The Be Good Tanyas: Hello Love
Nettwerk 30416 21
Format: CD

Musical Performance
Sound Quality
Overall Enjoyment

Say hello to my new love, the third studio release from the Vancouver-based female trio The Be Good Tanyas. Hello Love’s quirky patchwork of songs is woven together with a minimalist approach that allows the songwriting quality to speak for itself and plainly reveals the group’s talents. The Tanyas’ harmonies are like a siren song, swarming the ear with sultry whispers of achingly voiced urgency. The tempos are generally laid-back; they take time to contemplate the melancholy, though it’s never too long before a lilting fiddle or rousing banjo number gets them back on their feet again. Their acoustically styled Americana sound works perfectly for this group, who’ve earned their creative license with intriguing and delightfully unexpected covers. "For the Turnstiles" sounds better than Neil Young’s original, and my jaw dropped when I heard the CD’s hidden track: a cover of Prince’s "When Doves Cry," replete with claw-hammer banjo and standup bass. A definite rawness apparent throughout the album sometimes suggests the faintest tinkling of chimes in the distance; at other times, it sounds as if you’ve caught your sister singing in the shower when she thought no one was home. Hello Love is a gift of unflinching intimacy….Shannon Holliday

Nickel Creek: Reasons Why (The Very Best)
Sugar Hill SUG-CD-4022
Format: CD, DVD

Musical Performance
Sound Quality
Picture Quality
Overall Enjoyment

Nickel Creek’s very enjoyable Reasons Why (The Very Best) comprises a 14-track CD and a seven-track DVD. The traditional ballad "The Fox" is even more of a tour de force live than in the studio version, with some peak picking by the trio’s front man, mandolin prodigy Chris Thile. The touching "Lighthouse’s Tale," the clever "Can’t Complain," and the gentle "When You Come Back Down" are high points. "Sweet Afton," a Robert Burns poem set to gorgeous music by Thile on the band’s first album, Nickel Creek, easily could have made the cut. A few tracks are less good but still strong, along with the videos, which are mostly arbitrary pop-music footage that smacks of film-student homework and suggests marketing to a youth audience. Very young themselves, Thile, guitarist Sean Watkins, and violinist Sara Watkins have plenty of time to concentrate their shining vocals, playing, and skilled songwriting on more serious, less self-oriented material. I look forward to it!...David Cantor

David Crosby: If I Could Only Remember My Name . . .
Atlantic/Rhino R2 73204
Format: CD, DVD-Audio

Musical Performance
Sound Quality
Overall Enjoyment

David Crosby’s personal life and bouts with alcohol and drugs have garnered so much media attention that it’s easy to forget what a good songwriter he can be. This Rhino reissue of his best solo album ought to set the record straight. Crosby’s melodies often float over a thick carpet of instruments, and sometimes, as in "Traction in the Rain," over just two guitars and an autoharp. The tight harmonies that Crosby had worked out with Graham Nash for Crosby, Stills & Nash reach their zenith here in "Song Without Words." The songs have all been remastered and are offered in several formats: There’s a regular two-channel CD, plus a DVD-Audio disc that contains multichannel MLP, DTS, and Dolby Digital multichannel mixes, as well as DD stereo. Though they all sound good, they also sound very different. The CD and DVD two-channel mixes are bright and in your face much of the time. The MLP multichannel mix is mellow by comparison -- the highs are still there, but more subtle. On many songs there seems to be a musical fog punctuated by tight bass, with lead vocals clearly emerging from the front, and backing vocals, guitar, and keyboard coming from almost anywhere in the 360-degree soundfield. Those who grew up in the late 1960s and early ’70s will need no urging to hear these discs; those too young to have been around when these tracks were released in 1971 can find out what all the excitement was about….Rad Bennett

JJ Cale & Eric Clapton: The Road to Escondido
Reprise 44418-2
Format: CD

Musical Performance
Sound Quality
Overall Enjoyment

After 40 years of mutual respect and influence, two of the greatest living guitarists, JJ Cale and Eric Clapton, finally sat down in a studio to record a collaborative full-length album. Just as you’d hope, it’s a gem. The two men’s phrasing and vocal range are often indistinguishable. Cale wrote many of the songs Clapton became famous for, including "After Midnight" and "Cocaine," so it’s not surprising that Cale wrote 11 of The Road to Escondido’s 14 tracks. The compatibility of these two legends is so complementary that they hardly needed a powerhouse of special guests backing them, but who can complain that they invited Taj Mahal, John Mayer, Derek Trucks, Steve Jordan, and the late Billy Preston (in some of his last recorded sessions) to sit in. Cale and Clapton coproduced, and the spirits of collaboration and mutual exchange are evident in the final product -- a mellow convergence of blues, swing, and pop. I hope it’s not the last we’ll hear from this pair….Shannon Holliday

The Flaming Lips: At War with the Mystics
Warner Bros. 49966-2
Format: CD

Musical Performance
Sound Quality
Overall Enjoyment

The Flaming Lips are so gloriously strange that they’re nearly indefinable. Their music has evolved from the garage-band simplicity of their 1980s recordings to something that might be called progressive rock -- were it not for the band’s lack of bombastic self-importance. Their records, including their newest, At War with the Mystics, are so filled with aural loopiness that it would be easy to think the Lips are just goofing around. A careful listen to At War soon dispels that assumption -- it’s rich in sonic details that show a very skillful and committed band at work. Vocalist and lyricist Wayne Coyne continues to ask big questions about life and death, but At War also includes more topical material, such as "Free Radicals (A Hallucination of the Christmas Skeleton Pleading with a Suicide Bomber)." At War with the Mystics isn’t as consistently brilliant as the discs that preceded it, The Soft Bulletin (1999) and Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots (2002), but it’s still complex and very rewarding….Joseph Taylor