August 2025
By the time Leonard Cohen recorded his debut album in 1967, he was already a well-established poet and novelist. His first poetry collection, Let Us Compare Mythologies, appeared in 1956, and would be followed over the next ten years by three more poetry books and two novels. He would run into the Beat poets during his travels in the 1950s and befriend some of them, but Cohen was never really a part of any literary movement.
July 2025
Drag City DC-915CD
Format: CD
Musical Performance
Sound Quality
Overall Enjoyment
Songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Ty Segall has released one album per year since his eponymous debut in 2008. He’s also a member of the bands Fuzz, GØGGS, and the C.I.A., and has appeared on their records. Segall has a strong experimental streak and has explored numerous styles and approaches to recording. Love Rudiments is a percussion album, “Hello, Hi” is largely composed of acoustic-guitar tunes, and Freedom’s Goblin embraces all manner of rock genres and sounds.
July 2025
Last month’s print edition of The Atlantic included a noteworthy article by Spencer Kornhaber, a staff writer for the magazine. The piece, entitled “Is This the Worst-Ever Era of American Pop Culture?,” also appeared on the magazine’s website. Kornhaber’s article included conversations he’d had with several critics about the state of contemporary culture. He took a lengthy look at the visual arts and made a few quick references to film and television, but the bulk of the article was about pop music.
June 2025
Columbia Records—19802876231
Format: LP
Musical Performance
Sound Quality
Overall Enjoyment
When Pink Floyd performed at the ancient amphitheater in Pompeii in October 1971, they were getting ready to release their sixth album, Meddle, which would appear in shops a month later. The performance took place in front of a film crew, with no one else in attendance. Filmmaker Adrian Maben had several ideas for a movie that would feature Pink Floyd’s music, but a visit to Pompeii gave him the idea of filming the band there.
June 2025
Earlier this spring, SoundStage! Access editor Dennis Burger set up a video chat with a few SoundStage! Network writers to discuss phono preamps. Thom Moon, Jason Thorpe, and I shared our opinions about the advantages of phono preamps over the phono stages included in an integrated amp, preamp, or receiver. We also discussed the phono preamps we liked and why we preferred them over others. Our preferences were subjective, of course.
May 2025
Wildchild Records—WCR002LP
Format: LP
Musical Performance
Sound Quality
Overall Enjoyment
Three years ago, I reviewed The Occasion, the debut album by Canadian musician Harkness. He’s a bit of a renaissance man, and his interests include art and cooking—he even markets his own hot sauce. Harkness has created enough of a stir that the CBC recently released a documentary about him, but his trips to perform in the US and England haven’t yet generated much interest in his music outside of Canada.
May 2025
I turned 14 in the summer of 1970, and I went to my first rock concert that fall with my friend Wes. John Sebastian was appearing at Lewisburg, Pennsylvania’s Bucknell University, about a half-hour from where we lived at that time. We had seen the movie Woodstock just a few months earlier, and Sebastian was one of the performers featured in the film.
May 2025
Matador Records—OLE2105CD
Format: CD
Musical Performance
Sound Quality
Overall Enjoyment
Perfume Genius is the stage name for Mike Hadreas, a singer and songwriter whose music is delightfully unpredictable. His music defies categorization, but certain themes recur in his work, especially the mysteries of sexuality and the horrors of homophobia. The latter motif isn’t surprising, given Hadreas’s background. He was bullied in high school and dropped out in his senior year. Two years later, while studying art at a school in Seattle, he was hospitalized after being attacked by a group of young men.
April 2025
Milestone Records / Craft Recordings—CR00845
Format: LP
Musical Performance
Sound Quality
Overall Enjoyment
Jazz saxophonist Joe Henderson made his name with Blue Note Records, where he recorded five LPs as a leader between 1963 and 1966 and appeared as a sideman on many other sessions. He moved to Milestone Records in 1967 and in the ten years that followed recorded 12 albums for them. His Milestone years offered a mixed bag of approaches to jazz, and there were some gems among them. One was Power to the People (1969), which Craft Recordings reissued last year on vinyl and hi-rez digital as part of its Jazz Dispensary series.
April 2025
When I attended the Capital Audio Fest in November, I experienced many demo rooms full of impressive gear. I found myself being pulled into a few of them because, even as I was passing by in the hallway, I could hear music that sounded not just good, but lifelike. As I wandered into one such room in particular, I was immediately impressed by the appearance of the turntables, integrated amplifier, and speakers on display. They looked natural, organic, and inviting.
April 2025
Weird Records—WEIRD166LP
Format: LP
Musical Performance
Sound Quality
Overall Enjoyment
A little more than two years ago, English songwriter Richard Dawson released The Ruby Cord, the final album in a trilogy that looked at English life in the Middle Ages (Peasant, 2017), the present (2020, 2019), and the distant future (The Ruby Cord, 2022). For the most part, Dawson writes for acoustic instruments, and his work embraces folk-music traditions while subverting and reimagining them.
Note: for the full suite of measurements from the SoundStage! Audio-Electronics Lab, click this link.
March 2025
The history of recorded blues and jazz has abounded with legendary figures in the decades since Mamie Smith cut “Crazy Blues” in August 1920, but few artists have been connected to as broad a range of other musicians, and as many seminal events, as 82-year-old John Paul Hammond. Also known as John Hammond Jr.—to differentiate him from his father, a renowned record producer who shepherded budding artists ranging from Benny Goodman to Bruce Springsteen during his long tenure with Columbia Records—he was a veritable Zelig during the 1960s.
March 2025
Atlantic Records / Acoustic Sounds SD 8239 /APA 070-45
Format: LP
Musical Performance
Sound Quality
Overall Enjoyment
Boz Scaggs recorded his first solo album in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1965. Polydor Records released Boz in 1966, but it didn’t get wide distribution. On his return to the US, he joined up with Steve Miller in San Francisco. Scaggs had known Miller since high school, and they had played together in bands in high school and college.
March 2025
A little more than a month ago, SoundStage! publisher Doug Schneider posted a message on Facebook that caught my attention. To be honest, I usually look out for Doug’s posts—they let me know what’s going on at the SoundStage! Network, and in the audio industry in general. This one hit home because it referred to something that has always been at the root of my interest in hi-fi.
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