Staff Picks for May 2016
May 31, 2016
The second EP from the British rock quintet saw them taking steps away from their Arctic Monkeys influence, adding more synths to their songs, already full of infectiously melodic hooks. A short four-songs long, Charlemagne has synth-rock, some funk, full-on psych, and a touching ballad. Heavily buzzed, the group will release their debut LP later in 2016, giving listeners a few months to get onboard.
May 30, 2016
As the reluctant queen of rocksteady, Phyllis Dillon kept one foot in reality as she would perform with reggae superstars in Jamaica while taking time off from her bank job in New York City. Love is All I Had collects the majority of her output for labels such as Trojan and Treasure Isle, including soulful originals such as "Don't Stay Away," "Love Is All I Had," and a worthy interpretation of The Grass Roots' "Midnight Confessions."
May 29, 2016
Offering sweet synth pop topped by Susan Ottaviano's teasy, deadpan vocal delivery, this 1986 debut is most notable for its multitude of memorable tunes. John Hughes was sleeping on "You Make Me Feel So Good," which conjures images of a dancing Molly Ringwald despite never having appeared on a soundtrack.
May 28, 2016
After several years of often-confusing, frequently-bloated concept albums, prog-rock institution Yes threw in the towel in 1980. Three years later, a newly-retooled lineup pulled off a major reinvention under the guidance of producer and former member Trevor Horn. 90125 vaulted Yes into the 80's with a vivid pop-oriented sound and a #1 single in "Owner of a Lonely Heart."
May 27, 2016
Spring-into-summer is always a good time of year to revisit the His Name is Alive catalog. This was a limited collection of alternate takes and unreleased material, and it found the Michigan collective at their most dreamy and collage-like. Delayed drum machines, drifting guitars, angelic vocals, and even some reversed Public Enemy samples all figure into the mix. Hard to find, even in its more recent vinyl issue, but entirely worth the search.
May 26, 2016
This 2004 date on Narada Jazz displays the artist's trademark, smooth soul vocals amid lush, emotionally resonant songs. Highlights include the spiritually instructive "The Message" the uplifting "Let Somebody Know," the MPB-tinged "Make You Smile," and the kalimba-driven title track featuring Patti Austin as a guest vocalist.
May 25, 2016
1982's Vs. was the only full-length studio album Mission of Burma released during their original 1979-1983 run, but it was more than enough to cement their legend as one of the first great bands of indie rock. The blend of Roger Miller's guitar, Clint Conley's bass, and Peter Prescott's drumming was at once artful and ferocious, reinforced by the aural collage of Martin Swope's effects and tape loops, and the songs still sound smart, thoughtful, and challenging in the 21st Century.
May 24, 2016
Swedish Italo-disco duo Sally Shapiro recently announced that they have ceased making music together, ending a decade-long partnership which created some of the absolute best music of the time period. Their 2006 debut Disco Romance was an instant classic, taking inspiration from '80s dance but expressing feelings which have no time or place. Songs like "I'll Be By Your Side," "Find My Soul," and "He Keeps Me Alive" (on the 2007 reissue) remain poignant, and will always be there when you need to revisit them.
May 23, 2016
The Atlanta-based aggro-industrial filth-monger's throbbing 2010 release is a propulsive stomper, easily the band's most accessible LP. Take the darkest, most depraved energy from NIN, 3Teeth, and Rammstein and you've got a good idea of where this is headed. Standout track "Never Surrender" hypnotizes before the cuddly "F*ckmachine" does its job. This is EBM with muscle and melodic hooks to spare. The band's newest album is set to drop in June.
May 22, 2016
The third Dandy Warhols album presents a bakers' dozen of their most focused and cohesive songs. Where their earlier albums were eclectic to the point of being scattershot, this release manages to limit the band's style-switching to dreamy, sweeping epics like "Godless" and "Nietzsche," sussed, sleazy power pop like "Horse Pills" and "Cool Scene," and country and gospel ventures like "Country Leaver" and "The Gospel.
