Posts From Sam Sutherland

Sam Sutherland

Sam Sutherland

Sam Sutherland has worked both sides of the music biz street as music industry journalist at Billboard and Record World (as well as freelancing for Phonograph Record, Musician Magazine, High Fidelity and Rolling Stone), and in the label trenches with Elektra/Asylum, Windham Hill Productions and Discovery Records. In the ‘90s, he was beamed up to the digital rapture via software and early online projects for Microsoft and Amazon’s original music and video storefronts. He’s since produced entertainment content for Windows Media and, most recently, MSN Music. Nevertheless, he still prefers vinyl to digital. A New York ex-pat, Sutherland lives near Seattle.

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.

Read More

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.

Read More

‘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.

Read More

‘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.

Read More

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.

Read More

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.

Read More

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.

Read More

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s ‘Deja Vu’: A Volatile Chemistry

By any standard, it was an enormous success. But when CSN added a new member for their second album, it was an alliance that would both define and bedevil them.

Read More

Squeeze ‘East Side Story’: A Wily New Wave Classic

The album’s success underscores how the lively, kinetic pop-rock outfit was elevated by Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook’s artistry as storytellers.

Read More

Manassas: Stephen Stills’ Finest (Solo) Hour

Stills’ third full-length as leader showcased a collaborative ensemble flexible enough to cover a broad stylistic palette.

Read More