Staff Picks for January 2023
January 31, 2023
Very few bands of the 1960s could fuse the scrappy energy of garage rock with the passion of heart of R&B as well as the Rascals, and fewer still could do so with the unshakable authority of vocalist Eddie Bigati. Time Peace – The Rascals' Greatest Hits is a superb collection of their best known songs, Italian Soul at its finest. Rest in peace, drummer Dino Danelli.
January 30, 2023
This 2-disc collection of demos, outtakes and radio appearances from the time around Gillian Welch's debut evokes the same rustic feel as her first album. Simple instrumentation and honest performances are as good as would be expected, and a couple of songs that never made the final cut are like finding an unexpected ten dollar bill in your pocket.
January 29, 2023
The ethereal pop beauty that would later come to define the Cocteau Twins first started surfacing on their 1983 sophomore album Head over Heels. While still heavy on gothic darkness and the occasional post-punk inclination, the duo got into softer, more lucid songwriting, blueprinting the next 30-odd years of dream pop with the song "Sugar Hiccup" alone.
January 28, 2023
The Toronto art-pop combo's third album is an inquisitive and intimate set, spontaneously recorded and arranged in just ten days. Quirky synths and errant saxophones decorate the landscape, but it's singer Robin Dann's warm musings that steal the show.
January 27, 2023
Naming your album The World's Best American Band is a pretty gutsy move, but White Reaper made a pretty convincing case in 2017. Swaggering chest-forward rock with a glint of self-awareness and some pretty tuneful melodies, singer Tony Esposito belts it out with sweaty bravado and a smile you can hear through the speakers.
January 26, 2023
Comforting like a blanket or a warm hug, this introspective collection of pop-polished guitar ditties finds the singer-songwriter in a familiar place of wide-eyed, lovelorn yearning. It's endlessly hummable and melodic, uncomplicated and relatable. He's done so much since "Barely Breathing" and this LP is a fine example of the songcraft and emotion that helped take him to wider successes on the Broadway stage.
January 25, 2023
In her third solo album, Michelle Zauner speaks on healing after grief in a way that feels both raw and original. Sweet melodies, reverberating 80's-esque synth, and pulsating percussion form her devastatingly beautiful indie-dream-pop universe. Zauner's affinity for lyricism is showcased in every song, as her soft, soothing voice gracefully delivers each cutting, intimate word.
January 24, 2023
Is this a country record? A bluegrass record? a heavy metal record? A folk record? Maybe. It is ultimately soothing and charming. Both of these artists could've gone over the top, but it all ends up casual and feeling like a rocking chair on a frayed rug over a wood floor.
January 23, 2023
The first of DeJohnette's Special Edition ensembles offered a sound that in many ways was revolutionary in modern contemporary and creative improvised music circa 1980. With firebrand alto saxophonist Arthur Blythe and enfant terrible tenor saxophonist and bass clarinetist David Murray bobbing, weaving, and counterpunching, DeJohnette and bassist Peter Warren could have easily stood back in deference to these heavyweight pugilists. The result was a vehicle by which DeJohnette could power the two with his two-fisted drumming and play piano or melodica when the mood suited him, while Warren could simply establish a foundation for their witty, oftentimes boisterous ideas.
January 22, 2023
In my imagination, Sam Beam moved down to a ramshackle old mansion in New Orleans, channeled some ghosts and then hired a ton of great musicians to record a new version of Astral Weeks. That's how evocative and stirring Ghost on Ghost feels.
January 21, 2023
Christy Moore, Andy Irvine, Liam O'Flynn, and Dónal Lunny's first effort under the Planxty banner bears the sepia-tone sonic hallmarks of the early-'70s UK scene. Their impeccable musicianship and tight, organic, and authentic renderings of tunes like "Raggle Taggle Gypsy," "The Blacksmith," and "Merrily Kissed the Quaker" set a highwater mark for traditional music going forward.
![Elvis Presley [1956]](https://fastly-s3.allmusic.com/release/mr0000440641/front/400/Kd8PAoXNP6eH16aQQYFmnZhUoDg0hsvx4F4sL4oO-nA=.jpg)
January 20, 2023
In 1956, America was still making up its mind about whether Elvis Presley was a threat to American morality, a quirk of teenage overenthusiasm, or the future of pop music when RCA Victor released his debut album. Decades later, it's still dazzling – exciting, fun, a knowledgeable mash-up of Black and white musical styles, all filtered through the mind, heart, and voice of a young man thrilled by the possibilities of his talent.
