Music & More

  Photo courtesy of the band Welcome to my year end list. Sifting through the new releases each week, using multiple sources, is a lot of work. Boiling that down to a list of thirty is tougher still. It would be nice if there were a gate keeper with anything like my preferences, but I have not found one yet. This list is likely to be nothing like any other year end list that you will see, not NPR, not the NY Times, not Rolling Stone, not even WXPN. That said, I thank you for reading this list and my comments about each of the entries.  About my list, the artists' age, gender, race, religion, sexual orientation, country of origin, all have no bearing on their inclusion. My criteria is pretty simple. As I may have mentioned in the past, I want to hear singers with a strong voice, one that shows a little personality. I'm looking for production that allows every instrument to be heard clearly (instrumental albums are welcome, too). What I don't want to hear are wishy-washy voca

Garret Roberts, Beaver County Times   Greetings! It's that time of year again. It's probably no revelation if I point out that it comes around faster each year.  If you think about it, most of the albums are recorded in the middle of the summer in order to come out now. Years ago, I used to be fairly strict about not listening to Christmas music until after Thanksgiving, that is until I began writing about it. In order to keep up, some years I would begin listening to Christmas music as early as right after Labor Day. When people would hear me listening to Christmas music in September, October, even November, they usually comment (sometimes derisively) something to the effect of, "You must really like Christmas music." Mostly, it wasn't worth the true explanation, so I'd say something like, "Guilty as charged." My main reasoning there is that it's all true. I found that I really do love Christmas music.  I was going to go into my pet peeves about