One of Cool Album of the Day’s favorite performers graced The Late Show with David Letterman yet again recently. Elizabeth Cook not only performed a great classic song but also put smiles on faces with yet another fun interview.  You can see both below. Enjoy! Her latest  EP is a Gospel record called Gospel Plow. It was released a year or so ago. In fact, this is her second appearance on Dave’s show in that time. We’ve also added that performance below.     Here’s Elizabeth’s most recent interview on the show. She and her band performing “If I Had My Way” A great performance of “Hear Jerusalem Calling” Here’s an older interview as well Related Links Here is...

  Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#846 in the Series) is Devon Allman, Turquoise The first thing that hits you between the ears with a critical listen to “When I Left Home,” the opening track of Devon Allman’s fine new album Turquoise, a song that takes you through an autobiographical narrative that touches only sparingly on his rock royalty pedigree as the son of Gregg Allman and the Nephew of the late Duane Allman, is that Devon‘s musical path was not a gold and glitter strewn road that was pre-paved for success, but rather an ongoing journey that may have blessed him with some heavy-duty pixie dusting of artistic genes, but certainly did not come with a GPS...

  Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#845 in the Series) is Todd Rundgren, Live In Concert at the Warfield Theater It was 23 years ago today, Todd Rundgren brought his band to play.  Esoteric Recordings presents the Todd Rundgren Archive Series and if this is any indication, this is the start of something good. Todd Rundgren’s 1989 release Nearly Human was a bit of a re-visitation of his Philly Soul/R&B roots. Received to some critical acclaim, the album was recorded with a minimal amount of overdubs and this created a perfect live platform for a big 12-piece band. This recording documents the final show of this tour and has been newly mastered from the original master tapes, making...

  Song Of The Day by Eric Berman – “The Holy Drinker” by Steven Wilson If you thought that the progressive rock dinosaurs that dominated the musical landscape of the 1970s were all but extinct today, think again. Sure, bands like Yes and Jethro Tull are still churning out the classics on stages around the world, but in recent years the prog-rock scene has seen a full on rejuvenation starting in the ‘80s with Metallica, whose brand of progressive metal made them superstars and in the ‘90s The Mars Volta rose out of the ashes of the punk band At The Drive In to begin dressing their music in proggy clothing. In recent years there’s been a plethora of...

Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#844 in the Series) is Jim James, Regions of Light and Sound of God. Jim James is one of those voices that I heard in the chaos of my house, and immediately stopped everything and listened. It was the first time I had heard his voice. He was singing “Steam Engine”on vinyl on our Carver stereo. I was immediately smitten. (My husband was about one day ahead of me hearing them on the radio and went out and bought their vinyl.) We spent the better part of the year learning their discography and spent many a dollars seeing them whenever possible. We had the privilege of being able to go to New York City and watch...

  Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#842 in the Series) is Johnny Boy Would Love This…A Tribute to John Martyn There are some artists who open their hearts to us. They are the jewels, the ones that never fail you when you go back to their music. And their songs are the ones that live on, because the beauty of the truth they tell does not die, even when the artist does. A tribute album is a tricky thing. It always sounds like a good idea, but we all know cases where the end result leaves you wishing the material had been left alone. Bringing too few new ideas to the arrangements can leave us wishing for the original....

  Song Of The Day by Eric Berman – “What The Eyeballs Did” by Atoms For Peace The first thing that grabs you is the rhythm – jittery, squiggly, purely wiggy and totally glitchy rhythm. Rhythms that don’t make you dance, but do make you move. The ghost of Talking Heads’ Remain In Light lives here. Their fingerprints are all over songs that have been built up from rhythm. They inhabit the nine tracks that make up Amok, the first official album by Atoms For Peace. Atoms For Peace consists of Radiohead lead singer Thom Yorke, Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea, longtime Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich (keyboards, synths), Joey Waronker of Beck & R.E.M.  on drums and Brazilian...

  Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#839 in the Series) is Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Push The Sky Away The advance word on this one was that Nick and the band had recorded a somewhat subdued set, their most laid-back batch of songs since 1997’s classic The Boatmans Call and I’m very pleased to report that the word was spot on. I personally feel that Nick is at his very best when it comes to (for want of a better word) ballads, the stripped-down , soul baring stuff at which he excels. That being the case, I was never going to be disappointed by Push The Sky Away but it has exceeded even my high expectations,...

    Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#836 in the Series) is Paul Barrere & Roger Cole, Riding the Nova Train   Paul Barrere’s latest project is finally available; a collection of eclectic tunes reminiscent of the early days of Little Feat, recorded with old friend Roger Cole, Riding The Nova Train has a sample of influences through Paul’s long career. After the band plays at Feat Fan XI in Jamaica in March, Paul will be taking a year off to deal with treatment for Hep C. Below are some notes from Paul about the project and a link to hear a sample and order the CD….here’s a bit of the history of the album. An album, by...

  Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#834 in the Series) is Roger Knox, Stranger In My Land (Bloodshot Records) Part travelogue, part National Geographic special, and part crash sociology course, Stranger in My Land, the new album by Roger Knox is surely to be the most important album you will listen to all year, and might just be the most important album of the decade.  The overall arch of this record, the unfair treatment of Australian Aborigines, is a subject matter that until now has not necessarily reached mainstream hearts and ears, and with Bloodshot Records along with Jon Langford  (Waco Brothers, Pine Valley Cosmonauts) acting as curators, and Roger Knox, The Koori King of Country, leading the...