Staff Picks for May 2025
May 31, 2025
Once audiences got a chance to hear Primus' instantly recognizable sound, driven by Les Claypool's bizarrely virtuosic bass riffs, their audience grew by leaps and bounds. It was enough to make their second major-label album, Pork Soda, one of the strangest records ever to debut in the Top Ten.
May 30, 2025
Vaughan is arguably in the best voice of her career here, pausing and lingering over notes on the standards "April in Paris," "Jim," and "Lullaby of Birdland." As touching as Vaughan is, however, Clifford Brown almost equals her with his solos on "Lullaby of Birdland," "Jim," and "September Song," displaying his incredible bop virtuosity in a restrained setting without sacrificing either the simple feeling of his notes or the extraordinary flair of his choices.
May 29, 2025
Picking up where their Signal to Snow Ratio EP left off, Grandaddy's wittily named second album The Sophtware Slump, released 25 years ago today, upgrades the group's wry, country-tinged rock with electronic flourishes that run through the album like fiber-optic lines.
May 28, 2025
Having hit upon another smash formula -- cover versions of pop/rock hits backed by lavish strings, a simplified bossa nova rhythm, and the leader's piano comping -- Sergio Mendes & Brasil '66 produced two more chart-busting singles, again turning to the Beatles for sustenance with the title track (number six) and Simon & Garfunkel for "Scarborough Fair" (number 16).
May 27, 2025
Finally armed with a full lineup, Wings entered the studio in late 1974 on a creative high following the success of 1973's Band on the Run. The new lineup quickly gelled and produced more than an album's worth of material. Lead single "Listen to What the Man Said," which made it to #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, embraces the feel of New Orleans, where the album was largely recorded. Other Billboard-charting singles on the album include "Letting Go" and "Venus and Mars/Rock Show", both of which became concert staples. Although slightly less well received than its predecessor, Venus and Mars, released 50 years ago today, still reached #1 in the album charts in the US, UK and in several other countries.
May 26, 2025
With 1985's Thunder in the East, Loudness were faced with the daunting challenge of conquering heavy metal fans outside their homeland of Japan for the first time. Knowing that their early sound might prove a tad too heavy and complex for American audiences, the foursome rose to the occasion by dispensing their most melodic compositions ever.
May 25, 2025
It may sound silly to call the 12th album by a group with an eight-year string of gold records behind them a "breakthrough," but that's what Main Course, released 50 years ago this month, was. The group's first disco album -- and, for many white listeners, the first disco album they ever purchased -- Main Course marked a huge change in the Bee Gees' sound.
May 24, 2025
The team of Tammy Wynette and Billy Sherrill was incomparable. In 1977 at the dawn of the urban drugstore cowboy phenomenon, Wynette was still making classic countrypolitan records with Sherrill and would continue to until they parted company and she began working with future husband-producer George Richey. One of a Kind is of those classy classic records they made together.
May 23, 2025
On The Marshall Mathers LP, released 25 years ago today, Eminem is all about blurring the distinction between reality and fiction, humor and horror, satire and documentary, so it makes perfect sense that The Marshall Mathers LP is no more or no less "real" than The Slim Shady LP. It is, however, a fairly brilliant expansion of his debut, turning his spare, menacing hip-hop into a hyper-surreal, wittily disturbing thrill ride.
May 22, 2025
While most of the players in the jazz-rap movement never quite escaped the pasted-on qualities of their vintage samples, with The Low End Theory, A Tribe Called Quest created one of the closest and most brilliant fusions of jazz atmosphere and hip-hop attitude ever recorded.
May 21, 2025
The best pre-1965 Beach Boys album featured their brilliant number one single "I Get Around," as well as other standout cuts in the beautifully sad "Wendy," "Little Honda" (one of their best hot rod tunes, covered by the Hondells for a hit), and their remake of the late-'50s doo wop classic "Hushabye."
May 20, 2025
A guitar-less power trio debuting in the middle of the alt-rock '90s, Ben Folds Five arrived fully-formed with a smart and original brand of piano-led power pop that was as potent as it was fun.
May 19, 2025
Elton John and Bernie Taupin recalled their rise to power in Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy, released 50 years ago today, and their first explicitly conceptual effort since Tumbleweed Connection. It's no coincidence that it's their best album since then, showcasing each at the peak of his power, as John crafts supple, elastic, versatile pop and Taupin's inscrutable wordplay is evocative, even moving.
May 18, 2025
Various Artists
Released in 2016, this compilation of obscure independent artists is a resplendent collection of unheard magic. Genre classifications are hard to pin down precisely, as all of the artist here-- Linda Smith, Gary Davenport, The Rising Storm, etc.--- make dreamlike songs that are a little too far outside of the lines of normal rock, folk, or garage. Instead, Sky Girl catalogs a specific mood. One that's bittersweet, nostalgic, and reveals more curiosities with every spin.
May 17, 2025
With driven, whistling guitar riffs, Teitelbaum’s cutting vocals, and percussion that’s a little rough around the edges, Blondshell’s eponymous debut album brings a taste of grunge back to indie rock. While at times aggressive and hard-hitting and softer and more vulnerable at others, Blondshell is a perfect balance of flavors: heavy yet clean-cut, tight yet deliciously cathartic.
May 16, 2025
Oops!...I Did It Again, released 25 years ago today, has the same combination of sweetly sentimental ballads and endearingly gaudy dance-pop that made ...Baby One More Time. Fortunately, she and her production team not only have a stronger overall set of songs this time, but they also occasionally get carried away with the same bewildering magpie aesthetic that made the first album's "Sodapop" -- a combination of bubblegum, urban soul, and raga -- a gonzo teen pop classic.
