Soundcheck

Throughout its career, Los Lonely Boys has won over a whole community of fans and a Grammy Award in 2005 (for its single "Heaven") with its unique Tex Mex rock 'n' roll and radio-friendly pop hooks. But last year, the band's status was up in the air, after guitarist Henry Garza suffered a scary spinal injury when he fell off-stage during a concert, and the power trio -- brothers Henry Jojo, and Ringo Garza -- spent a good chunk of 2013 on hiatus.  Luckily, Henry Garza has recovered, the band has regrouped, and sounds revitalized on its latest album, Revelation, released back in January. While the hard-touring band has always played in a variety of genres and styles (often in the same song), this new collection finds Los Lonely Boys playing with Santana-esque Latin blues jams, traditional conjunto, '70s soul and even, yes, soft 80's-styled yacht rock. Ten years after its 2004 breakout, Revelation, feels like another very fine entry in the "Texican"'s discography.   Set List: "So Sensual" "Give A Little More" "Don't Walk Away"

John Doe has always seemed like an artist more likely to push forward to the next thing than to look back. But lately, he says he's found pleasure in seeing how far he's come since his days as the founding member of L.A. punk band X, and the country-rock band The Knitters. "You gotta keep going forward," he says in a press release, "But... I've begun to realize some of the advantages of reflection."  That reflection is now manifesting itself in a new collection, The Best Of John Doe: This Far. Compiling nearly 25 years of material, Doe includes some of his favorite concert moments, collaborations, and a few unreleased, or reworked songs. The record also features fantastic guest spots from Neko Case, Aimee Mann, Kathleen Edwards and Grant-Lee Phillips. Still, as the title implies, Doe considers this "greatest hits" album not so much a culmination, but a record of songs he's made thus far. "This is not 'I'm done, I'm over, this is the best I'm ever gonna do,'" he explains. For new listeners, a Best of is the perfect place to jump in, and for longtime fans, it's the perfect excuse to a savvy songwriter like John Doe with fresh ears. In a conversation with Soundcheck host John Schaefer, Doe talks about looking back at his past work, the new songs he has coming up, and even a pair of films he's set to appear in coming up this Spring.     For more photos, visit Soundcheck's Tumblr page. Set List: "Sweet Reward" "Poor Girl" "The Meanest Man In The World"

According to the streaming music service Spotify, nearly 20 percent of its catalogue -- close to four million songs -- have never been played. But now, a new service called Forgotify aims to get you listening to those songs. Case in point: Hans Edler, a Swedish pop star who had a No. 1 single in his native country in 2010, but whose song "Every Night and Day" had received exactly zero plays on Spotify until PopMatters columnist Ben Rubenstein discovered the tune via Forgotify. In a conversation with Soundcheck host John Schaefer, Rubeinstein delves into the finer points of Forgotify, what the service shows us about streaming behavior, our taste in music, and the ability to discover a whole new genre, like "Themes From Long-Forgotten TV Shows" -- and hear some seldom-heard song he discovered including Mundell Lowe And His All Stars' "Theme From Tightrope."  

Brooklyn indie rock outfit The National is a band of brothers -- literally. The group consists of two pairs of brothers -- there's Bryce and Aaron Dessner, and Scott and Bryan Devendorf, plus frontman Matt Berninger. But Berninger does, in fact, have a brother who is nine years his junior. Tom Berninger joined The National as a roadie for a portion of its recent world tour, and he brought a camera along. And what he documented along the way has now been released as Mistaken For Strangers, a chronicle of Tom's relationship with his big brother and his conflicted feelings about Matt's rock star status.  In a conversation with Soundcheck host John Schaefer, the Berningers talk about how Tom's almost incidental inclusion in the band's tour support roster lead to a film equal parts painful character study and warm, funny portrait of family... with guitars.

