Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, Push the Sky Away [The Phoenix]

In which the 50-something singer-songwriter, nearly a decade into a semi-feverish creative rebirth, rips it up and starts again. [...continue reading...]

Guest Lists: Top Tracks of 2012 [The Phoenix]

Guest Lists: The Phoenix writers + WFNX staff select their top tracks of 2012

Scott Walker, Bish Bosch [The Phoenix]

Scott Walker's late-period about-face is one of the strangest in the annals of pop music.

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Bill Withers, The Complete Sussex & Columbia Albums [The Phoenix]

Bill Withers has always been the down-to-earth, odd-man-out of the '70s soul brothers: he's the one who came bearing a lunch box on the cover of his relaxed 1971 debut, Just as I Am.

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R.E.M., Document [25th Anniversary Edition] [The Phoenix]

Fans of R.E.M. enjoy arguing over which album was the band's true shark-jump, but 1987's Document was inarguably the end of a groundbreaking era.

Read more: http://thephoenix.com/boston/music/144364-rem-document-25th-anniversary-edition/

Richard Hawley, Standing at the Sky's Edge [Boston Phoenix]

Richard Hawley's seventh studio album opens with "She Brings the Sunlight," a clouds-parting, hippy-dippy drone explosion that plays like "Tomorrow Never Knows" caught in the echo of a football stadium.

Read more: http://thephoenix.com/boston/music/143610-richard-hawley-standing-at-the-skys-edge/

Bob Mould, Silver Age [Boston Phoenix]

Now that he's getting love from both sides of the indie/mainstream divide (see No Age and Foo Fighters, for starters), Bob Mould is again playing like he has something to prove - or at least an iconography to maintain.

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Ry Cooder, Election Special [Boston Phoenix]

Ry Cooder's spur-of-the-moment (or is it heat-of-the-moment?) political album opens like any good political album should, with a rollicking blues song told from the point of view of Mitt Romney's dog.

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Antibalas, Antibalas [Boston Phoenix]

As its simple title would suggest, the fifth album from the Brooklyn Afrobeat torchbearers gets back to basics.

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Blur, 21 [Boston Phoenix]

Best Britpop band? That’s a question of taste — though if your answer is Oasis, you’re probably wrong, and if your answer is Blur, you’re probably right.

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