Music Street Journal - Music News & Reviews

Reviewing an album of acoustic guitar solo piece isn’t the easiest thing to do.

I reviewed a previous set from Peppino D'Agostino. Like that disc, this is made up of instrumental guitar pieces.

This release features the best known songs from D.I. newly recorded for this set along with a brand new song.

Although this is all pop music, and mostly modern, it’s tough to lay a more specific descriptive net on it.

There is a type of punk rock that's based around horror music, with groups like The Cramps as practitioners.

With a sound that lives somewhere in the shared space between country, bluegrass and folk, Damn Tall Buildings creates effective music on that basic plan.

So, apparently Ian Danter is a television personality.

This rocking disc lands in the neighborhood of 80s metal.

This collection of hard rocking music has a lot of great songs. The cover is rather confusing, though.

This classy 10-inch vinyl record from Bear Family is a reissue of a 1961 Japanese record from Bobby Darin.

I've been a big fan of this band for years. Their tongue-in-cheek, H.P. Lovecraft dominated brand of punky hard rock is always fun.

Ryan Dart is a Colorado based singer-songwriter. This album captures the exact images that that definition implies for me.

This is a "two albums on one CD" reissue from Dave and Sugar. I don't really remember this act.

This new disc finds Ren Daversa demonstrating her talents as both a singer and songwriter. The music lands in the general zone of soft pop rock, but there is some range here.

Old school rock and roll, folk, country and more are the main elements on this set. That said, there are moments that even work toward modern alternative rock based stuff and early Pink Floyd.

This is kind of an odd review. It seems to have two potential audiences.

This live album from Dave Davies kind of features what you’d expect.

This four-track EP is electronic and experimental. A lot of times I land music like that under progressive rock, but I don't think it fits with this set.

This collection features a 10-inch vinyl record along with a CD. The featured artist is Link Davis, who plies an old-school rock and roll meets blues, Creole and many other styles.

This is a four CD box set. It’s got some great performances from the final tour of the Miles Davis Quintet with John Coltrane.

I’ve always liked the Spencer Davis Group.

Here we get an album that really feels like it belongs in a different era.

I've always been a big fan of the original Young, Loud & Snotty album. Has it been 40 years already? That's so hard to believe.

This new four-song EP is literally a mixed bag. For my money, two of the songs lean a bit toward being too trendy and over-produced.

This is an intriguing album. It was recorded in 1969, but released only recently.

This group was the house band at the Peppermint Lounge in Manhattan in the early 1960s. They had a huge hit in 1962 with "Peppermint Twist."

If you dig old school sounding, high energy pop rock, you will find plenty to like here. The range of the music is fairly wide.

This is quite an interesting set. In a lot of ways each song here feels like it could have come from an entirely different album, if not a different band.

I can’t recommend this live recording enough.

Deep Purple has a lot of jam band built into the musical picture.

I’ve always been a big fan of the Burn album.

This new reissue of Purpendicular includes two bonus tracks.

If you like this version of Deep Purple (guitarist Ritchie Blackmore, frontman David Coverdale, bassist/vocalist Glenn Hughes, keyboard player Jon Lord and drummer Ian Paice) you must own this.

This is a very unusual Deep Purple album, yet there is no mistaking it as Deep Purple. It's also a lot of fun.

This is an unusual, but interesting release. Each CD is from a different concert, and actually a different era of the band.

Deep Purple have been putting out consistently strong stuff for a while now. This new release continues that trend.

This is a strange set. For one thing, it screams "unauthorized." The opening tracks are almost certainly bootleg recordings.

This is a new release from a Canadian act. It has a lot of folk music built into it, but probably lands closer to the alternative rock end of the spectrum.

Jam band would be one way to describe this band.

This is such an interesting album. There are three songs here that really stand out in terms of quality.

So, you’ve never heard of Delta Deep? There’s a really good chance you’ve heard of some of the people involved in the group.

Phil Collen of Def Leppard assembled this band. The other members of the group are Rob DeLeo, Forrest Robinson and Debbi Blackwell-Cook.

This disc has a lot of strong music. There are a couple mis-steps, too. Personally, I think it's a case where less would have been more.

This album captures an artist really doing a great job plying her craft. Her music is of the singer-songwriter variety.

Folk music along with country are the prevailing winds on this disc. Terry Derosier's brand of music is based firmly in a folk rock style, but there really is a southern tilt to it in a lot of ways.

