Staff Picks for October 2023
October 31, 2023
Maya Bouldry-Morrison's first album features refined house tracks exposing an emotional range greater than that of her preceding EPs. "Come Closer," "Bad Blood, and "Fear" pack seductive, churning menace. "His Kiss," buoyed by sharp breakbeat accents, is dizzying and euphoric, while "Please Don't Leave" is all longing ache with rattling percussion and a buried bittersweet melody. The only track without deeply emotional content is the functional "Work Me," a scuffy workout that is surprisingly physical.
October 30, 2023
For all of its sunny eclecticism, Natural Ingredients lacked the darkly funky urban soundscapes that made In Search of Manny so engaging. Fever in Fever Out brings that dark funkiness while keeping the pop hooks that made Natural Ingredients a step forward. Producer Daniel Lanois keeps his ambient tendencies to a minimum, providing just enough atmosphere to make songs as catchy as the jazzy, intricate "Naked Eye" surprisingly haunting. But what really impresses is the sense of forward motion Luscious Jackson displays on Fever in Fever Out, how their eclecticism is becoming more seamless as their songs grow stronger.
October 29, 2023
A seminal work of traditional music, Skara Brae were among the first to adapt the Irish language into harmony singing. The Ó Domhnaill siblings later went on to play in other influential groups like the Bothy Band, Relativity, and Altan.
October 28, 2023
This remarkable set, recorded at the Victoriaville new music festival, was drawn from two concerts celebrating the great saxophonist’s 70th birthday. The first is solo. It showcases the beginning of an inward turn to explore conceptions of space, harmony, texture, and melody. It’s reflected often in Brotzmann’s later recordings. The second disc is its exact opposite. It delivers a 70-minute paint peeling skronk gig by the Trio Roman with drummer Paal Nilsen-Love, electric bassist Massimo Pupillo.
October 27, 2023
James Carr's partisans say he was the world's greatest soul singer, and if that's a slight exaggeration, if he hadn't been sidelined by psychological problems he could have been one of the biggest R&B stars of his era. This collection from his most fruitful period includes his twin masterpieces, "The Dark End of the Street" and "Pouring Water on a Drowning Man," and no one who loves Southern soul should be without them.
October 26, 2023
Live at the House of Tribes finds Wynton Marsalis leading his sextet at the intimate community theater space in New York City in 2002. An annual ritual of sorts, the performance makes for one of the trumpeter's best live recordings since 1986's stellar Live at Blues Alley. Backed by a slightly altered lineup from 2005's The Magic Hour, Marsalis gains first-class support from alto saxophonist Wessel Anderson, pianist Eric Lewis, drummer Joe Farnsworth, bassist Kengo Nakamura, and percussionist Orlando Q. Rodriguez. Special mention goes to Robert Rucker for his highly energetic tambourine performance on the New Orleans "2nd Line" finale.
October 25, 2023
A serious contender for one of the best and most groundbreaking dub albums of all time, Starship Africa is the type of dub that Maelcum from William Gibson's cyberpunk classic Neuromancer would have listened to. Originally envisioned as a vocal showcase and eventually finished and released two years after it was first recorded, it's a spacey cinematic epic that still sounds like it was beamed from the future.
October 24, 2023
During the summer of 1955, that doyen of English style and wit made a splash in that flashiest of resort towns, and his one-month engagement at Wilbur Clark's Desert Inn sparked a mass exodus from Hollywood to his standing-room-only performances, by celebrities ranging from Humphrey Bogart to Frank Sinatra. Columbia head Goddard Lieberson soon followed their lead (with recording equipment in tow), and "the Master"-- while fighting a touch of flu in the 116-degree heat -- delivered one of his finest performances in front of a microphone.
October 23, 2023
Costa scored a hit in 2001 with this vibrant breakthrough, which blended funk, soul, and pop years before the mainstream's late-decade nostalgia boom (unsurprisingly, this is one of Mark Ronson's earliest turns at producing). Technically her fifth album (she was a childhood chart-topper in Europe in 1981), it features early aughts hits "Like A Feather" and the irresistible title track. Fans of Nelly Furtado, KT Tunstall, and Joss Stone will find plenty to love.
