Category: Music
27 review(s) found that match this category.
Key to My Cage
Summer 2015
The human voice is our oldest acoustic instrument and it’s still one of
the most captivating. Add a few well struck strings—just a few chords
even—and you have a remarkable symphony of bass, harmony, lyrics, and
emotion.
This is the begu...
Categories: Music
Tags: Folk, Blues rock
New & Noteworthy
Fall 2014
Said & Done by Elder Crow2014 ::
Tyler Morgan ’03 and his band crank up some old-school rock and roll in
their debut album. The Vancouver, Washington, group blends lyrics of
social justice and civil rights with roaring guitars and solid d...
Categories: Music, Veterinary medicine, Memoirs
Tags: Country music
Think About That
Winter 2013
As the rhythmic guitars launch “Son of a Gun,” the lead song from Chance McKinney’s album Think About That,
it’s easy to get hooked into his industrial country music, a powerful
blend of modern country and guitar-driven rock, with some un...
Categories: Music
Tags: Country music
Chicago, Barcelona Connections
Summer 2013
The Latin-themed recording is one of the great subgenres of jazz, going
back at least as far as Duke Ellington’s “Caravan” and running through
the likes of Dizzy Gillespie’s “Manteca” and the Getz/Gilberto
collaboration that brought...
Categories: Music
Tags: Jazz
Montaña Y Caballo
Winter 2011
For fans of earthy,
Northwest indie-folk in the
vein of Seattle’s Band of
Horses and Fleet Foxes,
Pullman’s own Yarn Owl
delivers a lush and
satisfying debut. Montaña
Y Caballo, the band’s first
full-length album, was
recorded i...
Categories: Music
Tags: Independent music, Folk rock
L.A. Rendezvous
Fall 2011
I have long admired Dr. Argersinger’s work so I was eager to hear his new CD, L.A. Rendezvous.
Argersinger (a retired WSU music professor) is a consummate composer
of contemporary art music and a superb jazz arranger and composer, so
it ...
Categories: Music
Tags: Jazz
Hard Water
Summer 2011
Insistently local, yet tapping into a national legacy of country and blues rock, Massy Ferguson’s second album Hard Water travels the back roads of Washington and treacherous paths of relationships with guitar, drum, and organ-driven songs. Da...
Categories: Music
Tags: Folk rock, Country rock, Blues rock
Friends of the Old Mill
Spring 2011
This new roots-rock album has compelling lyrics, musical variety, and
an overall upbeat feel. Cody Beebe and the Crooks (most of whom are WSU
alumni) offer up twelve tracks with titles such as “Nine to Chain,”
“Change of Pace,” and “H...
Categories: Music
Tags: Folk rock, Country music, Blues rock
Vol. XIII: "White Bed"
Winter 2010
Mining Neil Young’s “Harvest,” Eels’ “Electroshock Blues,” and a wealth of indie rockers, Super XX Man creates an alloy of fine instrumentation and catchy pop melodies to memorialize lead singer Scott Garred’s father on “White Bed...
Categories: Music
Tags: Independent music, Rock music, Folk rock
Live & Kickin'
Fall 2010
Bill Murlin ‘63 and Carl Allen ’60 created The Wanderers soon after they met in September, 1959, on the cusp of the Great Folk Scare of the 1960s. With Al Hansen on bass, the singer-guitarists performed regularly around Pullman for three years...
Categories: Music
Tags: Folk
Jump Into Life
Fall 2010
Eclectic Approach, a funk-rock Seattle band that includes Jowed Hadeed ’06, Ryan Jander ‘06 and Tony Poston ’07, released its third studio album, “Jump Into Life,” in June. Feel-good messages dominate the album. One track, “Change,” ...
Categories: Music
Tags: Seattle, Funk rock
Libera
Spring 2010
Some things you expect to find on the Palouse: tractors, football
fans, a smattering of laboratories probing the molecular basis of life
and the reaches of space. The rural alchemy of agriculture and academia
would seem less likely to nurture t...
Categories: Music
Tags: Jazz
Mountains On Our Backs
Winter 2009
Nestled
in the generally indescribable genre of indie music, Carcrashlander
challenges the listener by continuing to venture into experimental
music. In their most recent album, Mountains On Our Backs, the group combines basal vocals and keyboards...
