Album Reviews

This triple gatefold, double time capsule captures the rapturous July 1st, 1998 Carnegie Hall Concert also filmed by Wim Wenders and released the next year. The music is old. The players were old&#151some in their 80s and ‘90s&#151and some have since passed away, but the old music was fresh to the ears of Americans and others who first heard it thanks to the World Circuit CD produced by Ry Cooder (later issued on vinyl by Classic Records).

Is this performance of one of Dvorak’s most popular and oft-recorded piano trios likely the most authoritative or finely played? Not likely, given competition from Yo-Yo Ma, Emanuel Ax and Young Uck Kim among the many others by well- established ensembles and/or instrumentalists. This trio does play it very well, however.

Recorded at L.A.’s famed United Recorders June 6th and 12th 1963 and arranged by Gerald Wilson (Anthony’s dad) for the spare and daring combo of organ, trumpet, tenor sax and drums, this Sarah Vaughan set of mostly familiar standards will confound your expectations with every note.

Lee Morgan’s 1959 solo debut recorded when he was just 19 is aptly named. It’s an album of standards in a quartet setting designed to show off the prodigy’s ability to wrap his big, warm tone around familiar melodies.

Only in retrospect does the “high concept” of Marshall Crenshaw’s remarkable 1982 debut assert itself: marry infectious ‘50s and ‘60’s-like rock’n’roll tunes with the then modern chorus guitar effects popularized by The Police’s Andy Summers. Maybe that wasn’t the plan, but that’s sure what it sounds like! That, or what a vintage Seeburg or Wurlitzer juke box would sound like heard from outside of the malt shop teen hang out.

The Fleet Foxes are a new band from Seattle. Put aside any associations you might have with grungy histrionics. Imagine instead a small band of Blue Ridge mountain refugees spending a good long while in remote, lush forests where they smoothed away the rough edges and filigree notes of their musical forefathers while gathering up ideas from key times (the 60’s) and places (Laurel Canyon, rural England) to create their own, incantatory sound.

Leave it to Pure Pleasure to unearth great, but obscure titles like this, but more importantly, kudos to the label for having the nerve to put their money where their eclectic musical tastes reside and release it! And this one’s a double, making the enterprise twice as risky.