Posts From Sam Sutherland
‘Slowhand’: Eric Clapton’s 1977 Platinum Balancing Act
The album offers a lucid balance of technical mastery and artistic modesty. It became his best-selling studio LP to date upon its release.
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Stephen Stills’ A-List Solo Debut Revisited
A balance of DIY proficiency and top-tier talent gave the 1970 release an early head start in the race for most popular solo album by a member of CSN&Y.
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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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Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers’ ‘Damn the Torpedoes’: Full Speed Ahead
The LP was the band’s long-awaited breakthrough, with them now matching the caliber of their front man’s writing with their focused musicianship.
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When Donald Fagen Lightened Up With ‘The Nightfly’
On his debut solo album, cut during Steely Dan’s ’80s hiatus, he trades cynicism for nostalgia in a song cycle.
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‘Late for the Sky’—The Jackson Browne Confessional Masterpiece
He achieved a poetic force with the eight songs comprising the album, their lyrics demanding a closer listen.
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‘Wrecking Ball’—Emmylou Harris, Rewired
The 1995 album was a gamble both forward-looking but also connected to her early career as a folk singer.
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The Band and Their Pioneering ‘Music From Big Pink’: Review
The album offered quiet songs of experience bathed in a rustic glow, with no hints of the futurism and none of the kilowatt drama then prevalent elsewhere in rock.
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The Byrds’ ‘Mr. Tambourine Man’ LP—A Folk Rock Manifesto
With worthwhile covers, solid originals and no filler, the LP sustained a level of quality that invited favorable comparison with their heroes, the Beatles.
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Dire Straits’ ‘Brothers in Arms’: Mark Knopfler Completes the Transition to Stadium-Friendly Band
One of the first all-digital albums recorded with the compact disc in mind, it vaulted the British band into the rock stratosphere.
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