The Compulsive Reader » Music reviews

There are many collaborations on this album. Chief collaborator, Paperboy, has a wonderful sense of Musa’s linguistic and delivery skills, and the sound takes its cue from poetry/jazz fusion m...

http://compulsivereader.com/2024/05/06/a-review-of-the-fullness-by-omar-musa/

Eilish is wry in the way of the enfant terrible but also scary, a bad seed with a beat box and an hermetical disposition that runs to chaos. At first, I thought she’d sprung fully angst-ed o...

http://compulsivereader.com/2020/01/04/a-review-of-billie-eilishs-when-we-all-fall-asleep-where-do-we-go/

Music critic Daniel Garrett has compiled an extensive, topical survey of music news and notes including new album releases, concerts, books and talk. Read more →

http://compulsivereader.com/2017/10/01/the-state-of-the-music-rihanna-ann-powers-david-bowie-patti-smith-diana-ross-sam-smith-and-music-conferences-in-barcelona-and-britain/

Sam Cooke and Bob Dylan are compared by Hamilton for their musical roots and affiliation with particular communities and subsequent independence and experimentations with genre and form, though ...

http://compulsivereader.com/2017/04/11/corrections-an-internet-interview-with-jack-hamilton-author-of-just-around-midnight-rock-and-roll-and-the-racial-imagination/

Benjamin Clementine is to be encouraged. Who knows what else he might do? “The decision is mine ‘cause the vision is mine,” he states in the composition “Adios,” claiming ambition, dif...

http://compulsivereader.com/2016/08/04/rebirth-of-a-troubadour-at-least-for-now-by-benjamin-clementine/

Caroline Rose is one of the performers who is keeping the singer-songwriter tradition alive, one of the performers who is keeping the independence music scene a resource for liberation: so are A...

http://compulsivereader.com/2016/07/16/singer-songwriter-caroline-rose-and-the-band-algiers-jeff-buckley-pj-harvey-and-music-culture/

Brooke Waggoner’s compositions acknowledge the inevitability of time, and the struggle between mundane responsibility and transcendent possibility, with love to be found or lost.  On Sweven, ...

http://compulsivereader.com/2016/07/03/dreams-of-trouble-and-transcendence-brooke-waggoners-sweven/

Although its darkness is a little too unrelenting, Unravelling is a virtuoso performance, but it is much more than that. The long-awaited follow-up to Mosaic of Disarray was born of a terrib...

http://compulsivereader.com/2016/06/21/a-review-of-unravelling-by-channel-d/

The music of Villagers is an articulation of life and relationships, shaped by desire, perception, and conscience. The first song on Where Have You Been All My Life? is light, mellow, slow-paced...

http://compulsivereader.com/2016/06/12/desire-perception-conscience-where-have-you-been-all-my-life-by-villagers-featuring-conor-obrien/

Lianne La Havas—a British girl of Jamaican and Greek heritage (her Greek father was a musician)—has been a part of music scenes large and small (associated at one time or another with Paloma...

http://compulsivereader.com/2016/05/26/reflection-imagination-possibility-lianne-la-havas-blood/