Artist: Various Artists

Great compilation., 2010-06-07
You'll love the music! Great CD, buy it, enjoy it! That's what music is all about.

Artist: Beth Nielsen Chapman

BETH NIELSEN CHAPMAN, 2010-03-30
A TRULY FANTASTIC CD. THE SONG 'ALL I HAVE' IS ONE OF THE BEST SONGS EVER WRITTEN. I COULD RECOMMEND THIS CD TO ANY ONE.

Artist: Rosanne Cash

New songs, 2010-07-27
Some years ago Roseanne wrote the lyrics for a song and Phil Cunningham, the Scottish musician, wrote the music. That song was 'The Secret Life of a Rose' and I have tried ever since then to get a copy. Can you help?

Artist: Neil Young

My first Neil Young venture, 2009-11-26
Despite some of the reviews about this album, I think that it is a good introduction to Neil Young and would recommend this as a starter for anyone who has yet to buy any of his work.

Artist: Johnny Cash

The ethical questions surrounding this final album in the American Recordings series are as unavoidable as they are, ultimately, peripheral. While the vocal tracks were recorded in the months just prior to Johnny Cash's passing in September 2003, the arrangements weren't undertaken until two years later. And though producer Rick Rubin had become a trusted friend, the Man in Black wasn't around to approve or disapprove, let alone guide, the final sessions. However, if the pure power of these recordings doesn't quiet the skeptics, nothing will. With Heartbreakers Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench and slide guitar session pro Smokey Hormel on board (all three of whom appear on earlier Cash albums), along with guitarists Matt Sweeney and Johnny Polansky, the sound is stately and acoustic, but rarely staid, even as the dynamics of earlier recordings in the series are absent. Instead, the songs have a measured, elegiac intensity, the sound of musicians choosing their notes carefully and making just the right choices.

The songs Cash sings are, unsurprisingly, confessional and reflective: his mortality and his mistakes, his maker and his salvation, and the loss of his wife June...
Everyone should have this in their music collection, 2010-07-16
I was completely blown away by ths album. I wasn't a Johny Cash fan but I'm a huge fan now. Great songs, great feeling, great musicianship. "Ain'No Grave" is of similar quality.

Artist: Kris Kristofferson

Please tell us how the story began, 2010-05-10
The CD just landed through the door this morning. The packaging is great, but one of those cardboard folder types that gets scuffed. The sound quality is what you would expect from demos thrown down while the ideas were hot.
Some of the tracks are acoustic and some with the band, with alternative arrangements. The previous reviewer details this. There's a 60 page booklet that you won't get with the MP3. Obviously I haven't read it yet but it look pretty well researched. There's early photos in there too. This collection provides an intimate look at how all these songs sounded before the post production, there's some studio dialogue (false starts and goofing around; a historical document as well as some great listening.

I'd recommend it.

Artist: Johnny Cash

Johnny Cash had been breaking new ground for a decade when At Folsom Prison suddenly made the world at large take notice. The interaction of a volatile prison population starved for entertainment and a desperately on-form Johnny Cash was electrifying: his somber machismo finally found a home. The songs, which included every prison song Cash knew ("I Got Stripes", "The Wall", "25 Minutes to Go", "Cocaine Blues", plus his own "Folsom Prison Blues"), were tailored to galvanise the crowd. This set is all about atmosphere. Live at the Grand Ole Opry this ain't. The current version has been coupled with its de facto sequel, recorded three years later at San Quentin and nearly Folsom's match. -- Colin Escott
The man in charge, 2010-03-19
In 1968 and then in 1969 Cash played concerts at two legendary tough prisons and had some of the hardest men in America eating out of his hand and showing his heart on his sleeve (excuse the use of cliche).

