Staff Picks for May 2012
May 31, 2012
‘80s L.A. hair metal at its most glammed-out. Trashy frontman with a huge range? Check. Bulky drummer with mascara? Check. Dueling guitarists with cool last names? Check. Skip past the obvious smash “Round and Round,” and check out “Back for More,” “The Morning After,” and “Scene of the Crime.”
May 30, 2012
Carrying even fewer body-moving rhythms than 2010's Splazsh, this completely abstract, mostly ambient set -- maverick Darren Cunningham's third album as Actress -- is full of superbly creative, evocative, and mind-altering material. It's more likely to appeal to dancefloor-allergic space cadets who lean on Oneohtrix Point Never and Autechre.
May 29, 2012
Various Artists
Some of the best and brightest boogaloo you've never heard, this collection of streetwise R&B and Latin nuggets from the '60s and '70s is just the thing to get summer kicked off right.
May 28, 2012
Leading early music conductor Masaaki Suzuki and his Bach Collegium Japan present soothing selections by Bach to inspire and comfort the victims of the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster at Fukushima in March 2011. Royalties from this compilation of arias, organ chorales, and sinfonias will go to Tohoku HELP.
May 27, 2012
With a kinetic mix of Baltimore club, dance-pop, and hip-hop, singer Rye Rye finally makes her dancefloor-melting debut with Go! Pop! Bang!
May 26, 2012
The (hipper than you’d expect) debut album from 2011 American Idol finalist Haley Reinhart, Listen Up! is a catchy retro-pop soul album that wraps Reinhart’s sassy, sexy persona and resonant, gutsy vocal style in a mix of Motown, disco, and even some ‘90s R&B-inflected productions.
May 25, 2012
Elemental Journey is Landreth's 11th solo album, and it's his first all-instrumental outing, and folks, this isn't a blues album. It's a wonderfully bright, woven mesh of blues, strings, rock, zydeco, country, reggae, and jazz that shifts and turns and builds within each track, and all of it fits seamlessly together like a huge musical quilt made for guitar heaven.
May 24, 2012
There have been plenty of "old-school" albums lately, but rather than just focus on yesterday, Killer Mike's R.A.P. Music leads by example, bringing that golden-age spirit into 2012 while looking toward the future. This vital slab was released by Adult Swim's Williams Street label and produced by El-P, who just put out his own killer album, Cancer4Cure.
May 23, 2012
On his second album under his given name, the often inscrutable Callahan is simultaneously at his most accessible and darkest since (Smog)'s Supper six years before, evoking the vibe of '70s era Jackson Browne reinterpreted through his poetic, outsider-like lens.
May 22, 2012
Various Artists
This Aids fundraiser comp features deep cuts by a alternative radio's finest and the songs by Smashing Pumpkins and Pavement were good enough to be A-Sides, but of course, the best moment came in Nirvana's "Verse Chorus Verse," which, in true '90s slacker fashion, went unmentioned in the tracklisting.
May 21, 2012
Eric Bibb's version of the blues is calm, wise, hushed, and elegant, as much or more about redemption as it is about despair, and with Deeper in the Well, he delivers one of his best albums.
May 20, 2012
You've probably heard his big hit “Pass the Tu-Sheng-Peng” but VP's excellent Most Wanted set goes well beyond that weed anthem. Here, tracks like “Sara” and “Worries in the Dance” show why the underappreciated Frankie Paul was once considered Dennis Brown’s closest competition.
May 19, 2012
The dark debut from the '80s L.A. supergroup, which featured members of the Blasters and X, wrangled together by punk poet (and Slash journalist) Chris D.
May 18, 2012
Responding to the commercial success of Wake Up!, poppy shoegazers the Boo Radleys revisited their experimentation-minded roots and challenged newcomer fans with C'mon Kids, sandwiching their hooks between walls of murky guitar and tape effects.
May 17, 2012
An overload of prime British punk courtesy of the Skids, including soaring anthemia akin to their biggest hit, "Into the Valley."
May 16, 2012
An absolutely electric excursion in the realm of spiritual free jazz from 1969, Howard leads a larger band (including Arthur Doyle, Earl Cross and other experimental luminaries) through a blissfully overdriven celebration. The album goes full bore for almost it's entire duration, landing somewhere between Coltrane's latter-day searches for enlightenment and Sun Ra's interstellar space.
May 15, 2012
With its amazing blend of futuristic beats and nostalgic samples, Geogaddi is one of those rare electronic albums that still feels completely fresh, even a dozen years after its release. Chillwave's got nothing on "Julie and Candy."
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May 14, 2012
Lars Hollmer’s son Gabriel compiled 26 tracks from his father’s music archive; the DVD features a stellar live set from the Gouveia Art Rock Festival.
May 13, 2012
Torche unleash their inner GBV on Harmonicraft, an album that finds the band refining their upbeat, doom-pop sound even further.
May 12, 2012
Collecting his early King Records sides and his later Starday Records sides, this set is easily the best Cowboy Copas introduction out there.
May 10, 2012
An unpredictable but lovely mix of folk, country and psychedelic rock, this collaboration between Will Oldham and the Scottish group Trembling Bells shows off the strong points of everyone involved, to breathtaking and sometimes heartbreaking effect.
May 9, 2012
Too often eclipsed by the formidable shadows of Waylon and Willie, Tompall Glaser helped to define outlaw country in the 1960's and 70's, and this fine compilation from Collector's Choice offers up twenty four reasons why.
May 8, 2012
This double disc set focuses on Ike Turner’s crucial early R&B and jump blues sides. Recorded for Sun, King, Chess and other independent regional labels, these sessions find Ike not only providing guitar, piano and vocals, but producing and arranging as well; the guy could do it all!
May 7, 2012
Various Artists
The soundtrack to the HBO original series' first two seasons is a serious collection of musical heavy hitters that should find an easy place on the shelf of any music lover.
May 4, 2012
Beastie Boy Adam Yauch has just passed from cancer at the age of 47, leaving behind a legacy in popular music that few can touch. Their 1986 debut Licensed To Ill was the first hip-hop album to the top the Billboard charts and while the Beasties worked overtime to distance themselves from its loutishness the album's furious, funny fusion of rap and metal rap retains its power all these years later.
May 3, 2012
Setting up shop in LA, the Beastie Boys joined forces with the Dust Brothers and created the wondrous Paul's Boutique, an album that could only have been made at the tail-end of the '80s when sampling had yet to be reigned in by lawsuits and regulations. Allusions, references, samples and jokes are woven into dense collages that are simultaneously nostalgic and futuristic and still sound visionary to this day.
May 2, 2012
Released near the peak of the Beastie Boys' '90s popularity, Hello Nasty may be that album that captures their personality best. It teems with their love of old-school hip-hop and '70s junk culture, flirts with punk and soul-jazz and has Adam Yauch's Buddhism threaded throughout.
May 1, 2012
On those days when the Cocteau Twins are too punk for you and Sigur Ros aren't quite lush enough, you might need the twinkling forest faerie dub of Enya to help you over the rough spots. This is her masterpiece and "Orinoco Flow" is her "Louie Louie".