May 21, 2016
Clocking in at just over 30 minutes, Sentenced to Life feels like an exclamation point studded with framing nails. Steeped in the punishing gloom of early black metal, but fueled by the muscular attack of thrash and punk, what Seattle's Black Breath lacks in the hooks department, it more than makes up for in sheer, unfiltered menace.
May 20, 2016
The biggest selling album of Barbra Streisand's career is also one of her least characteristic. The album was written and produced by Barry Gibb in association with his brothers and the producers of the Bee Gees, and in essence it sounds like a post-Saturday Night Fever Bee Gees album with vocals by Streisand.
May 19, 2016
Partners in Crime finds Holmes more focused with pop savvy and a great batch of songs. The effort's biggest hit, the ingratiating "Escape" (The Pina Colada Song)," though skilled, is cutesy enough to make some people's eyes roll. Despite the nature of that track, Holmes was also willing to tackle more interesting issues. With the slightly disco-fied title track, he deftly examines the male/female dynamic as business deal.
May 18, 2016
The third LP from the Australian post-hardcore band finds them in a position similar to the big-break moments of Paramore, Bring Me The Horizon, PVRIS, and Linkin Park. Shedding the generic genre sounds that marked their first two outings, they shoot for the stars with tight production, new sounds, and killer hooks. Fans of those aforementioned bands won't be disappointed by the start-to-finish collection of gems like "New Romantics," "Division Symbols," and "Motion Sickness."
May 17, 2016
The band's Chicks on Speed debut doesn't just go pop -- it explodes with songs so bright, so immediate, and so weird that they're virtually fluorescent. This Day-Glo immediacy is so intensely cheery, it often ends up sounding more deranged than some of DAT Politics' earlier, darker material. Wow Twist's highly concentrated cuteness and mischief might rub more serious-minded electronic music fans the wrong way, but it serves as a welcome reminder that not all forward-thinking music has to be somber.
![The Descendants [Original Soundtrack]](https://fastly-s3.allmusic.com/release/mr0003484159/front/400/CGnnZknphowIpSWZBj1k2w4Q1ghY8VaPylnm7PwcKNY=.jpg)
May 16, 2016
Original Soundtrack
A luau ready collection of classic Hawaiian slack key guitar that just happens to serve as the audio companion to Alexander Payne's 2011 film of the same name, The Descendants is a quiet gem of a record. It's a soundtrack that feels loved, much like the Italian folk/Louis Prima-heavy soundtrack to Stanley Tucci and Campbell Scott's 1996 period comedy-drama Big Night, and as an introduction to traditional Hawaiian music, it's almost indispensable.
May 15, 2016
The first and only studio album from Bob Dylan's brief fling with Asylum Records, 1974's Planet Waves found him teaming up with the Band again. The songs are far more straightforward than his Basement Tapes material, but the performances, recorded live over the space of three days, captured a similarly loose but incisive vibe. And the album included several overlooked gems, including "Going, Going, Gone" and "Tough Mama," as well as the hardy perennial "Forever Young."
May 14, 2016
After Cymone left the Prince camp in 1981, he signed to Columbia and delivered this, his first of three multi-dimensional albums for the label. An idiosyncratic fusion of funk and new wave with sly pop hooks, it's led by the freakazoid quasi-anthem title song, which debuted on the Black Singles chart the same week as the Time's "777-9311."
May 13, 2016
Hokey Pokey has something that sets it apart from most of Richard & Linda Thompson's albums -- a sense of fun. Admittedly, "I'll Regret It All In The Morning" is a harrowing depiction of a marriage beyond repair, and "Old Man Inside A Young Man" is full of sorrow. But "Smiffy's Glass Eye" and the title tune are laugh-out-loud funny, a rare quality in the R&L catalog, and "Georgie on a Spree" and "Mole in a Hole" are witty and smart. And the songwriting, guitar work, and harmonies are, as you'd expect, marvelous.
May 12, 2016
If not their most celebrated album, still full of dance-rock greatness from the slinky "To Look at You" to the racing "Black and White," it's sometimes hard to believe that one album was bookended by the band's international breakthrough hit "The One Thing" and even better "Don't Change." Get ready to dance, press play, and pour one out again for Michael Hutchence.
