Music Reviews: Vinyl

There’s a certain romance about audio and vinyl from Japan. For equipment there is a well-deserved reverence for the build quality and commitment to excellence from the engineers, and for vinyl records we’ve long been fascinated by boutique audiophile pressings from the island nation, particularly I’ve long held a steadfast love for King Records’ “Super Analogue Series” of Decca classical reissues.Classical vinyl reissues from Japan have unfortunately dried up over... Read More

Amongst contemporaries like King Crimson and Genesis, Yes had more than enough going for it to stand out from the crowd. The combination of Jon Anderson’s angelic falsetto and abstract lyrics, Chris Squire’s lead-like bass runs, Steve Howe’s experimental guitar explorations, Rick Wakeman’s classically-inspired keyboard flourishes, and Bill Bruford’s percussive jazz fills encompassed the trappings of progressive rock at its most potent. Yes spent first half of the... Read More

Elliott Smith’s 1998 major label debut, XO, isn’t as vibey as its predecessor, 1997’s Either/Or. Nor is it as laser-focused as its follow-up, 2000’s Figure 8 — the Sgt. Pepper... to XO’s Revolver.Still, XO is special. It captured a crucial creative flowering for the late Smith, where an artist known for lo-fi hyper-intimacy strolled into a succession of L.A. studios with a head full of new sounds, and the confidence to let them loose. And a large handful of its songs... Read More

Artisan Sound Recorders masterings from "back in the day" were and are held in the highest esteem, kind of like "RL STERLING" (or any Sterling). For instance, if you want the best version of Exile on Main Street you want one with the Artisan stamp on it. The original L.A. Woman has the Artisan stamp.An original L.A. Woman pressing sounds great as anyone who owns one knows. It's arguably the best sounding Doors album. I have two and both also... Read More

Today, it’s rare to discover music without any prior knowledge of it. We usually have some vague sense of the genre, sound, or artist. But, I had no idea what to expect from Joshua Moshier before the needle hit his debut album’s grooves. It quickly became clear to me that Moshier is an exceptionally talented musician. And I further learned that he’s an Emmy-nominated composer, songwriter, and pianist who has crafted music for series, films, interactive media, and the... Read More

It seems like the only notifications in my inbox that come more often than Democratic Party money begs are Warner Records announcements of new Neil Young Archive releases. It's hard to keep up and so many are so good. Very little filler. There are 198 tracks in the upcoming Archives Vol. III (1976-1987) and I'v been sorting through that, though there won't be vinyl. Understandable! This recent one deserves your attention if you're a true Neil and... Read More

Barcelona-based Elemental Music has secured a significant deal with Motown Records to reissue a selection of classic albums from the iconic label's catalog. Dubbed the Motown Sound Collection, the series will feature over twenty titles. Jordi Soley, the founder of Elemental Music and producer of the project, explains, “For many of the albums that we’ll be putting out throughout 2024 and into 2025, it will be their first reissue since their original release.... Read More

This album arrived in the mail featuring jazz vocalist Teri Roiger, her husband and bassist John Menegon, both unfamiliar to me, plus always a joy to enjoy, Jack DeJohnette and Kenny Burrell (drums and guitar, but you already knew that). How this session happened—have DeJohnette and Burrell ever played together previously or ever again?—I don't know. But once I played it and heard Roiger's vocals I think I understood why those two did the gig, why I needed... Read More

David Murray was the tenor saxophonist of the 1980s and ‘90s, first as junior member of the World Saxophone Quartet, among the most innovative jazz groups of the era, then as leader of a dozen different ensembles of varying size, from duets to big band and everything in between, playing a range of music (much of it self-composed) from frenzied avant-garde to swooning ballads, his solos sweeping arpeggios in pleasingly jarring intervals laced with Sapphiric blue notes,... Read More

Prog rock and jazz fusion both have an otherworldly quality. I’ve never seen either live, so listening to recordings created with the intense discipline, musicianship, and complexity these styles demand, I’m often amazed that real people are behind the instruments. If you feel that way, you’ll find the late Chick Corea’s Elektric Band's latest live album, The Future is Now (Candid), a mostly accessible showcase of high-level musicianship combined with... Read More

Free was one of the great unappreciated late '60's era rock bands. Sure, they had a hit with "All Right Now", but like Stealers Wheel with "Stuck in the Middle", that song is catchy with a barbed hook, but that's about all. Free was a band that simmered: dark, brooding, deep and thoughtful. The albums leading up to Fire and Water didn't sell, and Highway, the one following the big seller, flopped too. The group did better in the... Read More

Because I was involved in the vinyl production of this record (credited as “Vinyl Shepherd”) I didn’t feel it appropriate to review it. So I enlisted Morgan Enos to do it. Mr. Enos’s partial resume: “Former Staff Writer at GRAMMY.com. His features, essays, and interviews, which encompass jazz, classic rock, hip-hop, and other spheres, have also appeared in Fortune, Billboard, JazzTimes, uDiscover Music, and other platforms”. The album debuts today with pre-orders on the familiar sites including the “buy now” button at the review bottom, where you can get more details.

The problem with records like this is that they tell you how mediocre sounding many of your records are—unless your collection consists only of "audiophile" records, of which there are two kinds: "sounds great, less filling", or more rarely, "sounds great, is filling". For younger readers, that's a play on the old Miller Lite commercial: "tastes great, less filling".McIntosh Sessions celebrates the company's 75th... Read More

Based on some of the comments on this site under the original announcement of these UHQR Bill Evans releases you might think the subtitle quote was someone's reference to Analogue Productions Chad Kassem, but it's actually from annotator Ira Gitler's original liner notes for Sunday at the Village Vanguard. His point was that being a jazz critic doesn't mean he can't melt into the music and drop the analytical side of his reviewer brain. These... Read More

In need of a feel good story? Here it is. There's even a hi-fi system tie in. The story as told in the booklet by Ricky Riccardi, Director of Research Collections for the Louis Armstrong House Museum (and author of three Armstrong biographies) begins almost a year after this BBC performance with Louis at home recuperating from two hospital stays playing for guests his new Tandberg reel to reel tape recorders his wife Lucille had installed as a surprise while he... Read More

On 1974's Court and Spark Joni Mitchell cautiously dipped her musical toes into the jazz pool, adding some studio players like Milt Holland, Wilton Felder and Tom Scott to the arranging mix and capping the record with a sly, startling cover of Wardell Gray and Annie Ross's "Twisted" found originally on Lambert, Hendricks & Ross!: The Hottest New Group in Jazz (Columbia CS 8198). Cheech and Chong added some of their zany comic commentary to the... Read More

Series curator Scott Billington says it all in his obi strip annotation: "In the 1960s James may have startled listeners the most, because the haunting quality of his music had only deepened with time". Scott was referring to James's eerie, almost ghostly falsetto vocals that first appeared on record back in 1931 on the Paramount label.This outing recorded January 9 and 10 1966 at Vanguard's 214 West 23rd Street New York City studio, is... Read More