Columbia

A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the 2016 reissue of the BLACKsummers’night LP by Maxwell. On a superficial level, leaping around an artist’s catalogue can be confusing in a variety of ways; there can be a disconnect in the continuity of the artist’s development and that may mess with the perceptions of their catalogue as a whole. Such a phenomenon is absolutely true of Maxwell’s songbook – when the singer’s started with Urban Hang Suite in 1996, his...

Artist: Jack White Album: Acoustic Recordings 1998 – 2016 (2CD) (Third Face/Third Man/Columbia/Sony Music) Over the last twenty years (yes yes yes – it’s hard to believe that it’s been so long), Jack White has worn many hats. In that time, he’s been a punk and indie rock-identified pop star, a blues and folky troubadour, an opinionated artist of music and opinionated record label owner, and an innovative composer who has reinvigorated the blues almost single-handedly – causing young audiences...

It has been said so often now that most fans (even the newest, least tested ones) can take this as a fact: David Bowie always rocks hardest and best when he’s making a grand artistic statement. The years have proven that as factual but, as Station To Station, Tin Machine, Earthling and, now, Blackstar illustrate, the singer goes that ever-so-important extra step and ascends to a whole other creative echelon when even his biggest supporters are left pretty sure that...

A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Record Store Day-pressed reissue of Earthling by David Bowie. Leave it to David Bowie to wrap a perfectly tongue-in-cheek idea in populist medium and make a celebration of it. That is, of course, precisely what the singer has done in licensing Earthling for a fresh vinyl pressing now, almost twenty years after the album was originally released. Confused reader? Let me clarify it for you: when Earthling was first released in...