Music Reviews: Vinyl

Of course this wasn't Little Feat's "last album" any more than boomer rock band "final tours" are ever final. As Dennis McNally's well-illustrated excellent annotation points out without actually saying it, Lowell George was not exactly ebullient about things when this was recorded and the songs weren't either though there are a few classics like "All That You Dream" and "Long Distance Love". In fact all of... Read More

Mode was a '50s era west coast jazz label with a distinctive look thanks to Eva Diana's colorful portraits but more importantly, the label, in its 6 months of operation produced 31 albums and managed to release 29 of them. And of equal importance to TrackingAngle readers, the sets were recorded at Radio Recorders and engineered by a then just starting out Dayton "Bones" Howe! As you'll hear unless you already have some of the '80's... Read More

It’s almost a Hollywood cliché…promising young band signs to a major and comes out the other end pummeled, singed and largely indistinguishable. In 1983 The Dream Syndicate tumbled into bed with A&M Records, which helped cushion their fall with a $150K recording budget for sophomore outing Medicine Show. The songs were just as solid as their Indie debut (The Days of Wine and Roses) but something had broken in the process.“We’d come out the other side of the... Read More

Disguised in Kabuki-esque makeup and looking imposing in studded leather uniforms, KISS was the grotesque footnote of a musical subset on the verge of being submerged by disco that deafened and blinded the musical landscape. Their brand of unadulterating hard rock, delivered with on-stage theatrics, wooed audiences across the United States, often upstaging the headliners they opened for. Sustaining a live reputation conflicted with the timid nature of their album... Read More

Sweet, sweeping strings, fluttering flutes, melancholic trombone, soft bass line and an insistent bossa nova beat tapped out on a snare rim, back the then little known performer but well known composer Antonio Carlos Jobim on his first studio album (though his songs had previously appeared on a 1958 João Gilberto album and of course of Stan Getz's Jazz Samba). Jobim plays rhythm acoustic guitar and taps out on one finger piano the melodies to a dozen of his most... Read More

Ghost is the ultimate entity for admirers of heavy metal and theatre. The group, satirizing the Catholic Church by praising the Devil instead of God, is fronted by Tobias Forge, who dons a prosthetic mask and devilish papal regalia under the pseudonym Papa Emeritus. In the eyes of devout liturgics, Ghost’s schtick is blasphemous and has become the root of some minor controversies over the years. Their live show is still a spectacle to witness, borrowing elements from... Read More

Every album by tenor saxophonist Charles Lloyd these past few years is a voyage of sorts, his latest, Figure in Blue, more than most, and not just because he turned 87 while recording it this past March, though every birthday at that point is a milestone, and every creative endeavor is both a reminiscence and an ambitious plunge into the now. This double-LP—98 minutes of starkly revealing music, Lloyd blowing front and center, backed only by Jason Moran on piano and... Read More

Back in the mid '60s, the popularity of The Monkees mystified many a maturing adolescent craving authenticity not just in music but in everything. According to a Wikipedia post then aspiring filmmaker Bob Rafelson developed "the initial idea" for The Monkees in 1962, well before Beatlemania arrived in America, and for that matter in the U.K. as well. The Wiki story doesn't make clear precisely what was "the initial idea", but whatever it... Read More

It's been almost 20 years since guitarist/arranger Anthony Wilson released a nonet record. That one was Power of Nine (Groove Note GRV1035-1) and it's certainly highly recommended but that was then and this is now. And now is a very good time for Anthony Wilson. Over the past few years he's released a series of musically thoughtful and intriguing albums including Songs and Photographs and Frogtown. Worth checking out.Wilson is now back with a live nonet... Read More

A tide was turning when the dawn of the 1980s coincided with the demise of the progressive rock genre and one of its godfathers, Yes. Punk and New Wave made old hat of everything musically that preceded it and MTV shifted the focus of the music industry to an artist’s image. As for Yes, fans found it hard to embrace the new lineup that integrated pop duo The Buggles, where vocalist Trevor Horn had to fill Jon Anderson’s hard-to-fill shoes. Their streak of crafting... Read More

Of course Art Pepper, 31 when this album was recorded, doesn't really "meet" the rhythm section on the January 19th, 1957 recording, which puts the alto saxophonist hard left channel and the rhythm section hard right with little but open subtle ambient space between the two. Bernie Grundman explains in the booklet accompanying Contemporary Analogue Productions UHQR titles that the passive board didn't feature a center panning pot so it resembles... Read More

Berlin, the city where I was born, grew up, and still live today, was divided for three decades. The Berlin Wall stood here, and the city was perhaps the most famous border between East and West. The Wall completely enclosed West Berlin, but also ran right through the middle of historic Berlin. The Wall separated not only the country and its people, but also its culture. Most of the theaters, opera houses, museums, and libraries were located in East Berlin, which was... Read More

Deep Purple’s Mark II lineup of Blackmore/Lord/Paice/Gillan/Glover, strayed from the group’s psychedelic origins, adapting to the harder-rocking style of contemporaries like Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, which became the pillars of what became heavy metal. Fueled by lengthy and dynamic improvisations, the group was an untamable force on the live stage, something that worked in favor of their reputation and against the notion that it would translate efficiently on... Read More

Okay, here's my sub mission: I'm spoiled. I have the original 11 track Virgin U.K. release (A2/B1) issued in haste and quickly corrected to the 12 track standard version. You want Steve Jones's snarling, fibrillating singular animal guitar (arguably the glue that holds the record together, created by reproducing his guitar part an octave down as explained in Chris Thomas's notes in this reissue) make your ears sizzle. You want Lydon/Rotten's... Read More

If the music wasn't so interesting and singular, the story behind the album recorded in 1967 and released in 1968 would easily be more so. Dumped by Decca after having a string of great singles including "She's Not There", the group self-financed this project, recorded much of it at what later would be called Abbey Road Studios (with some at Olympic), signed to CBS, put out two singles and then this album released April, 1968 a month after the band... Read More

Back in 2016, while interviewing her for a New Yorker profile, I asked Cécile McLorin Salvant, who was 28 years old and just emerging as the era’s greatest jazz singer, whether she might cover contemporary pop tunes. The question made her wince. “There are some new songs that I really like,” she replied, “but I never think, ‘Maybe I’ll sing this song.’ I don’t care whether what I do is modern or of our time. I want to sing songs that have this timeless quality… I love... Read More

Jazz Patterns is a live album recorded in 1970 by the same great Joe Henderson band that recorded the classic Milestone album, If You’re Not Part Of The Solution, You’re Part Of The Problem. Since its release in 1982 on the Everest Archive of Folk and Jazz Music label, Jazz Patterns has always been an elusive and mysterious album. Everest, once highly regarded by audiophiles, had by 1982 long fallen into the deepest depths of the budget label netherworld and... Read More

Last month, Sacramento Nu-Metal band Deftones dropped their 10th studio album Private Music. Coincidentally, this album also marks nearly 30 years since their debut LP Adrenaline released in 1995. Deftones have come a long way in 30 years, and their longevity is rare, especially for a band associated with a style of music that mostly died off in the mid 2000s. But part of their staying power has been the musical creativity that has long elevated the group far above... Read More