Issue Articles
DJ RQAway: Behind the Wheels
Throbbing bodies and heavy bass alone do not the life of a DJ make. When money is the object, the profession takes the musician to venues near and far to […]
Esperanza Spalding, Radio Music Society (Heads Up International Records)
Intended as the companion to 2010’s Chamber Music Society, Esperanza Spalding’s latest release explores pop and its power on radio. For an artist whose credentials are questioned by various jazz […]
No Limit Forever: Dawn of the Don II?
Recall New Orleans, 1998, around midnight. Your sweaty back cools against the passenger seat of a silver Maxima buzzing along I-10 under a lavender sky. From the carpet of shingles […]
The Songs of the 2009-2010 New Orleans Saints
Listen to our Saints Songs playlist on Spotify On the projector screen behind me, Peyton Manning’s mouth twists in puzzled defeat. To my right, DJ Justin Thomas begins to scream. […]
Jesse Moore, Live at the Old Point (Threadhead Records)
Accompanied only by his acoustic guitar, a singer-songwriter places the onus on his songs, his voice, and his picking to separate himself from the downy snowstorm of similar arrangements that […]
The Funky Butt Brass Band, You Can Trust the Funky Butt Brass Band (Independent)
I once saw Henry Butler judge a big butt contest at the Funky Butt on Rampart Street and have been searching for another night like that ever since. Similar memories […]
Poncho Sanchez & Terence Blanchard, Chano y Dizzy (Concord Jazz Records)
The meeting on record of Poncho Sanchez and Terence Blanchard risks a collapse under the weight of names. Not just their own, but the corresponding heroes that inspire the collaboration. […]
Big Chief Monk Boudreaux, Won’t Bow Down (f.Boo Music)
With the Wild Magnolias albums, Willie Tee created a template for Mardi Gras Indian funk that reverberates to this day, a time that finds an unprecedented number of Indians onstage […]
Spencer Bohren, Blackwater Music (Threadhead Records)
The inside cover of this album lists the guitars employed in its making—a 1950 Tonemaster, a 1928 National, an 1897 Bruno—the names and years that make a fetishist curse his […]
Willy DeVille, Come a Little Bit Closer: The Best of Willy DeVille Live (Eagle Records)
Reviewing a deceased artist of lesser renown can be problematic. You have to take music on its own terms, but you can’t fully tap that all-important relationship between sound and […]