January 19, 2023
Right before he became Experienced, Jimi Hendrix sat in as the guitarist on these really hot R&B sessions with Curtis Knight and the Squires. These recordings have been misleadingly re-packaged as a Jimi Hendrix album over the years, but thinking of it as an R&B combo with a particularly adventurous lead guitarist makes for a terrific listen. The leadoff track "How Would You Feel" is a pretty shameless ripoff of the melody of "Like a Rolling Stone" but it still cooks and kicks off a fun 50 minutes of greasy soul.
January 18, 2023
On his second post-Gong solo album, the guitarist reinterprets well-known tunes by Donovan and George Harrison, amid his own memorable compositions. His unique riffing and speedy solos reflect Hendrix, but go further afield compositionally via various scales learned from other cultures. Todd Rundgren's engineering and production genius with his Utopians guesting, and Don Cherry on brass and Tibetan trumpet, and a 15th century Hurdy Gurdy and you have an eclectic romp The 12-minute "Lunar Musick Suite" is the set’s high point, while "Om Nama Shivaya" among Hillage's most blissed-out trance rock jams.
January 17, 2023
In 1966, a budget label Tifton obtained the rights to make a novelty album of tracks for Batman and Robin. While this album came out around the same time as the popular Batman TV series, none of the tracks on the LP actually appeared on the show and was produced as a cash grab. Credited to "The Sensational Guitars of Dan and Dale," there is no Dan or Dale, and is actually the Blues Project with Sun Ra and members of his Arkestra hired as studio musicians. When hired, the band did not know it was a Batman tie-in. While Sun Ra was involved, most tracks are less far out and would fit in best in a 1960's cartoon chase montage.
January 16, 2023
Released a decade ago and reissued in 2022, the debut album from The Staves showcases the harmonies of three sisters, layering voices over beds of indie-folk acoustic instrumentation and subtle compositions. Insisting but never urgent, the songs are truly lovely and the performances are breathtaking.
January 15, 2023
The follow-up to Sonny Sharrock's entirely solo comeback album, Guitar, Seize the Rainbow puts the guitarist at the helm of a rock-styled power trio featuring bassist Melvin Gibbs and Abe Speller and Pheeroan akLaff on drums (producer Bill Laswell also plays bass on one cut). The overall sound of the album is surprisingly straightforward, heavy metal-tinged jazz-rock, though the caliber and taste of the musicians makes it something far more than what rock guitar virtuosos of the period were recording.
January 14, 2023
Presented as a four-part suite of disparate and occasionally colliding elements, Kaddish is an impressive, if somewhat oblique, album meshing contemporary experimental and rock elements with traditional Jewish prayers and Eastern European melodies. The blend of (for instance) heavy metal/hard rock guitar with rabbinical prayer, or klezmer fiddling with neo-industrial crunch, is not for everyone. Adventurous listeners will find much to chew on for repeated listenings, however, in a work that reflects the horrors and wounds of the Holocaust with subtle (and largely wordless) complexity.
January 13, 2023
Japanese legends Les Rallizes Dénudés notoriously never issued any official studio material, and the majority of the releases bearing their name are live bootlegs. '77 Live is one of their few authorized albums, and it's a document of their scorching live energy, with harsh sheets of guitar noise over grooves that stretch up to 20 minutes. Along with a few other recordings like the earlier, comparatively less intense Oz Tapes, this album was remastered and is now on streaming services.
January 12, 2023
This 2022 alt-indie album utilizes a prominent relaxed bass for the movement of the songs, and plaintive vocals describing the chaos of reality. They explore the physical and emotional sides of mundane life with equal scrutiny, but the emotion of the song seems subdued and complacent.
January 11, 2023
Somewhere in between the Justified Ancients of Mu Mu and Chumbawamba, but more absurd and tasteless, Australian dance-pop pranksters TISM embraced rave culture in the mid-'90s and unexpectedly hit the top ten with their gold-selling third album. The proto-electroclash "(He'll Never Be An) Ol' Man River" was the breakthrough hit, but the best song is "Garbage", a thrashing breakbeat techno track with lyrics condemning classic rock and the endless recycling of nostalgia. A collection of the band's singles recently appeared on Negativland's Seeland label, and the group have started performing for the first time in decades.
