Tag Archives: Alabama Shakes

Got To Have Rock & Roll

Here are my 12 favourite albums of 2012 (so far). You can check out some older covers from nine of those acts below. Click on the images above to make them larger and click on an artist’s name below to go to their website. The final dozen (in no particular order):

Cat Power – Sun
Rumer – Boys Don’t Cry
Diana Krall – Glad Rag Doll
Aimee Mann – Charmer
Alabama Shakes – Girls & Boys
Heartless Bastards – Arrow
Dexys – One Day I’m Going to Soar
The Lumineers – The Lumineers
Bob Dylan – Tempest
Richard Hawley – Standing at the Sky’s Edge
Bill Fay – Life is People
The Avett Brothers – The Carpenter

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Rock of Ages

The 40th series of Later with Jools Holland returned to the BBC this month and this week’s second episode was a right humdinger of a show. It featured an array of North American artists playing that region’s traditional forms of music, as well as an Irish group celebrating fifty years together. To celebrate this milestone, The Chieftains have teamed up with producer T Bone Burnett on an album called Voice of Ages. The Chieftains are no strangers to merging different styles of traditional music, as evidenced by their version of The Long Black Veil with Mick Jagger below. They are joined on the new album by a number of bands that have previously appeared on Later: Imelda May and Lisa Hannigan from Ireland; Paolo Nutini from Scotland; Bon Iver, The Civil Wars, The Decemberists, Paolo Nutini, Carolina Chocolate Drops and The Secret Sisters from the States

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