Category Archives: Music

Sunday Music | Azure Ray | 2001 | Dream Pop Artists

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Dream pop duo Azure Ray — composed of Orenda Fink and Maria Taylor — employ graceful harmonies, patient folksy song structures, and touches of electronic production to create otherworldly songs that balance tranquility and intensity.

The pair met at the age of 15 while attending the Alabama School of Fine Arts in Birmingham. Together, they fronted a band called Little Red Rocket, which released two CDs, Who Did You Pay (1997) and It’s in the Sound (2000), with the band breaking up shortly after the release of the latter album.

Orenda Fink and Maria Taylor decided to head out to Athens, Georgia, striking out to find a career, forming Azure Ray soon after arrival in their new home.

“My boyfriend had just died and we had written all of these songs that were helping us cope with everything. We had a night where all of our friends and family got together. We played those songs, which later would turn into the songs on our first Azure Ray record, which we released shortly thereafter,” says Taylor.

Their self-titled début album is a quiet, gentle set of lovely and soul-searching songs that incorporate elements of folk, pop, and light electronica.

Following the unexpected death of Taylor’s boyfriend, the two musicians used songwriting as a method of coping with their grief. The intensity of that loss informed the mournful tone of the group’s earliest work in 2001, and would carry through in their sound to some degree from that point on.

The song Sleep was later featured in the 2006 Academy Award-nominated movie The Devil Wears Prada, featuring Anne Hathaway. In February 2015, Taylor Swift included Sleep on a six-song “breakup playlist” made for a fan via her official Tumblr account.

Camilo Arturo Leslie in Pitchfork had this to say about the début album …

Their album cover is simple: just an old, sepia-toned photograph of a little girl. She looks like my grandmother as a child. Nostalgia and melancholy rub off the liner notes and stain your fingertips. The little girl clutches her palms to her ears and wears an inscrutable expression that vacillates from pouty to fearful to verge-of-tears, depending on what mental angle you hold it at.

Azure Ray’s indie music aesthetic is built on pretty, easy-on-the-tympanum pop acoustic guitar strumming. No fuzz, no indigestible chords, just polished production and evocative arrangements. Lap steel guitar, cello, violin, church bells, piano, brass, and tape loops make appearances on these 11 tracks.

The draw of their music is, of course, the duo’s vocals, Azure Ray’s gentle trills offering a haunting balance between the ethereal and corporeal, as well as an understated,  yet distinct feminine strength, not unlike the early music of Linda Ronstadt.

Indie label-ghetto obscurity has kept Azure Ray from attaining massive popularity.

But an indie-ghetto habitué such as yourself shouldn’t have any trouble digging up a copy of Azure Ray’s début CD, or maybe a vinyl copy.

Red Cat Records on Main Street, or Zulu Records on West 4th Avenue, if they don’t have it in stock, could certainly order it for you.

Beautiful, expertly crafted pop songs keep a room in your heart’s hotel (under an assumed name, naturally).

You could also listen to Azure Ray on Spotify, or Apple or Amazon Music, or purchase their music from either of the two latter providers of digital music.

Sunday Music | Tracy Chapman | 1988 |
Most Auspicious Début

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Arriving with little fanfare in the spring of 1988, Tracy Chapman’s eponymous début album emerged as one of the most important and top-selling records of the late 1980s, providing a touchstone for an entire progressive movement of change, while reviving the singer / songwriter tradition.

As with most promising singer-songwriters, comparisons are prone to discussion, and Tracy Chapman’s début garnered mass amounts of media attention.

Of course, Joan Armatrading’s name is frequently mentioned (Tracy Chapman, however, shares little more than race and gender). Her vocal delivery is reminiscent of Joni Mitchell’s folk period; her sensitivity parallels that of Suzanne Vega. Yet Tracy Chapman is not quite so detached from her listener as these influential forebearers were and are (even today).


Tracy Chapman and Luke Combs playing to a rapturous audience at the 2024 Grammy Awards

Tracy Chapman is a fascinating storyteller, her world unlittered by pretense or façade. Consequently, much of the journey often overwhelms with sheer fidelity.

On June 11th 1988, a concert was held for Nelson Mandela’s 70th birthday who was still imprisoned at the time for his anti-apartheid beliefs and activism.