October 22, 2023
The indie folk-pop duo of brothers Lewis and Addison Rogers offered up a charmingly homespun debut album (replete with suitcase drum) that rarely strayed from the impression of weekend buskers. For the more ambitious follow-up, they recruited a 21-piece orchestra to help flesh out a set of character sketches that span their core '60s pop sensibility, Caribbean steel-drum music ("Mother"), and even jump blues ("Evening Flows"). Tying things together are robust melodies and the inviting warmth of both brothers' voices -- Lewis' distinctive sweetened rasp and Addison's smooth croon.
October 21, 2023
Freedy Johnston's second album was an unexpected masterpiece, the moment where a promising singer and songwriter took his charmingly eccentric world view and shaped it into something close to perfection. Full of character studies of curiously remarkable characters matched to melodies that balance sadness against sturdy Midwestern beauty, Can You Fly was one of the finest singer-songwriter albums of the 1990s.
October 20, 2023
Released 25 years ago today, Maybe You've Been Brainwashed Too contains what may be the last one-hit wonder of the pre-streaming era in the irresponsibly catchy "You Get What You Give," a Rundgren-influenced alt-power pop half-anthem/half-screed celebrating empowerment (and for some reason beating up the children in Hanson). Surprisingly not disposable, the song still resonates 25 years later.
October 19, 2023
Released 50 years ago today, Pete Townshend revisited the rock opera concept with another double-album opus, this time built around the story of a young mod's struggle to come of age in the mid-'60s. If anything, this was a more ambitious project than Tommy, given added weight by the fact that the Who weren't devising some fantasy but were re-examining the roots of their own birth in mod culture.
October 18, 2023
Toussaint McCall, who passed away in August 2023, only scored one major hit in his lifetime, but what a hit it was – "Nothing Takes the Place of You" is a slow, simple, strikingly powerful portrait of heartache, fueled almost entirely by McCall's vocals and keyboards. This compilation of his 1960s recordings for Ronn Records includes that miraculous performance and 24 others attesting to McCall's talent, which far outstripped his commercial success.
October 17, 2023
Their second album Spiderland might be regarded as a post-rock masterpiece, but Slint's 1989 debut Tweez is an essential part of their story as well. More experimental, mathy, and often making curious decisions, Tweez was the only album to be released before Slint's initial breakup.
October 16, 2023
The outrageously named Reverend Glasseye and His Wooden Legs look and sound as if they've just stepped out of an Edward Gorey drawing, complete with vaudeville street-corner instrumentation and waxed moustaches just itching to be twirled maniacally.
October 15, 2023
Few rockers have been as willing as Young to lay themselves bare before their audience, and Time Fades Away, released 50 years ago today, ranks with the bravest and most painfully honest albums of his career -- like the tequila Young was drinking on that tour, it isn't for everyone, but you may be surprised by its powerful effects.
October 14, 2023
Certain people will be debating what was the first punk band until doomsday, but Cleveland's the Electric Eels certainly ticked all the boxes during their 1972-1975 lifespan – raw guitars, simple tunes, thunderous rhythm section, and a lead singer whose anger bordered on psychosis. The Electric Eels didn't simply anticipate punk while no one paid attention, but merged sound and fury with a force few bands have matched before or since.
October 13, 2023
Mason Jennings 2011 effort Minnesota is a poetic little backwoods opus with a number of hypnotic, darkly psychedelic nuggets including the sexy, acid-soaked folk-blues track, "Witches Dream."
October 12, 2023
Genesis proved that they could rock on Foxtrot but on its follow-up Selling England by the Pound, released 50 years ago today, they didn't follow this route, they returned to the English eccentricity of their first records, which wasn't so much a retreat as a consolidation of powers.