May 11, 2016
Giddy Motors' relentless second album arrived in 2006, when most indie rock was a lot more docile. Indeed, the band's smart, snarling anger had more in common with the heydays of Touch & Go and Amphetamine Reptile in the late '80s and early '90s. Do Easy's unapologetic rawness -- its sessions were initially intended as demo recordings -- makes its rejection of complacency all the more potent.
May 10, 2016
The Toronto chamber pop outfit's infectious second outing for Rough Trade builds on their melodic wall of sound, championing gay culture in a way no other band does. It's brazen, funny, heartfelt, puzzling, and irresistible.
May 9, 2016
Of all the recordings in his catalogue, none reflects the collision of street funk, jazz and rock like this one. Miles and his band employed an developed an instinctive angular, darkly hued musical language hewn from mysterious shard-like vamps, squiggly keyboards and beats. It flipped the bird at jazz audiences and influenced everyone from P-Funk to Prince.
May 8, 2016
Released at the bitter end of The Artist's public feud with Warner Bros.,1996's Chaos & Disorder was treated like a contractual obligation throw-away, and between the title and the heart in a toilet bowl on the back cover, no one had any reason to expect much from it. But give it a listen and surprise! Most of the album is taut, funky, and fun, with Prince playing lots of guitar and sounding like he's having a grand time. Rather than a kiss off, Chaos & Disorder is a blowout going away party and well worth a listen.
May 7, 2016
By the time of Do It!'s release in 2006, Clinic was no longer a buzz band, but their mix of cryptically dour art-punk, psych, soul and funk was just as distinctive as ever. Boasting songs full of rapid mood swings and blanketed in thick distortion, this album finds the band sounding almost happy to be rid of the hype and able to innovate within their self-imposed limitations undisturbed.
May 6, 2016
The second collaboration between the "Silver Fox" and producer Billy Sherrill made use of all of his gifts. With material ranges from barroom blues, soul, country, gospel and jazz. Arrangements changed from cut to cut, and the singer and pianist not only adapted, but projected his own image on to the proceedings. Amazing.
May 5, 2016
At a time when grunge-sloppiness was ruling rockdom, singer/guitarist Chris Goss enlisted legendary Cream drummer Ginger Baker into his tight-knit power trio to make beguiling and wilfully crafty rock album that was unlike anything else in the early-90's.
May 4, 2016
The White Stripes sold a lot more records, but for sheer rock action, the Hives were the clear winners of the Millennial Garage Rock Explosion. Their international breakthrough, 2000's Veni Vidi Vicious, is raw, simple, and loaded with enough energy to power a medium sized city for a week. The band's fusion of punk and garage rock is catchy and ear kicking, the tunes are hooky and funny, and Howlin' Pelle Almqvist's cheerful arrogance is a thing of punk rock beauty.
May 3, 2016
Credited to three members of the then-split Time and others within the purple orbit, this Prince project, fronted by by Susannah Melvoin and Paul "St. Paul" Peterson, followed Around the World in a Day by four months. Similarly dreamlike and somewhat theatrical in scope, it wasn't nearly as successful, but it includes the gorgeous Top Ten hit "The Screams of Passion" and the original version of "Nothing Compares 2 U," popularized a few years later by Sinead O'Connor.
May 2, 2016
Currently traversing the globe on a massive stadium tour in support of this, their 7th album, Coldplay find themselves in a new and happy place. The next step in life-celebration after Viva and MX, Dreams finds the band completely free, even more earnest, and with no time for the haters still grumbling fifteen years after "Yellow." The positivity and joy are infectious on tracks featuring Tove Lo, Noel Gallagher, Barack Obama, and Queen Bey herself.
May 1, 2016
A veritable greatest-hits album recorded in 1956, The Wildest! is the gem of Louis Prima's catalogue. None of his other efforts transcend its raunchy mix of demented gibberish, blaring sax, and explosive swing, which rocked as hard as anything released at the time. Personnel included Prima, saxophonist Sam Butera, trombonist James Blount, and vocalist Keely Smith.