Staff Picks for August 2025
August 31, 2025
Watson's arrival on the folk scene of the '60s was a major event in American music, due mostly to his appearance at the 1963 Newport Folk Festival and the release of this self-titled album the following year. Not only did it revolutionize folk guitar picking, but it set the standard for the rest of his career with its mix of old-timey numbers, blues, gospel, and adapted fiddle tunes.
August 30, 2025
Of all his world fusion efforts, Brown Rice, released 50 years ago today, is the most accessible entry point into Cherry's borderless ideal, jelling into a personal, unique, and seamless vision that's at once primitive and futuristic in the best possible senses of both words.
August 29, 2025
Starting with the epic two-chord gallop of "Under the Pressure," Granduciel offers up song after song of incredibly restrained yet entirely engaged rock. The classic rock reference points led to a "blue-collar rock" labeling of the band's sound, and while there are undeniable callbacks to Petty, Dylan, and Springsteen here, as there were on earlier albums, the War on Drugs have come into their own with their sound.
August 28, 2025
A classic live set from the Hungarian jazz guitarist showcasing his late-'60s mastery and tight, semi-psychedelic grooves.
August 27, 2025
One of several albums made by the Art Ensemble while they were living in Paris at the end of the '60s into the early '70s, this soundtrack album finds the group showing off their range, moving effortlessly from R&B grooves to more heady jazz forms. While it's not quite like anything else the Art Ensemble ever made, opening track "Theme de Yo-Yo," with its eviscerating vocals from Fontella Bass, is one of the Ensemble's greatest moments.
August 26, 2025
The project's third album was inspired by Katherine Paul moving from Portland back to the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community (on Puget Sound), where she was raised, at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. For her, the period's mix of grief, loneliness, and frustration was matched by a sense of belonging as well as by potent physical surroundings -- the Skagit River, towering cedar trees, tide flats, and mountain vistas. It's a dichotomy reflected musically by moments of quiet reflection and dissonant alt-rock. Mount Eerie's Phil Elverum joins Paul on the bittersweet "Salmon Stinta," a song about fish swimming upstream.
August 25, 2025
If The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle was an accidental miracle, Born to Run, released 50 years ago today, was an intentional masterpiece. It declared its own greatness with songs and a sound that lived up to Springsteen's promise, and though some thought it took itself too seriously, many found that exalting.
August 24, 2025
This is one of those recordings that cannot be fully absorbed on the first or second listen, but after several, one starts to realize just how strong this abstract pop-folk-rock release is. With a quirky and waifish vocal style, lead singer Angie Hart can take a bit of getting used to, but it's an acquired taste well worth the effort as she navigates the band's strange acoustic cover of New Order's "Bizarre Love Triangle" and originals like "Explode," "Pretty Friend," and "Lonely," Throughout, the Australians use subtlety and understatement to great advantage on this striking debut.
August 23, 2025
This album moves the ensemble even further afield from the conventional quartet; the players frequently double on folk instruments, and in one of the pieces they don't use their own instruments at all, but newly invented ones, created especially for this album. The selection of music is broadly eclectic and includes arrangements of a popular Arab song from 1940 and an ancient Christian hymn from Lebanon, a collaboration with a Palestinian electronic ensemble, and an original piece by a Serbian-American composer.
August 22, 2025
Lou Christie will always be remembered for his melodramatic, falsetto-driven hits like "Lightning Strikes" or "Two Faces Have I," but in 1971, he crafted this ambitious concept album that revealed how much more he could do. Paint America Love is a collection of songs reflecting dramatic political and social change in America, and along with his semi-operatic vocals, it features grand scale production and arrangements that make it an overlooked masterpiece of mature, arty pop.
August 21, 2025
Subtitled "The Quintessential Reinhardt & Grappelli," this is a perfect, concise encapsulation of the Quintette's classic recordings, featuring all of their best-known songs and a number of fascinating extras. Reinhardt certainly recorded more than a disc's worth of essential music, but for people looking for the key to the great gypsy's genius, this collection is unbeatable.
August 20, 2025
Scottish folk music icons the Tannahill Weavers begin their first anthology -- like one of their legendary live shows -- with the rousing "Geese in the Bog/The Jig of Slurs," and what follows are some of the most electrifying recordings of traditional music ever put to tape. Best of 1979-1989 compiles 12 stellar tracks culled from the group's first seven records and showcase its muscular piping and gorgeous balladry.
August 19, 2025
Metamodern Sounds in Country Music is wildly adventurous; it extends the musical promise outlaw music made to listeners over 40 years ago. Simpson is too honest, restless and dedicated to country music's illustrious legacy to simply frame it as a musical museum piece. As an artist of uncommon ability, he has learned from its hallowed lineage and storied past that in order for it to evolve, it cannot be reined in; it must be free to roam in order to create its future. His visionary work on this album opens the gate wide on that frontier.
August 18, 2025
50 years ago today, Hall & Oates released a self-titled album that fulfilled their early promise as pop-savvy blue-eyed soul craftsmen. A few of the tracks fall flat, but much of the album is lush and catchy, featuring ballads and midtempo numbers that are nearly as engaging as the duo's breakthrough single, "Sara Smile."
August 17, 2025
In his 2000 debut album, released 25 years ago today, Craig David merges smooth-soul crooning with a cascade of glistening keyboards, circling guitars, and sophisticated rhythms. Displaying a healthy marriage of current R&B vocal stylings and U.K. club/dance fused beats, David's music skillfully evades feeling robotic and cold, while still sounding pristine and immaculate.
