Staff Picks for August 2023
![Blue Velvet [Original Motion Picture Soundtrack]](https://fastly-s3.allmusic.com/release/mr0000682980/front/400/A9QhXqiqqlOZeorgstYSnJhUoDg0hsvx4F4sL4oO-nA=.jpg)
August 31, 2023
Beautiful and strange, the score to this David Lynch classic is a staggering surrealist's nightmare told with the heart of a saint. Dense orchestrations float along whispers of dark, unnerving melodies; an astounding sense of menace coils inside even the most reassuring of moments. This marked the first collaboration between Lynch and the composer, and its fusion of the sublime and the dangerous is breathtaking.
August 30, 2023
Perhaps Serge Gainsbourg's finest hour, 1971 album Histoire de la Melody Nelson is a masterclass in sleaze, funk, and hedonistic joy. Gainsbourg's breathless, sultry whispering might be a bit much for some listeners, but the album's combination of lush orchestral strings and effervescent lounge-funk grooves is undeniable.
August 29, 2023
Sam Barker's full-length debut expanded on his 2018 EP Debiasing, which captured the euphoric highs of trance and techno without using kick drums. Many of the album's tracks consist of lapping textural waves which glide over a ticking rhythmic frame, with too much of a propulsive force to seem like they're staying in one place. Perhaps this is the sound of techno having an out-of-body experience, hovering a few yards above the dancefloor.
August 28, 2023
After brilliantly surveying the social, political, and spiritual landscape with What's Going On, Marvin Gaye turned to more intimate matters with Let's Get It On, a record unparalleled in its sheer sensuality and carnal energy. This album was released 50 years ago today.
August 27, 2023
With 15 tracks that average less than two minutes apiece, this Frankie Cosmos-influenced debut from Texas' Caleb Campbell stands as a similarly tuneful indie pop gem. Full of contradictions -- anxious and soothing, articulate and dreamy, simple and complex, enchanted and alienated -- it's the kind of album that will hold up to deeper scrutiny but is better enjoyed for its warm, whimsically bittersweet surface.
August 26, 2023
A ten-song, highly melodic juggernaut of Norse brutality that is as taut and clinical as it is glorious and epic, the Faroe Islands metal ambassadors' fourth LP is as pure as fresh blood on snow. It takes a mere chorus to sink the hooks in, gut you, and throw your scraps to the gulls.
August 25, 2023
The social heart of The Fugees and its most talented performer, Lauryn Hill tailored The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, released 25 years ago today, not as a crossover record but as a collection of overtly personal and political statements; nevertheless, it rocketed to the top of the album charts and made her a superstar.
August 24, 2023
A beguiling ensemble record from 1979, Avocet splits the difference between the tenacious progressivism of the guitarist's early, post-Pentangle offerings and the stateliness of his later work.
August 23, 2023
Barry Craig used the term "trance" to describe his work long before that word was applied to club music. His third album (recently reissued with live material and a second disc containing outtakes and alternate versions) incorporated nature recordings, synths, and various types of drums from multiple continents. However, it's not always obvious which instruments are being used, and the music forms its own particular haunting zone.
August 22, 2023
Released in 1958, the second album from groundbreaking jazz harpist Dorothy Ashby is a mellow, grooving affair. Along with a sturdy rhythm section and flutist Frank Wess, Ashby uses her deftly controlled harp to steer the album's seven laid-back selections. Ashby would later venture into psychedelic soul jazz, but on Hip Harp the moods are strictly cool.
August 21, 2023
Released 50 years ago today, Two Sides of Peter Banks is the most progressive effort the guitarist released after his departure from Yes. If it weren't for the star-heavy cast this album would be nothing more than an enjoyable curiosity, but fans of Genesis and Focus should find it an important addition to their collections.
