Music reviews. CD reviews. Critically hip!

Saafir has been around for awhile. The earliest joint a can remember from him is “Body Hat Syndrome” which he cut as a part of Digital Underground in the early 1990s. He parlayed that into a deal with Warner, and dropped a couple of critically acclaimed discs. He has more ...

RESIST. REVOLT. RECLAIM choke slams the listener into a puddle of mucky dissonance over the current, American political regime.  This ain’t nearly as pretentious as one would imagine.  It’s not nearly as dumbed down as one would think it either.  Sadaharu, if I may quote the “stranger” from ...

My life was changed the moment I first listened to Sage Francis. The song was "Escape Artist" and I was feeling particularly angry and dissociative. The remember the chorus giving me a sense of camaraderie that I had never shared with a musician of any genre, let alone hip-hop. From ...

Sakai is a talented singer from California with a great style. Her new album, Dream Big, is impressive. It's moving and sexy, reminiscent of the great early 90's R&B. Every song has a soulful musicality about it. You can really get into this album.Sakai has a ...

All Hell breaks loose from the onset and it ain't long before the suds fly and blood flows -- what must it have been like to be present at Danceteria in N.Y.C. or Metro Chicago back in the day?  Wish I'd known but here's the next best thing, the final ...

Sammy Kershaw is one of those guys who has toiled mightily in the fields ofthe country music industry without reaping the harvest which should have been his by right. He doesn't quite fit into what the Nashville powers that be are looking for right now, in that he's over 25, ...

Samson Trinh is going to make it.  I can feel it.  At only 23-years-old, one would think this musical ingénue wouldn’t attract listeners outside his native Richmond, Va.  But he proves on his debut album, Very Strange Night that his style of jazz and orchestral standards is original, hip and ...

She ain’t no Ella Fitzgerald, but you can tell that she’s a fan of the First Lady of Song. Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, Lena Horne, and Doris Day were all influences to Sandy Dennison growing up. These artists drew Dennison to Jazz and, as she likes to put it, got ...

It seems that with clockwork regularity the music gods provide their listeners with at least one new symphonic rock band. Styx, Queensryche, Triumph, Night Ranger, Rush…the list goes on, in such frequency and propensity that they have spawned a genre onto themselves, called Screamo. One of the ...

Sara Tavares weaves her sound through a tapestry lush with light jazz, funk and Afro-European grooves. Singing in a mix of Portuguese, Cape Verdean Crioulo and English, Tavares voice ranges from a breathy Atlantic breeze to a thin silver line connecting poly-rhythmic beats. Balancê plays like a tropical ode to ...

Does anyone really sing more beautifully than Sarah McLachlan?  I can’t help but listen to this album and wonder, is she really even human?  It is quite possible that she may be an angel… or at very least an alien from a planet where every sings in perfect harmony.  But ...

Although making quite the duo, I was disappointed to hear two extraordinarily beautiful voices singing such dull songs. Aside from the familiar track of Dust in The Wind I think Sasha and Shawna's powerful and enchanting voices are simply wasted on mediocre pieces of music. Both opera singers, Sasha and ...

Amethyst Rock Star plays like fierce spoken word poetry; Saul Williams is an intelligent artist whose lyrics do not involve the words “bling bling” and “them hos”. Ja Rule it is not. Williams’ rhythm is jagged, unique and brings a new light to urban ...

When record execs sit around a table and decide how they're going to release a CD, they're going to be laboring under a conundrum. There is an element of conventional wisdom that says that an artist need to put all of their good tracks in the front of the CD ...

Mainstream pop-punk bands have seen quite a bit of change throughout the past several years. Saves the Day is no exception. Their new album, Under the Boards, is unlike anything I have ever heard by them. While they sound furious and rebellious on previous records, songs ...

Almost as soon as I heard this band, I could tell there was a Southern influence in there somewhere. So I was not surprised to hear that Saving Abel – the name comes from the Bible story of Cain and Abel – formed in Corinth, Mississippi in 2004. The group ...

The fact that they're still around is a testament to the existence of the supernatural… how else can you explain it? Saxon, a Heavy Metal survivor like few others, continues to forge ahead, their battle cry long since echoing in the distance. Onward they trudge creating album after album ...

As an actress crossing over into the world of music, one can assume that Scarlett Johansson’s debut album would be poppy, super producer-influenced, and a general all around flop.  Oddly enough, this first and might I add, strange, album is not what you’d expect from a typical cross-over actress, yet ...

“No misleading phrases are the bricks that we pave with. And oh we just want to burn at a brighter Orange than all the fires built before us. You know we’ll set this off” -- Taken from the first track, Just Ask Us, off of Scenes From a Movie's debut album ...

Upon first viewing the additional video clip for the title track I am now firmly assured that we are indeed in the 21st century… a cooler brand of digitized cyber Death and noise infiltration there never was. Sceptic is a newcomer to the Death Metal scene. Originating from Poland, one ...

This idea is so cool I can barely get my head around it. Toyota, to promote its Scion automobiles, has been releasing CD samplers of some fabulous, outside of the mainstream music. The latest of these is an ambitious two CD set entitled Daptone Records Remixed. Daptone ...

I guess you could say they give new meaning to the idea of "Combat Rock." These guys are like a cumulous cloud rolling over a beautiful blue sky and the results are unpleasant, repugnant and vile… but ya gotta love them verses. They remind me a lot of System of ...

Forgive me if I'm not sure exactly what label the Scorpions are on these days. In the past six years, they've released a studio album on Atlantic Records, had an anthology issued by Mercury, their old label, moved to Koch Records for another studio album, did a symphonic disc, a ...

Let me get this out of the way right away: with Humanity Hour 1, The Scorpions have delivered their first GOOD album in nearly 15 years. If it sounds like I’m saying that with a bit of surprise, well, I am. As a fan, I’ve listened to the band’s output ...

The Scotland Yard Gospel Choir is actually from Chicago. While they’re on Bloodshot Records, which used to (and maybe still does) describe itself as “insurgent country”) this self-titled project (which we shall hereinafter refer to as “TSYGC”), the band’s second release, has more in common with The ...