Staff Picks for April 2023
April 30, 2023
Shygirl's debut album expands on the more melodic, intimate direction of her preceding singles rather than her abrasive early EPs and singles. The Arca-produced "Come for Me" feels closest to the more industrial hip-hop sound of 2018's Cruel Practice, while the glitchy, U.K. garage-influenced "Firefly" fulfills all the promise of Shygirl's directional shift. Nymph isn't exactly the type of album full of bangers that one might have previously expected from Shygirl, but it reveals a greater depth to her personality, and it's consistently inventive.
April 29, 2023
The 1969 debut from former Soft Machine member Kevin Ayers is a gentle explosion of whimsical psychedelic folk. An endlessly colorful and experimental set, Ayers' cool baritone delivers sing-song nursery rhyme melodies that drift atop rich orchestral pop arrangements. Every song takes a slightly different direction, from the sun blinded bliss of "Girl on a Swing" to the mellow tropical prog of "Song for Insane Times."
April 28, 2023
A cool performance in every sense of the word, this live recording captures the nascent trio in sharp form, cooking through eight songs in just over a half-hour. Pianist Ahmad Jamal, bassist Israel Crosby, and drummer Vernell Fournier feed off each other in this blazing set highlighted by the classic rendition of "Poinciana."
April 27, 2023
The most impressive result of the violinist's collaborations with Glass may be the Partita for solo violin (2010), a seven-movement suite written especially for Fain that opens this recording. Associations with Bach's violin partitas are inevitable; it's clear that Glass had them in mind while composing in what can be described as an aspirational, rather than a merely imitative, manner. The ebb and flow of tempos and expressive use of rubato here give the Partita an introspective feeling, and its freedom of individual expression is quite removed from the locked-in, high-energy ensemble playing that was Glass' early trademark style.
April 26, 2023
Various Artists
When it comes to the sultry themes, ominous harmonic clusters, and jarring interjections that helped give classic film noir movies their gritty, high-contrast style, this collection offers some of the genre's high-water marks. Presented in dramatic fashion with excerpts of hard-boiled dialogue (Bogie and Bacall, James Cagney's "top of the world" speech from White Heat), the score material includes multiple appearances from the likes of Max Steiner, Davis Raksin, and Adolph Deutsch.
April 25, 2023
Released 50 years ago today, Sold American brought the gonzo mystery book writer to the airwaves with a series of earnestly-performed smart alecky outlaw country tunes with titles like the self-referential "Ride 'Em Jewboy" and the tongue in cheek hashtagproblematic "Get Your Biscuits in the Oven and Your Buns in the Bed." Alongside these intentionally feather-ruffling comedy bits is the title track, a soulful lament for the state of the American dream through the eyes of a wickedly smart observer.
April 24, 2023
Produced solely by Tyler himself, Igor, is his fifth studio album. At times unsettling, the album takes us through Tyler's struggle losing someone he loves. The instrumentals are brilliant and unique throughout every song and the lyrics beautifully and tragically paint the picture of his inner turmoil, rage, and sorrow. While I usually steer clear of songs with lots of synth accompaniments, Tyler explores its possibilities with an aptitude and finesse that is graceful, harrowing, complex and completely his own.
April 23, 2023
Spooky's first album was a watershed moment in the development of progressive house, though the duo's music was often more gleeful and less self-important than the genre would end up becoming. Cheeky opening track "Don't Panic" is what you put on when you want to listen to Surfer Rosa and Paul's Boutique at the same time, and the two-part "Little Bullet" formed the basis of Sasha's 1999 trance epic "Xpander."
April 22, 2023
After a relatively toned-down debut, the Roches turned in an erratic and punky second album in 1980's Nurds. Backed by members of Television and the Patti Smith Group, the previously mostly folk trio took bizarre and rowdy approaches with these songs, emphasizing the inner weirdness and goofiness that only peeked through on the first album.
