Search results for

Hailing from Long Beach, Calif. the aptly named five-piece, Greater California, makes music that is delightfully nostalgic, hopeful, and a bit retro. The instrumentation is bright but woozy with subtle traces of psychedelia, and the vocals are equally distant and dreamy and often refer to things in the past. The song "It's Great," in particular, sounds like it was meant to accompany some epic cinematic moment with a sullen protagonist who silently comes to a significant realization.

Kurt Wagner's music represents an offbeat marriage of country, soul and avant-garde pop, sprinkled over gently fingerpicked guitar. His understated melodies and ambiguous lyrics are in abundant supply on Lambchop's OH (Ohio), which is upbeat and soulful in its irreverence.

Though it's titled Grrr..., there's nothing threatening about the third album from the Brooklyn pop-rock band Bishop Allen. Its peppy melodies are framed by sing-along vocals, quirky approaches to wordplay, a solid rock foundation and lyrics about the reliable yet relatable subject of trying to grow up.

Combining electronica, indie-rock, soul and funk, the group's newest record topped many critics' best-of lists for 2008. On Dear Science, the band's characteristically dark lyrics are balanced by some of the most accessible song structures of TV on the Radio's career.

After being barred from performing at Constitution Hall in 1939 because she was black, opera singer Marian Anderson gave a performance on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Author Raymond Arsenault's new book, The Sound of Freedom, reflects on the cultural significance of Anderson's performance that Easter.

Although it represents diverse movements, composed at different times in Bach's life, the Mass in B minor transcends the inconsistency of its origins, leaving behind a statement on the nature of sacred music as a bequest to the future.

The pianist for the BMI/New York Jazz Composers Orchestra is also a singer and a former musical director at an Episcopal church. Her latest studio album elaborates on familiar jazz forms while embracing sacred texts, including a piece for Easter vespers.

Eva Ayllon is sometimes called Peru's Tina Turner. On Kimba Fa, the 30-year veteran takes all sorts of liberties with Afro-Peruvian music, adding in piano and sometimes a brass section, as well as jazz harmony and ideas from other Afro Latin styles.

More than 20 years since they started making music, Indigo Girls' members still exude a passion that never subsides. The folk-pop duo's new release, Poseidon and the Bitter Bug, is the first on their independent label, IG Recordings; it finds the duo exploring new melodic and rhythmic territory.

For those who think all Cajun music sounds exactly the same, a new CD tries to dispel that pervasive and dangerous myth. Christine Balfa Plays the Triangle offers up nearly an hour of triangle solos, performed by a woman with an impeccable Cajun pedigree.