August 20, 2023
Even though four albums were still to follow, this is the last time Craig Nicholls delivered something that sounded truly intentional and thought-out. Not only does this strong third set deserve a revisit, but Nicholls' legacy as one of the stronger early-aughts songwriters could use a reevaluation. Quick blasts of psych-grunge hit the melodic sweet spot, but it's the gorgeous slow jams ("Vision Valley," "Going Gone," "Spaceship") that really nourish the soul.
August 19, 2023
The trio of violin, accordion, and guitar traipse through haunted saloon doors and across rainy Italian piazzas. Skirting the line between jazz, acoustic music, and contemporary composition, Tin Hat Trio's earthy sonic explorations seem like something from the turn of the century, but they leave it unclear as to which century they are referring. Could be 1800, could be a century yet to come.
August 18, 2023
Recorded 50 years ago today, Viva Terlingua, recorded live in Luckenbach, TX, on a hot August night in 1973, is among the most legendary of "live" singer/songwriter albums ever released. It's the Live at the Fillmore East of redneck Texas folk-rock. This record asks no questions and there are no hidden meanings in Walker's or anybody else's lyrics; it's all there for the taking. And that's what makes it the enduring classic it is.
August 17, 2023
A largely underappreciated entry in the Britpop canon, Arnold took cues from quieter Obscured by Clouds-era Pink Floyd b-sides and deployed reverby atmospherics to their breathy acoustic compositions, creating a more pastoral oasis than their blurry compatriots. Comparisons to Travis' ballads would not be out of line, but the more upbeat electric numbers like "Windsor Park" and "Moroccan Roll - Part Two" could have sat comfortably on the second half of a Verve or Gomez record from this same era.
August 16, 2023
Various Artists
Once upon a time, there was a small but thriving industry devoted to bilking hapless would-be songwriters by setting their clumsy lyrics to music and releasing them on barely distributed compilation albums – for a price. This collection brings together 27 seemingly sincere "song-poem" recordings (and one obvious prank), and the oddball themes and assembly line lyrics produce results that are strange, funny, and occasionally revelatory. Includes the best disco song ever written about Jimmy Carter.
August 15, 2023
The sophomore long-player from cosmic country innovator James Wallace's Skyway Man project, World Only Ends When You Die is a ramshackle road trip billed as a "psych-folk opera" that evokes a Muscle Shoals-backed Grateful Dead piloting a boogie van into the Greek underworld.
August 14, 2023
Behind Dee Snider's inimitable roar, Twisted Sister made their mark on the MTV era with their distinctive mix of punchy glam metal anthems ("We're Not Gonna Take it") and rowdy, comedic videos (plus a cameo in Pee Wee's Big Adventure), while retaining enough menace to properly agitate the conservative crusaders at the PMRC.
August 13, 2023
Coming in at the tail end of the true Grunge era, Gloritone has more in common with Foo Fighters and Silverchair with sunnier choruses and more radio-friendly riffs than their Pacific Northwest forebears. Blasting out of the gate with the buzzy, feedback laden "Halfway," vocalist Tim Anthonise sweetly shouts in an amiable Cobain-influenced yarl, while Pumpkins-esque guitars blaze in the background.
August 12, 2023
The hardest rocking album of Scott Miller's career, the second LP from the Loud Family. 1994's The Tape of Only Linda was recorded after the band had toured extensively behind their debut, and the songs and performances take advantage of their taut interplay and muscular attack. Miller's literate cynicism and angular guitar solos cut the sweetness of his glorious melodic hooks, and Mitch Easter's production captured it brilliantly.
August 11, 2023
Keyboardist Robert Glasper purportedly came up with the concept for R+R=Now (which means reflect and respond now), his forward-looking jazz supergroup, while producing Nina Revisited, a companion album to the 2015 Nina Simone documentary What Happened, Miss Simone? While musically far afield of Simone's own literate, bluesy piano-and-vocal style of jazz, R+R=Now's debut album, 2018's Collagically Speaking, has a cinematic quality that speaks to Glasper's original impulse to make music inspired by Simone's artistically adventurous, socially and politically minded work.