Dan Wilson is one of the most successful songwriters in pop music, but his name may not pop out to most people. Yet, even a cursory glance of his credentials and you absolutely know his work. Wilson is best known for fronting Semisonic, the 1990's band that brought us “Closing Time,” the ubiquitous Grammy-nominated hit quoted at practically every bar around 2 a.m.: "You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here." Since Semisonic, Wilson has become one of the most sought-after songwriters in the industry, collaborating with pop's biggest names: Dixie Chicks, Nas, Carole King, John Legend, Dierks Bentley, My Morning Jacket's Jim James, Pink, Josh Groban, Weezer, and Taylor Swift. Whew. And of course, he contributed three songs on Adele's smash album 21, including “Someone Like You” -- a song he also produced and subsequently earned an Album of the Year Grammy. Somehow, Dan Wilson still manages to find time to write songs for his solo albums, the latest, Love Without Fear, due out later this spring. A collection of Americana and Beatles-tinged pop, the record features a lot of Wilson's collaborators and friends, including Blake Mills, Sara Bareilles, Natalie Maines, Missy Higgins, and Lissie.   Set List: "Love Without Fear" "Disappearing" "A Song Can Be About Anything"

Shearwater is no stranger to high concept rock music. Through its first three albums, frontman Jonathan Meiburg built an ambitious trilogy around his interests in nature and science, and ornithology, masterfully marrying indie rock with prog rock grandiosity. Then, with 2012's Animal Joy, the band totally shifted, downsizing in scope, yet crafting lean and distorted rockers. So it's not all that surprising that Meiburg's next move was another conceptual album, but a neat one: On each of Fellow Travelers' 10 songs, Meiburg and company pays tribute to an artist with whom the band has toured. The lineup of artists covered -- Xiu Xiu, Folk Implosion, Sharon Van Etten, St. Vincent, Wye Oak -- reads like a who's who of like-minded bands all capable of the same sort of moody and deeply melodic songs that Shearwater does so well. It's always a fascinating exercise to hear a band get into the head of another musician's songs -- and when delivered by Meiburg's distinctive operatic voice, songs like "I Luv The Valley OH!!" and even Coldplay's "Hurts Like Heaven" soar to new heights. Meiburg has said that doing this covers record serves as something of a transition, a bridge between it's previous album and whatever Shearwater has in store next. For a band this talented and unique, that is an enticing prospect. Hear Meiburg and his latest iteration of Shearwater, featuring singer-songwriter Jesca Hoop on vocals, perform a set of recent favorite originals in the Soundcheck studio. Plus, Mieburg reveals the title of the next Shearwater album, The Jet Plane And The Ox-Bow, and explains its meaning.   For more photos, visit Soundcheck's Tumblr page. Set List: "Hidden Lakes" "You As You Were" "A Wake For The Minotaur"    

All this week on Soundcheck, we've been taking getting nostalgic for New York music in collaboration with New York magazine, which presented its annual "yesteryear" issue focused on New York City music. So far, we've had Jody Rosen on the songwriters of the 1920's, and Lane Brown on the '60s and Jennifer Vineyard on the 1970's. Today we wrap up with New York magazine's Mark Jacobson, who shares his love for a particularly important transitional era of New York music, the jazz of the 1940's. In a conversation with Soundcheck host John Schaefer, Jacobson says he believes the iconic pianist Thelonious Monk is not only one of greatest American composers and the greatest jazz composer, but his ideal musician. "There's something about the way he rearranges sonic geometry every time he puts his fingers on the keyboard that I just can never get enough of," explains Jacobson. "He's the best." Jacobson points to Monk's song "Episotrophy" as the epitome of jazz's emerging modernism -- because it sits on the edge between two eras, swing and bop.   "If you know the song, it's this sort of dark comedy," Jacobson says. "And it comes right out of the swing stuff, which you don't really get too much of in the later Monk stuff when he gets more angular. He maybe more depressed, who knows. And it has this kind of low-slung bounce to it -- you always get a bounce in Monk. It was written in 1941 and I think you really can't envision all that stuff that's gonna happen. So he's on this cusp." Jacobson also highlights the music of Sonny Rollins, and "St. Thomas," one of the jazz saxophone titan's lighter and more playful works.  

