Staff Picks for August 2020
August 31, 2020
Trumpeter Mark Isham's languid, sensuous jazz soundtrack to Alan Rudolph's acclaimed 1997 romantic drama combined his talents as an arranger for film and as a longstanding Miles Davis acolyte. More than just a soundtrack, Afterglow is one of Isham's defining artistic statements and remains as memorable as Julie Christie's performance was in the film.
August 30, 2020
It comes late in the Culture discography, but leader Joseph Hill had lost none of his edge lyrically. Payday is a work-themed album with the title track, "Share the Riches," and others touching upon the 9-5 life, but then there's "Chicken Titty," one of the most bizarre and fun numbers in the Culture songbook.
August 29, 2020
The Devil Makes Three is a very special trio, mixing old country blues, gospel, banjo reels, and ragtime, back-country stomp into a potent brand of folk-punk that has made their live shows near legendary. The band's albums are pretty memorable, too, but I'm a Stranger Here, produced in Nashville by Buddy Miller (who also plays guitar and baritone guitar on the album), has a warm and coherent sound to it that harnesses the band's chaotic energy without denying it.
August 28, 2020
Ready or Not, Foreigner lead singer Lou Gramm's first solo outing, was infinitely more fun (and dumb) than his flagship band's filler heavy fifth studio album Agent Provocateur, and while it may not make a lick of sense, the impossible to hate single "Midnight Blue" was one of the last great AOR confections of the 1980's.
August 27, 2020
East-meets-West stylistic mergers are nearly a cliché in the jazz fusion world, but simakDialog are unique in their meld of post-Miles electric fusion and Canterbury influences with Sundanese kendang drumming. This 2013 album finds the Indonesian band at a creative peak, angular but with the steadily percolating rhythms providing welcome understatement.
August 26, 2020
Five years after their oddly aggressive and lopsided third album, the Strokes returned in 2011 with Angles, a collection of tunes that would have sounded at home on either an unknown 80's synth pop album or one of their own early albums. Though somewhat disjointed and self-referential, even a slight return to earlier glories was worth the wait as well as the album's filler tracks.
![You Gotta Walk It Like You Talk It (Or You'll Lose That Beat) [Original Soundtrack]](https://fastly-s3.allmusic.com/release/mr0001278598/front/400/vtbUq7UiavRhnMMlO-NmPVWnbEN5fCjifro6xhIBuB4=.jpg)
August 25, 2020
A pre-Steely Dan curiosity finds Becker and Fagen (and future Dan guitarist Denny Dias), in need of money during their Brill Building days, soundtracking a forgotten Richard Pryor movie. While not a five-star outing, the brief set nonetheless shows an embryonic form of the jazz-rock heroes growing their sense of interplay on four songs and a trio of instrumentals.
August 24, 2020
After unearthing a cache of late frontman Wayne Static's vocals, the original lineup (along with a masked frontman rumored to be Edsel Dope) reunited to record a fresh batch of tunes to cement this underrated late '90s band's "evil disco" legacy. Hitting as hard and fast as the best of Wisconsin Death Trip, it's a surprising return to form (check out "Hollow," "Terminator Oscillator," and "Otsego Placebo") and one of their best.
August 23, 2020
In the early '60s, a handsome and charming American teen idol has a hit single in South America, heads over for a concert tour, gets politicized, and becomes wildly famous in the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc. Such was the career of Dean Reed, and while his politically-oriented material cut after relocating to East Germany is missing, this collection of his early Capitol Records sides is a fascinating look at a truly unique entertainer.
August 22, 2020
The one and only LP created by Ernest Hood is a nostalgic scrapbook of scenes from mid-20th century rural America, particularly focusing on memories of childhood. The album's eight pieces are collages of small-town field recordings interspersed with pleasant, wistful synthesizer melodies, along with sprawling zither arrangements. Some four decades after it was first privately issued, Neighborhoods became a cult classic, and it was finally reissued in 2019, to much fanfare.
