Great Album

March 19: Leonard Cohen released “Songs of Love and Hate” in 1971

Posted on by Egil Mosbron

And Songs of Love and Hate captured Cohen in one of his finest hours as a songwriter, and the best selections (especially “Famous Blue Raincoat,” “Joan of Arc,” and “Love Calls You by Your Name”) rank with the most satisfying work of his career. If Songs of Love and Hate isn’t Cohen’s best album, it comes close enough to be essential to anyone interested in his work.
~Mark Deming (allmusic.com)

Avalanche

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Released March 19, 1971
Recorded September 22–26, 1970 at Columbia Studio A, Nashville (Second mix)
August 31, 1970 at Isle of Wight, Trident Studios, London (First mix)
Genre Folk, folk rock
Length 44:21
Label Columbia
Producer Bob Johnston

Songs of Love and Hate is the third studio album by Canadian singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen. Produced by Bob Johnston, the album was released on March 19, 1971, through Columbia Records.

leonard-cohen

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March 11: Déjà Vu (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young album) released in 1970

Posted on by Egil Mosbron

March 11: Déjà Vu (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young album) released in 1970

One of the most hotly awaited second albums in history — right up there with those by the Beatles and the Band — Déjà Vu lived up to its expectations and rose to number one on the charts.
~Bruce Eder (allmusic.com)

Almost Cut My Hair – Live Wembley 1974:

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Jan 21: Them Again by Them was released in 1966

Posted on by Hallgeir Olsen

Them Again is the second album by Them, lead by singer and songwriter Van Morrison. The album was released by Decca Records in the UK on 21 January 1966 but it failed to chart. In the U.S. it was released in April 1966 where it peaked at #138 on the Billboard charts.

Released 21 January 1966 (UK), April 1966 (USA)
Genre Rock
Length 48:21Decca (UK), Parrot PA 61008; PAS 71008 (USA)
Producer Tommy Scott

It’s a great record and often overlooked and unfavourably compared to Them’s debut. It is allmost as good. You owe it to yourself to check it out.

Two of the original Van Morrison songs included on the album, “My Lonely Sad Eyes” and “Hey Girl”, can be seen as precursors to the poetic musings of Morrison’s later Astral Weeks album, released in 1968. “My Lonely Sad Eyes” begins with the words, “Fill me my cup, and I’ll drink your sparkling wine/Pretend that everything is fine, ’til I see your sad eyes.” The title implies that the sad eyes belong to the singer but the lyrics address the singer’s love interest. It reminds me of Rolling Stones at their most soulful.

My Lonely Sad Eyes:

The song “Hey Girl” has a pastoral feel to it, enhanced by the addition of flutes and in Brian Hinton’s opinion is a “dry run for ‘Cyprus Avenue'” from Astral Weeks.

Hey Girl:

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Great Album: Dylan LeBlanc – Cautionary Tale

Posted on by Hallgeir Olsen

“The easy way out
is a dangerous path
and no one knows it like I do”
– Dylan LeBlanc (Easy Way Out)

Dylan LeBlanc released his new record, Cautionary Tale, January 15 2016.

Shreveport artist Dylan LeBlanc is still only 25 years old, he was considered a wunderkind when he released his debut, Pauper Field, to much well deserved acclaim in 2010. It was a great album and the fall on the follow-up, Cast The Same Shadow in 2012, was hard. Not that the album was so terrible, but the expectations were so high.

He spent his formative years surrounded by some of the region’s finest musicians. His father, James LeBlanc, is a longtime Muscle Shoals session player and a fine singer, songwriter (and guitar player) in his own right.

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Jan 13: Johnny Cash recorded At Folsom Prison in 1968

Posted on by Hallgeir Olsen

“Folsom Prison looms large in Johnny Cash’s legacy, providing the setting for perhaps his definitive song and the location for his definitive album, At Folsom Prison. The ideal blend of mythmaking and gritty reality, At Folsom Prison is the moment when Cash turned into the towering Man in Black, a haunted troubadour singing songs of crime, conflicted conscience, and jail.”
~Stephen Thomas Erlewine (allmusic.com)

One of the best live albums in recording history was taped on this date in 1968, hell, it’s one of the best albums period. Today it is it’s 48-year anniversary.

folsom

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Great Album: Chris Stapleton – Traveller

Posted on by Egil Mosbron

 

I’ve got a problem but it ain’t like what you think
I drink because I’m lonesome and I’m lonesome ‘cause I drink
~Whiskey and You

“A lot of my earliest memories of music were listening to music in the car with my dad, he listened to a lot of outlaw country, Merle Haggard and things like that and then old R&B: Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin. Hopefully, some of this record reflects some of that and I think that he would have liked it. I like to think he would have, anyway.”
– Chris Stapleton (PasteMagazine)

Really, it’s unfair to peg him as country’s savior: because records like this transcend genre altogether, created to mend souls, not sales.
~americansongwriter.com

Chris Stapleton released one of this year’s strongest albums back in back in May. It’s a fantastic record of soulful country songs. When I say soulful, I mean that the whole album is dripping with just as much soul as country. This isn’t a new thing in country music (or the soul genre, for that matter), but it has been very long since we’ve heard it done this good.

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