![Flash Gordon [Original Motion Picture Soundtrack]](https://fastly-s3.allmusic.com/release/mr0001055433/front/400/dnR0IetZrGR3Z3zcVNC7aB_TZlp6n_cq-Emr2zx15tU=.jpg)
January 10, 2023
Recorded alongside and released the same year as 1980's The Game, Queen's soundtrack to Dino DeLaurentis' sci-fi epic Flash Gordon was the highlight of the film. Although best known for its classic title song, it was a chance for the already ambitious group to stretch out instrumentally and they did so with plenty of gusto and imagination.
January 9, 2023
With short punchy songs, and a rebellious message referenced throughout, Fresh is a modernized punk album mixed with the persistent internal dread of youth. The explicit callousness of the lyrics and the familiarity of the pop-punky melodies makes the album feel both new and like something you could have grown up listening to.
![The Thin Blue Line [Original Soundtrack]](https://fastly-s3.allmusic.com/release/mr0001183558/front/400/0RhPjOX6W79WlWD22DwUbg4Q1ghY8VaPylnm7PwcKNY=.jpg)
January 8, 2023
The soundtrack to this Errol Morris documentary emphasizes story over music; the interviews which make up the majority of the film -- a crusading effort which led to the release of its subject, Randall Adams, from a Texas prison -- are presented on record as they were on screen, with Glass' chamber orchestra music hovering in the background. The result is a soundtrack which comes remarkably close to capturing the power of its source film. Even without the moving images, this is a chilling document.
January 7, 2023
The second album from producer/songwriter Joe Moore and cherubic-voiced singer Maddie Dobie revisits the dramatic Baroque pop influences of their debut but with an even more melancholy bearing. Song titles like "When You Look at Her" and "Fools Fall in Love" accurately foreshadow a collection of brokenhearted indie pop tunes that should delight the Bacharach set. The Cotswold Voices choir guests on select tracks.
January 6, 2023
When Chris Bell left Big Star after their 1972 debut, he took with him a particular kind of aching, conflicted beauty that thrives throughout I Am the Cosmos. Bell labored long over these songs, creating both tense power pop and heart-crushing balladry, but the music would remain unreleased until years after his 1978 death, surfacing in the early '90s when the world had finally caught up with Big Star's--- and Bell's--- peculiar genius.
January 5, 2023
Riding a "hidden" drone that hums through the entirety of the album, this gem from the French singer/songwriter is a quirky, engaging experience for fans of outside-the-box creativity from an artist that sounds like she was tinkering in a lab. Some songs feel tribal ("Assise"), while others comfort like a jazz lounge ("Baby carni bird"). "Ta douleur" is the big single, but "Au port" is the thrilling showstopper that demands immediate attention.
January 4, 2023
On the follow-up to his Grammy-nominated debut, jazz singer Kurt Elling applied his wild vocalese and lyrical inventions to a set of originals and quirky readings of classic material ranging from Eden Ahbez's haunting "Nature Boy" to Dexter Gordon's "Tanya Jean."
January 3, 2023
This deceptively sweet album features dreamy harps and romantic lyrics that get corrupted by metal riffs and murderous subject matter. The entire album oscillates between a feminine cutesy tone and an oppressively heavy alternative mode. It feels sort of like two very different people decided to Frankenstein their interests together, and it created this monster barbie album.
January 2, 2023
As one of alternative rock's most sought-after collaborators -- having Sinéad on even one track would garner enough press to render a release noteworthy -- O'Connor racked up enough "guest vocalist" credits during the late '80s/early '90s to warrant two compilations. All in all, Collaborations is as essential a piece of O'Connor's history as anything in her catalog.
January 1, 2023
When Oregon’s Ralph Towner released Solstice, his third solo album on the ECM label, it took the brilliant guitarist's caché to a much higher level, especially as a composer. With the otherworldly curved soprano sax and flute playing of Jan Garbarek, the precise drumming of Jon Christensen, and unique bass sounds of Eberhard Weber, the music on this album lifted the ECM/Euro-styled jazz and improvised music to a new realm of pure expressionism. Simply put -- this music is stunningly beautiful.