Tracy Chapman, a largely unknown artist who had just released an album, and prior to playing on the stage at Wembley Stadium had played only clubs holding no more than 40 patrons, or as a street musician had performed in front of crowds of no more than 200 hundred, was asked to play Wembley as a “fill in” artist.

Stevie Wonder was scheduled to perform, too, despite not being officially announced, with the Superstition superstar arriving in London early in the morning of the concert. Heading straight to Wembley Stadium after his plane landed, his band were already rehearsing for his set which was due to take place after UB40 had finished their set. But disaster struck, with Stevie refusing to come on stage, leaving the organizers in panic — Wonder realized a crucial piece of his equipment was missing as he walked up the ramp to take the stage.

Although Tracy Chapman had already performed a brief set earlier in the day to a relatively sparse audience, with concert organizers pleading with her to fill the gap left by Stevie Wonder’s absence, a legend was born.

Behind the Wall was the second of what was supposed to be a three-song set.

As the legend goes, serendipity gave the world another glimpse of this commanding artist when Stevie Wonder’s team took their time to ready the stage for his concert, extending Chapman’s set to include almost the entirety of her début album.

With the crew setting up behind her for Stevie Wonder, alone on the massive stage at Wembley Stadium, guitar in hand, she allowed the echoing mic and the screaming of the initially inattentive crowd to amplify the quiet of the song. At first, a little insecure on the biggest stage of her career, as she sang with magnetic calm she built an atmosphere as intimate as each listener’s childhood bedroom, by the end of her first song, Fast Car, the entire crowd was listening in rapt attention.

The low verses mix bleak recognition with quiet hope before building to a chorus so wistful, so joyfully tender it can transport you to a time in your life when you were younger and maybe a little less scared. Most of the people watching her performance at Wembley did not arrive knowing Chapman’s power, and most likely had never heard of her before. But they experienced in real time her ability to lift hearts into people’s throats. She performed her songs the same way she had on the streets for years: alone and brilliantly exposed.

Not only was the Wembley crowd gobsmacked with Tracy Chapman’s performance — with the noisy crowd quietened by Chapman’s compelling presence on stage, and the strength of the songs she played — but playing two sets on the day offered her far more exposure, with an estimated global audience of 600 million for her second performance watching the concert on their televisions at home.

Over the years, we’ve witnessed the worst this world can throw our way, Chapman suggests on her début, at times through her working-class characters. But her music creates a world where no force exists without a counter. The worst of what we’ve endured, she also offers, makes righteous justice inevitable. It’s a worldview that many could appreciate.

By the end of the summer of 1988, a few months after the Nelson Mandela tribute, Tracy Chapman had a platinum selling album, and the singer was a major star.

Before the Wembley Stadium concert, Chapman had sold roughly 250,000 albums. In the two weeks following her performances, she had sold over two million.

In 1989 at that year’s Grammy Awards, Tracy Chapman won Best New Artist, Best Contemporary Folk Album and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance, and had been nominated — and perhaps should have won — for Album of the Year and Record of the Year for Fast Car, which was nominated as Song of the Year, as well.

In time, Tracy Chapman added a backup band. By then, however, Tracy Chapman was on her way to becoming a global phenomenon. The rest is history.


The wondrous Tracy Chapman and Eric ‘slow hand’ Clapton, 1999, performing Give Me One Reason

Music Sundays | Todd Rundgren | 1972’s Most Auspicious Début Album

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Dating back to the late 1960s, through until today, I have often found employment as a music critic.

One of the great delights of my young life was to walk onto the property of Warner Bros. or Capitol Records, and be taken into the warehouse in behind the offices, leaving the premises with one hundred or more new albums, all ready to return to the home Cathy and I shared at Simon Fraser University.

From those days til today, my love for music, for discovering new music has known no bounds, as will remain the case through the end of my days.

Of course, I was very lucky — as were all members of the boom generation — to grow up in the era of The Beatles, and the rush of new music coming out of the UK, and down south out of Los Angeles. These were halcyon days of discovery, more often than not enhanced by the intake of cannabis (there is hardly any greater joy than listening to music stoned).

One of my early discoveries was Todd Rundgren, whose music career began in 1967 at the age of 19 with the Philadephia-based garage rock band, Nazz.

