Album Reviews

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Album Reviews
Sade's 80's Aural Aphrodisiac
Randy Wells  |  Sep 22, 2012  |  7 comments
When Diamond Life burst onto the scene in 1984/1985 it provided a calm oasis. This was not post-punk or techno-pop. This was an album of lush and lovely music with smooth jazz moods and world beat underpinnings. Superficially cool, the Latin tempos trapped in the grooves simmered with a passion just waiting to explode.
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Album Reviews
The Cars Get Mo-Fi Drive: Candy-O and Shake It Up
Randy Wells  |  Sep 26, 2012  |  11 comments
It was the summer of 1978. The Cars were moving in stereo. They let the good times roll and were just what I needed.

As it turns out, The Cars were just what another million music fans needed too. Recorded at London’s AIR studios, their debut record was so fresh and appealing that it instantly became an AM radio favorite and went Platinum in six months.

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Album Reviews
"Belafonte Sings the Blues" at 45rpm From IMPEX
Michael Fremer  |  Oct 01, 2012  |  6 comments
Conceptually, Harry Belafonte singing the blues probably strikes some as inauthentic. After all, Belafonte's introduction to American audiences was as "the king of calypso" singing "Matilda" and "The Banana Boat Song" that much later was used by The New York Yankees and Ray Davies as a crowd rouser.
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Album Reviews
Mick And Keith Meet Their Maker! Muddy Waters -The Rolling Stones Live at The Checkerboard Lounge
Michael Fremer  |  Oct 03, 2012  |  7 comments
This is crazy! Why did it take so long for this to be officially issued? Whatever. It's Muddy Waters and his band live in Chicago, 1981 at the tiny Checkerboard Lounge, with Mick, Keith, Ronnie and Stones pianist Ian Stewart in the audience. Oh, and Buddy Guy, Junior Wells and Lefty Dizz.
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Album Reviews
Meeting By the Potomac: Ry Cooder's "Election Special"
Michael Fremer  |  Oct 05, 2012  |  22 comments
Arlo Guthrie is a registered Republican (though of the ultra-rare libertarian/progressive strain). That leaves Ry Cooder to carry on his dad's uncompromising protest song tradition and he does so with musical and lyrical conviction on this album aimed at the upcoming election that's no more likely to date than has "This Land is Your Land."
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Album Reviews
Don't Play This With a Mono Cartridge! Or Maybe You Should?
Michael Fremer  |  Oct 09, 2012  |  14 comments
What happens when you gather thirty one jazz musicians including MIles Davis, John Coltrane, Herbie Mann, Phil Woods, Bill Evans, Paul Chambers, Ben Webster, Hank Jones, Art Farmer, Donald Byrd, Milt Hinton and many other jazz greats (including a baritone sax role for Teo Macero) in Columbia's iconic 30th Street Studio?
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Album Reviews
"Rock Of Ages" Even Better in Retrospect
Michael Fremer  |  Nov 08, 2012  |  15 comments
Recorded late 1971 during a multi-night gig at New York City's Academy of Music and released the next summer, Rock of Ages was intended to be a celebratory send-off for one of the greatest bands of that era as it contemplated a long touring and recording break that went on for far longer than expected.
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Album Reviews
Chicago "Field Recordings" Continue to Excite the Senses
Michael Fremer  |  Nov 08, 2012  |  13 comments
When we think of "field recordings" we often think of Alan Lomax trudging through the South with a tape recorder, setting up shop wherever he found the music.
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Album Reviews
"Heartbreak" Is Right! How Did This Happen???? (Pressing plant correction)
Michael Fremer  |  Nov 10, 2012  |  7 comments
The backstory here is almost as interesting as the music on this just reissued, long out of print record first released in 1982.
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Album Reviews
Love's "Forever Changes" Finally Gets Long Deserved First Class Vinyl Reissue
Michael Fremer  |  Dec 26, 2012  |  14 comments
The late Arthur Lee exited a California prison in December of 2001, having served more than five years of a twelve year sentence for negligent discharge of a firearm. The long mandatory sentence resulted from California's ridiculous, now repealed "three strikes you're out" law.

Before being incarcerated Lee had resurrected his moribund career by teaming with a talented group called Baby Lemonade (named for a Syd Barrett song) much as had Brian Wilson with The Wondermints. Once out of prison, Lee took up where he left off, touring the world as Arthur Lee and Love.

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Album Reviews
Flower By The Dry River
Michael Fremer  |  Dec 26, 2012  |  7 comments
The classically trained Cuban-born jazz pianist Elio Villafranca and his group the Jass Syncopators recorded this album Direct-to-Disk last Winter at the "Least Significant Bit Studios", which is actually a large room in the Sound-Smith.com production facility converted into a performance space/recording studio.

The double LP set is but one of many DirectGrace D2D records produced by Sound-Smith's founder Peter Ledermann to benefit a charity dedicated to helping some 215 million exploited children around the world enduring child labor, or abandoned to the streets due to the AIDS epidemic and other public health catastrophes.

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Album Reviews
Neil Young's "Psychedelic Pill"—"Don't Want My MP3"
Michael Fremer  |  Dec 29, 2012  |  28 comments
"Don't want my MP3," Neil Young protests on side two's "Drifting Back (Part 2)".

Young's lifelong obsession with sound quality is well known and of course welcomed around here. He was one of the first musicians to express serious reservations about digital recording and playback. Back in 1993 he appeared on an MTV News piece along with Peter Gabriel and me too. You can watch it here. "We've lost the sound" Neil laments—and that was before the scourge of MP3.

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Album Reviews
Elvis Peeks Under the Sheets in the "Imperial Bedroom"
Michael Fremer  |  Jan 03, 2013  |  7 comments
The song "Imperial Bedroom" does not appear on E.C.'s fourth album issued back in 1982 but it does as a bonus track on Rykodisc's twofer CD. The twofer's other album Almost Blue does not include the song "Almost Blue," which is on Imperial Bedroom. Got that?
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Album Reviews
Dirty Projectors Practice Musical Hygiene on "Swing Lo Magellan"
Michael Fremer  |  Jan 05, 2013  |  17 comments
Dear Diary:

Dirty Projectors has been around for a decade. This is the group's, what? sixth album? but only the first I've heard since becoming aware of it only a few month ago. How totally clueless have I become?

When I write about Swing Lo Magellan do I fake it and write as if I've known about the group for a decade? I can't do that. So I'll have to admit how unhip and out of the loop I've become.

I know! I'll blame The Beatles and all of the reissues I have to cover. Right!

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Album Reviews
The Best Ever "Bringing It All Back Home"?
Michael Fremer  |  Jan 22, 2013  |  22 comments
One side electric, one side acoustic, both sides of this March, 1965 release announced in both words and music Dylan's liberation from his folk music and "spokesperson for a generation" straight jacket and a turn towards more personal expression.
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