Great Album

Great Album: Kamasi Washington – The Epic

Posted on by Hallgeir Olsen

Kamasi Washington’s masterwork The Epic shows us an incisive saxophonist who has performed with jazz greats Gerald Wilson and Herbie Hancock but is better known for his work with Steven Ellison aka Flying Lotus (grand-nephew of Alice Coltrane); rising Compton rapper Kendrick Lamar and bass player Steven Bruner aka Thundercat.

This is the best Jazz album of 2015 in my book. Big, sprawling and, yes, epic. Impressive musicianship all around. Full of surprising turns, inventive ideas and very fun to listen to. It’s been a long time since I got this excited about a jazz album.

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Great Album: Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell – The Travelling Kind

Posted on by Hallgeir Olsen

“In the words of Willie Nelson, ‘The life I love is making music with my friends,’ and there’s no better friend for me to make music with than Rodney. I can’t wait to get out there on the road with him and play the songs from this new record.”
– Emmylou Harris

Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell – The Travelling kind:

Two years after releasing 2013’s Old Yellow Moon, Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell have collaborated again with The Traveling Kind, another album built around their easy but heartfelt creative interplay as both vocalists and songwriters. It’s even better than Old Yellow Moon. I saw them in Oslo last summer, just wonderful, and the songs are great live.

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Great Album: Turnpike Troubadours – Turnpike Troubadours

Posted on by Hallgeir Olsen

Turnpike Troubadours is an American Red Dirt group from Oklahoma composed of Evan Felker, R.C. Edwards, Kyle Nix, Ryan Engelman and Gabe Pearson.

They released their fourth album in 2015, their eponymous, Turnpike Troubadours. I’ve listened to it a lot the last two and a half months. This is great country-rock about loss, love and life. They sing “story songs” much like Springsteen, Zevon and Prine.

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Great Album: Fear and Saturday Night (Ryan Bingham)

Posted on by Egil Mosbron

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“It’s definitely easier to write than perform. But when you hear the stories from listeners of how they relate to a song or how it may have helped them through their own experience in some way – that’s what makes it worth it to me.”
~Ray Bingham (No Depression interview)

Seemingly at peace and no longer concerned with “rising star” status or meeting corporate expectations, the candor of Bingham on Bingham reveals an intimate portrait of love and hope on Fear and Saturday Night. More morning after than its title implies, Bingham’s rawness has been refined ever so slightly, his newfound reserve a therapeutic epiphany.
~Eric Risch (popmatters.com)

“Nobody Knows My Trouble” (Live in West Hollywood, CA):

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