Staff Picks for May 2024
May 31, 2024
Chastened by his court battle over a sample from pop crooner Gilbert O'Sullivan, Biz Markie returned with All Samples Cleared!, a safe record, both legally and artistically. Sampling conservatively, Markie nevertheless opened with a forceful statement of purpose ("I'm the Biz Markie"), but elsewhere hoped for another hit with the same blend of great storytelling and artless balladeering that had made "Just a Friend" his only Top Ten hit.
May 30, 2024
The not-so-disparate worlds of botany and history collide on the likeably outlandish Henki, a self-described "flora-themed hypno-folk-metal" collaboration between English folk provocateur Richard Dawson and Finnish experimental rock veterans Circle. Wild, protean hard rock songs rooted in psychedelic folk and delivered with Green Man-worthy gusto.
May 29, 2024
Connie Converse was a singer/songwriter before that was a genre or even a common career goal. While a small handful of people were deeply impressed by the songs she wrote and performed in the early 1950s, pop music simply wasn't ready for an artist as smart, bold, imaginative, and risk-taking as her. How Sad, How Lovely was culled from home-recorded sessions and performances at parties, and the expressive literacy of her songs and the sly confidence of her delivery is thrilling, while also raising the question of what could have happened if she'd appeared ten years later.
May 28, 2024
Released 50 years ago today, three hit singles spun off of Sheet Music, and most of the other tracks could have followed suit; it says much for the record's staying power that no matter how many times the album is reissued, it has never lost its power to delight, excite, and set alight a lousy day.
May 27, 2024
This 1966 live set comes by its retro-bop feel honestly. Its link to the bop tradition is the group's pianist, Barry Harris, who bridges the generation between Bird, Diz, and Bud Powell and that of leader Charles McPherson. It was Harris, a Powell disciple, who steeped saxophonist McPherson and trumpeter Lonnie Hillyer in the bop idiom when they were teenagers growing up in Detroit. An equally formative experience for McPherson and Hillyer was their time with Charles Mingus in the early '60s. By the time of this date, the bop flames the pair had nurtured had become white hot.
May 26, 2024
Juno Reactor was envisioned as an art project rather than a conventional music group, and they progressed from being a popular club act to an ambitious, multi-cultural performing ensemble. Building on the goa trance sound of their early work, their fourth album incorporates industrial textures and unconventional rhythms, with South African percussion ensemble Amampondo playing on "Conga Fury" and touring with the group, while Natacha Atlas sings on the mesmerizing "God Is God." The band's music became more bombastic as they contributed more heavily to movie soundtracks and video games, but Bible of Dreams still holds up as their best record.
May 25, 2024
If there's one thing Slick Rick has mastered, it is The Art of Storytelling. Ever since his debut, The Great Adventures of Slick Rick, he has been known for his literate, winding narratives, but his career was marred by legal troubles that kept him in prison for much of the '90s. Consequently, The Art of Storytelling, released 25 years ago today, is only his fourth album, but it's the first to rank as a worthy sequel to his classic debut.
May 24, 2024
Bowie disbanded his Spiders from Mars just before recording Diamond Dogs, released 50 years ago today. Despite the opportunity for reinvention, Bowie couldn't quite leave his spaceman persona behind, resulting in a push pull of his older sound and the tightly controlled albums that would follow. Personas and personnel aside, the album expands Bowie's continued inventiveness on the songs "Candidate," "Sweet Thing," and the instant classic "Rebel Rebel."
May 23, 2024
"It's a young thing -- and it's a different thing!" -- so proclaimed the back cover of the handsome gatefold jacket on the Free Design's debut album, in words that couldn't have dissuaded more people under 30 from buying the album if the makers had tried. And that's a crying shame, because Kites Are Fun was a glorious product of the same zeitgeist that yielded the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album and a dozen other triumphant pop-psychedelic albums.
May 22, 2024
This sample-based album from Joel Martin and Matt Edwards plucks from numerous forms of marginalia, whether obscure, loathed by the stereotypical record store clerk, or loved by legions of geeks who were dealt wedgies in high school by Van Halen-loving jocks: prog rock and yacht rock punch lines, new age pin cushions, unhip singer/songwriters, largely unknown Italian film-music composers, and several others. It is, for lack of better categorization, a chillout album, even though it is just as much a creep-out, its most tranquil scenes seemingly on the verge of being washed away by a sudden ecological catastrophe.
