A song most associate most strongly with Patsy Cline, “Sweet Dreams” had actually been a hit at least twice already before her version was released just after her death in 1963.
In 1956 Don Gibson, the song’s writer, had a top ten country hit with the song. And in 1960 Faron Young’s version did even better. But since Cline’s version has done the most business in the years since, it’s become the “classic”.
Elvis Costello shocked fans in 1981 by releasing Almost Blue, a country album recorded in Nashville. It was his first album not to reach the top 30 in America, his fans not being ready to let him out of his New Wave pigeon-hole. But some of it really does stand up all these years later, including his take of “Sweet Dreams”, which includes some sublime piano work by Steve Nieve.
Kate & Anna McGarrigle: “Complante Pour Ste-Catherine” (1980)
Montreal-born Kate and Anna McGarrigle’s introduction to an international audience came via Linda Ronstadt’s recording of their “Heart Like a Wheel” as the title track of one of her platinum-selling albums.
Their French Record, from 1980, is a favorite among fans, even those who don’t know a word of French.
Kate McGarrigle and Louden Wainwright III (of 1970’s “Dead Skunk” fame) are the parents of Rufus and Martha Wainwright.
Halloween seems the perfect time for the haunting voice of Alasdair MacLean. And Autumn as fitting a time as any for the band Spin magazine called “Aggressively, gratuitously lovely”.
Back into that falling night the birches and the silhouettes the haunted plain sweet lord, here I am again
You flower through my nails and skin moving like the sunlight in the alleyways but in this life we won’t meet again
Keane retreats to familiar territory on their fourth album after some experimentation on 2008’s Perfect Symmetry. It’s for the best–this is exactly what they do well.
For all intents and purposes, Roye Albrighton is Nektar. Lead guitar wizard, lead vocalist, main songwriter–he’s everything to the band Ian Anderson is to Jethro Tull.
The last thing Nektar fans would want is an album without Albrighton. But when he left the band for a brief period that’s what they got in 1977’s Magic is a Child. And though it’s the least Nektar-like (and least prog-sounding) album in the band’s catalogue, it’s actually a pretty decent record.
Most of it sounds like straight-ahead 70’s British rock, stripped of the lofty space rock tendencies that are Albrighton’s forte. But the title track sounds a different note entirely. What it sounds like is exactly what it was to me as teenager: a sort of anthem for hyper imaginative, inward-turned, Tolkien-reading misfits.
Oh, and that happens to be a young Brooke Shields on the album’s cover and inner sleeve–speaking of the genre of fantasy.
At the time I was a little boy All my senses were in bloom The forests were adventure There dwelt the legends of my mind I was the keeper of the golden key I made all the rules I only had to dream to create the scene
Magic is a child Imagination is alive Magic is imagination A child is alive
How the trees were so high The cheese in the sky Were part of my imagination I was goblins and elves With small mushroom shelves As Brothers Grimm would tell their stories
Opening my eyes in the morning I would see Patterns in the trees making shapes that were a Face to me
In those tireless times And those carefree lines That we draw ourselves But they’re never kept I know magic is a child Imagination is alive Magic is imagination A child is alive Magic is a child Imagination is alive Magic is a child Alive as a child’s imagination
It starts with a beat. Just one, before a woman begins singing over a simple rhythm about a hopeless case and a resolve to love. Then comes another voice and horns — harmonizing, swelling, building. A full minute goes by before “Sonsick” practically explodes in a burst of musical euphoria and lyrical heartbreak. The stop-you-in-your-tracks song is by San Fermin, and it’s irresistible. The voices belong to singers Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig, who lead another rising Brooklyn band in Lucius. San Fermin is the brainchild of Yale composition grad Ellis Ludwig-Leone, who recruited Wolfe and Laessig to help bring his project to fruition. While “Sonsick” infuses its indie-rock sound with classical flourishes, you don’t need a trained ear to be knocked out by its epic beauty. Just as quickly as you’re swept up by the fanfare, everything falls away, leaving nothing but a few piano chords and that voice, resolving to love.
Every Moment Has A Song 