CD Reviews

Review: Lisa ''Left Eye'' Lopes, Eye Legacy

Mass Appeal/Koch (2009)

By MIKAEL WOOD | January 27, 2009

1.5 Stars

The posthumous hip-hop release has become such a music-biz commonplace that the folks who package these things no longer seem concerned with honoring the legacies of the artists whose names prop them up.

This collection credited to the late TLC star isn't the worst of the bunch: Left Eye, who died in 2002 after a car accident in Honduras, was never less than a spunky studio presence, a quality that survives much of the budget-bin production here. ("Block Party," featuring an appearance by the always welcome Lil Mama, works up some energy worthy of the song's title.)

But with a slapdash track list that intersperses previously unreleased cuts with lightly retooled versions of tunes from Left Eye's import-only solo debut, Eye Legacy still feels like an after-the-fact throw-away, one that makes you wonder just what its creators were attempting to say about their dearly departed friend.

Review: Musiq Soulchild | Onmyradio
Atlantic (2008)
Living in the Now
There’s no denying the ongoing presence of what we’ll call melodic pop acts here in Rhode Island, bands comprised of guys in their mid-20s with a serious knack for penning sugary-sweet hooks and harmonies.
Review: The Hot Club of San Francisco's Bohemian Maestro
No genre is as closely associated with a single artist as Gypsy jazz is with Django Reinhardt.
Review: My Bloody Valentine 3-D
Back in the early '80s, before Michael, Jason, and Freddy took off as slasher all-stars, there were other less famous genre seedlings, like the homonymous source for this pedestrian hack-'em-up about a pickax-wielding wonk gone berserk in a sleepy mining town.
The Avett Brothers
In country music, blood ties evoke an era — the days of the Carter Family, the Monroe Brothers — when making music in the parlor was everyday entertainment. Comprising Avett siblings Scott and Seth plus Bob Crawford, this trio tap into that association via stripped-down instrumentation (guitar, banjo, upright bass), spirited vocal harmonies, and rustic yet contemporary originals.
Various Artists | A Boston State Of Mind Volume 2
Every night, when I get home from reporting facts, I poison the Internet with innuendo on a Boston-based hip-hop blog called jumptheturnstyle.com.
Midnight ramblers
In rock ’n’ roll, it was possible to live in Harvard Square, be a musician — a local musician — and be able to pay your rent and find restaurants where you could eat and buy food and survive, and feel that there was a sense of . . . future, with hope and opportunity.
Steady business
"Poorly Drawn People has some new members, and a new way of doing biz."
Review: Oak Lonetree, Lava + 2
Oak Lonetree hemorrhages more discs than Kool Keith — which, for those who don't know, is a bootyload.
Rock n' Roll saves the day
One way to keep dry, academic art theorizing from getting too, well, dry and academic is to inject some rock and roll.
Levon Helm | Electric Dirt
Helm's 2007 Dirt Farmer won the Best Traditional Folk Album Grammy for its acoustic arrangements of songs plucked from the Delta soil of the Band drummer and singer's rural Arkansas youth.
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[ 05/27 ] "A Natural Order," photographs by Lucas Foglia @ David Winton Bell Gallery

[ 05/27 ] George Orwell's 1984, adapted by Nick Lane @ Gamm Theatre

[ 05/27 ] "2012 RISD Graduate Thesis Exhibition" @ Rhode Island Convention Center

ARTICLES BY MIKAEL WOOD

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Given the theory of de-evolution these Ohio brainiacs began expounding more than 30 years ago, it makes a sad kind of sense that Devo's first album since 1990's Smooth Noodle Maps offers such a charmless, base-level version of the band's synth-addled new wave.

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THE FUTUREHEADS | THE CHAOS | June 16, 2010
"I wish that I could stop the noise," sings Barry Hyde not long into The Chaos . It sure doesn't seem that way.

BETTYE LAVETTE | INTERPRETATIONS: THE BRITISH ROCK SONGBOOK | June 01, 2010
Bettye LaVette’s previous two albums had titles that required a little digging to unpack.