May 21, 2024
If the Knack had had better songs and a frontman who wasn't a jerk, they might have been as good as the Beat, the band Paul Collins put together after power-pop pioneers the Nerves split up. Their 1979 debut album is thirty-five minutes of power-pop bliss, with irresistible hooks, no-nonsense lyrics, abundant energy, taut guitar work, and a tight, tireless rhythm section, and it's anyone's guess why "Rock N Roll Girl" and "Don't Wait Up For Me Tonight" weren't hit singles.
May 20, 2024
Equally as engaging on the sampler as Matmos, Akufen, or Matthew Herbert, Secret Mommy's Very Rec is the culmination of nearly a year's worth of field recordings featuring friends doing recreational activities. Carefully cutting and reassembling these sounds into quirky compositions, Secret Mommy has serious fun capturing the sounds of scissors into cardboard paper, zamboni machines, or tennis balls and making them into songs with amazing results.
May 19, 2024
By crystallizing all of the band's influences -- Stones-y rock & roll, pop, funk, contemporary dance-pop -- into a cool, stylish dance/rock hybrid, the Aussies' sixth studio album spawned no less than four Top Ten singles, including their only U.S. number one, "Need You Tonight." Even without the band's MTV-endorsed sense of style, the flawless songcraft is intoxicating, and it's what makes this one of the best mainstream pop albums of the '80s.
May 18, 2024
Celebrating its 25th anniversary today, Millennium has no pretense of being anything other than an album for the moment, delivering more of everything that made Backstreet's Back a blockbuster. There's a familiar blend of ballads and dance-pop, a similar shiny production, a reliance on the Boys' charisma that brings to mind the debut. If Millennium were anything other than big, glossy mainstream pop, such calculation may be a little unseemly, but in this context, it can be rather fun.
May 17, 2024
On Mess, Liars turn dance music on its head by giving it a heroic dose of their dark mischief. Whether they give their taut, snotty art-punk a glossy chrome plating or conjure hammering beats and slithering textures that Trent Reznor would be proud to call his own, the band delivers some of their most spontaneous, kinetic music while pushing their boundaries.
May 16, 2024
A vital and unrelenting set of high-caliber hardcore ragers that celebrate the worst that humanity has to offer. The band's devotion to unadulterated sonic malevolence remains unchanged. They know that the darkest corners of the human psyche have deep closets, and they would like to show you what's in them.
![Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs [Original Motion Picture Soundtrack]](https://fastly-s3.allmusic.com/release/mr0001670882/front/400/SqC9lelUcpox22OLSAa5EJhUoDg0hsvx4F4sL4oO-nA=.jpg)
May 15, 2024
Original Soundtrack
The theatrical re-release of Walt Disney's first full-length animated feature in 1993 prompted the record division of Disney to put together this first full-length edition of the soundtrack, timing out at more than 73 minutes. Featuring enduring classics like "Whistle While You Work," "Heigh-Ho," and "Some Day My Prince Will Come," this music has charmed generations of children, and there's no reason to think it won't continue to do so.
May 14, 2024
Many critics found Muddy Waters' 1968 set Electric Mud to be a crass attempt at cashing in on the trend of heavy guitar rock, but Muddy's amped up takes on blues burners and Rolling Stones covers actually rock pretty legitimately. Maybe Electric Mud is an abomination to blues traditionalists, but taken in terms of pure enjoyment and fun, it's fantastic.
May 13, 2024
On his pleasingly minimalist solo debut, Canadian singer/songwriter Graham Van Pelt uses little more than the sequencer of his vintage Roland SH-101 synth to build a warm little house around his musings on aging, friendships, and matters of the heart.
May 12, 2024
Their debut may have the big hit, but this sophomore set is a perfect blast of anthemic electronic pop. Shimmering and icy, pulse-pounding and utterly soulful, it just makes you feel good, like raving on a glacier (if that was a thing). Shake those hips with "DNA" and "Alive," and revel in the sublime transition from "Old Flavours" into "Celebrate," featuring Silverchair's Daniel Johns. Be on the lookout: they just returned with "Changes."