May 15, 2025
Gillian Welch's third album, Time (The Revelator), finds the folk vocalist and musician shifting her attention from achingly beautiful mountain ballads to achingly beautiful pop/rock ballads. Regarding this album, Welch states: "As opposed to being little tiny folk songs or traditional songs, they're really tiny rock songs. They're just performed in this acoustic setting. In our heads we went electric without changing instruments."
May 14, 2025
DJ Funk will always be remembered as the pioneer of ghetto house, a lo-fi sound born in Chicago whose influence has spread far and wide -- Daft Punk even namechecked Funk as an inspiration on their first album. While he put out several mixtapes and CDs, Booty House Anthems was the only one to receive widespread distribution, and it ended up becoming his calling card, as well as the style's definitive release. Countless DJs have tried to capture the energy of this mix, and so many of its tracks remain dancefloor staples to this day.
May 13, 2025
Recorded for Charles Mingus' Debut label in 1955, Blue Moods is an excellent example of cool jazz. However, not all of the musicians who join Davis on this album were full-time members of jazz's cool school. Although vibist Teddy Charles was cool-oriented, Mingus (upright bass) and Elvin Jones (drums) were never considered cool players -- and the lyrical trombonist Britt Woodman was, in the '50s, best known for his association with Duke Ellington.
May 12, 2025
Cementing their one-hit-wonder status with the buzzing gem "Ready to Go" – heard in almost every commercial and movie trailer in 1996 – this English group managed to craft a whole album of catchy earworms that serves as a nostalgic time capsule for an era when trip-hop, aggressive electronica, and cyberpunk alternative collided into a single glorious subgenre. Outside of that big hit, check out the hypnotizing "Picture Me," the KMFDM-lite "Out of the Darkness," and the Garbage-esque "Bloke."
May 11, 2025
Allen Toussaint produced a kind of masterpiece with his first Reprise album, Life, Love and Faith, finding previously unimagined variations on his signature New Orleans R&B sound. For its 1975 sequel, Southern Nights, released 50 years ago this month, he went even further out, working with producer Marshall Sehorn to create a hazy vague concept album that flirted with neo-psychedelia while dishing out his deepest funk and sweetest soul.
May 10, 2025
Quietly acoustic and warmly produced, Real Estate's Atlas provides the perfect soundtrack for the first days of spring when the windows can be opened and the light comes in. Breathy vocals and chiming guitars tell slight stories of love and longing, making for a fine background atmosphere but also rewarding close attention.
May 9, 2025
Decorated with a magnificent sleeve that unfolded into the shape of a shield, Warrior on the Edge of Time, released 50 years ago today, delivered some of Hawkwind's best-loved future showstoppers -- Simon House's far-reaching "Spiral Galaxy 28948," the frenetic "Assault and Battery," and the monstrous "Magnu" all made their bow here, while the accompanying "Kings of Speed" single was certainly a big hit in the youth clubs of the day, even if it did steadfastly avoid the chart.
May 8, 2025
Welsh artist Cate Le Bon's fifth album, 2019's Reward, found her moving away from the folk rock of her earlier albums for songs that were more abstract and unconventional takes on melodic pop. Made with more synthesizer and saxophone than her older, more guitar-based work, Reward carries an insular weirdness similar to Bowie's Berlin albums while also coming off as an art-rock take on Prince-esque funk.
May 7, 2025
Kenyan sound artist Joseph Kamaru recorded his album Peel within 48 hours, shortly after returning home to Nairobi following a trip to Montreal for the Mutek festival, and right before the COVID-19 lockdown. Peel's six pieces fall into the "haunted loops" school of ambient music, capturing brief snapshots of electro-acoustic sound and setting them spinning with subtle shifts and alterations. Most breathtaking of all is the stirring 23-minute title track, which expresses a sense of slow-motion impending doom through gradually building loops and textures, yet does so with gentler tones rather than harsh, suffocating ones.
May 6, 2025
On the English trio's debut, they created a fantasy land of lush cabaret-pop that sounds like a blend of James Bond themes, trip-hop beats, and vintage vocal pop. Think Shirley Bassey and Portishead's Beth Gibbons taking turns on tracks by Goldfrapp and Air. Best known as the album that spawned the luscious "Bellissimo" (recognized in the U.S. because of a makeup commercial), this set is an underrated beauty and hidden gem.
May 5, 2025
There's No Place Like America Today, released 50 years ago this month, doesn't really have as clearly delineated a body of songs as Mayfield's earlier topical releases, but it's in the same league with his other work of the period and represents him near his prime as a composer.
May 4, 2025
Philip's Glass' soundtrack to Paul Schrader's 1985 film Mishima is one his more unique early scores, crackling with energy and action with arrangements that segue from classic Glass minimalism to jazz and surf detours.
May 3, 2025
After a handful of EPs and their debut studio album, Isn’t Anything, my bloody valentine surfaced with their magnum opus: a hazy yet vibrant record of sludgy, distorted guitar and synth tones, ethereal melodies, and Eno-esque electronic embellishments—eleven songs comprising a rich, dreamy, drug-filled soundscape.
May 2, 2025
Sleater-Kinney switched gears on their follow-up to the challenging, introspective The Hot Rock, delivering their brightest, most accessible album to date with All Hands on the Bad One, released 25 years ago today. That's partly due to a renewed assurance in craft -- the arrangements here are the most refined of the group's career, and their performances the most polished.
May 1, 2025
Willie Nelson's Red Headed Stranger, released 50 years ago today, perhaps is the strangest blockbuster country produced, a concept album about a preacher on the run after murdering his departed wife and her new lover, told entirely with brief song-poems and utterly minimal backing. It's defiantly anticommercial and it demands intense concentration -- all reasons why nobody thought it would be a hit.