April 21, 2023
Original Soundtrack
While the film hasn't aged well, the soundtrack is a wealth of Beatles covers from an impressive cast of (now) veteran artists like Aimee Mann, Sarah McLachlan, Eddie Vedder, Ben Harper, Sheryl Crow, Ben Folds, the Black Crowes, Nick Cave, and many more. Rufus Wainwright's "Across the Universe" is sublime, while the Wallflowers and the Vines (remember them?) deliver two surprising standouts.
April 20, 2023
A blistering and riffy cosmic collection of lo-fi demos, bootlegs, and outtakes from the pioneering shoegaze/space rock act of the '80s and early '90s. Raw and unrefined, these mostly two-chord symphonies chime and ring with an almost religious drone, perfect for sitting around and doing nothing at all.
April 19, 2023
Cope's rambling 1995 effort contained a bevy of ideas and sounds, not unlike Peggy Suicide, but with less overtly environmental messages. At times, it is surprisingly personal as he hashes out familial struggles and reconciliation among the more anarchic and psychedelic fare.
April 18, 2023
Britt's entry in the Beat Generation series from BBE is a real Philadelphia experiment, the type of hip-hop record that the former Digable Planets DJ, Sylk 130 leader, and producer extraordinaire had always wanted to make. Though he included a few straight vocal tracks, most of these are rap tracks with few pretensions, just King Britt's textured, keyboard-heavy production, and a dizzying range of beats that puts commercial rap trackmasters to shame. Britt apparently likes working with distinctive rappers, and he called on a few of the best, including Quasimoto, Posdnous and Trugoy from De La Soul, and Bahamadia.
April 17, 2023
The pianist reworks Latin jazz by adding contemporary dance, soul and disco, to deliver a kinetic, entertaining set. Ruiz enlisted a stellar cast that included Tito Puente, Richie Flores and bassist Ruben Rodriguez, among others. The bandleader also wrote or co-wrote and provided arrangements for all eight imaginative selections. An earlier cousin to Ray Barretto’s Can You Feel It.
April 16, 2023
Gillian Welch and David Rawlings may have shocked and appalled folk purists with their fourth album, Soul Journey. "Are those drums?" "Is that an organ?" "Wait a minute, is that an electric bass?!?" The album uses these musical elements to drive home a living-room, lazy-summertime jam-session feel that hadn't really shown itself on Welch's previous releases.
April 15, 2023
Released the same day as Nas' It Was Written and between albums like Jay-Z's Reasonable Doubt and OutKast's ATLiens, Stakes Is High possibly didn't get its rightful burn in respective tape decks and CD players. De La nonethless offered an album that was not only sonically excellent and creative and pure, but an album with the year's most relevant and prescient message. It's also an album that did its part to solve what De La were articulating as a problem, ushering in what would become the newer version of the Native Tongues.
April 14, 2023
Goldie & the Gingerbreads were the first all-female rock band to land a major label deal when Atco Records signed them for a handful of singles in 1965. The world wasn't ready for four women who could sing like the Shangri-Las and wail like the Animals, and they never scored the hits they deserved, but Thinking About the Good Times collects their best work on one disc and proves they could and should have been stars.
April 13, 2023
The Clown was Charles Mingus' second masterpiece in a row, upping the already intense emotional commitment of Pithecanthropus Erectus and burning with righteous anger and frustration. With Pithecanthropus, Mingus displayed a gift for airtight, focused arrangements that nonetheless allowed his players great freedom to add to the established mood of each piece.
April 12, 2023
After a three year hiatus, Emails I Can't Send is Sabrina Carpenter's best album to date. It is deeply personal and insightful while simultaneously energetic and exciting. My personal favorite song, the title track "emails I can't send", appropriately introduces the album; the lyrics are smart, candid, and self-reflective, and the instrumentals are simple, yet energetic and moving.
April 11, 2023
Deftly handling the alto, tenor, and baritone saxophone, bebop giant Sonny Stitt is heard to perfection here on a variety of early-'50s dates. Stitt not only shows off his patented speed throughout, but he goes a long way in dispelling criticisms of him being all fire and no grace.
