Blog Archive for January 2025
Album Of The Day: Cover Story by Russ Taff
Russ Taff is an artist from before my time, to some extent. He was a member of the christian vocal group The Imperials in the late '70s and early '80s, then performed as a solo artist for a few more decades, and that was mostly before I started listening to music in earnest. Away from the stage and studio, Russ had a hard life, coming from an abusive home and struggling with alcoholism, among other things. But at age 71, he's still got a good voice and a longing to sing. Released today, this album of covers finds this vocalist covering songs by Bill Withers, Bob Dylan, Prince and The National, among others. While his voice has a bit more rough edges than it did back in his younger days, Russ Taff can still belt out a tune, and he makes these classic songs his own, plus covers a few songs you might not know as well. Through these covers, he tells his own story of struggle, love and redemption over his 50+ years in music.
Release Year: 2025
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Album Of The Day: The Great American Midrange by The Elms
The Elms is still one of my favorite bands of all time. This rock band created great rock records championing hard-working, blue-collar Americans and celebrating both the highs and lows of life. This was their fourth and final album, released independently before deciding to call it quits a year later. Thom Daugherty's guitar work is iconic and Thom playing guitar at their reunion show in 2015 is still my phone's lock screen. This album is maybe best known in the band's home state of Indiana for the song "Back To Indiana", where lead singer Owen Thomas pines to return to his loved one as soon as possible. It's an excellent song for a road trip, and I've definitely played it on the way to Indiana a few times. "Thunderhead" and "A Place In the Sun", while not as rockin' as some other tracks, ends the album in a quieter note and are a fitting end to the band's epic 10-year, four-album run. (On some streaming services, the "Complete Edition" is available which has acoustic versions of every song on the album, but the first 12 tracks is the original album.)
Release Year: 2009
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Buy The Elms 4xLP Collection
Album Of The Day: From The Womb Of The Morning, The Dew of Your Youth Will Be Yours by Ronnie Martin
For over 30 years, Ronnie Martin has been making music, much of it with Moog synthesizers, and much of it under the band name Joy Electric. But for the last few years, he's been releasing music under his name. Released on this day 3 years ago, this album features vocals by Mr. Martin and all other sounds are created on his Moog One. Some of it sounds almost like real drums in some spots, if you ask me. Lyrically, Ronnie provides some fantasy references like the old Joy Electric, but these songs are a bit deeper and the sound a bit more epic than the Joy Electric releases. Ronnie Martin's synth-heavy pop sound is not something I listen to all the time, for sure, but it's an interesting listen from time to time.
Release Year: 2022
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Album Of The Day: In The Name Of Love by Various Artists
Released on this day 21 years ago, some of the biggest artists in Christian music at the time honored Irish rock band U2, who was at the top of the world back then. In The Name Of Love: Artist United For Africa gave proceeds to Bono's charity and 13 artists got to cover a U2 song. It's a wide variety of artists featured, from pop/contemporary artists like Nichole Nordeman and Todd Agnew to rock bands like Pillar and Sanctus Real. My favorites are Sixpence None The Richer doing "Love Is Blindness" and Jars of Clay covering "All I Want Is You" because they're less the same as the U2 original and more of their own style. Sorry, but I don't really like that they tried to get some hip-hop/rap from TobyMac and GRiTS on here because it doesn't really work, but I guess that's the nature of a label-made compilation—trying to get a wide variety of label talent involved. It's not as good as most U2 albums, but if you're a fan of these artists, it's kinda a fun listen.
Release Year: 2004
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Album Of The Day: Split The Sky by Chris Quilala
A part of the Jesus Culture church/conference worship team, Chris Quilala has led worship on some of their songs or played as part of the band on others. This is his only solo album so far, a studio recording with beautiful keyboards and electronic programming to create a bit more of a dance vibe than most modern church music. Lyrically, it's definitely music to be sung to God at modern church services, but musically, it's a rich tapestry of sounds and beats that is a bit more complex than you would expect from the more common live, church worship release. It's also great to listen to real, live worship recordings, but I like it when artists are able to craft something even better in the studio like Chris Quilala and his team has done here.
