Stormfields

A beautifully-conceived live album and concert video, Sanctitude finds Katatonia going (mostly) acoustic in a well-curated exhibition of songs sympathetic to the quieter spaces.  Yes, there are candles, and yes, they play in a church, but this is not an overwrought episode of MTV Unplugged; rather it’s an essential expression for Katatonia and its songs, an approach they explored at length on their Dethroned and Uncrowned album, where they offered the entirety of Dead End Kings in similar stripped down fashion.  Sanctitude is a complement to last year’s Last Fair Day Gone Night; where that live set, issued on CD/DVD last year, offered a rocked-out, straightforward career retrospective, the new album demonstrates why Katatonia is Katatonia.  Because they’re a death metal, no a black metal, no a doom metal, no a shoe-gazey rock band — or are they? — that has the chops and the artistic will to…

Big Big Train, Wassail (English Electric, 2015)

Tracks: Wassail; Lost Rivers of London; Mudlarks; and Master James of St. George.

Wassail, the new EP from Big Big Train

As far as I know, I’ve never tasted Wassail.

Of course, I come from Bavarian peasant stock and possess, sadly, not a drop of Anglo-Saxon or Celtic blood in my veins.  My wife, however, is blessed with Celtic as well as Swedish ancestry, and I’m more than happy to have played a role in passing those genes on to our rather large gaggle of children.

As far back as I remember, though, my very German-American family drank something that sounds quite similar, at least in essence if not in accidents, to Wassail, Gluhwein.  Even the very word Gluhwein conjures not just the scents of warm cinnamon, cloves, and anise, but also the idea of heavenly comfort and satiation.

Much the same could…

A review of YES, PROGENY: SEVEN SHOWS FROM SEVENTY-TWO (Rhino, 2015).

PROGENY (Rhino, 2015)

As I’ve mentioned a number of times, I was born in the summer of love, 1967.  The youngest of three boys (eight years younger than the oldest and five years younger than the older), I inherited my music tastes at a very early age.  Our house always had music playing—whether classical, jazz, rock, or pop.  I especially loved the first three, though I could belt out most of the words to Three Dog Night with the best of three year olds.  Crazily, I was able to sneak out of the crab, crawl downstairs (duplex), and put my favorite records on the turntable at 3 in the morning.  No, I’m not exaggerating.  I wanted the entire house to listen!

My favorites, though, even as a little kid were the songs by Yes, the Moody Blues, and Jethro…