Over the next four years, Nazz released three albums, all to little acclaim, prompting Rundgren to leave the group, move to New York, and educate himself in the fine arts of audio engineering and production.

Upon arriving in New York, Rundgren was soon signed by Ampex Records, where he began work producing for various rock groups of the day.

1972 proved to be a critically important year for Todd Rundgren.

After signing with Bearsville Records — a recording studio started in 1969 by legendary music impresario Albert Grossman, manager of Bob Dylan, The Band, and Janis Joplin — Rundgren’s musical career took off into the stratosphere.

A few years back, a friend asked me, “So, what kind of music do you like?”

Today’s post constitutes one of a series of columns I’ve been writing on the Top 100 début albums of the past 75 years, music that has both changed and informed my life, my love of almost all musical genres also knowing no bounds.

I love life. I love music.

Today’s Music Sunday column tracks the early work of Todd Rundgren, and his multi-platinum solo, self-produced début album, Something/Anything?

Early in 1972, soon after signing on with Albert Grossman, one Friday afternoon early in the year, Todd Rundgren was in the Bearsville Studio offices for a pre-production meeting for his upcoming album the studio intended to record. All went well at the meeting, and at the 5 o’ clock hour, as the cleaning crew arrived, Grossman prepared to close the studio for the weekend.

Rundgren said, “I’ll have the cleaners let me out. I’m heading to the washroom.” Everyone bid their adieu, going home to their families.

But not Todd Rundgren. Instead, Rundgren hid out in a closet and slept for four hours, readying himself for the marathon production weekend ahead.

The cleaners left shortly before 9pm, when a sleepy Todd Rundgren emerged from his closet home. What occurred over the next fifty-seven and one half hours is part of rock and roll history.

From 9pm on that Friday night, until 6:30am Monday morning, Todd Rundgren wrote, produced, mixed, sang and played guitars, keyboards and all other instruments to produce the groundbreaking multi-platinum, multi-Grammy award winning hit machine, Something/Anything?

Every voice is Rundgren’s, every instrument played by the nascent songwriter-singer-producer, Rundgren over the weekend innovating on the recently acquired 8-track production studio equipment in ways previously unheard of and unimagined, writing a new chapter in the ongoing history of rock ‘n roll.

Twenty-five songs on a two disc album, recorded at a rate of under one fully produced song every three hours. When Bearsville Studio staff and executives arrived at their offices on Monday morning, they found Rundgren passed out, a master tape, track list and album cover art work on the console.

Over the next three weeks, working with Rundgren, studio engineers fine-tuned the 25 songs, the double Something/Anything? album released to critical acclaim in April, out-selling every other album that year.

Something/Anything? spawned a half dozen chart topping hits, including I Saw the Light, and a remake of the Nazz near-hit Hello It’s Me, which shot to No. 5 in the week it was released. As a reminder: both songs featured Todd Rundgren producing, as well as on all vocals and instruments.

It Wouldn’t Have Made Any Difference was the third smash hit off Something / Anything? to top the Billboard charts in the early autumn that year.

A dozen years later my children and I lived together at SFU with a woman, a younger doppelgänger for my now ex-wife, dubbed by my friends, and referred to by my children as Cathy 2 — as my friends said, “the sane Cathy,” and so she was.

One day when I was off teaching class, Cathy 2 put on the Rundgren album.

When I arrived home to our two-bedroom apartment at Louis Riel House, Cathy 2 greeted me, smothering me in kisses, excitedly exclaiming …

“Raymond, Raymond, I’ve spent the entire afternoon listening to Todd Rundgren’s Something/Anything? It’s gorgeous, it’s groundbreaking, I’ve never heard anything like it. I think I’m in love with Todd Rundgren!”

And so she was, and so should we all be.

On a closing note, and to provide a bit more background on Todd Rundgren.

In 1972, Rundgren began a relationship with model Bebe Buell. During a break in their relationship, Buell had a brief relationship with Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler, which resulted in an unplanned pregnancy.

On July 1, 1977, Buell gave birth to Liv Tyler, the future model and actress.


Todd Rundgren raised actress Liv Tyler as his daughter for the first 18 years of her life. Even when she became aware that Steven Tyler was her father, she maintained Rundgren as one of her two fathers.

To protect the child from Tyler’s drug addiction, Buell claimed that Todd Rundgren was the biological father, and named the child Liv Rundgren, Todd Rundgren raising her as his daughter. At age fifteen, Liv learned that Steven Tyler was her biological father.

