Review: Miss Montreal
I Am Hunter
8 Ball Music

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Dutch singer-songwriter and pop-rocker Sanne Hans who fronts Miss Montreal has one of the most gorgeous voices in music today. On "I Am Hunter" it curls around lonely ballads like a wisp of smoke and on the rockers it soars and shoots through the room like a bright light.

Virtually unknown outside of Europe, the band traveled to Nashville to record their third album with the help of songwriting and producing team Nate Capmany and Joshua Crosby. Hans voice which carried their first two albums is handled and…

Review: Norah Jones
Little Broken Hearts (2012)
Blue Note Records

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Well, well, Norah Jones and her producer Brian Burton (Danger Mouse) have just delivered a lesson to Lana Del Rey on what sexy-noir is all about. Intentional or not, the similarities will jump out here to pop culture watchers and Jones comes out on "Little Broken Hearts" as both a musical victor and the thematic one in a darkly vicious games of love. Dark is the key word here.

Early Jones fans won't find anything close to "Come Away With Me" on this.…

Review: The Parlor Soldiers
When The Dust Settles (2011)
Self Released (@ bandcamp.com)

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The Parlor Soldiers are a remnant army of three. Songwriters Alex Culbreth and Karen Jonas duet, harmonize and trade off guitar and drum roles. Bringing up the rear, or holding down the bottom is Dan Dutton on upright bass. It takes a lot of talent for three people and simple songs to hold your attention for a whole album. Culbreth and Jonas weave their voices together in Appalachian tapestry where one song has you breathing dust and the next laughing at the irreverent back and forth…

Review: Joan Osborne
Bring It On Home (2012)
Saguaro Road Records

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When the track list for Joan Osborne's first album in four years appeared and the opening track was the blues/rock standard "I Don't Need No Doctor," I felt both excitement and trepidation. An Ashford & Simpson penned tune first done by Ray Charles and then taken to another whole level by Humble Pie and the legendary voice of Steve Marriott on their Rockin' the Fillmore LP in 1971, it's a classic worthy of playing at full volume. But similar recent attempts in going back to a blues…

Review: Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires
There is a Bomb in Gilead (May 2012)
Alive Naturalsound Records

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Recorded in the heart of Dixie and mixed in the Motor City, the debut release from Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires burns a path through the American musical landscape on which lesser bands have become hopelessly lost. These boys are forging a sound based on garage rock guts, southern riffs and gospel flavors that was first explored by The Rolling Stones 40 years ago on Exile on Main St.

The difference here is the Stones were doing an…

What am I into? I seek authenticity. After a few decades of listening you just know it when you hear it. Rock, country, soul, blues…call it roots music. For me the best albums and songs pull from many influences. I think music today is getting broken down into too many sub genres…it gets a little bewildering and ridiculous. I long for the days when I could turn on the radio, a transistor a.m., and hear The Supremes, Johnny Cash, The Beatles and Frank Sinatra on the same station. A good song is a good song. And as my favorite bumper…