Album Reviews

Keb' Mo's mellow protest album recycles classics from the '60s and '70s, recasting them for the 2004 mindset witnessing the greatest strategic foreign policy mistake in American history. 

Clearly a fan, producer Steve Lipson places Jeff Beck's guitar in a distant reverberant  space that decreases its solidity but increases both its size and its mystery, evoking a God-like presence hovering above a lush, string-drenched orchestra. Or you could see Beck playing perched on a craggy, windswept rock surrounded by white-capped water. The album very much has a Pacific Ocean vibe.

This 1973 release, minus saxophonist Phil Shulman who had left the group (leaving but two Shulmans),  was rejected by Columbia Records for being "un-commercial" yet it became one of the band's most popular releases. It was available only as an import in America.

Long considered one of the great recordings of the early stereo era, España was originally issued in the UK on the British Decca label (SXL 2020) and on American subsidiary London (CS6006).

The music made by the Australian group Dead Can Dance during their seventeen year existence resembled soundtracks to imaginary movies. The core duo of Brendan Perry and Lisa Gerrard, who were also an item at the time, moved to the U.K. a year after the group's founding in 1981. They issued their first album on 4AD in 1984. 

Recorded in glorious mono in 1956 and issued first in 1957, this set of small combo standards with Cole both singing and playing the piano remains as fresh and vital as it did when originally released. 

Trumpeter Kenny Dorham brought Joe Henderson to Blue Note and on the late tenor saxophonist's second lead album gives him strong support as the two chase each other through some zig-zag bop thickets. "Teeter Totter," the fast-paced Henderson-penned opener alone is worth the price of admission but the other tracks simmer with equal intensity.