Dan Bern - Breathe (Mp3 Download

track Lists
01. Trudy
02. Breathe
03. Feel Like A Man
04. Remember Me
05. Suicide Room
06. Tongue-Tied
07. Rain
08. Visit In My Dreams
09. Past Belief
10. Another Man's Clothes

The Meeting Places - Numbered Days (Mp3 Download)

Review by Ned Raggett @ allmusic.com

The Meeting Places' debut was a listenable if ultimately unsurprising slice of 21st century shoegaze and Numbered Days readily continues where it left off with cascading guitar riffs, dreamy vocals, and more besides. If anything, the sound they started with has been perfected to a fault, and while one can easily put this album on as fine background music first and foremost, it's the subtler touches which stand out all the more precisely because they spike the well-established formula. The piano part on "Until It's Gone" and the melancholy guitar-as-radio-signal feedback underneath the chorus of "Hall of Fame" show that they can be deft to good effect. Perhaps what's best -- and in a way, what's most frustrating -- is hearing when the band suddenly, thrillingly takes to the skies. Consider the airborne guitar breaks on "Nothing's the Same," when the scope of the song expands to widescreen, or how the repeated line "You wait alone" on "Sink into Stone"'s near Smashing Pumpkins-level volume of riffing becomes the tense heart of that song. If the Meeting Places could just have more of these moments throughout, they'd really be onto something big time, but there's something too safe about them still -- the great leap forward isn't yet apparent. If nothing else, though, given shoegaze's reputation as a style that elevates sound qua sound over clarity as such, having a song called "Mumble" shows a sly sense of humor at work.

Track Lists
01. Love Like The Movies
02. Until It's Gone
03. Nothing's The Same
04. Mumble
05. Hall Of Fame
06. Sink Into Stone
07. Numbered Days
08. The City's Asleep
09. Pause
10. Cardboard Robot

Armik - Lost In Paradise (Mp3 Download)

Review by Jonathan Widran @ allmusic.com
Armik's lifelong love affair with the flamenco guitar began on his first visit to Spain at age 20, when he saw the legendary Paco de Lucia perform. Driven by a fire for the tradition that has defined his musical life ever since, the young musician immediately switched from his electric Gibson CS175, trading his Wes Montgomery licks for an in-depth journey to the heart of Spanish music. Launching his solo career with 1994's Rain Dancer -- a Top Ten Billboard New Age hit, like his five subsequent releases -- he drew upon his jazz roots and flamenco passions to create a revolutionary twist on the emerging nouveau flamenco sound. Armik's Bolero Records debut, Lost in Paradise, paints a lush landscape of a unique style he calls "gypsy jazz," joyfully blending classic elements of rhumba, cha-cha, bolero, jazz, and, taking a rhythmic sojourn down to Brazil, a bit of bossa nova. The bold, percussive opening rhumba track "Barcelona Sunsets" thrusts the listener full throttle into the raw, emotional power of the Armik experience; his powerful fingerstyling is enhanced by a lively piano harmony. This is balanced by the gentle intimacy of the title track, a slow rhumba featuring a dreamy, seductive guitar line. The snappy cha-cha-cha piece, "Golden Rule," features Armik's plucky strains over a spirited, rolling groove. After the romantic sizzle of "Bolero Passion" (parts of which feature a harp like guitar sound), the fast rhumba "Almeria" brings back the fire for an aggressive, percussion-dense jam session. The Fender Rhodes-enhanced "Gypsy Love" demonstrates the true fusion that defines Armik's style, a soul-jazz meets flamenco jam that almost singlehandedly creates a new genre.

