Great Album: Kacey Musgraves – Pageant Material

Kacey Musgraves - Pageant Material 2

“It’s funny that doing things your way and not conforming makes you an outlaw or a rebel,” she adds. “But if that’s the stamp that you get, then maybe that’s a good one. …
I had so much fun creating this record and wanted to convey a classic, even tone throughout the whole thing, I hope the live spirit we wanted to capture came across.”
~Kacey Musgraves (radio.com interview)

At its core, Pageant Material is about how you never quite escape small-town struggles with family, neighbors and old flames, even after your big break. Last time out she sang “If I can’t bring you to my house / I’ll bring my house to you.” On her excellent second album, she brings us the whole block.
~Brennan Carley (spin.com)

Biscuits:

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Great Album: Kamasi Washington – The Epic

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

“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

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)

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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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The 5 Best Music Films 2015

Love & Mercy
Director: Bill Pohlad

In the 1960s, Beach Boys leader Brian Wilson struggles with emerging psychosis as he attempts to craft his avant-garde pop masterpiece. In the 1980s, he is a broken, confused man under the 24-hour watch of shady therapist Dr. Eugene Landy.

And, yes, it feels like we’re in the studio with Brian Wilson!
love and mercy

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