Song Lines

UK act The Dreaming Tree was formed sometime after the millenium, but didn't evolve towards a real band project until 2004, when forming duo Chris Buckler and Neil Ablard met Dan Jones on an engineering course. Dan was invited to join the duo's musical escapades, and soon after Jim Peterson and Steve Barratt agreed to take part in this endeavour as well…

Like almost every other live release of the new millennium, Between the Line: Sara Bareilles Live at Fillmore is a multi-format package appearing as a CD/DVD set and a Blu_Ray release, all containing the same set. It's a crisp, clean production designed for home theater systems, but it also works very well as a standalone live album, since its lean, lively arrangements – often featuring extended piano-and-voice segments, with "Fairytale" being performed entirely solo by Bareilles – wind up showcasing the melodic craft behind her songs.

Allan Taylor is one of England's most-respected singer/songwriters. His songs have been covered by artists on both sides of the Atlantic, including Don Williams, Frankie Miller, Fairport Convention, Dick Gaughan, the McCalmans, the Fureys, the Clancy Brothers, and De Dannan. Folk Roots praised him for his "ability to crystallize a mood and evoke an era with the ease of a computer memory access, crafting perfect songs with dramatic changes in the spirit of Brecht, Bikel, and Brel." The Oxford Book of Traditional Verse felt as strongly, writing that Taylor was "one of the most literate and sensitive of contemporary songwriters in terms of words and music and one who is capable of exploring more complex subjects than most of his contemporaries."

Anna Prohaska - Behind The Lines (2014) {Deutsche Grammophon}
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Classical / Vocal Music

In a scene where the recordings of young sopranos tend toward an extreme sameness, Austria's Anna Prohaska would deserve kudos simply for the ambition of this release of soldiers' songs. The idea, especially for a female singer, is original, and the music draws on a great variety of sources, from Scottish song to Wolfgang Rihm. Better still is the execution, which shows Prohaska's extreme versatility. She's one of the few non-Anglophone singers to get the difficult combination of vernacular American English and popular-classical crossover referentiality in the three Charles Ives songs included, and she moves effortlessly from the edgy anger of Kurt Weill and Hanns Eisler to the more delicate tragic sense of Roger Quilter.

Allan Taylor is one of England's most-respected singer/songwriters. His songs have been covered by artists on both sides of the Atlantic, including Don Williams, Frankie Miller, Fairport Convention, Dick Gaughan, the McCalmans, the Fureys, the Clancy Brothers, and De Dannan. Folk Roots praised him for his "ability to crystallize a mood and evoke an era with the ease of a computer memory access, crafting perfect songs with dramatic changes in the spirit of Brecht, Bikel, and Brel." The Oxford Book of Traditional Verse felt as strongly, writing that Taylor was "one of the most literate and sensitive of contemporary songwriters in terms of words and music and one who is capable of exploring more complex subjects than most of his contemporaries."

Subscribing to the time-honored practice of striking when the iron is hot, the Jonas Brothers put out Lines, Vines and Trying Times in June of 2009, making it their third album in one year. True, Lines and A Little Bit Longer were separated by a soundtrack to a concert film, but the flood of product is a true reflection of the peak of the group's popularity, just as how the over-produced, stretched-thin Lines is a reflection of their hectic schedule. Where A Little Bit Longer was built on a strong song foundation, Lines, Vines and Trying Times feels constructed from the outside in, with the concepts coming before the tunes, concepts that all take the Brothers Jonas further away from the fizzy, power pop fun. Lines is designed to showcase a mature Jonas Brothers, who wear their maturation in an increased stylistic range, and fussed-over arrangements that lend this a stiffness of a band well beyond their years. Pop classicists that they are, the Jonases are a bit more comfortable with immaculate arrangements than they are with the expansion, as they fumble through a couple of country songs and "Don't Charge Me for the Crime," a truly bizarre duet with Common where they gamely, lamely affect a hard-boiled pose. Tellingly, most of the forced moments were written in collaboration with outsiders such as Cathy Dennis and Greg Garbowsky, the latter being responsible for co-writing "Poison Ivy," a power pop tune so labored it reveals just how good A Little Bit Longer was. Overthinking and over-production are the primary flaws on Lines, where every point is hammered home by horns transported from the waning days of the Reagan administration. This oddly yuppified production is more Taylor Hicks than Taylor Swift, but the presence of Joe's former girlfriend is felt elsewhere, whether it's in the lyric's heartbroken love songs (as well as a couple of rocking accusations), or how Miley Cyrus stands in for Taylor on one of those country songs. But Swift also comes to mind because she and the Jonas Brothers are trying to do a similar thing: make teen pop that skews adult in its sound and form. The JoBros did it effortlessly on A Little Bit Longer but on Lines, Vines and Trying Times the seams are showing, which makes it a little bit harder to enjoy, even if there are certainly moments where all their craft and charm click, resulting in some fine pop that points out what's missing from the rest of the record.

- Allmusic