Staff Picks for March 2014
March 31, 2014
A delightfully blasphemous slab of note-perfect death metal, supergroup Bloodbath hit its second back-to-back home run with 'Nightmares Made Flesh' in 2005. Peter Tägtgren took over for Mikael Åkerfeldt on vocals and milked hyper-brutal songs like "Soul Evisceration" and "Cancer of the Soul" for every ounce of guttural, bone-crushing glee he possibly could. The pummeling bridge on "Bastard Son of God" is death metal encapsulated in one direct burst.
March 30, 2014
Cocoa Tea is a reggae singer who kept his Lovers Rock-styled, cool delivery even as the kinetic sound of dancehall took over reggae. 'Rocking Dolly' is prime, filler-free example. The beloved title track and "I Lost My Sonia" are both reggae standards, but my favorite is "Can't Stop Cocoa Tea" a swagger track of the highest order.
March 29, 2014
While the For Carnation doesn't get as much recognition as Brian McMahan's previous band Slint, the group's subtlety is just as impressive as the more explosive dynamics McMahan explored earlier. The band's second, self-titled album is a remarkable study in intimate tension and dread.
March 28, 2014
The band's fourth album built on the sophisticated songwriting and arranging that appeared on 1971's Look at Yourself to create a blueprint for progressive sword and sorcery metal to come. Whether it's in short cranking rock tunes ("Easy Livin'"), mid-length anthems ("Circle Of Hands"), or sprawling labyrinthine epics ("Paradise/The Spell"), 'Demons and Wizards' weds intricate, ever-changing melodies, thudding heaviness and nearly operatic theatricality.
March 27, 2014
Ever-mellow New Jeresey indie rockers Real Estate took a turn toward more mature songwriting on their third album, trading in listless post-college nostalgia for darker undertones. Instead of a dour break up album, 'Atlas' remains easygoing and breezy, but more introspective than the band ever sounded before.
March 26, 2014
The multifaceted Dutch musician is probably best known as a fiery Zappa-esque electric guitarist and ringleader of jazz-rock-blues-funk-and-more ensembles de Brokken (the Lumps) and de Grote Brokken (the Big Lumps), but life changes brought out her quieter, contemplative side on this 2013 disc, a masterful display of solo improvisational focus approached utterly without preconceptions.
March 25, 2014
Boasting a handful of CVB classics like the tuneful and cryptic "Eye of Fatima, Pt.1," a meaty, Bayou-blasted, jazz funeral-inspired reading of oft-covered spiritual "Oh Death," and a tart, twisty and tragic toast to Patty Hearst ("Tania"), the band's first major label outing adds depth and polish to their signature ska-pop-meets nervy college rock sound without neutering it in the process.
March 24, 2014
Think Tom Waits getting drunk with the Tennessee Two while playing a honky tonk in Greece, or something like that. 'Doubled Exposure,' recorded by Jason Meagher at Black Dirt Studios in upstate New York, has a rich, full, warm, and still live-sounding and edgy wash of grit all over it, and it is D. Charles Speer's most accessible album yet, if accessible means one can't help being kind of fascinated by it. Speer and the Helix mix blues riffs with country two-step boogie shuffles, tinges of discordant jazz, and mock-mythic Greek drones into a clanging stew that somehow remains honky tonk even as it veers off into space.
March 23, 2014
Recorded in 1992, this ECM date features the composer in a completely solo setting, playing everything from trumpet and flugelhorn, to harmonica, bamboo flute, koto, mbira, maracas and other percussion instruments. Over 13 tunes, he weaves an intoxicating spell from folk, blues, jazz and improvised music. It is at once deep and intimate, yet charming and accessible. Here musical sophistication is expressed directly with a storyteller's desire to enchant.