May 11, 2024
After ten years and five albums of groundbreaking progressive death metal, Neurosis managed to carve a highly original niche for themselves...coming off somewhat like a Tool for extremists. Yeah, you heard right. But while this Oakland bunch deserve great kudos for such unwavering commitment to their vision, they seem fated to remain confined to well-kept secret status for remaining so stubbornly inaccessible. Times of Grace, released 25 years ago today, adds another chapter to this ongoing dilemma by delving ever deeper into the group's hypnotic semi-industrial dirge.
May 10, 2024
After the clatter of their first album failed to bring them a wide audience, the New York Dolls hired producer Shadow Morton to work on the follow-up, Too Much Too Soon (released 50 years ago today). The differences are apparent right from the start of the ferocious opener, "Babylon." Not only are the guitars cleaner, but the mix is dominated by waves of studio sound effects and female backing vocals. Ironically, instead of making the Dolls sound safer, all the added frills emphasize their gleeful sleaziness and reckless sound.
May 9, 2024
Laufey’s contemporary, confessional brand of jazz is easy to fall right into. In a rich, smooth alto, she weaves poetic turns of phrase with honest musings about love, heartbreak, and growing up. “From The Start” is a sweet, bossa nova-esque number about an unrequited crush, and in “California and Me”, she collaborates with the Philharmonic Orchestra in a sweeping lament that would hardly sound out of place in a Disney princess film.
May 8, 2024
Filled with skipping beats, old-school synths, and digitally tweaked vocals, the French group's fourth album doesn't just go pop -- it explodes with songs so immediate, so weird, and so bright that they're virtually fluorescent. Though DAT Politics took themselves less seriously than many of the other electronic innovators of the mid-2000s on Wow Twist, the album is day-glo proof that forward-thinking music doesn't have to be somber.
![Datapanik in the Year Zero [Box]](https://fastly-s3.allmusic.com/release/mr0000367822/front/400/K2LQ_nxqOe5o1h7YzK72AypQg_7iAU1wjqLgK_xGXts=.jpg)
May 7, 2024
Cleveland, OH's music scene of the 1970s is often lauded as the breeding ground for proto-punk, but rather than trying to rev up rock & roll gone stale, Pere Ubu were self-sufficient outliers, making sounds that were new and novel but existed in a world of their own. This box set collects Pere Ubu's recordings from the formative period of 1975 to 1982, along with a disc of material by friends and fellow travelers, and it still sounds bold and ahead of its time in 2024.
May 6, 2024
Behind its poignant hit "Luka" and the marvelous a cappella "Tom's Diner," Suzanne Vega's second album became a surprise breakout for a literate folk-pop artist during the height of late-'80s excess.
May 5, 2024
Brian Eno's third album was where he arguably invented ambient pop, turning away from the oddball glam rock songs of his first two (very good) solo outings in favor of calm, pictorial instrumentals and only the occasional vocal tune. Another Green World is more of a playful sound environment than a traditional album, and was especially groundbreaking upon its arrival in 1975.
May 4, 2024
One of the better albums in the Kool Keith catalog, First Come, First Served (released 25 years ago today) is further evidence that the volatile MC works best with an alter ego -- in this case Dr. Dooom, a serial killer with a fondness for cannibalism, pet rats, and Flintstones vitamins.
May 3, 2024
Journey to the Centre of the Earth, released 50 years ago today, is one of progressive rock's crowning achievements. With the help of the London Symphony Orchestra and the English Chamber Choir, Rick Wakeman turns this classic Jules Verne tale into an exciting and suspenseful instrumental narrative. The story is told by David Hemmings in between the use of Wakeman's keyboards, and when coupled with the prestigious sound of the orchestra, creates the album's fairy tale-like climate.
May 2, 2024
After the relatively experimental Beautiful Garbage, Shirley Manson and the guys got back to basics on this guitar-heavy fourth set, which celebrated its 20th anniversary this April. Born out of high tensions within the band, that seething energy and aggression is palpable on ragers like "Bad Boyfriend" (with Dave Grohl on drums) and "Why Do You Love Me," while shimmering moments like "Run Baby Run" and "It's All Over…" expand the band's emotional scope.
May 1, 2024
Arguably one of Sparks' best albums, 1974's Kimono My House (released 50 years ago today) finds the brothers Mael (Ron wrote most the songs and played keyboards, while Russell was the singing frontman) ingeniously playing their guitar- and keyboard-heavy pop mix on 12 consistently fine tracks.