre” that features guest trumpet from UK icon Robert Wyatt.
Read more →Don’t bother asking The Mastersons where they’re from. Brooklyn, Austin, Los Angeles, Terlingua; they’ve called each home in just the last few years alone. If you really want to get to know this husband-and-wife duo, the better question to ask is where they’re going. Perhaps more than any other band playing today, The Mastersons live on the road, perpetually in motion and always creating. Movement is their muse. On tour, in the unpredictable adventures and characters they cross,
Read more →We’re still reeling from the two in-store shows we’ve had at Horizon in the Bohemian Café over the last few days. Both SARAH JAROSZ and OLD SALT UNION brought the acoustic-music thunder, and we were thrilled that they both had a packed house to play to. THANK YOU, GREENVILLE! Now let’s get ready for the chaos and surprises of RECORD STORE DAY 2017! Stay tuned for more info!
Read more →‘Bobby Fuller’ finds Chuck coming full circle. He cut the album to tape at Hyde Street Studio in San Francisco, which also happens to be the same studio where Prophet did his very first recording session, while still in high school. Chuck brought out his ’64 Stratocaster for the sessions, conjuring a sound that Jonathan Richman once described as “gasoline in the sand, like a motorcycle at a hot dog stand.” He’s backed by The Mission Express, a band featuring his wife Stephanie Finch (vocals, keyboards, guitar), Kevin White (bass), Vicente Rodriguez (drums, vocals) and James DePrato (guitar).
Read more →Veteran trumpeter Terell Stafford delivers the second installment of saxophonist Herb Harris‘s dynamic “Jazz Masters Unlimited” series production, with the unveiling of Forgive and Forget, providing a forum for Stafford’s talents and improvisational skills. Showcasing a repertoire penned and arranged by Harris, the trumpeter surrounds himself with a formidable quintet that makes his performance here […]
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