On The Forgotten Arm, Aimee Mann serves up an assertive mix of confidence, conviction, and authority, using a stirring vocal presence — which recalls in equal measures Chrissie Hynde, Lucinda Williams, and Christine McVie — while backed by a band playing a series of rich, riveting melodies that resonate from…

What other festival provides it all — rock, rap, reggae, pop, punk, and nearly everything in between? SunFest 2005, where an ambitious attempt to bridge the demographic divide creates something for everyone. There’s Nelly and Brian McKnight for urban music aficionados, Ryan Cabrera and Elvis’s baby girl Lisa Marie Presley…

By the time a band releases its fifth album, it should be garnering more than a mere smattering of recognition. However, for Love as Laughter, it’s almost understandable that its off-handed arrangements just barely coalesce. In fact, on Laughter’s Fifth, songs such as “Survivors” and “Makeshift Heart” sound so loose…

With all the fuss over the nuptials of Charles and Camilla, it’s easy to forget that one of the longest royal reigns in recent times belongs not to the monarchy, but to music, or namely, Lady Soul — the undisputed queen of R&B, Aretha Franklin. The first woman inducted into…

Elvis lives … in spirit anyway, as reflected by this retro collaboration between Jon Spencer, leader of his self-dubbed Blues Explosion, and Matt Verta-Ray from rockabilly revivalists Speedball Baby. Vintage-sounding rockers such as “Dark Hair’d Rider,” “Lover Street,” and “The Loveless” take a cue from Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins,…

Retro rocker, trendsetter, ladies’ man, soul man, and SoBe resident Lenny Kravitz was born into show biz — his mother, actress Roxie Roker, played Helen Willis on the popular TV show The Jeffersons. Family connections to Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, and Count Basie made a musical career seem…

Call him the consummate showman. A veritable South Florida jazz institution, Joe Donato can be found Thursday nights holding court at Coconut Grove’s Tuscany Café, charming the diners with his free-flowing mix of perennial standards such as Duke Ellington’s “Caravan” and George Gershwin’s “Summertime,” as well as innumerable requests from…

While he never attained the stature of, say, Sam Cooke, Sixties soul singer Solomon Burke exerted his own substantial influence. Artists such as the Rolling Stones (who covered his “Cry to Me” and “Everybody Needs Somebody to Love”), Tom Jones, and Otis Redding borrowed liberally from Burke’s bellicose singing style…

Popular myth dictates that everyone from Cape Breton, Newfoundland, on Canada’s rugged Atlantic coastline, is born with either a fiddle or a fishing net in hand. That’s not true, of course, but then again Natalie MacMaster has wielded the former since age nine and currently boasts a reputation as one…

An ex-member of skewered folk duo Moldy Peaches, Adam Green creates naughty narratives filled with guilty pleasures, fueled by a vibrant croon that recalls both Morrissey and Jim Morrison and skittishly engaging melodies that reference Bacharach, Brel, and Berry (Chuck, that is). Like fellow indie idol Conor Oberst, the 23-year…

If multitasking is the byword of the new millennium, Damon and Naomi have mastered it. Since dissolving their ethereal ensemble Galaxie 500, the couple has released five albums; jump-started both a record label and a publishing company; pursued side projects in writing, poetry, photography, and graphic design; and overseen their…

Multi-instrumentalist Andrew Bird, a graduate of both the Squirrel Nut Zippers and his own band Bowl of Fire, takes a new route with his latest solo outing, swapping that earlier eclectic jazz-pop sound for a pop-rock approach with a more personal perspective. Melding ornate orchestration — violins, whistles, synthesizers, and…

Buoyed by contributions to the best-selling soundtracks O Brother, Where Art Thou and Cold Mountain, Alison Krauss and Union Station not only gained recognition as one of America’s hottest contemporary bluegrass bands, but also helped nurture new interest in roots music in general. Still, Krauss and company’s approach is far…

Fractured, fragmented, and woefully lethargic, Parker & Lily’s aptly titled third album, The Low Lows, is a sluggish snoozefest that rarely coalesces. Granted, the pair do an adequate job of weaving atmospheric arrangements that can be haunting, harrowing, or heartbreaking, particularly on songs such as “June Gloom” and the shimmering…

Hattie’s Hat in Seattle is your typical urban haunt, an intimate, unassuming, and somewhat charming gathering place for close chums, perpetual barflies, and worker bees looking to grab a quick cocktail on their dash back to the suburbs after a maddening day at the office. It was there one night…

Say what you will about roots rocker Steve Earle; his reputation as an irascible insurgent is well-founded. In a career spanning nearly two decades, he’s been labeled an outlaw and renegade on one hand, a musical savior on the other; a melding of Bruce Springsteen, Bob Marley, and Hank Williams…

Since 1979’s harrowing Broken English, the latter phase of Marianne Faithfull’s recording career has been marked by a coarse, confessional approach. But her first new effort in three years is a somewhat easier pill to swallow. With contributions from Nick Cave, composer/arranger Hal Wilner, Blur’s Damon Albarn, and PJ Harvey,…

With the release of 2002’s lavishly produced opus Lifted or The Story Is in the Soil, Conor Oberst, a.k.a. Bright Eyes, reaped a flood of critical kudos and a sales breakthrough that led some to dub him the golden boy of the indie legions. He rode the momentum with last…

Nope, this isn’t another movie starlet looking to validate her questionable musical ability. Rowlands is billed but not involved, merely name-dropped alongside actress Janeane Garofalo (“Garofalo, C’est Moi”), singer Lesley Gore (“The Last Words of Lesley Gore” and even winemaker Ernest Gallo (“Easter @ the 7-11”) by the band’s true…

If Sixties chic seems more a matter of style than substance nowadays, retro is still relevant for The Kennedys. Not the tragically flawed and slightly debauched political dynasty, but Pete and Maura Kennedy, a husband-wife duo from New York whose jangly guitars and sunny disposition echo a sentiment seemingly out…

Kimberly Rew’s seminal efforts alongside Robyn Hitchcock in the Soft Boys first established his creative credentials before he confirmed his pop pedigree in the early Eighties by penning the hit “Walking On Sunshine” for Katrina and the Waves. But Rew’s solo outings eschew the infectious accessibility of his work with…

Before parting ways ten years ago, American Music Club forged a multihued, angst-induced sound. After reconvening earlier this year, the group articulates the disenfranchisement and alienation of the new millennium with the ironically titled Love Songs for Patriots. It’s a series of confessional encounters, from the male stripper of “Patriot’s…