April 10, 2023
This duo issued the mini album Mexico in 2008, weaving Truffaz's formal and post-jazz sensibilities with Murcof's electronic abstraction. While this isn't a big departure, it offers another inspirational element; namely, the work of French visual artist Enki Bilal, who created the cover of this release based on the duo's concept, that included a film, making this a soundtrack.
April 9, 2023
The group's second album represents the toughening up and expansion of their wall-rattling, yell-along sound. Never content to play their punk rock by the book, the band uses dynamics, songcraft, and the sax of Apollo 9 to add texture and power to their rock hard guitar-bass-drums foundation.
April 8, 2023
An ostensibly serious study of Inuit music and culture, the Residents' 1979's album Eskimo slowly but surely reveals itself as a grand prank on the listener, as the deeply buried jokes become increasingly audible over the course of 40 minutes. At the same time, the forbidding soundscapes of the music and alien bleats of the "vocals" are powerfully atmospheric and some of the most effective, mesmerizing work this band of masked marvels would create.
April 7, 2023
After taking four years to complete his 2008 debut album, Son Lux mastermind Ryan Lott made the bold decision to try to compress his creative process, writing and recording his follow-up in just four weeks. The result is a beautifully realized piece of flowing neo-psychedelia that strikes a fine balance between sonic experimentation and pop craftsmanship, with pleasant synth melodies that shift from deep and lush to lo-fi and fuzzy as Lott delivers enigmatic lyrics with a spooky frailty that lingers.
April 6, 2023
Before becoming known for his solo reworkings of contemporary classical masterpieces including Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians, Erik Hall flexed his own composing and songwriting muscles under this solo pseudonym. The project's second album was another solitary endeavor featuring layers of delicate percussion, guitars, keyboards, and judiciously placed effects. Many of the songs (and instrumentals) achieve motion via stacked rhythms, compelling textures, and melody more so than by chord progressions and form, with Hall's gentle vocals and misty lyrics helping to keep sharp focus at bay,
April 5, 2023
Swedish organist and composer Merit Hemmingson gave traditional Swedish folk songs a new groove on this 1971 album, adapting the melodies into something decidedly more hip. While Huvva! - Svensk Folkmusik På Beat is reworkings of folk tunes passed down through the ages, the cool, jazzy organ leads and swinging rhythm section reads more as the kind of slightly trippy space age bachelor pad instrumentals that were popular at the time.
April 4, 2023
Excellent collection of late '60s recordings from one of the great underrated Soul singers that's punctuated by strutting come ons (Am I Grooving You?) super lonesome ballads (Are You Lonely For Me, Baby) and the song Biz Markie borrowed for “Just a Friend” (You Got What I Need.)
April 3, 2023
The Alice in Chains co-founder's first solo outing since 2002, the aptly named Brighten sees Jerry Cantrell dial back the dimly lit, minor-key ruminations of past efforts for something that hews dangerously close to hope. Confident, inward-looking, forgiving, yet bruising in all the right places, it's not just a great album by Cantrell's standards; it's a great record, period.
April 2, 2023
A rare commercially issued mix by Theo Parrish, DJ-Kicks (subtitled Detroit Forward) is entirely dedicated to the Motor City's homegrown music scene, with nearly all of the selections created by Detroit artists and previously unreleased. Placing less of an emphasis on the revered selector's mixing skills, the set spotlights the talents of scene mainstays and up-and-comers including Jon Dixon, Whodat, Ian Fink, and Meftah, with styles ranging from jazzy house and broken beat to hip-hop poetry and wonky dub.
April 1, 2023
The first of only a handful of official releases from this often bootlegged Japanese psych powerhouse, '77 Live captures eveyrthing that made Les Rallizes Denudes so fascinating and so cool. The seven tracks all sprawl out with minimal post-Velvet Underground rock structures and noisy guitar scawl, recorded in such low fidelity even listeners with the most abrasive tastes might wonder if there's something wrong with the stereo.