March 22, 2014
For me at least, this is the magical pivot point for Al Stewart - the moment where he eased himself away from po-faced folkie to a precious, high class phenomenon, dedicated to exquisite surfaces and elegant ennui. It opens with "You Don't Even Know Me," as good a song as he ever wrote, then delves into similarly high-minded baroque pop where the pretension is an asset, not a hindrance. He made better albums - 'Year Of The Cat' and 'Time Passages' are celebrated for a reason--but the gangly nature of 'Orange' keeps calling me back.
March 21, 2014
While all of St. Vincent's albums benefit from Annie Clark's whip-smart lyrics, it was with 'Actor' that she set herself apart from the singer-songwriter pack. Fantastical arrangements contrast and complement Clark's archly sweet vocals, setting the stage for the direction she took on 'Strange Mercy' and 'St. Vincent.'
March 20, 2014
The title suite of this 2013 electric chamber jazz outing is derived from the names of Portland, Oregon's ten sister cities worldwide - and while you might expect a globe-spanning musical travelogue, the album still manages to find unexpected territories to explore. Most of all, this Portland quintet and guests provide a fine example of the vibrancy of their city's creative jazz scene.
March 19, 2014
'Lessons,' Ha Ha Tonka's fourth album, was inspired by illustrator and children's book author Maurice Sendak's musings on creativity, and if that sounds like trouble, well, it isn't, because again, it's a thematically balanced set that touches on issues of aging, not reaching goals, damaged dreams, and the hope of rewriting one's life, all done with bright, shifting melodies, gorgeous four-part harmonies, and the kind of confidence that can only come from a band that knows exactly what it wants to do and isn't afraid to take chances to get there.
March 18, 2014
Recorded at the turn of the century, the fourth album from Detroit psychedelic bubblegum song machine Matthew Smith finds he and his group at a melodic high point. Some of the band's best songs can be found on this collection of short, scrappy pop tracks with an acid-burned edge.
March 17, 2014
Ten songs from 1966 - two years before his debut - show Townes Van Zandt already in full flight, deftly finger-picking his way through "Gypsy Friday," uncharacteristically rocking out with a full band on "Black Widow Blues," and already pondering his mortality on the wrenching "Black Crow Blues." This compilation was repressed on vinyl by Fat Possum in 2010 and is now easy to find, and adds 10 very worthy songs to Van Zandt's already deep library.
March 16, 2014
Nearly five years after its release, Cold Cave's debut album feels like a blueprint for the swelling ranks of dark electronic pop acts that followed - and it's still one of that scene's most affecting statements of yearning and isolation.
March 15, 2014
An album that's truly worthy of the oft-cited/lazily applied "tone poem" tag, 1997's 'Bad Timing' managed to find the sweet/soft spot between avant-garde pretense (each of the four long tracks is called "untitled") and breezy, homespun mellifluousness. Throughout it all, O'Rourke's deft guitar playing evokes both the sun-soaked ambience and underlying darkness of the late John Fahey.
![Eric Carmen [1984]](https://fastly-s3.allmusic.com/release/mr0000760706/front/400/qSCgAcAaKytYEuSWgnoVbR_TZlp6n_cq-Emr2zx15tU=.jpg)
March 14, 2014
Legacy has a terrific Eric Carmen anthology out this month - it's called 'Essential' and it has almost all his great songs, but the absence of his 1985 single "I Want To Hear It From Your Lips" is notable. Carmen wasn't exactly at a high point in the mid-'80s - he was halfway between "All By Myself" and his 'Dirty Dancing' comeback - but "I Want To Hear It From Your Lips" is one of his great singles, a high water mark of '80s synth and melodies, and the rest of the accompanying eponymous 1984 album is also terrific: highly polished and irresistible.
March 13, 2014
The legendary Chicago blues guitarist is in relaxed but incisive form on this live date, recorded at a Milwaukee coffeehouse in 1968. Of the great blues players of the day, Magic Sam was one of the few with a truly playful side, and there's a genuine sense of fun as he dazzles with his fast picking, string bends, and room-filling tone. Not Magic Sam's defining moment, but sure proof this man didn't have many nights where he didn't hit the bullseye.