August 21, 2020
James got out of his artistic rut in a major way with the excellent Glow. In interviews, James had expressed a desire to record an all-out rock album, and while Glow doesn't fit that description, he does incorporate rock and pop elements with splendid results on everything from the new wave-ish "Can't Stop" to the sweaty "Rock & Roll Control." But make no mistake: this is an R&B album first and foremost, and seductive numbers like "Moonchild" and the title song would be worthy of Kashif or Luther Vandross.
August 20, 2020
With the hit "Mercy Mercy Mercy" still reverberating on the sales charts, Capitol simply had the Quintet crank out one live club date after another at this point, hoping for another smash. They never really got one, but Cannonball and Nat Adderley, in league with pianist Joe Zawinul, bassist Victor Gaskin and drummer Roy McCurdy, left a strong legacy like this vigorous live Hollywood gig.
August 19, 2020
Combining a galloping thrash attack with a pummeling rhythm section reminiscent of Cannibal Corpse's gut-churning low end (fittingly recorded at Morrisound with Scott Burns), Demolition Hammer's debut wastes no time with florid introductions. Diving in headfirst with the relentless ".44 Caliber Brain Surgery," the aggression steamrolls ahead for 43 minutes of no-frills NYC metal.
August 18, 2020
This 1980 collaboration between Cluster's Dieter Moebius and krautrock producer Konrad Plank threw everything at the wall and moved on without waiting to see what stuck. In addition to a mutated form of Cluster's pastoral atmospherics, the duo used the record to explore funky minimal dub, sound collage lunacy and grating industrial-tinged instrumental rock.
![The Reader [Original Motion Picture Score]](https://fastly-s3.allmusic.com/release/mr0001321937/front/400/-3XpZzH9IchY60-21RfdYd_M69_UI9rrJSVvWL2-yAg=.jpg)
August 17, 2020
Muhly's score for this 2009 Best Picture nominee addresses complex themes involving secrets and revelations with likewise nuanced music. Slow, gentle piano cadences and discreet accompanying strings are contrasted by darker sections that employ a disturbing dichotomy of time signatures in which a primary instrument, usually the piano, plays in repeating patterns in one time while the strings play in another. The effect is disquieting, yet subtle, reinforcing what's playing out on-screen.
August 16, 2020
A six-volume box set documenting a band that never made an album may seem excessive, but Sonic's Rendezvous Band clearly deserved better than they got. A group of Detroit rock All-Stars led by Fred "Sonic" Smith of the MC5, this set shows just how tight, powerful, and imaginative this band could be; the live tapes are dazzling, and the few studio tracks make you pine for the LP that could have been.
August 15, 2020
Sporting the jammin' million-selling single "On and On," Claudine is the least celebrated of songwriter/producer Mayfield's soundtrack albums (Superfly, Sparkle), though it's the most poignant of them. "Mr. Welfare Man" lays out the dehumanizing effect of being on welfare, while still being enticing and majestic in its dynamic arrangement. "To Be Invisible" spoke to a child character's need to escape her depressing surroundings. "The Makings of You" is a heart-tugging, strings-cushioned ballad that Knight sings wonderfully.
August 14, 2020
There's something sweetly intoxicating about trumpeter Eddie Henderson's first two 1973 solo albums. Recorded with what was essentially the same group that made Herbie Hancock's Sextant that same year, the pair of albums (compiled here by the British Soul Brother label) feel like the gooey, intergalactic center of the Hancock space-funk donut. One of the first players to successfully incorporate Davis' fusion-style, Henderson solos with an untethered intensity throughout, leaping squelch-toned through shimmering, cosmic percussion dust clouds, froggy alien bass lines, and '50s sci-fi ray gun blasts.
August 13, 2020
One of the more exciting and often overlooked D.C. punk bands, Slant 6's mysterious and energetic style was in full force on their urgent, no nonsense 1994 debut. A baker's dozen of short, snappy songs (three bonus tracks are included on some versions of the album) fly by with no time to waste, their tense and frustrated punk energy enhanced by nonstop melodic hooks.
August 12, 2020
Dawn Robinson from En Vogue. Raphael Saadiq. Tribe Called Quest's Ali Shaheed Muhammad. Now that's a supergroup! It's too bad they only made this one album, but they sure made the most of their moment. "Dance Tonight" is the all time new jack/jill classic, the rest of the record is laid back, funky neo-soul that's somehow classic and ageless.