August 16, 2025
Released 50 years ago today, Honey kept the band's commercial momentum going thanks to such hard-driving funk as "Love Rollercoaster" (a song that was sampled to death by rappers in the '80s and '90s and covered by the Red Hot Chili Peppers in 1996), "Fopp," and the playfully jazz-influenced hit "Sweet Sticky Thing."
August 15, 2025
Somehow, the slacker anthem "Teenage Dirtbag" has earwormed its way into the zeitgeist steadily over the past decade, despite its rather brief time on the Modern Rock Tracks chart in 2000. That single is the highlight of the album, which was released 25 years ago today, but stick around for their heartfelt cover of the Erasure hit "A Little Respect."
August 14, 2025
Revisiting Phantoms two decades after its original release, it's impressive how much these songs hold up. Merging an emo-punk pedigree with melodic rock heft, this is essential listening and one of the seminal releases from that era. Blast off with "In Too Far," "Breathless," "Over You," and "Permanent." Yearning and earnestness rarely rock this hard. Celebrating the 20th anniversary of this beloved debut, the Seattle emo-punks will return this September with a newly recorded duets version of the LP featuring a slew of special guests.
August 13, 2025
Various Artists
Of all the Fania compilations put out, and they number in the thousands, Fania Records 1964-1980: The Original Sound of Latin New York is the one to own. What's more, of all the compilations of late-20th-century Latin music put out, this is also the one to own.
![The Childhood of a Leader [Original Motion Picture Soundtrack]](https://fastly-s3.allmusic.com/release/mr0004590239/front/400/QwHbO6LPh07qfwat1wfgHJhUoDg0hsvx4F4sL4oO-nA=.jpg)
August 11, 2025
Heard in the context of director Brady Corbet's provocative, feature-length debut film, the original score for The Childhood of a Leader is so successful, it's inseparable from the images but adds brutality. Co-produced by Walker and Peter Walsh, the half-hour-long score was performed by a 62-piece orchestra of strings, winds, reeds, brass, and percussion, and conducted by longtime collaborator Mark Warman. It's a dark, turbulent, and welcome entry in Walker's catalog.
August 10, 2025
Kate & Anna McGarrigle's self-titled 1976 album was too austere for radio, and 1978's Pronto Monto was a flawed attempt to make them pop-friendly. With 1983's Love Over & Over, they hit a perfect middle ground – the production added just enough sweetening, the arrangements (including a guest spot from Mark Knopfler) lifted the melodies well, and their songs and harmonies will thaw the coldest heart. Also includes the best French-language Bob Seger cover of all time.
August 9, 2025
When Creed Taylor left Verve/MGM for his own label under the auspices of A&M, he quickly signed Antonio Carlos Jobim and they picked up right where they left off with this stunningly seductive record, possibly Jobim's best.
August 8, 2025
Don't expect 1000 Hurts (released 25 years ago today) to open your ears to anything new. Shellac's sound hasn't developed much. Are they yanking chains by periodically releasing selections from one extremely fruitful session? Only the band and a few tape operators know. No other band sounds like them, which legitimizes this status quo.
August 7, 2025
The first proper Split Enz album, released 50 years ago this summer, features the band at its eccentric best. Mental Notes is completely noncommercial art rock filled with ambitious arrangements and slightly disturbing themes courtesy of the Phil Judd and Tim Finn songwriting partnership.
August 6, 2025
The 1974 debut by Bennie Maupin remains one of the best examples of spiritual jazz, a deep and flowing network of melodies, textures, and instrumentation choices that are subtle but heavenly. Maupin leads an incredible band that includes Herbie Hancock, Buster Williams, Billy Hart, and others, but focuses on leaving ample space for each player to gently breathe his themes in, and exhale them as something different. The result is an ambient jazz environment that's easy and uncluttered but impossible to ignore.
August 5, 2025
The wall of fizzling shoegaze guitars, sparkling production, and post-punk-inspired vocals might sound like the Stills debut album is just another forgettable and derivative offering from the 2000s indie waste bin. And yet, over two decades since its release at the tail-end of the "The Band" boom, it holds up as a starry-eyed dose of nostalgia that sounds like a happier Interpol or Editors. At a swift ten tracks, it's over and ready to repeat before you know it, with highlights "Lola Stars and Stripes," "Gender Bombs," "Changes Are No Good," and "Still in Love Song" serving as the main standouts.
August 4, 2025
This album, released 50 years ago this month, will sketch a barren wasteland in the mind through the wispiness of the wind-like effects. Timewind serves as splendid mood music, and the ears are forever kept busy following Schulze's electronic wandering.
August 3, 2025
The bassist's guest-filled Blue Note debut reveals in a sophisticated, exceptionally ambitious manner the labyrinthine interconnectedness of earlier sounds and rhythms -- which emerged from bondage and horrific suffering -- to new ones that bring the world joy.
August 2, 2025
The Paper Chase's debut album, released 25 years ago today, clearly sets the band apart from other Texas punk bands. The Paper Chase blends layers of grit, found sounds, samples, and guitar chunk with delicate piano swells and cello melodies to create a far artier and jarring overall work.
August 1, 2025
Released a few years after Russell's death in 1992, Another Thought was one of the first of what would be many posthumous excavations of the multidimensional New York artist's extensive archive of unreleased tapes. It does a great job of showing just how wildly diverse Russell could be, zooming between avant-garde cello ambiance, would-be pop, and not-quite disco tracks while remaining cohesive by way of the artist's one-of-a-kind creative vision, the thread that connected it all.