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Booker T. Jones’s latest solo effort is significantly more interesting than the obvious question of what exactly a “potato hole” is; Jones is backed by the Drive By Truckers and Neil Young adds his instantly recognizable lead guitar to nine of the album’s ten tracks – which include a cover of Outkast’s “Hey Ya!” and Tom Waits’s “Get Behind The Mule – and the result is pretty much what you’d expect: a fun collection of soul and gritty rock.
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Gavin Degraw has stated that his goal with his third album Free was to create an “indie record,” as he puts it – “an artist’s record for an artist’s fans…I didn’t want to saturate the tracks with overdubs and flying guitars and unicorns…,” which is exactly what he did, but it stripping out the unicorns he seems to have stripped out any and all originality; it’s musically solid and a decent mix of soul and country, but there’s not a compelling note on the entire disc and the sappiness grates the nerves – Gavin Degraw knows how to make music, but Free doesn’t do anything to prove he can make interesting music. More »
Tags: gavin degraw, howard benson
If you’ve ever wondered what a Black Sabbath cover band would sound like doing a Rush impersonation look no further than Crack the Skye; although the cloned Ozzy vocals can be eyeroll-inducing and the concept – something about a paraplegic kid who can travel on the astral plane, falling through a wormhole and winding up in Russia where a cult puts his soul in Rasputin’s body and his killed and the Devil takes his soul and so on – is exhausting if you try to follow it…but the music itself is good – not too heavy metal, not too rock – and is creative and manages to stay interesting throughout.
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