Album Reviews

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Album Reviews
Count Basie Spins at 45rpm
Michael Fremer  |  Mar 15, 2003  |  0 comments

Oops. I mistakenly called this Basie Jam in the March Stereophile's "In Heavy Rotation" listing. How's that? This was sent to me, along with others in the series, as test pressings in plain white jackets. Of course I have written often about the original Pablo issue of this monster of a record, so I have no excuses. Anyway, Basie Jam, another Pablo great, has yet to be issued at 45 rpm, so many of you have figured out my mistake and sent me e-mails about it. Sorry.

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Album Reviews
Counting Crows Debut "August And Everything After" Among the Last of the Great Analog Rock Recordings
Michael Fremer  |  Feb 19, 2013  |  11 comments
With his influences clearly imprinted on his creative sleeve, Adam Duritz and friends created in 1993 one of the last great analog rock recordings. Duritz understood that sound mattered as did producer T-Bone Burnett who continues to treasure the basic sense even when working with diminished budgets.
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Album Reviews
Court and Spark Revisited
Michael Fremer  |  Nov 01, 2010  |  1 comments

Joni Mitchell’s move to jazz on this 1974 game changer upset her hippie contingent, who wished she’d remained a “lady of the canyon,” and it didn’t exactly thrill fans who considered themselves jazz aficionados either—not with the likes of “jazz-lite” guys like Tom Scott, Joe Sample, Wilton Felder and Larry Carlton involved.

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Album Reviews
Craft Recordings Puts A Shine On Travis’s Good Feeling
Nathan Zeller  |  May 17, 2021  |  4 comments
September 26th, 1997 marks the release date of Travis’s debut effort Good Feeling. It’s also the day the group didn’t take the world by storm.

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AAA VinylAlbum Reviews
Craft Recordings Succeeds with RSD Mono Albert King Reissue
Malachi Lui  |  May 06, 2019  |  9 comments
Wouldn’t pairing a highly talented bluesman with one of the best house bands in the world result in a great record?

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AAA VinylAlbum Reviews
Craft Recordings' 5 LP Chet Baker Box Sure to Please Fans
Michael Fremer  |  Jan 05, 2020  |  10 comments
For every reason, from mastering to pressing to packaging and annotation—and pricing, Craft’s 5 LP Chet Baker Riverside box scores the highest marks.

The recent RSD mono release of It Could Happen to You—Chet Baker Sings signaled what this set might and turned out to be. For those fans who might have some of these albums on original or OJC reissues, you can be sure the audio here soundly beats those.

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Album Reviews
Craft Records Reissues on Vinyl Creedence Clearwater Classics Green River and Willy and The Poorboys
Michael Fremer  |  Nov 17, 2019  |  16 comments
Though you could argue that Bayou Country containing "Proud Mary" and "Born on the Bayou" was a better album, I'm going with Green River as a stronger, more consistent overall album (you remember albums, don't you?), which also had some hits like "Bad Moon Rising" (with it's refrain "there's a bathroom on the right"), "Lodi", which at the time made me wonder why Fogerty was writing about New Jersey and of course the title tune. In retrospect, despite the New Orleans musical setting, much of what Fogerty wrote was about his life growing up in Berkeley, Calfornia. But I digress.

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Album Reviews
Crazy Horse Live 1970 Well Worth the Wait!
Michael Fremer  |  Aug 01, 2008  |  0 comments

Memories can play nasty tricks on the mind. Events long since past that once seemed sublime can turn out to be anything but when the time machine slides them into the present.

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Album Reviews
Cream Reunion on Triple Vinyl Takes You There
Michael Fremer  |  May 02, 2006  |  1 comments

Yes, Clapton, Bruce and Baker have gotten older. Face it, they’ve gotten old as have those of us who’ve been Cream fans since they were called “The Cream” on the first album jacket. And face it, youth be served, they haven’t the raw power they once had.

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Album Reviews
Creedence Clearwater Survival: Box Set Shines
Michael Fremer  |  Sep 01, 2004  |  1 comments

Grand Funk Railroad proclaimed itself “an American band,” but CCR was arguably, the American band of the late '60's early '70's rock era. Even if Fogerty and Co. was not your premier domestic purveyor of rock'n roll, the group's sound has stood the test of time and actually grown in stature. Dredged from blues, swamp, and rhythm and blues, and overlaid with a now-classic propulsive '60's rock sensibility, CCR today still sounds fresh and remarkably pure, even as so much of the music from back then sounds “of the time.”

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Album Reviews
Crunch Time For the Stripped Down Stripes
Michael Fremer  |  Nov 01, 2007  |  0 comments

Look: if you don’t like The Sweet, Humble Pie, Deep Purple, Neil and Crazy Horse, T-Rex and of course Led Zep and boogie rock generally, Jack White’s brand of retro-crunchrock isn’t going to be to your liking, but if that kind of stuff appeals to you and considerations of modernity don’t apply to your musical meanderings, this record will hit the spot. And how long has it been since that spot’s been hit?

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Album Reviews
Cuban-Born Jazz Duo Produce Thoughtful Musical Excursion
Michael Fremer  |  Jul 01, 2011  |  0 comments

The Cuban born, classically trained jazz pianist Elio Villafranca plays in a lyrical, yet not quite florid style that moves from Latin style fiery and dramatic one moment to deeply introspective and abstract the next.

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Album Reviews
Cyndi Lauper's Debut Sounding Better Than Ever on Mobile Fidelity's Reissue
Michael Fremer  |  Sep 15, 2013  |  1 comments
Like Marshall Crenshaw’s debut, Cyndi Lauper’s first album would be difficult to top and neither she nor Crenshaw managed to do it. Better to peak early than not peak at all—not that either of them didn’t release some very good follow-ups.

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Album Reviews
D'Angelo's Black Messiah  Took Fifteen Years To Produce
Michael Fremer  |  Apr 01, 2015  |  6 comments
Squishy, sticky, elastic beats, some so slow and off-kilter that they threaten to fall apart, ghostly falsetto harmonies, cavernous empty spaces between the rhythmic wah-wah pulses and a distant, almost other-worldly sonic perspective announce D’Angelo’s singular sinewy yet gentle vision.

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Album Reviews
Daft Punk's "Random Access Memories" Is Retro-Disco Ear Candy
Michael Fremer  |  Aug 10, 2013  |  32 comments
Escaping The Doors' "Light My Fire" was impossible throughout 1967's "Summer of Love". Likewise, unless you shuttered yourself indoors throughout this year's "Summer of Blah" you simply couldn't avoid Daft Punk's break out hit "Get Lucky" culled from the unlikely number eight spot in the album's thirteen song sequence.

What do I mean by "Summer of Blah"? Is this not the most, compliant, passive, drippy, "blah" generation to come down the pike in decades?

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