***1/2 When The Black Keys’ guitarist Dan Auerbach announced yet another side project in early 2015, it didn’t come as a surprise to anyone familiar with the well-versed Bluesman. A regular producer for acts as varied as Dr. John and Lucinda Williams, Auerbach is no stranger to musicality from across the spectrum. But though The…
***1/2 Ed Sheeran has changed a bit since I last heard him. I remember the heart-stricken young man that ripped “The A Team” right out of his heartstrings and excited young college students across the country. I remember the Ed Sheeran that seemed right at home strumming alongside his hero Elton John at the Grammys…
***** Sometimes the best music hits you when you least expect it. There have been great debut albums from bands and artists across the history of music. Bruce Springsteen, Guns N’ Roses, Black Sabbath, Oasis, Metallica, The Doors, Aerosmith all made a quick and sudden impact on the musical landscape of the world upon the…
**** Truth be told, I had pretty low expectations going into Music From Another Dimension. It was probably the least successful Aerosmith album ever peaking at the No. 5 position on the Billboard chart upon release, and it got lukewarm-at-best reviews from critics. Not to mention, it was released over a full decade removed from…
**** When Aerosmith announced that they would be releasing an album of Blues covers, most probably thought they’d just run out of ideas. In truth, it was their best idea in 15 years. Honkin on Bobo delivers 11 Blues standbys (and one Aerosmith original) in a modern image that the majority of these songs’ originators…
***1/2 Just Push Play is the perfect follow-up to Nine Lives in that it offers a unique direction with occasional greatness, but more often than not results in passable but uninspired songs that bring nothing new or exciting to the table. Even so, I’ve always pulled for Just Push Play over Nine Lives for some reason.…
Aerosmith has dominated my life over the course of the last week, but they aren’t the only artist I’ve been listening to. This week’s playlist highlights my two favorite Aerosmith songs ever written, but also a protest anthem for the ages, a Folk crooner I’d never heard before, and one of the most famous songs…
***1/2 For some reason, Nine Lives just seems cooler than Get a Grip. A part of it may be because it doesn’t have a freakin pierced cow udder on the case, but I think it has more to do with the effort that Aerosmith was putting in to make their album sound different. Utilizing strange…
***1/2 There’s nothing really wrong with Get a Grip. It marked the peak of Aerosmith’s commercial success, spawning four hit singles, tons of regular MTV rotation for their many music videos, and millions of copies sold. For mainstream Rock radio, Get a Grip was the best album Aerosmith ever. But for the rest of us,…
****1/2 It took over a decade, but in 1989, Aerosmith finally came out with an album that can be considered on the same level as their best work from the mid-’70s. Like on Permanent Vacation, Aerosmith enlisted the help of songwriters Desmond Child and Jim Vallance, but the difference here is these outside collaborators only…
The Soundtrack Online 