Music

The Analog Players Society provides some of the best evidence since the rise of Vampire Weekend that formerly exotic international music -- particularly African rhythms and accents -- has become an everyday part of modern popular tunes.

Ken Tucker says that Charmer is a song cycle about getting rid of a cynical frame of mind; about distancing yourself from people who are dragging you down.

Guaraldi had range, as well as an instrumental hit right when jazz was vanishing from AM radio.

The singer-songwriter and actor may not fit the country-music mold, but he carves out his own sound on hew new album, 3 Pears.

The jazz trio returns to covering classic rock, folk and pop tunes on its latest album, Where Do You Start. Fresh Air critic Kevin Whitehead reviews the band's take on Elvis Costello, Nick Drake, Sonny Rollins and more.

Critic Ken Tucker says that some songs on Tempest should less like concentrated efforts than outpourings of rambling thoughts; others are as precisely crafted as any Bob Dylan has written.

Memphis has been a music town since anyone can remember, and it's had places to record that music since there have been records. Some of its studies -- Sun, Stax and Hi -- are well-known, but American Studios produced its share of hits, and yet remains obscure.

Hal David, the Oscar- and Grammy-winning lyricist, died Saturday in Los Angeles. He was 91. David is best known for his many collaborations with composer Burt Bacharach between the late '50s and the mid-'70s.

Street Corner Symphonies is a 15-volume year-by-year survey of doo-wop by scholar Bill Dahl.

Despite its title, When I'm President isn't as political as Hunter's past couple of solo albums. Critic Ken Tucker says Hunter reachers back into rock's past while linking it firmly to the present.

Julio Cortazar's book Rayuela is expansive, smart, breezy, romantic and occasionally reminiscent of a disturbing dream. Jazz critic Kevin Whitehead says that Miguel Zenon and Laurent Coq's Rayuela-inspired album lands on all those squares.

The members of Shoes have cobbled together albums like stubborn craftsmen who know that their trade is at once outmoded and valuable. Ken Tucker says Ignition retains the same pop-rock rigor heard in the band's 1970s records.

There are lots of stories about the band that got away. For rock historian Ed Ward, one of those groups has always been Autosalvage, a New York quartet who made one album and then stopped playing.

Garbarek helped the ECM label find its emerging voice 40 years ago. A new box set of early albums captures the saxophonist's forming sound — austere and astringent.

Listen to an in-studio concert and conversation with the Canadian singer and her longtime guitarist, Jordan Officer.

Ken Tucker says the Black Keys member works wonders producing JEFF The Brotherhood and Hacienda.

Scholar and fan Ryan Truesdell has turned unheard Evans scores into richly textured works.

The various music styles of Eastern Europe's Roma people, formerly known as gypsies, have become favorites with audiences around the world. Milo Miles says no group does a better job of blending tradition with innovation than the ensemble led by Boban Markovic and his son Marko.

The prolific, and often risqué, crooner's 14th album explores sounds from earlier eras with surprising restraint.