WILCO: <I>Sky Blue Sky</I><BR>
Nonesuch 131388 (CD). 2007. Wilco, prods.; TJ Doherty, eng.; Jim Scott, mix; Bob Ludwig, mastering. AAD? TT: 51:18<BR>
Performance *****<BR>
Sonics ****

The French have a phrase for it: <I>plus &#231;a change, plus la m&#234;me chose</I>, which can be roughly translated as "the more things change, the more they stay the same." I was reminded of this when recently reading through the December 1980 issue of <I>The Absolute Sound</I>. There on p.368 was the statement that "Dave Wilson (Virgo) has joined the staff...to construct a testing program that will allow us to determine if some of the peculiarities and anomalies we hear in evaluating equipment can indeed be numerically measured."

The French have a phrase for it: <I>plus &#231;a change, plus la m&#234;me chose</I>, which can be roughly translated as "the more things change, the more they stay the same." I was reminded of this when recently reading through the December 1980 issue of <I>The Absolute Sound</I>. There on p.368 was the statement that "Dave Wilson (Virgo) has joined the staff...to construct a testing program that will allow us to determine if some of the peculiarities and anomalies we hear in evaluating equipment can indeed be numerically measured."

The French have a phrase for it: <I>plus &#231;a change, plus la m&#234;me chose</I>, which can be roughly translated as "the more things change, the more they stay the same." I was reminded of this when recently reading through the December 1980 issue of <I>The Absolute Sound</I>. There on p.368 was the statement that "Dave Wilson (Virgo) has joined the staff...to construct a testing program that will allow us to determine if some of the peculiarities and anomalies we hear in evaluating equipment can indeed be numerically measured."

The French have a phrase for it: plus ça change, plus la même chose, which can be roughly translated as "the more things change, the more they stay the same." I was reminded of this when recently reading through the December 1980 issue of The Absolute Sound. There on p.368 was the statement that "Dave Wilson (Virgo) has joined the staff...to construct a testing program that will allow us to determine if some of the peculiarities and anomalies we hear in evaluating equipment can indeed be numerically measured."

Anat Cohen’s <I>Poetica</I>, on her own Anzic Records label, is a fresh breeze of an album, and I mean that in a good way. Still in her 20s, Cohen plays clarinet with a polished edge and verve second only to Don Byron’s. Born in Tel Aviv, schooled at Berklee, honed in New York clubs, playing not just modern jazz but Brazilian Choro and Dixieland, she lets all her influences show but none of them dominate. Her tone bears something of klezmer’s lilt but none of its schmaltz. Her arrangements have the joyful-melancholic sway of Israeli or Latin folk music but none of its sentimentality. On the album, she also plays two knottily catchy original tunes, a Jacques Brel song, and a tinglingly lovely cover of Coltrane’s “Lonnie’s Lament,” the last backed by a string quartet. The sound, mixed by Joe Ferla and mastered by Sony’s Mark Wilder, is excellent.