With an enormous repertoire at his fingertips, there is a great emphasis on crime, punishment and imprisonment. This could have been dark and grim and sometimes it is but there is as much light as there is shade and Cash makes his audience laugh as much as he rouses them. It's a masterclass in audience control as he has these hundreds of hard hard men exactly where he wants them. On the second album his song San Quentin is a searing angry masterpiece which goes down so well he sings it again straight afterwards. These are his people he's playing and singing for, the working class and dispossessed of America and they know it and respond accordingly. If they are his people, he is their voice.

Extra tracks aside, this is an excellent box set. Each 20+ page booklet includes new material written by Cash as well as others and plenty of photographs. Only one caveat: I can't listen to one after the other because it's too much of a good thing. That apart this is a magnificent piece of work.

Artist: The Boy Who Trapped The Sun

***A SUPERB DEBUT ALBUM***, 2010-07-25
An excellent debut album by a very talented young man, absolutely love the album.

Highly recommend...

Artist: Robert Plant and Alison Krauss

Led Zeppelin frontman Robert Plant and bluegrass crooner Alison Krauss may not be the likeliest of musical combinations. But on this welcome collaboration album, they work beautifully together, wringing a kind of magic from other people’s songs. The key to the album is its versatility. Between them, Krauss and Plant can handle a vast repertoire on their own, and here they take on the lot, from folk laments and country soul to searing blues and upbeat rock & roll. Overseen by Elvis Costello producer T Bone Burnett and backed by high caliber musicians like guitarist Marc Ribot and multi-instrumentalist Mike Seeger, Raising Sand sees the duo create stellar covers of songs by Tom Waits, Townes Van Zandt, Mel Tillis and The Everly Brothers, among others. Highlights include a killer version of Roly Salley's "Killing the Blues", and a cover of the Plant-Page collaboration "Please Read the Letter," though in truth, it’s difficult to find a weak spot on the whole album. --Danny McKenna
Planted in bluegrass: the Krauss collaboration gives birth to something special, 2010-07-03

There seems little point in repeating the praise heaped on these landmark recordings already in so many excellent reviews. When I first heard "Raising Sand" in 2007 it was obviously destined not for musical obscurity but for some kind of greatness, and since then I've listened to these songs hundreds of times in the morning, the evening, on lazy summer afternoons and driving through the mountains of Andalusia in an open-topped sports car. It's one of those rare occasions when dedicated professionalism, inspired musicians with a love for the material and first-rate production know-how come together to create something remarkable and hard to categorise.

Robert Plant has always had a deep interest in, and understanding of, the many strands of traditional American folk music. Anyone familiar with his back catalogue over the past 40 years will see evidence of this interest and of his ability to interpret traditional styles like slow blues, R&B and folk-country in new ways. Just listen to "Babe I'm gonna leave you" from Led Zeppelin's first album in 1969 - it goes back that far.

Alison Krauss has spent a career playing bluegrass - she's a great fiddle player too - and in Plant has found what seems to be her perfect musical match. This superficially improbable collaboration has given birth to something truly wonderful. Plant's voice turns out to be perfect for bluegrass and brings a depth of feeling - yet with a light touch - to complement Krauss's serene and beautiful singing in harmonies of such richness and serenity they raise the bar in the same way Simon & Garfunkel did way back in the 1970s (though the analogy is confined to the quality of the harmonies and goes no further). The care and respect they have for the material is obvious in the quality of the resultant product. The album cover carries a MOJO quote: "The musical relationship between Krauss and Plant is so gentle, attentive and respectfully intimate it feels more like a courtship dance" - perfect summary.

It's a great, great album, and something of a benchmark. If you've never heard it, you should. You'll likely listen to it for years and years, and love it more every time - like the rest of us.

Artist: Jewel

Country Bumpkin, 2010-07-13
I think this latest offering will be a grower like "Goodbye Alice in Wonderland" was...but as im a huge fan im bound to be biased!I love her pure undiluted approch to offering her raw emotions on a melodic platter...it truly haunts me. Im still love with her last Album "Perfectly Clear" and this is definatly a sequel to that. Jewel never fails to uplift my spirits...no matter how cheesy it sounds, there a truth hidden in the feel good factor of her undeniable talent