He found his footing in jazz through its hard-swinging main stem. But after he'd proved his hard-bop mettle, he took a fork in the road toward electric experimentalism. Now, trumpeter Nicholas Payton seems comfortable pursuing a middle ground. Hear his band play live.
Tired of the new-wave explosion in their hometown of San Diego, The Soft Pack's Matt Lamkin and Matty McLoughlin got their start after deciding to revive old-school grunge. Later joined by Dave Lantzman and Brian Hill, the group found a knack for writing simple and catchy tunes that hint at the New York underground and subtle '60s California surf-rock.
Damian Kulash, singer-songwriter-guitarist with OK Go, talks about the group's split with its label as the result of a label policy that kept a popular video the band made from being embedded on YouTube. "This Too Shall Pass" is a viral video that took a month to make; it displays an elaborate two-story Rube Goldberg device timed to the song.
"If all that grows starts to fade, starts to falter / Oh, let me inside, let me inside not to wake," Midlake's Tim Smith sings in "Acts of Man," which surrounds his meditation on man and nature with dense harmonies and the rich sounds of a folk-pop orchestra.
Seven years after the death of Johnny Cash, producer Rick Rubin has selected 10 more songs among the many he produced for Cash late in the singer's life. Rock critic Ken Tucker examines the end result, the album
American VI: Ain't No Grave.
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