Posts From Sam Sutherland
Finding a ‘Pearl’–Janis Joplin’s Last Hurrah
It remains her most fully realized record, fronting the best band she would ever lead on her strongest set of material.
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Elvis Costello ‘Armed Forces’: What’s So Funny?
The band’s third album was a leap forward in songcraft and sonic ambition, a song cycle weaving the personal and political.
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The Band ‘Rock of Ages’: Their Live Pinnacle?
It belongs on any short list of the best live albums ever, while serving as a coda to the group’s groundbreaking influence.
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Bob Marley and the Wailers’ ‘Live!’ Album: Reggae Rocks Babylon
The 1975 London concert provided validation that they had breached the rock market with their potent strain of reggae.
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‘Buffalo Springfield Again’: An Embattled Creation
A volatile mix of talent and dysfunction percolates beneath the surface of the California band’s second and best album, cobbled together amidst rivalries
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Jackson Browne ‘The Pretender’: Dreams and Nightmares
The 1976 album, arriving at a difficult time in his life, projects a more sinister and less forgiving world than Browne’s earlier works.
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‘The Who By Numbers’: Back to Basics
After an eight-year odyssey of releasing concept albums, the original quartet put together a set of unrelated songs that found favor with their fans.
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Graham Parker & the Rumour’s ‘Heat Treatment’: When Pub-Rock Met New Wave
When the Village Voice unveiled its 1976 Pazz & Jop Poll winners, an unknown English musician commanded two of the top five entries from the influential poll’s panel of music critics
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Dire Straits’ ‘Making Movies’: Mark Knopfler’s Widescreen Ambitions
The album restored the band’s platinum stature with a more expansive style verging on prog rock while retaining retro accents
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Paul Simon ‘Still Crazy After All These Years’: A Solo Triumph
His only #1 LP, and an Album of the Year Grammy winner, this 1975 release offered definitive proof that he was not going back to the past.
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