October 11, 2023
The sophomore full-length effort from the American indie rock trio featuring Shearwater's Jonathan Meiburg and Cross Record's Emily Cross and Dan Duszynski, Don't Shy Away sees Loma deliver an impressive and impressionistic set of songs that combine elemental dream pop and dark folktronica.
October 10, 2023
The combo of vocalist/fiddler/mandolinist Tim O' Brien and banjo player Pete Wernick was never stronger than on Hot Rize's 1987 release Untold Stories. Never as "progressive" as some of their peers (New Grass Revival, the Seldom Scene, Country Gazette), Hot Rize were able to hold on to the trappings of traditional roots music without ever letting it sound stale or too "old-timey."
October 9, 2023
Recorded in Nashville with the Black Keys' Dan Auerbach producing, Hearts That Strain is an organically crafted, immaculately arranged set of original songs that all sound like they easily could have been recorded at Olympic Studios in 1970. These are languid, poetic compositions, largely inspired by the melodic, Americana-informed pop of '60s songwriters like Jimmy Webb and Lee Hazlewood.
October 8, 2023
One of the many oddities in the Black Flag catalog, this four song EP of instrumental, jazz-informed sprawl is every bit as menacing and uneasy as the band's punk songs with various vocalists. Recorded and released in 1985 at the peak of the band's productivity, The Process of Weeding Out is minimal but charged, experimenting with atonality and messy improvisation in a decidedly rock format.
October 7, 2023
One of the band's masterworks, Juju sees Siouxsie and the Banshees operating in a squalid wall of sound dominated by tribal drums, swirling and piercing guitars, and Siouxsie Sioux's fractured art-attack vocals. If not for John McGeoch's marvelous high-pitched guitars, here as reminiscent of Joy Division as his own work in Magazine, the album would rank as the band's most gothic release. Thanks to its killer singles, unrelenting force, and invigorating dynamics, Juju is a post-punk classic.
October 6, 2023
After leaving Ultravox!, John Foxx began the 1980s by releasing one of the best and most groundbreaking synth pop albums of all time. Rarely has anyone made cryptic lyrics, alien electronics, and dystopian dread this accessible. If you're familiar with Gary Numan but not this, please fix that right away.
October 5, 2023
This album, released 50 years ago today, touched on everything Elton John did before, and suggested ways he'd move in the near-future, and that sprawl is always messy but usually delightful, a testament to Elton's '70s power as a star and a musician.
October 4, 2023
In a fascinating meeting between reggae legend King Jammy and Japanese roots reggae duo Dry & Heavy, Jammy took tapes from two previous Dry & Heavy albums back to his Kingston studios and dubbed them up in fine, roots-wise style, employing all the tricks of echo, reverb, and drop-out that he learned at the feet of the master; the result is a masterpiece of dark and heavy dub that serves as a perfect companion to the albums on which it's based.
October 3, 2023
Even at the peak of their popularity, Sonic Youth defied expectations. Dirty arrived at the height of the grunge revolution they helped usher in, but the album's mix of reflective interludes ("JC," "Theresa's Sound World") and charged rock ("100%," "Sugar Kane") once again set them apart from the crowd.
October 2, 2023
Celebrating its 50th anniversary today, Stone Gon' was the second release in an incredible run of sensually charged titles White produced during the first half of the '70s. His patented mix of love monologues and rich vocal dynamics would come to mark the best songs of the period, including the two chart-toppers here, "Honey Please, Can't Ya See" and "Never, Never Gonna Give Ya Up."
October 1, 2023
The critical re-evaluation of this catalog anomaly is in full swing, with folks finally coming around to this hidden gem for "true fans." Quintessentially late '90s with its trip-hop flourish, electronic texture, and decidedly un-dance-pop bend, it's the sound of Kylie at her most experimental and interesting. Influenced by contemporary sounds of Garbage, Bjork, and Tricky, it's a nostalgic time warp to a bygone era of alternative when everyone tried to sound this cool.