August 10, 2023
Sometimes issued as a self-titled disc, and sometimes under the designation of being the singer's "4th English Album," Francoise Hardy's If You Listen maintains a smoky, gentle late-night atmosphere for its entirety. From the hushed title track to Hardy's renditions of songs penned by Neil Young, Buffy Sainte-Marie, or Randy Newman, the album is subdued and restrained, perfectly designed for the end of a long night or the reflective start of a new day.
August 9, 2023
There are some albums that beg to be listened to from beginning to end in one sitting; Brian Eno's Music for Airports, Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, and Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians come to mind. The fourth album (and Luaka Bop debut) from Danish instrumentalists Bremer/McCoy, 2019's Utopia, is also one of those albums. Featuring the talents of bassist Jonathan Bremer and keyboardist/tape delay artist Morten McCoy, Utopia showcases the duo's instrumentally expansive, often hypnotic jazz-, dub-, and classical-influenced sound.
August 8, 2023
Wanda Jackson made plenty of fine country records in the 1950s and '60s, but she was one of the first truly great rock & roll singers, and this collection brings together thirty-five tunes that focus on her revved-up and rockin' sides. Rockabilly mavens revere "Fujiyama Mama," "Honey Bop," and "Hot Dog! That Made Him Mad" for a reason – between Wanda's fiery vocals and the crack studio accompaniment, this is as good as first-era rock gets.
August 7, 2023
Turning 50 years old today, 3 + 3 proved to be a turning point in the Isley Brothers' creative direction. Moving from a trio to a sextet would be enough to change the sound of any group, but the addition of the supremely funky bassist Marvin Isley and particularly the Hendrix-infused guitar work of Ernie Isley hustled the band into a heavier, funkier, and slinkier direction.
August 6, 2023
The veteran Massachusetts-based heavy metal/post-grunge outfit's first proper set of new studio recordings in a decade -- 2019's largely stitched-together Final Transmission served as a potent eulogy for fallen bassist Caleb Scofield -- the Relapse-issued Heavy Pendulum is a robust and relentlessly creative beast that distills all of Cave-In's influences into sonic totality.
August 5, 2023
With all 13 tracks drawn from traditional Irish repertoire, Sinéad O'Connor reclaims that combination of fragility and strength that distinguishes her from virtually every other singer of her age and background. Supported by an assembly of brilliant musicians, O'Connor turns clichéd arrangements into compelling narratives and emphasizes the tragic flavors that sweeter singers often miss.
August 4, 2023
Sinéad O'Connor's debut was a sensation upon its 1987 release, and it remains a distinctive record, finding a major talent striving to achieve her own voice. Like many debuts, it's entirely possible to hear her influences, from Peter Gabriel to Prince and contemporary rap, but what's striking about the record is how she synthesizes these into her own sound -- an eerie, expansive sound heavy on atmosphere and tortured passion.
August 3, 2023
When Stevie Wonder applied his tremendous songwriting talents to the unsettled social morass that was the early '70s, he produced one of his greatest, most important works, a rich panoply of songs addressing drugs, spirituality, political ethics, the unnecessary perils of urban life, and what looked to be the failure of the '60s dream -- all set within a collection of charts as funky and catchy as any he'd written before. Innervisions was released 50 years ago today.
August 2, 2023
This wild Greek-American project emerged out of New York City in the late-'80s, merging the experimental studio techniques and pop elements of the day with traditional Greek music.
August 1, 2023
Pop vocalist/songwriter Jackie DeShannon was on top of the world by 1970, having scored a few of her biggest hits and trying to keep the momentum going with this album of perfectly arranged and softly grooving soul pop heavy on string arrangements. It didn't achieve the commercial success she might have been aiming for, but To Be Free is an artistic triumph and a wildly enjoyable album, to be filed alongside Dusty in Memphis or Cowboy in Sweden.