This four CD set is a great package. It comes in a nice box and includes four separate CDs, each a full album from Rick Derringer.

I like Michael Des Barres.

This album has an intriguing mix of sounds from power-pop to alternative rock and more.

I remember buying this years ago on vinyl. I'm a Yes fanatic, so the fact that Tony Kaye was in the band meant I had to have it for my collection.

This lands in the neighborhood of a lot of the modern female pop music out there. That style (like most modern pop music) suffers from over-production and synthetic elements.

This new single is classy stuff. I'm not a big fan of this kind of pop music, but I find plenty to like about this.

There is a real roots music movement these days. This is likely to appeal to that crowd.

I think Bo Diddley is really one of the true founding fathers of rock and roll. It should be no surprise then that I like this collection.

I very nearly put this one in heavy metal. A lot of it lands in the epic metal category.

This set comes from a southern California outfit.

This new single is so cool. It's modern R&B with some hip hop at its heart. That said, though, the electronic groove brings a different flavor.

There is something to be said about bands that play solid, no frills rock and roll. This is one such act.

This set comes from a southern California outfit. I have to say that I'm probably not the chosen audience for this.

I reviewed a previous album from this act and said that I had some problems with a monolithic sound to the disc and some songs that seemed a bit awkward.

I always like DOA’s brand of punk rock.

This brand new album from D.O.A. is among their best. They are angry, and their music is on fire.

I love music that combines different sounds to create something unique.

So many people point to Elvis Presley as the founding father of rock and roll. Personally, I’ve always felt that the originators were people like Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry and Fats Domino.

What a killer set this is! It’s part blues, part R & B and part rock.

This has a real classic sound. Most of the time it lands in blues, but there is quite a bit of variety within that heading.

This is the new single from Tomas Doncker. I reviewed his last disc previously at Music Street Journal.

This album is very much a message kind of release.

This is a fairly artsy set. It works quite well, too.

This is quite a cool release. This band has an alternative rock edge.

This live recording from the Doobie Brothers is quite strong.

This new set is somewhat moody and dark, but I suppose you'd expect that given the title.

This is a band that first got started in the 1980s. I remember hearing the name, but I never heard them before this album other than one song on a compilation disc. .

You might not recognize the name Lamont Dozier immediately, unless you pay attention to songwriting credits. Lamont Dozier was part of a songwriting team known as "Dozier Holland Dozier."

I'm reviewing two EPs from this New Jersey act in this issue of Music Street Journal. This one was released in 2021.

I've reviewed two EPs from this act for this issue of Music Street Journal. Released in 2022, this is the more recent of the two.

As I've noted in other reviews, when I'm lining up music for a new issue of MSJ, I tend to scan a little bit of a song or two to decide what category it lands in.

These guys originally formed in the early 1970, with a sound derived from psychedelia and garage band texture of the 1960s. This is their newest disc and really has a great fuzz-driven texture.

This is a compilation album from a group described as a French reggae outfit.

If you sat down and listened to this album without any pre-knowledge, you'd probably suspect that this band is based on some tropical island paradise. The truth is that they hail from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania that is.

Anton Du Preez is quite talented. You don't have to listen to much of this set to get that.

This isn't the most original thing I've heard. That's for certain.

I reviewed a previous set from Mark Duda and thought it had a lot in common with the Ramones.

I knocked around the idea of landing this album under "progressive rock." We generally put fusion there.

This is a cool disc. I would say that Hope Dunbar's biggest strength is her ability to write great lyrics.

While I appreciate country music, and particularly country with rock leanings, I wouldn't consider it one of my wheelhouse genres.

This set from Melody Duncan is intriguing. It has a real artsv vibe to it.

There is some great music here.

With the bulk falling somewhere in the country and folk category, this album is built around a lot of Americana. I suppose "singer songwriter" would be the most apt description, but that's only so specific.

This is a four-song EP that runs about 12 minutes or so long. These tracks were recorded by an early lineup of the band.

If you like retro styled sounds that land mostly in the folk vein, this set is for you. It has a good range in terms of variety and style, but everything is quite retro in texture.

This album is a bit uneven, but it has some real peaks.

If you dig bouncy, driving kind of pop rock with a lot of old school blues rock in the mix, you will like this new single. It's a cool tune with so much character and "oomph" built into it.

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