Stories
Some records meet you at the bottom of the day without pretending they can solve everything. The best hip hop albums to listen to when you're feeling down…
The opening of Paul Simon’s “Graceland” does something wonderfully disarming. Before the guitars, vocals and hand percussion establish the song’s wide…
For years, progressive rock felt like music I was supposed to admire rather than enjoy. I understood that bands such as Yes, King Crimson and Genesis were…
A great concept album asks you to hear songs as parts of a larger world. The tracks may follow a character, revisit a political idea, share a setting, or…
I had been chasing big sounds for years, layering guitars and stacking harmonies like I was building a wall, when a friend handed me a burned CD with a single…
When listeners think of Led Zeppelin, the mind usually drifts to volcanic blues riffs, thunderous drums, and Robert Plant's banshee wail on tracks like "Whole…
I keep reaching for the same handful of records when I want to feel like songwriting is still a private language between friends. The first three or four…
Every now and then, while I'm flicking through records on a Saturday arvo at the local record fair in Melbourne, I land on a Beatles album and the same thought…
A chance encounter with a street musician inspired my own songwriting in a way no writing exercise or carefully chosen reference track had managed to do. I was…
Few producers in modern music have reshaped the rhythm of a genre as thoroughly as James Dewitt Yancey, known universally as J Dilla. Working primarily out of…