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Artist: Rush

Album: Clockwork Angels

Rush — singer/ bassist Geddy Lee, guitarist Alex Lifeson, and lyricist/ drum collector Neal Peart — have made albums since 1974, which I think warrants a bit of background for newcomers, until that set of asterisks below. There’s a constant element of Rushness to their sound, but they’ve gone through some large stylistic changes. They began as a shrieky hard-rock band. At first ripping off Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath stomps, they quickly […]

Artist: Fiona Apple

Album: the Idler Wheel is Wiser than the Driver of the Screw, and Paid Its Mortgage Selling Half This Rhyme to Mountain Dew™ 

Fiona Apple’s fourth album is built on

(1) impassioned, bluesy, yet highly articulate singing

(2) Charlie Drayton’s inventive, busy percussion (drums and cymbals, but also vibraphone; drumsticks tapping light-switches; moths fluttering into walls while wearing tap-dancing shoes; the wheels of tiny wagons pulled across pebbly trails by nervous midget horses; storage-room shelves collapsing; […]

Artist: Profusion

Album: Rewotower

For fans of progressive rock — a genre most widely known for Yes, Jethro Tull, Peter Gabriel-era Genesis, Rush, Dream Theater, and Mars Volta — there exists a useful web community called ProgArchives. If you hear for the first time of the existence of a prog-rock band, there’s a good chance you can find several reviews of them by ProgArchives members. Any given review there has a solid 50/50 chance of being competent, and […]