Doug Taylor

Gordie SampsonSunburn(Maple)As key as Cape Bretoner Samp- son has been to east coast music in his six years between albums, Sunburn could easily be from an Ontario or California artist. It’s free of fiddle and hometown homilies and packed with sonic sophistication and high-art metaphors. “Paris” uses the city to woo and is destined to […]

Eugene MirmanEn Garde Society! (Sub Pop)This New York-based comic will remind you of some guy you know who sits around playing with words and unravelling his thoughts. He gets on your nerves, but every five minutes he comes up with something. Mirman has a better laugh rate, as he dissects the peculiar phrases that culture, […]

Catherine MacLellanChurch Bell Blues(Independent)So intimate are these songs as a group, they float in from an era of slow and stark acoustic music. Many could have been composed during a bout of mid-winter cabin fever. The daughter of the late PEI bard Gene MacLellan, Catherine is less a story-teller than a confessor. Her way of […]

Ray DaviesThanksgiving Day EP(V2)Four songs plus one alternate mix are a teaser for Davies’ first full post-Kinks album in February. The Yanks’ Thanksgiving is a feast of ideas for Davies, always a lover of traditions and shrewd portrayer of inner lives. On the title cut, the longings of a widower and spinster lead to a […]

SweetbackStage (2) (Epic)The trio that’s backed up Sade for two decades forged this identity in 1996. Sweetback’s second album welcomes vocalists Aya, Chocolate Genius and Ivana Santilli into a sophisticated chill groove not far removed from the band’s main gig. The impulse to experiment is limited, but most compelling is a fusion of hits by […]

Ray DaviesOther People’s Lives(V2)Just when his urbane influence can be heard so clearly in the latest batch of UK bands, here comes Ray Davies with his first full studio album post-Kinks. He experienced renewal while living in New Orleans, and his characters and concerns are back, vivid as ever. The songs rock furtively, with the […]

Kasey ChambersCarnival(Warner)The spunk that made Chambers so captivating on her first couple of releases has morphed into an intense humility that could be faith. When she sings “Praise the Lord” on “Sign on the Door,” it feels more like general elation than shout-outs upstairs. It’s either a metaphor for personal devotion, or Chambers is being […]

Scott Miller & the CommonwealthReconstruction(Sugar Hill)We don’t hear too many crack Southern bands in these parts anymore. This live set is a taste of what we’re missing. Miller muses over the landscape (“Why does everything around me have to look the same” from “Amtrak Crescent”), sin, salvation, cars and cards. “Drunk All Around this Town” […]

Princess SuperstarMy Machine(!K7)If Princess Superstar seemed uncharacteristically quiet since her 2001 breakthrough, “Bad Babysitter,” the fruits of her focus have arrived. As her handle betrays an obsession with fame, My Machine is an opera of self-indictment that envisions her own desire taken to science fiction extremes. Backed by an army of “duplicants,” Superstar corners the […]

JobriathLonely Planet Boy(Attack)When such a huge 1970s flop turns up, you know the re-releasers were digging deep. Jobriath was an American knockoff of Ziggy Stardust-period Bowie, so gay it was part of the hype. (Morrissey, a fan, contributes the liner notes.) Jobriath’s singing can be described as caterwauling, but his songs and piano have a […]

Kinky Atlas(Nettwerk)If half the songs weren’t in Spanish and there wasn’t an extra Latin pizzazz in the rhythms, Kinky would still rock out. LA engineer Thom Russo enables the band to inject a harder, bassier drive into its second album. “The Headphon-ist” separates and lifts each son- ic element while pondering the shape of silence. […]