Staff Picks for August 2019
August 31, 2019
This collaboration between Davis and bandleader Gil Evans is a bright and shining collection of songs that acts as a bridge between the big band sound of the prior decade and the trumpet player's emerging modal explorations. Tuneful and engaging throughout, elements of their future work Sketches of Spain are evident on the album's closer "Blues for Pablo."
![The BFG [Original Motion Picture Soundtrack]](https://fastly-s3.allmusic.com/release/mr0004564660/front/400/MSZsFSPhStaLGJDUVAdB0g4Q1ghY8VaPylnm7PwcKNY=.jpg)
August 30, 2019
In the vein of E.T. and Harry Potter, leaping melodic lines and a hefty dose of whimsy mark the score for the composer's 28th feature-length collaboration with Steven Spielberg, a 2016 adaptation of Roald Dahl's book. After 60 years in the business, Williams still sounds inspired, and that's saying something in an industry that, frankly, requires a lot of fast work with often homogeneous results.
August 29, 2019
So It Is showcases a soulful, bluesy, groove-oriented set of songs heavily influenced by the roiling, kinetic sound of Afro-Latin and Cuban bands. Rather than playing standards like "The Peanut Vendor" or "Oye Como Va," Jaffe and his bandmates deliver the Preservation Hall Jazz Band's second album of all-original compositions. Cuts like "Santiago" and "Innocence," both co-written by Jaffe and saxophonist/clarinetist Charlie Gabriel, are ferociously bumping, dance-inducing anthems built around titanically rolling drumbeats, evocative keyboard lines, and bristling, puckered horn riffs.
August 28, 2019
Trying to pin down the best Django Reinhardt compilation can be a foreboding task since there are literally dozens (if not hundreds) available but the terrific news is that it's tough to find a lousy performance on any of them. Peche à la Mouche collects the guitarist's later work for Blue Star in the late '40s and early '50s, and finds him in terrific playing form, both with the Quintette du Hot Club de France and in a smaller group setting.
August 27, 2019
With their third studio album, this wiley Brooklyn instrumental collective crushed together free jazz, ragged blues, slick kraut rock grooves and brilliantly damaged guitar freakouts into what was at once their most measured and psychedelic work to date. From cosmic synth traces to a burning cover of Alice Coltrane's meditative "Ptah, the El Daoud," Sunwatchers tie together all their incongruent impulses into a streamlined-- if hazy--- vision.
August 26, 2019
As Arthur Jeffes increasingly steps out from his father's shadow and asserts his own unique and considerable talents, the closer his music feels in spirit to his chief inspiration. Penguin Cafe have created a charming world within The Imperfect Sea that gently seduces the listener through the restless and captivating collection of songs within it.
August 25, 2019
White Denim went through a lineup change just prior to this album (half of the band left to play with Leon Bridges), but Stiff still retains their familiar tightly-wound psych jam backbone. Relentlessly positive and bouncing, the first two tracks explode off the turntable with soulful yowls and oddball song structures, and the album just continues on in the same vein from there.
August 24, 2019
How far she's come. Back in 2012, she arrived atop a wave of hype with her hybrid, hip-hop alterna-pop before drastically switching styles to a throwback sound drenched in nostalgic, gilded American drama. Whether her debut was authentic or not, it's still her catchiest and most accessible. Aside from '10s classics like "Video Games" and "Summertime Sadness," "National Anthem" and "Radio" are but two of the most delectable goodies here. Album six arrives this month.
August 23, 2019
Various Artists
A heady, glamorous anthology of disco, funk, and R&B that emerged out of Nigeria in the '70s and '80s.
August 22, 2019
This jagged and angular album is drenched in reverb and overdriven grit, but maintains a melodic throughline. Singer Jon Loudon's raw vocals skate over and through the layers of guitar and rhythm, interweaving his messages into Restorations' bed of beautifully cathartic sound.
August 21, 2019
The veteran jazz drummer and his longtime band dig deep into root American forms on this beautifully atmospheric 2014 set for Blue Note.
August 20, 2019
Roc Marciano is an auteur -- a grimy, underground, unsung, unexpected, unassuming auteur -- and his debut album is as understated a revelation as can be. Self-produced with only one guest verse, it's sonically rich and ambient, emotionally moody, and lyrically dexterous. Roc Marc offers classic, sample-heavy beats appropriating the '90s golden-era craftsmanship that underpins his nuanced, heavily steez'd flow, spitting newly spun, age-old tales of, and takes on, N.Y.C. street living/survival.
August 19, 2019
Who else could build a 37-minute minimal techno epic out of an old Yugoslavian brass band sample, a steady beat, and a bit of delay? Ricardo Villalobos' mind-expanding "Fizheuer Zieheuer" immediately attained legendary status when it was released in 2006, and it's hard to think of anything else remotely like it, even now.
August 18, 2019
On the band's self-titled 2006 debut, pint-sized vocalist Lacey Sturm tore a hole in the hard rock world with her inimitable voice and a batch of songs wrought with self-doubt and rage. While the band never matched these heights again (and Sturm left after the third album), the cathartic power of "I'm So Sick," "Fully Alive," and "So Sorry" are therapeutic bursts of bloodletting that still pummel the heart and soul over a decade later.
August 17, 2019
Up to the moment when Fearless was released, it was not easy to gauge which path Jazmine Sullivan would take. Was she a pop songwriter, a young member of the "grown folks R&B" division, or a young Lauryn Hill? With her first album here, it is clear she is comfortable in each mode. Sullivan switches between a number of tacks, both stylistically and emotionally, each one flush with conviction, whether she's dealing out theatrical retribution, fronting a peppy girl group, or tearing the house-down with a ballad.