Even so, Liv Tyler still calls Todd Rundgren her father, and still maintains a very close relationship with the now 75-year-old musician.

Music Sundays | Norah Jones | The Discovery of a New, Young Talent

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Norah Jones’ 2002 multi-Grammy-winning début album, Come Away With Me, has become one of the 21st century’s instant classics, an album for all time.

Jones comes from formidable musical stock. Her father is the heralded sitar player Ravi Shankar, her mother the acclaimed American concert producer Sue Jones.

Jones was born in Brooklyn in 1979. After her parents separated in 1986, she lived with her mother, growing up in Grapevine, Texas. Jones’ music took its form early on in the local Methodist Church where she regularly sang solos. At the age of 16, with both parents’ consent, she officially changed her name to Norah Jones.

Norah Jones showed enormous talent as a pianist from an early age, and was soon immersed in the works of pioneering American jazz pianist and composer Bill Evans, and renowned jazz singer, Billie Holiday … which led to Jones registering as a jazz piano major at the University Of North Texas, where her collaborations with Jesse Harris and Richard Julian set her on a new jazz country fusion path.

Urged by friends and mentors to move to New York to expand her musical vocabulary, Norah Jones arrived in New York City in 2000, whereupon she began appearing in ever larger clubs in and around Greenwich Village.

After a year and a half in New York, with A&R reps from the major record labels having heard of this young jazz / country-style artist, Norah Jones, and having seen and heard her in concert, a 22-year-old Norah Jones was signed to a recording contract with Blue Note Records, a label owned by the EMI Group, and production on her début album began.

Come Away With Me was released shortly thereafter, on February 26, 2002, becoming a monolithic, out-of-nowhere success in a way that’s almost hard to imagine now, when few releases can capture more than a week’s worth of attention.

Norah Jones’ début is a mellow, acoustic pop affair with soul and country overtones, immaculately produced by the legendary Arif Mardin.

Jones is not quite a jazz singer, but on her début album she was joined by highly regarded jazz musicians: guitarists Adam Levy, Adam Rogers, Tony Scherr, Bill Frisell, and Kevin Breit; drummers Brian Blade, Dan Rieser, and Kenny Wollesen; organist Sam Yahel; accordionist Rob Burger; and violinist Jenny Scheinman.

Jones’ regular guitarist and bassist, Jesse Harris and Lee Alexander, respectively, play on every track and also serve as the chief songwriters. Both have a gift for melody, simple yet elegant progressions, and evocative lyrics.

Jones, for her part, wrote the title track and the pretty but slightly restless Nightingale. She also includes convincing readings of Hank Williams’ Cold Cold Heart, J.D. Loudermilk’s Turn Me On, and Hoagy Carmichael’s The Nearness of You.

There’s a touch of Rickie Lee Jones in the voice of Norah Jones, a touch of Bonnie Raitt in the arrangements; her youth and her piano skills could lead one to call her an Alicia Keys for grown-ups.

Jones’ début record provided listeners with a strong indication of her alluring talents, Jones and Come Away With Me winning a slew of Grammy Awards.

Debuting at No. 139, Come Away With Me reached No. 1 on the Billboard 200 within two weeks of its release. The single Don’t Know Why hit No. 1 on the Top 40 Adult Chart in 2003, and Billboard’s Hot 100 Singles Chart.

At the 45th Grammy Awards in 2003, Norah Jones was awarded …

  • Album of the Year: Come Away With Me | Arif Mardin / Craig Street / Jay Newland / Norah Jones / S. “Husky” Hoskulds / Ted Jensen;
  • Best Engineered Album: Come Away With Me | Jay Newland / S. “Husky” Hoskulds
  • Best Pop Vocal Album: Come Away With Me | Arif Mardin / Jay Newland / Norah Jones / S. “Husky” Hoskulds;
  • Best Female Pop Vocal Performance, Don’t Know Why | Norah Jones;
  • Record Of The Year, Don’t Know Why | Arif Mardin / Jay Newland / Norah Jones;
  • Song Of The Year, Don’t Know Why | Jesse Harris.

By February 2005, Come Away With Me was certified diamond for selling ten million copies, one of the top selling albums of the decade.