Record Reviews

  • Top 40 Over 40.28: Matana Roberts, Coin Coin Chapter Four: Memphis

    Yes, social media can be a waste of time, and a low self esteem machine. Yes, it facilitates hate and social sniping. But – with a good roster of musical friends it can also introduce you to a lot of great new music – both in the sense of just released, and new-to-you. My latest…

  • Top 40 Over 40.25: Wise Intelligent

    Even rarer than artists making great records after 40 is those who are able to do so in quick succession.  Back when I was high school, Hüsker Dü released New Day Rising and Flip Your Wig only 8 months apart.  It’s hard to imagine young bands doing that in today’s post-internet crash music economy, let…

  • The Residents and the Arctic

    I rarely hear an entire record played on the radio.  A few months ago, I heard the album Eskimo by the Residents played on WXDU’s stellar Sunday afternoon show, Polyphonic Perversity.  I soon purchased it and have really enjoyed hanging out with it since. I know very little about the Residents, so I won’t say…

  • Top 40 over 40.17: A Different Kind of Swans Song

    Most of the musicians I’ve written about in this series are ones that were important to me when I was younger because of work they did themselves when they were young.  I’ve written about records they did after turning 40 that either came close to or equaled the quality I heard in their earlier recordings.…

  • Top 40 Over 40.16: Holding It Down

    One possible answer to the question I posed in my post on Reckoning with REM – How come their early portraits of Southern life never said anything about the history of racist violence and forced labor in their native Georgia, even on their album Fables of the Reconstruction / Reconstruction of the Fables? – is that…

  • Top 40 Over 40.13: Weird Al’s “Party In the CIA”

    I can think of few more unlikely candidates for creative growth after 40 than Weird Al Yankovic.  Back when I was in grade school, he came on the pop culture radar with “Eat It,” his parody of Michael Jackson’s “Beat It.”  His string of similar Dr. Demento style hits willfully sucked all of the sexual…

  • Top 40 Over 40.11: Wurst is also Best!

    I cannot pretend to write an objective review of today’s entry into my Top 40 Over 40 countdown, Transcendental Youth by the Mountain Goats.  You see, I compete in an annual NFL pool with John Darnielle and Peter Hughes.  I’m indebted to Peter for running this pool and to John for keeping me out of…

  • Top 40 Over 40.10: Bill Dixon

    In this series of posts on artists who inspired me to start recording again by doing first-rate work on or after their 4oth birthday, Bill Dixon is an anomaly.  Most of the folks I’ve written about were known for an early body of work done in their 20’s, and managed a “return to form” after…

  • Top 40 Over 40.9: Jandek….live?!?!

    I didn’t pay much attention to what was going on in the undie music scene during the aughts.  I listened to some things that were current, but mostly I was just writing lyrics on my own and listening to a lot of modern classical music.  When I started lending an ear indie-ward over the last…

  • Top 40 Over 40.8: Scott Walker’s hat trick

    Sometimes pop artists you associate with youth surprise you with a new vocal persona that suits them as they get older.  (Think Robert Plant on Raising Sand.) But in the case of Scott Walker, he never really sounded like a young man to begin with.  Sure, he was a teen idol back in the late…