August 16, 2019
This record chronicles a flavorful and unforgettable night during a live show recorded in Montreux, Switzerland. Gato Barbieri leads his fantastic group of musical friends with hurricane-like flair on his tenor sax. At times surreal and mind-boggling, Barbieri shows just how far one can let the music go to break the borders of jazz, sending his music into fresh and uncharted territory. Barbieri's chops and melodic sweeps are daring and bold, while the back crew brings vitality and utter life to the music, from the record's beginning to its very end.
August 15, 2019
The artist's second Columbia album shows him in transition from Texas bluesman to rock and roll guitar hero. "Memory Pain," is psychedelic blues-rock while the renditions of old-time rockers "Johnny B. Goode," "Miss Ann," and "Slippin' and Slidin'" offered familiar canvasses on which to spray his audacious licks. The reading of Dylan's "Highway 61 Revisited" is the record's jewel, a career-defining track that would remain a major component in his set list to the end of his life.
August 14, 2019
Despite its breezy sound, the group took on heavier subject matter here, including domestic violence, drugs, and sectarian violence in Ireland, but it's still summer in the Northern Hemisphere, Robert De Niro's still gracing the silver screen, and '80 pop production is back in style -- and this sophomore album covers all bases.
August 13, 2019
Initially released as a solo album, Paddy McAloon's deeply-moving semi-instrumental and mostly-orchestral set was built around a strange pastiche of talk radio samples the singer collected while convalescing from an illness that took away his eyesight.
August 12, 2019
The band's 1973 sophomore album is rightly considered a country rock classic. Songwriter Craig Fuller wove lyrically poignant, instrumentally savvy suite-like portraits of troubled relationships that sounded autobiographical, not formulaic. Acoustic and electric guitars and lush vocal harmonies are framed by astonishing string arrangements courtesy of guest guitarist Mick Ronson. The single, "Amie" became a Top 30 hit and bar band classic more than two years after its initial release.
August 11, 2019
Commercially disappointing at the time of its release, Kate Bush's self-produced fourth album was far ahead of its early 80's time frame. Fearlessly emotional and constructed painstakingly out of early experiments with the Fairlight digital sampler/synthesizer, Bush's abstract pop was too raw and experimental for some at the time. Her vocal acrobatics, melodic turns and revolutionary melding of electronics and organic instruments set a pace that wouldn't be fully picked up on until decades later.
August 10, 2019
On the group's major label debut, they cleaned up and streamlined their punk-pop sound to come up with a sleek, slick punk-grunge classic that relies as much on clever songwriting and restrained emotions as it does on their trademarked high-energy attack.
August 9, 2019
Converter's third album is an indisputable high point of the style known as rhythmic noise. Few other producers have ever managed to make harsh, punishing noise this danceable. The album's complex tracks are never short on ideas, continually twisting in new directions, and it sounds remarkably well controlled for something so violent and chaotic.
![The Virgin Suicides [Original Soundtrack]](https://fastly-s3.allmusic.com/release/mr0000001306/front/400/V-qE9PQa233fPOCi8YTc7VWnbEN5fCjifro6xhIBuB4=.jpg)
August 8, 2019
The French ambient pop duo's first foray into film music, the beguiling Virgin Suicides makes the most of their atmospheric qualities, resulting in a quietly unforgettable score that's heavy on the analog synth and organ yet features plenty of traditional textures that evoke lounge music and space-pop from the 1960s and '70s.
August 7, 2019
With 1979's mighty "Starry Eyes," the Records delivered one of the truly great power pop tracks of the era. That the rest of their excellent debut, Shades in Bed (and its self-titled American version), never received the attention it warranted is a shame given the English band's affinity for writing catchy and melodic guitar pop gems.
August 6, 2019
Dreamy and atmospheric while grounded in the joys and sadness of everyday life, songwriter Natalie Mering perfected her Weyes Blood project with these songs. Evoking the same breezy spirit of 70's staples like Harry Nilsson and Joni Mitchell, Mering's own melancholic perspectives guide the album through orchestral pop and synthy interludes.
August 5, 2019
The Sneetches were one of the best classic guitar pop bands in the late '80s/early '90s, and this career-spanning collection charts their course from a bedroom pop duo to their too-early demise.
August 4, 2019
Since the mid-2000s, many PJ Harvey fans have lamented her disinterest in the electric guitar. But with 2011's Let England Shake, Harvey proved she could create the most powerful music of her career at a low volume. A song cycle rooted in the horrors of war and England's inconsonant history, the song structures (often built around samples and interpolations) are bold, the lyrics are stirringly evocative, and the performances are understated and haunting.
August 3, 2019
Drum'n'bass pioneer J Majik followed his instant-classic early 12"s for Metalheadz with an astounding debut album, filled with complex drum patterns and lush, trippy textures. He also dips into downtempo material in the vein of his Innervisions alter ego, with no lapse in quality. Somehow this escaped the attention that Photek's boring debut album received the same year. It's just as technically accomplished, but sounds far more alive.
August 2, 2019
On her fifth album, Kim Lenz delivers her most stylistically broad production to date with twangy songs dusted with themes of pain, desire, and the supernatural. Lenz, who first emerged in the '90s with her trademark backing group the Jaguars, is largely known as a queen of traditional rockabilly, a torchbearer of the swaggering, wickedly sexy style of '50s female rock icons like Barbara Pittman, Wanda Jackson, and Janis Martin. With Slowly Speeding, she expands upon this approach, exploring ever more nuanced aspects of the Americana tradition.
August 1, 2019
Having assembled, for touring purposes, what would soon be his formal backing band, the Hundred Men, and more specifically, having found a new key songwriting collaborator in keyboardist Paul Statham, Murphy created his most elegant post-Bauhaus effort to date.