Canter Bridge

Despite criticism that it is eclectic to the point of distraction (sometimes expressed as `Has Sting run out of ideas?’), Brand New Day contains several of the finest songs of the entire final decade of the twentieth century. Sting being Sting, you wade through a couple of dry stretches on this album as on almost any of its level. Yet the gems are gorgeous, enduring glimpses of brilliance. The album’s opening track, `A Thousand Years’, may be the most splendidly lush love song to be performed in twenty years. Pulsing, obsessed with a love whose mathematics defy infinity, Sting in this profound statement of amour knows only one thing: I still love you. (more…)

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Alexandre Desplat’s minimalist score fitly accompanies the taut psychological drama that is the 2007 motion picture that imaginatively chronicles the tectonic shifts that were occurring in the royal family behind closed doors in the wake of Diana’s tragic death in a Paris highway tunnel. Alternately brooding and winsome, Desplat produces a soundtrack that underscores Queen Elizabeth II’s rather heroic change of mind regarding her family’s role vis-à-vis ‘the people’. (more…)

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Kany García is not one vocal artist. She is two.

Cualquier Día begins on the better half of this split, artistic personality. This one, Good Kany, is sensitive, balladic, and performs at moderate-to-low volume. She is the promising Kany García, singing from the heart, not trying too hard to succeed too quickly, too early, too explosively. Roughly two of every three songs give this Kany García a chance to emerge and make her point. (more…)

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Bryan Adams’ 1996 compilation of greatest hits is all about cheap thrills. With lyrics like `The only thing that looks good on me … is you’, `I just wanna’ be … your underwear’, you don’t buy this album after a hard think about whether to spend your nine bucks on this or on, say, that new translation of Homer’s Odyssey. You plunk down your cash for good, old-fashioned, hedonistic, irreverent rock & roll. The second most overused line in assessments of Bryan’s music—after `the Canadian rocker’—seems to be `feel-good rocker’.

With good reason. (more…)

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Michael Bolton is in his element in tossing off this 2003 collection—a very short one, it must be said—of fine old bluesy-romantic pieces. Gone for the moment is the flamboyant wall of musicians that backs up his more anthemic rock and roll pieces. The music here is supplied by a diminutive assortment of soft-spoken instrumentalists. All that’s missing is a smoky stage and a cover charge. (more…)

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In the mid-1990s in Great Britain I purchased a Linguaphone French language learning package and, as a result, received this marvelous booklet and Karajan/Berliner Philharmoniker/Deutsche Grammophon/Michel Schwalbé recording of Antonio Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, Concerto ‘L’Amoroso’, Symphony ‘Al Santo Sepolcro’, and Concerto ‘Alla Rustica’.

Apart from a lone seller with a copy listed on Amazon, I have not been able to locate any sign that this recording—which plays on my sound system as I write this—actually exists. (more…)

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Returning to the shed from a first sea kayaking experience on Alaska’s Inner Passage, I was greeted by the voice of Greg Brown, soon interpreted by the enthusiastic commentary of my kayaking guide. I resolved that I would come to know this singer as a living souvenir of the kayaking thing. `Soon as I could, I ordered The Poet Game rather at random from Brown’s prodigious menu of recordings.

Shades of the Man in Black come through in Brown’s the astonishing low range of Brown’s understated vocals. Better still, his song-writing is top-drawer stuff. It oozes authenticity, manouvers on the kind of observations a man can stand by, rings true. (more…)

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It must be hard to be Michael Bolton. Blessed with an unfathomably powerful voice, he nonetheless harvests love and grimaces only in about equal measure. He pays tribute to some sturdy old songs and gets labeled as a cover-only singer. It’s enough to drive a man to play baseball or something. Which he does. Softball, actually, but you get the picture.

This 1995 collection of a decade’s worth of hits shows off Bolton’s prowess and production in a way that sheds some light on the ambivalent reception he’s earned. In truth, fifty-three million albums may not be a definition of ambivalence you’re familiar with. Yet the sheer quantity of anti-Bolton reviews that surface on websites everywhere suggests that the a-word is not a bad place to begin this assessment of Michael Bolton, Greatest Hits 1985-1995. (more…)

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The dance of an instrumental soloist and the disproportionately sized partner with which the classical concerti pair him or her is one of classical music’s most capable forms. Done well, the assymetry soars. The soloist’s work is framed as no other configuration could. The orchestra’s restraint against the danger of overpowering its smaller partner show a deftness that is compensated by the occasional liberties afforded it to revel in its own potency while its partner pauses to gather strength. (more…)

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