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.
February 2025
Polydor / Fiction Records / Capitol Records 00602475036746
Format: CD
Musical Performance
Sound Quality
Overall Enjoyment
Songs of a Lost World is the Cure’s first album of new songs in 16 years. The group has released a couple of live albums and a few random singles since the last studio album, 4:13 Dream (2008), and has toured off and on. Robert Smith, the Cure’s leader and the one consistent member over its nearly 50-year history, announced a new album several times in interviews since 2008, but it never materialized.
February 2025
Rick Beato is a musician, producer, recording-studio owner, and guitar instructor. His YouTube channel, which Beato established in 2015, has 4.7 million subscribers. On the channel, Beato has covered a lot of subjects in the last ten years, diving into everything from music theory to the current state of the recording industry. Beato has become so popular and well established that he’s been able to interview famous musicians on his show, including David Gilmour, jazz guitarist Mike Stern, Rick Wakeman, and Tori Amos.
January 2025
Having worked with artists as diverse as Bon Jovi and Wynton Marsalis and helped define the musical signatures of late-career Chick Corea and Wayne Shorter as a member of their bands, bassist John Patitucci has cachet that few other rhythm-section players achieve. His tone, technique, and imagination are all exceptional.
January 2025
Craft Recordings / Milestone Records CR00767
Format: LP
Musical Performance
Sound Quality
Overall Enjoyment
I hadn’t heard of the Uruguayan jazz trio Opa until Craft Recordings reissued the group’s US debut, Goldenwings, in its Jazz Dispensary Top Shelf series. The label’s audiophile series has returned a few lesser-known albums by well-regarded jazz musicians, such as Joe Henderson and Woody Shaw, to vinyl. It has also brought back work by artists who deserve wider renown, including pianist Patrice Rushen.
January 2025
In my November Pulse! column, I made a prediction about the Capital Audiofest, which took place over the weekend of November 8–10 in Rockville, MD, a suburb of Washington, DC. “I can tell you what I’ll hear,” I wrote. “Diana Krall, Sting, Texas Flood by Stevie Ray Vaughan (the Acoustic Sounds reissue), Kind of Blue (Acoustic Sounds again), any number of MoFi titles, and so on.”
January 2025
Capitol Records—T 2080 Apple Records / Universal Music Group International 0602468019756
Format: LP
Musical Performance
Sound Quality
Overall Enjoyment
The Beatles’ conquest of America in 1964 happened so quickly, it caught the band and its record company, Capitol Records, by surprise. Capitol Records was the US subsidiary of EMI Records, whose Parlophone label had enjoyed unprecedented success with the group in England. Those records, distributed in the US by Vee Jay and Swan, did not do well at first. But “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” which Capitol reluctantly agreed to release after passing up the group’s first three singles, turned out to be a massive hit. And American teens demanded more.
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