R.E.M.
Live at the Olympia
(Warner Bros.)
Dublin is a place where the thoughts and imagination of people from James Joyce to Sinead O'Connor have flourished, so where better to coax the oft-reclusive creativity of Michael Stipe out of hiding? This July 2007 concert, staged ostensibly to work through new material for 2008's Accelerate album, reminds us just how massively influential this band was on modern music. R.E.M. is like the connective tissue that touches every style from Celtic to punk to Appalachian murder ballads, the missing link between Neil Young and Nirvana, Son Volt and The Cranberries. This live performance is exceptional—it could just as easily have been recorded in 1990 as 2007—and covers not only the newer material but the requisite hits from Murmur, Reckoning and more. Between-song banter is great, and there's not a bad-sounding tune out of the 39 included on this double CD. —Tom Sturm
A.A. Bondy
When the Devil's Loose
(Fat Possum)
To paraphrase Peter Buck of the aforementioned R.E.M., "This is a record you can turn all the way up, and it will still sound quiet." On his second record since the dissolution of Verbena, Bondy continues to mine much of the same material he explored on his first solo effort. This includes soft acoustic ballads, gentle ruminations on love and loss, and melancholy tunes that land somewhere between folk rock and alt-country. Most of this album was recorded with only minimal accompaniment on bass and drums, so the vocals and guitar are front and center. However, there is also room for piano as on the soft "On the Moon." Occasionally a rousing chorus or two leads to a rise in volume, but most of the time this record plays like the perfect companion to a lonely Saturday night, or hungover Sunday morning. —Michael Cimaomo
The Unwanted
Music from the Atlantic Fringe
(Compass)
It's always a challenge to play in a genre steeped in hundreds of years of history without disappearing into cliche or pushing so far past the genre's boundaries that little remains of the original. The Unwanted—Irish musicians Cathy Jordan and Seamie O'Dowd from the band Dervish plus Californian Rick Epping—have employed an end-run around Irish traditional music that crops up every so often: the melding of traditions from both sides of the Atlantic. Sometimes the results are revelatory, sometimes just gimmicky. But this trio finds a pleasant middle ground, marrying back-porch American vocals and slide guitar with Irish adornment, or Irish-flavored singing with harmonica or jaw harp and Appalachian accompaniment. Though not every track manages a comfortable co-existence between these related traditions, most of them pull it off handily, resulting in a sound that reflects the kind of musical collisions that must have been frequent as American culture emerged from the mix of close cousins from across the ocean. —James Heflin