We’ve come to the end of Soundcheck's week of nostalgia for bygone eras of the New York music scene. But one thing we haven’t tackled yet: Why do we get nostalgic in the first place? And why does music seem to conjure up such strong feelings of it? Maybe it’s time to ask an expert: Clay Routledge, an associate professor of psychology at North Dakota State University who has conducted research about nostalgia and music. " We have a desire to stay connected with our past," he tells Soundcheck host John Schaefer, "and to be reminded of the experiences in our past we cherish the most." But that doesn't mean we necessarily cherish the songs themselves that trigger our nostalgia. John's own story of musical nostalgia is a case in point: "There's an Elton John song called 'Someone Saved My Life Tonight.' In the summer of 1975 this song was all over the place. I had a summer job as a parkie — one of those guys with the big stick and the bag and you pick up the garbage in the park and put it in the bag — at Flushing Meadows Park here in New York. "And the little building where we would go every morning to get our assignments, they had this little radio. It seemed to constantly have this Elton John song playing. I didn't like the song! But 30 or so years later, if I hear that song I am immediately back in that kind of sitcom experience of weird characters that I spent that summer working with."  

Often when a distinctive singer goes solo for the first time, there's not that much a difference between the music with the band and the new material. But that's certainly not the case with Sabina Scuibba, the singer and co-founding member of Brazilian Girls. With that band, Sciubba made lovely and evocative music perfectly suited for smoky lounges and dimly-lit clubs -- Sciubba's beguiling voice danced over the top of a bed of world grooves, electronic beats, and retro orchestrations. Now, with her very first solo record, Toujours, she's not only dropped her last name (she's just Sabina now), but has totally shifted her sound, and in the process reconfigures the way we hear her voice. Where Brazilian Girls captured a sophisticated, continental vibe, Sabina has embraced the rock and pop of the 1960's and '70s -- hear traces of The Velvet Underground and Nico in "Cinema" and "The Sun" -- and a lean, almost garage rock feel on songs like "Viva L'amour" and "Long Distance Love."     Still, despite the sharper edge in the music, there's no denying these songs still have a European feel -- no doubt a result of her international background. Born in Rome to a German mother and an Italian father, Sabina has lived in Italy, Germany, and France before moving to New York City for a decade where she performed with Brazilian Girls. Currently, Sabina lives in Paris, where she produced and arranged Toujours with Brazilian Girls producer Frederik Rubens, who provides a crisp, modern sheen to her anthemic and multi-lingual songs.    Set List: "Toujours" "Mystery River" "Fields Of Snow"

Over the years, Simone Dinnerstein has been no stranger to Soundcheck and WNYC, having appeared many times to perform in a variety of settings -- be it in concert with songwriter Tift Merritt or playing the works of J.S. Bach, including The Goldberg Variations. The young and renowned concert pianist returns to the Soundcheck studio to perform selections from her latest collection of Bach compositions, specifically the Inventions and Sinfonias. Those pieces were originally written in 1723 as a musical guide for keyboard players -- and remain part of the core repertoire for students, amateurs, and professional musicians. Dinnerstein says the first Bach pieces she ever heard was the Inventions and has had a connection to this music ever since. Recorded at the Academy of Arts and Letters in New York with Grammy-winning producer Adam Abeshouse, Dinnerstein not only demonstrates her stunning music prowess, but highlights why these small masterpieces have endured for so long.  

To music fans, the idea of a “lost album” can be intoxicating. But new releases touted as “lost albums” often end up being collections of B sides, outtakes and demos. But that is not the case with the new album "Out Among the Stars" by the late Johnny Cash. He recorded it in 1981 and 1984 during the final years of a contract with Columbia Records. The album reveals much about the man behind “the man in black.” In a conversation with Soundcheck host John Schaefer, John Carter Cash, the son of Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash and a co-producer of Out Among The Stars.