Release Year: 2016
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Album Of The Day: Rubber Factory by The Black Keys
Usually the blues is a full band thing: guitar and/or keyboards, bass and drums, vocals, etc. But The Black Keys stripped the blues to its core with just electric guitar and drums, and in the end they made their own, new brand of rock. They recorded this album Rubber Factory in a no-longer-used tire factory in their hometown of Akron, Ohio, USA. Most of the songs are new songs this two-piece band wrote, though a few are covers of older blues songs. I love these great guitar sounds that guitarist/vocalist Dan Auerbach gets out of his guitar setup and Patrick Carney's drums are solid too. This was my first exposure to The Black Keys back about 20 years ago, and since then I've been enjoying their brand of modern blues/rock, although most of their recent albums have failed to impress me as much as this and other early albums.
Release Year: 2004
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Album Of The Day: Memory Bank by Drew & Ellie Holcomb
It's Friday, so let's listen to some music that is released today! Drew Holcomb has been making music with his backing band "The Neighbors" for nearly 20 years, and early versions of Drew Holcomb and The Neighbors had Ellie Holcomb providing vocals. For the last 10 years, though, Ellie Holcomb has also been recording her own solo albums and maybe not touring with Drew all the time. This married couple has been recording music for years, but this is the first full-length album released as just the two of them. Musically, it's mostly Americana/country, but there's definitely some rock, folk and other influences in here. Drew's deep voice works great with Ellie's and it's clear they've got lots of chemistry from these songs. Lyrically, it's a bunch of well-crafted songs about relationships, love, and sharing life together, plus just having fun. It's a good listen and even though I've not been a huge fan of either artist, I'm thinking I'll probably listen to this more.
Release Year: 2025
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Album Of The Day: Chagall Guevara by Chagall Guevara
Released this week 34 years ago, this is one of the coolest early '90s rock bands you have probably never heard of. Lead vocalist Steve Taylor and his bandmates had been performing for 10-15 years in other bands and then formed a rock band with a very weird, artsy name: Chagall Guevara. The guitars, bass and drums are on point and Taylor provides somewhat raspy vocals struggling to be heard above the band. Like the band's name, the lyrics on the album are a bit of a puzzle, containing some spiritual language but not at all getting preachy, and at least a hint of sarcastic wit that was also present on Steve Taylor's solo albums. This album is an engaging listen all these years later, even though the band never gained notoriety or radio airplay for this album back in the day. The band split up not long after this release, though they did reunite a few years ago for a few shows, to release a live album as well as an album of rarities and new tracks.
Release Year: 1991
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Album Of The Day: Writing On The Wall by Jill Phillips
Jill Phillips is a beautiful songwriter and great singer. This is her third album, and in her career of over 25 years so far, she's released 10 albums and one EP (if I'm counting correctly), most of them released independently. Her style is simple singer-songwriter pop/folk, and her husband Andy Gullahorn writes some songs as well as plays guitars and mandolin. Some of my favorites are "The Way Of The Fire", "Wrecking Ball" and the Pierce Pettis cover "God Believes In You". This album speaks to God's grace and love but also life's uncertainties and hardships, and I turn to her music often when I'm looking for something a bit softer but full of passion.
Release Year: 2003
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Album Of The Day: The Narrative by Sho Baraka
"Love over hate / I'm here for that" is a lyric from "Here". On this Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, I think it's a good idea to listen to what our black brothers and sisters have to say on life, Christianity and America. I've got a lot to learn in these areas and I like this album from Sho Baraka as the artist shares his views through engaging hip-hop. In "Maybe Both", Baraka and crew talk about America's and Christianity's shortcomings with lyrics like, "Are they killing with a pistol or a vote? / Or, maybe, it is both?" as well as "So, are there two Christs totally unrelated / Or, maybe there's one Christ, and he's pretty complicated / Huh? Pretty complicated / Or, maybe it is both?" Beautiful instrumentation is beneath the fast-paced rap that encourages us to love our neighbor and be aware of our differences while embracing our similarities. I've gotta check out more of Sho Baraka's music as I'm really only familiar with this album, which I like a lot.
Release Year: 2016
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