Track Lists
01. Barcelona Sunsets
02. Lost In Paradise
03. Golden Touch
04. Balero Passion
05. Almeria
06. Magic Of Your Eyes
07. Treasures From Spain
08. Dreaming Of You
09. Gypsy Love
10. Romantic Escape
11. Solo Para Ti

Mario Frangoulis - Sometimes I Dream (Mp3 Download)

Review by Jonathan Widran @ allmusic.com

More seasoned in years than Josh Groban, this Rhodesia-born and Greek-raised and cultured tenor is a veteran stage performer well versed in everything from classical opera to popular musical theater, even Shakespeare. With Peter Asher as executive producer, the idea is to showcase the ethnic and multi-lingual diversity of an extraordinary artist while also nudging him into the mainstream of adult contemporary music. The good news is that he has an equal, relaxed facility for English, Spanish, Italian, and his native Greek, and like Groban, he even engages the hearts of listeners who can't understand the words (translations are included). The general technique is the slow groove beginning with subdued vocals, then a burst of passion and sizzle as the beat and production values pick up. Producer Steve Woods contributes a few new dramatic tracks (the best of these is the soaring, wistful "Vincerò, Perderò"), but it's even more interesting to hear what Frangoulis does with material based on Puccini (the seductive, exotic ballad "Sometimes I Dream") and classics from the film Life is Beautiful (the mystical "Buongiorno Principessa") and Nino Rota (an atmospheric, flamenco-tinged "Canzone Arrabbiata"). Rock fans looking for a connective thread will gravitate to the balmy Italian-to-English version of the Moody Blues' "Nights in White Satin," whose pop-classical flavor is perfect for an artist trying to bridge those two genres. Justin Hayward is on hand to sing along and nod his approval of this loving tribute.

Track Lists
01. Vincero Perdero
02. Buongiorno Principessa
03. Sometimes I Dream
04. Luna Rossa
05. Naturaleza Muerta
06. Night In White Satin (Notte de Luce)
07. Ton Eafto Tou Paidi
08. Non Sara
09. Hijo de la Luna
10. Nights Want To Forget
11. Canzone Arrabbiata
12. La Luna de Valencia

Nickelback - All The Right Reasons (Mp3 Download)

Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine @ allmusic.com

With their fourth album, All the Right Reasons, Nickelback ditches any pretense of being a grunge band and finally acknowledges they're a straight-up heavy rock band. Not that they've left the angst of grunge behind: they're a modern rock band living in a post-grunge world, so there's lots of tortured emotions threaded throughout the 11 songs here. But where their previous albums roiled with anger -- their breakthrough "How You Remind Me" was not affectionate, it was snide and cynical -- there's a surprisingly large sentimental streak running throughout All the Right Reasons, and it's not just limited to heart-on-sleeve power ballads like "Far Away" and "Savin' Me," the latter being the latest entry in their soundalike sweepstakes. No, lead singer/songwriter Chad Kroeger is in a particularly pensive mood here, looking back fondly at his crazy times in high school on "Photograph" ("Look at this photograph/Every time I do it makes me laugh/How did our eyes get so red?/And what the hell is on Joey's head?"), lamenting the murder of Dimebag Darrell on "Side of a Bullet" (where a Dimebag solo is overdubbed), and, most touching of all, imagining "the day when nobody died" on "If Everyone Cared" (which would be brought about "If everyone cared and nobody cried/If everyone loved and nobody lied"). Appropriately enough for an album that finds Kroeger's emotional palette opening up, Nickelback try a few new things here, adding more pianos, keyboards, and acoustic guitars to not just their ballads, but a few of their big, anthemic rockers; they even sound a little bit light and limber on "Someone That You're With," the fastest tune here and a bit of relief after all the heavy guitars. All this makes for a more varied Nickelback album, but it doesn't really change their essence. Sure, they stretch a little bit, but they still favor clumsy, plodding riffs, still incessantly rewrite the same chords and melody, still harmonize exactly the same way on every song, Kroeger still sounds as if he's singing with a hernia, he still writes shockingly stupid lines that make you long for the days of such subtle double-entendres as "she's using her head again" (such as "She'd be pissed if she could see the parts of you that I've been kissing," "It's just a little hard to leave/When you're going down on me" -- and, mind you, this album does not carry a Parental Advisory sticker, even though "a**holes" is prominently used in two songs), and despite the attempted sarcasm of "Rockstar," he still shows no discernible sense of humor. Which means, despite all their newly developed relative nuances, Nickelback remain unchanged: they're still unspeakably awful.

Track Lists
01. Follow You Home
02. Fight For All The Wrong Reasons
03. Photograph
04. Animals
05. Savin' Me
06. Far Away
07. Next Contestant
08. Side Of A Bullet
09. If Everyone Cared
10. Someone That You're With
11. Rockstar