Categories: Music
Tags: Alternative music, Independent music
One More Mile
Spring 2009
What caught my attention from the first time I heard album was the silky-smooth blending of tonality this jazz quartet presents. The interplay between instruments (soprano sax, piano, bass, and drums) is balanced in such a way that one initially f...
Categories: Music
Tags: Jazz
When the Circus Leaves Town
Winter 2008
Seattle-raised Brooke Ludwick spent time as a creative director and artist in the advertising field before recently returning to her first love, songwriting and performing. With her talents and understanding of the music business, she has created som...
Categories: Music
Tags: Country music
Sonata Concertante for Cello and Piano and other works
Winter 2002
In the course of his 26 years at Washington State University, Lothar Kreck, who retired in 1997, served as director of Hotel and Restaurant Administration (1971-79) and was the program's first Ivar B. Haglund Distinguished Professor. He also pur...
Categories: Music
Tags: Classical music, Composers
Sojourner
Winter 2002
Style, phrasing, and rhythmic acuity are hallmarks of a great jazz singer. Julie Silvera displays all of these and more on her debut CD, Sojourner. A graduate of Washington State University with an M.A. in music, Julie cut her "jazz teeth" singin...
Categories: Music
Tags: Jazz
East West Encounter
Fall 2002
From the first quietly unsettling notes of Susan Chan's East West Encounter, it's clear that this is no ordinary piano CD. A delicate initial passage suddenly explodes into a dramatic and resonant section of lower keys; two contemporary pieces ro...
Categories: Music
Tags: Piano, Instrumental music
Handmade
Winter 2006
It's no accident that the cover art for Paul Ely Smith's compact disc, Handmade, features a detail from an oriental rug. Paul, an instructor in the General Education Program at Washington State University, has been a collector of tribal woven pieces...
Categories: Music
Tags: Instrumental music, World music
The Dozier-Jarvis-Young Quartet: You Guys From Around Here?
Fall 2006
The photo of the Moscow/Pullman highway which graces the cover of the Dozier-Jarvis-Young Quartet's debut CD release, You Guys From Around Here? brought the memories flooding back, as I settled down to listen to the opening track, "Homecoming." You s...
Categories: Music
Tags: Jazz
Wiggle Like a Fish
Summer 2008
Sometime in the 1970s or '80s, when National Public Radio was airing a program called Folk Festival USA, I recorded a concert from one of those broadcasts by a singer named Sam Hinton. Among the songs Hinton performed was one called "Barney McCabe." ...
Categories: Music
Tags: Children's music
The Way I Feel Tonight
Spring 2008
For a lot of musicians, recording a second CD is typically a tough proposition. Do you take your music in a new direction, or do you maintain some aspects of the first CD that garnered attention and fans? Jennifer Lynn '03 manages to do both on her s...
Categories: Music
Tags: Country music
Acoustic Jazz Quartet: Organic
Spring 2004
It becomes clearer the longer you listen to Organic that the title of this CD indicates the playing style that the Acoustic Jazz Quartet allows to grow in the middle of its straight-ahead jazz sounds. Most of the numbers begin s...
Categories: Music
Tags: Percussion, Jazz
Louisiana—A Pianist's Journey
Fall 2008
In one of my first musical memories, I am sitting with my grandfather at his player-piano, watching the punched rolls spin as we listen to the popular music of his youth. As a young child, I hadn't yet developed a curiosity for the vast wealth and br...
Categories: Music
Tags: Piano
Where the Fins Meet the Frets
Fall 2008
If life imitates art, then for Ray Troll, so does music. More specifically, his music imitates his art. The debut CD from Ray Troll and the Ratfish Wranglers titled Where The Fins Meet The Frets contains 16 original songs that one could say leap dire...
Categories: Music
Tags: Children's music
Destinations Unknown
Summer 2006
Broken hearts, barrooms, rodeos, and crying in your beer—the new CD, Destinations Unknown, from Chris Guenther '04 has all the ingredients of a traditional country from the heart of country music, Nashville. Chris separates himself from his crooner...
Categories: Music
Tags: Country music
The Wakefields: Falling Down Blue
Fall 2007
Country music always seems to be filled with nostalgia—looking back on the days of old with a southern drawl, an acoustic guitar, and a broken heart. Yet every so often artists like The Wakefields come along to alter these perspectives. Falling Dow...
Categories: Music
Tags: Country music