Ken Tucker

A prime example of this is It Don't Mean a Thing.

Robin's jagged, distorted vocal helps convey the lyric's disappointment in a love gone bad.

Her bitterness bleeds into the beat.

I've reviewed both of Alison Russell's albums, The Returner and Outside Child, and it seems as though every time I hear something new by her, I want to immediately play it for everyone I know.

That's certainly the case with her new single called No Springtime.

Russell sings this ballad with minimal instrumental accompaniment.

The song builds on harmonies provided by fellow singer-songwriters Joy Aladakun and Julie Williams.

This near a cappella performance of No Springtime gets its power from the completion of the title phrase.

There's no springtime in the blues, they sing.

And it is indeed Russell's deep connection to the blues that takes its sadness to another level.

Russell knows as well as Ella Langley and Robin that sometimes fully felt unhappiness, free of self-pity or melodramatic exaggeration, can be as thrilling and uplifting as joy.

Another day, they don't add another ship.

I know how it happened.

I saw it begin.

I opened my heart to the world and the world became me.

It's been a long time since I've read a book about a major artist that is as much fun, that communicates as much excitement as the author feels for his subject, as Robert Pulido's After the Flood, subtitled Inside Bob Dylan's Memory Palace.

Its provocative argument is that the past 30 years of Bob Dylan's career are every bit as creative and essential as the first 30, those early years of Dylan's arrival as a folk revolutionary and a pop star.

For Pulido, the albums beginning with 1997's Time Out of Mind, on through 2001's Love and Theft, and Rough and Rowdy Ways in 2020, as well as his thousands of performances on the so-called NeverEnding Tour, are as thrilling and innovative as anything Dylan was doing as a young man.

And if you don't think so, it's just because you haven't been listening.

I'm sitting on my terrace, lost in the stars Listening to the sounds of the sand guitars