March 12, 2014
This debut album finds Leyla McCalla featuring her cello-led arrangements of various Langston Hughes poems, along with striking personal versions of a couple of traditional Haitian folk songs. If this sounds like things here will be a little stiff and academic, well, they're not, as McCalla makes the Hughes lyrics her own, and the sparse, haunting feel of these tracks is timeless, belonging to this century but feeling like they could easily have come from the century before.
March 11, 2014
Any album beginning with a song called "Slut Machine" is not going to win any awards for subtlety, but that's what Monster Magnet does best. 'Monolithic Baby!' came two albums after the band's commercial breakthrough and found them slipping farther away from the American airwaves, but it was that country's loss, as riff-fests like "Supercruel," "Radiation Day" and "Master of Light" are among the band's most exuberant and exhilarating.
March 10, 2014
Portishead and Massive Attack are the names most remembered from the genre they call "trip-hop", but DJ Cam's name should be household, and 'Mad Blunted Jazz' is the proof. This U.S. two-fer combines the U.K. releases 'Underground Vibes' and 'Underground Live' for an epic jazz-meets-hip-hop journey.
March 9, 2014
This is a marvelous debut album, a revelation, even, with striking electric stomps like "Somebody Touched Me," which sounds a bit like a raw garage band doing a slowed-down gospel version of Chuck Berry, and delicately balanced acoustic numbers like "Mother Loves Her Children" and "The Lord Will Make a Way" showing that Leo Welch has found a way to make the blues and gospel speak together in one voice.
March 8, 2014
Terry Hall's first solo album is nothing like anything he'd done before. It's a big, guitar rock album that's equal parts Brit Pop hookiness and Prefab Sprout trickiness with Hall's most tuneful vocals yet. It's very much of it's time, but it's also a very pleasant surprise from a guy who never liked to do the same thing twice.
March 7, 2014
Various Artists
A great look at the California punk scene circa the late '70s, compiled by Jon Savage of England's Dreaming fame and going much deeper than the usual X / Dead Kennedys / Germs sort of comp.
March 6, 2014
Often derided, admittedly uneven, but undeniably fun, Queen's 1982 foray into synthy disco split fan opinion. That said, it played well next to Michael Jackson's 'Thriller,' and allowed Freddie Mercury to more demonstratively embrace his love of club culture; all of which surely provided a post-Wham! road map for George Michael.
March 5, 2014
The long-awaited Small Faces box set is here but that's for the collectors (only 3000 copies were made, after all). Everybody else should turn to this double-disc collection of their Immediate recordings, featuring the hit "Itchycoo Park" and the song I currently can't stop playing, the shaggy, shambolic "The Universal."
March 4, 2014
While some bands have a hard time making a 10 track album without any filler, They Might Be Giants defy the odds on Flood, one of the handful of albums that I can listen to cover to cover without feeling the need to skip a track. Try this one on for size and treat yourself to 19 tracks of irreverent pop perfection, because you're worth it.
March 3, 2014
When Bark Psychosis' debut full-length was released, in February 1994, it sounded just like the type of album -- an unassuming masterstroke of quiet, occasionally stormy intensity -- that a small cult would term a classic. The passing of two decades has not softened its impact.
March 2, 2014
On their debut, the Raincoats introduced a version of punk that was equally avant-garde and approachable. Deftly weaving folk, free jazz and a transgressive cover of the Kinks' "Lola" into their music, the band sounds bold, vulnerable, funny or intimidating at a moment's notice -- and sometimes all of those things at once.
March 1, 2014
On her seventh solo full-length, indie songwriting luminary Tara Jane O'Neil gets into her most ethereal work to date, emerging from long stretches of ambient pop into the reflective folk-blues guitar style and whisper-thin vocals that defined her earlier catalog.