August 11, 2020
Easily one of Steven Stapleton's masterpieces, Soliloquy for Lilith has nothing to do with industrial noise or exotica cut-ups. Instead, it's a collection of side-long drones which sound like slowly spiraling down a metallic abyss. Truly strange and beautiful music that you inhabit rather than listen to.
August 10, 2020
The masked pranksters mount a frontal assault on the AM radio hits that at once formed the musical vocabulary that would make them possible while also scarring them for life. The grand irony is that the harder the Residents push the dissonance in this music, the songs still sound catchy and fun, and the balance of love and hate on this album is as weirdly entertaining as anything the group ever released.
August 9, 2020
On their second album, the Montreal group cast off the '60s straightjacket that gave their first album the feel of a museum piece or a school assignment. Instead they open up their sound to include more "modern" reference points like the Stone Roses, the '90s shoegaze sound, and jangling new wave. The extra layer of influences free the band from the clutches of the past, and they magically end up sounding like no one but themselves.
August 8, 2020
The saxophonist’s third album is among his finest. Featuring only two tracks, the 32- minute "The Creator Has a Master Plan,” is iconic, and played by one of Sanders' finest studio bands. Besides the bandleader it is, vocalist Leon Thomas who truly astonishes. The remaining personnel perform with inspired abandon. They include drummer Billy Hart, flutist James Spaulding, pianist Lonnie Liston Smith, and bassists Richard Davis and Reggie Workman.
August 7, 2020
Rich in sonic detail, the neo-psychedelic Express offers a listening experience like no other album -- guitars spiral to dizzying heights from beds of sound, arrangements swirl, songs change and mutate.
August 5, 2020
Best known for the loungey single "My Definition of Boombastic Jazz style," Dream Warriors' 1991 debut And Now, The Legacy Begins, introduced the Canadian rap duo's astute, cheeky style. Released during the first wave of '90s jazz-influenced hip-hop, the album found rappers King Lou and Capital Q building groovy tracks out of samples culled from albums by Quincy Jones, Count Basie, the Meters, and others. Their lyrics were just as richly attenuated, touching upon the multiverse ("Voyage Through the Multiverse") and police racism ("U Could Get Arrested") years before Marvel movies and the Black Lives Matter movement.
August 4, 2020
Among the first wave of British rock stars of the late '50s and early '60s, no one sounded stronger or more convincing than Billy Fury. His voice had a strength and unforced cool his peers lacked, and he could not only write his own songs, most of them were actually good. 1960's The Sound of Fury, his first album, is a classic in U.K. rock, simple, passionate, and satisfying.
August 3, 2020
Amid the occasional waves of 80s nostalgia, it's easy to overlook the sheer ubiquity of the Pointer Sisters' 1983 classic, Break Out. Already a veteran group with nine albums behind them, the sisters' tenth LP made good on its title and delivered them with gusto to the MTV age with a bevy of joyful and exuberant dance hits like "I'm So Excited," "Automatic," and "Neutron Dance."
August 2, 2020
Coming on the heels of the success of the Power Station's self-titled debut, the singer's eighth long-player employed the talents of Power Station's Andy Taylor, Tony Thompson, and Bernard Edwards, the latter of whom produced both albums. The results channel his soul-steeped vocals into a set of hooky, rock-leaning songs that seem tailored to be chart hits. Hit the charts they did; the album became Palmer's biggest commercial success, reaching the U.K. Top Five and the Top Ten in the States behind MTV classics like "Addicted to Love" and his cover of Cherrelle's "I Didn't Mean to Turn You On."
August 1, 2020
Coming off the success of their third set, the UK rock outfit hit a snag with this 2001 LP. Despite it being one of their best, unintentional connections to 9/11 disrupted promotion (original artwork was an airplane) and the album failed to maintain their '90s success. Check out "People That We Love" (originally titled "Speed Kills"), "Hurricane," and the gorgeous "Float." They wouldn't release an album this good until 2020's The Kingdom.