All this week on Soundcheck, we're taking getting all nostalgic for New York music in collaboration with New York magazine, which this week is presenting their annual "yesteryear" issue -- this year, focused on New York City music. And we've asking listeners which decade you're most nostalgic for. (Call us at 866 939 1612, or leave a comment below.) So far, we've had Jody Rosen on the songwriters of the 1920's, and Lane Brown on the '60s and the Bob Dylan-era Greenwich Village folk scene. Today, New York magazine's Jennifer Vineyard talks to Soundcheck host John Schaefer about being most nostalgic for the New York music of the 1970's -- and specifically CBGB, a place she was much too young to visit in its heyday. Vineyard points to bands like The Ramones and Talking Heads who not only got their start thanks to performances at CBGB, but have songs that reference the beloved, but now-shuttered club. "There were all these great bands that were in their beginning stages at that point, and they were just figuring out what they were doing." Vineyard explains. "And they were trying things out on stage for the first time, and sometimes arguing with each other on stage about what song they should play next. The Ramones have all these 'I Don't Wanna' type songs -- apparently they don't want to play the 'I Don't Wanna' songs on stage sometimes. And they would just top the set and argue with each other."     Vineyard also points to Debbie Harry of Blondie, who was able to experiment with her persona and antics on stage and see what worked. "Debbie Harry was figuring out what does she want to do to rip her to shreds," says Vineyard. "And so she tried this wedding dress that she apparently had -- like a tear-away wedding dress. She would tear off other people's clothes, she was just trying to figure out what should be part of the set; 'How am I a performer?' This is a new thing for her."  

For more than a decade, Dawn Landes has shown a knack for writing sophisticated folk songs with an ear for storytelling so honest and personal it can seem like your own. On the Brooklyn-via-Louisville singer-songwriter and engineer's new album, Bluebird, that feels especially true.  The record, and especially tracks like "Love Song" and "Cry No More," will surely get attention as coming on the heels of Landes' recent divorce. Yet the way she writes about the ending of a relationship, she finds poignancy and universality in the specificity of her feelings. Coupled with relatively sparse production flourish, this is an intimate collection of songs that showcase Landes' lovely voice and delicate finger-picked guitar. And while songs like "Home" grapple with loneliness, Bluebird does not feel so much like a sad breakup album, but rather, expresses a sense of hope and moving forward stronger than before.   For more photos, visit Soundcheck's Tumblr page. Set List: "Bluebird" "Try To Make A Fire Burn Again" "Love Song"

Gary Numan's career got off to a bang with his smash hit "Cars" in 1979. The song refuses to fade away from pop consciousness, and is still ubiquitous in commercials, films, and radio. The song is timeless, and is an early testament to Numan's pioneering sonic sensibilities. For 30 years, Gary Numan has continued to make genre-pushing music, influencing generations of artists in his wake.        Since the release of "Cars," Numan's career has been inextricably linked to the critical and commercial fortunes of electronic music. Appropriate, then, that in a year when Daft Punk is a Grammy-winning act, Numan's star is the highest it's been in 10 years. The success comes with plenty of backstory, though, as Numan grappled with depression (and, he says, equally painful treatment) for much of the 2000s before he was able to return to making music. His latest album, Splinter (Songs From A Broken Mind), is an unsettling -- though not altogether bleak -- chronicle of that dark period of his life.  In a conversation with Soundcheck host John Schaefer, Gary Numan talks about his evolving feelings about touring and the press, his friendship with Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor, and how his wife has inspired his music (and inspired his highly-entertaining Twitter feed).   

All this week on Soundcheck, we're taking getting all nostalgic for New York music in collaboration with New York magazine, which this week is presenting their annual "yesteryear" issue -- this year, focused on New York City music. And we've asking listeners which decade you're most nostalgic for. (Call us at 866 939 1612, or leave a comment below.)  Yesterday, Jody Rosen reflected on the 1920's. Today, New York magazine culture editor Lane Brown delves into the music of the '60s, a vital time he says had "a 1000 different things happening."   "You had the Brill Building just churning out hit after hit after hit; you had the birth of salsa; you had Barbara Streisand on Broadway; you had Judy Garland at Carnegie Hall," Brown tells Soundcheck host John Schaefer. "But you also had this interesting collision with pop music and mass media -- and it's kind of a time when pop music becomes self-aware and concerned with branding. And you have people like Bob Dylan, who is this nice kid from Minnesota who comes to New York and pretends to fall out of a boxcar, basically, and becomes the king of the Greenwich Village folk scene. And later, when that kind of curdles, he becomes this rock star." Brown also points to The Velvet Underground as a band of the 1960's that many people feel nostalgia for, even though they may have missed that music at the time.  "There's that famous Brian Eno quote," Brown explains, "where very few people actually bought the album when it came out, but they all went on to form bands of their own. It was 171 on the Billboard charts... I think it took a long time for people to catch on. They were way ahead of their time."