Album Reviews

A trio of new releases share some wonderful and often heartfelt aesthetics across a variety of genres, dance music-infused sounds, personal identity, and artistic freedom, and we’re covering all three of them today together under our Short Cuts album review banner. Read Mark Smotroff’s roundup review of three wonderful LPs from the always adventurous female singer Lady Blackbird, chart sensation and vocal marvel Chappell Roan, and a full live concert reissue from the vaults of the late, legendary dance music pioneer Sylvester. . .

Released in the 1970s and ’80s by legendary jazz producer/impresario Norman Granz, albums on the Pablo Records label were often lush-sounding affairs — and now, all these years later, Analogue Productions has seen fit to reissue and remaster many of the label’s key titles as 180g LPs, all cut at QRP. Read Mark Smotroff’s Short Cuts combo review of a trio of Pablo titles — one each from Count Basie & His Orchestra, Count Basie Big Band, and Duke Ellington and Ray Brown — to see just how essential these three LPs are to have in your collection. . .

The official National Calendar says today, August 12, is National Vinyl Record Day, so I cued up a few of my favorite new vinyl offerings — including the latest 2LP studio set from a longtime favorite, a 4LP box set with an album I’ve been waiting decades to get on vinyl, and a brand-new-to-2024 throwback 45 — to celebrate the theme of the day. Read on to see what they are, and feel free to chime in about your own favorite LPs you were spinning on your own turntable on this most hallowed of days. . .

It’s not often you get new titles from three legendary artists of yesteryear like gospel icon Sister Rosetta Tharpe, piano virtuoso Art Tatum, and soul-jazz organ pioneer Brother Jack McDuff all released on the same day. But this year, all three of them are being celebrated on Record Store Day 2024 — this year’s first installment of which happens to fall on this upcoming Saturday, April 20 — with newly unearthed, previously unreleased, multidisc live concert recordings on 180g black vinyl. Read Mark Smotroff’s review of all three of these releases to see which one, or ones, belong on your “must have” RSD 2024 shopping list. . .

Looks like another year has gone by with a seemingly endless release-cycle parade consisting of scores of brand-new LPs from both known artists and untested newcomers alike, along with a myriad of archival vinyl reissues and overstuffed box sets galore — a good number of them presented in the much-preferred AAA form to boot. With the calendar set to turn over to 2024 any day now, that means it’s high time to assess the best of what we’ve heard on wax during the past 12 months. Read on to see AP editor Mike Mettler and chief LP reviewer Mark Smotroff’s respective lists of the top archival and new LP releases of 2023. . .

In retrospect, Tom Waits’ trajectory from singer/song writer to down-beaten jazz-fueled street person scowling at the piano in the 1970s made perfect sense. But when he came out of the gate in the early 1980s, his transformation was almost as dramatic as David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust reinvention. Five new of-era 180g 1LP reissues from Island/UMe — namely, 1983’s Swordfishtrombones, 1985’s Rain Dogs, 1987’s Franks Wild Years, 1992’s Bone Machine, and 1993’s The Black Rider — all seek to remind us of just how fertile this period was in Waits’ overall canon. Read Mark Smotroff’s Short Cuts combo review to see if any or all of these new wonderful Waits reissues belong in your collection. . .