Category — music

Joni Mitchell

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45tunes.com says: Joni’s Blue is an absolute masterpiece. Alanis, Tori, and a lot of other great artists owe a lot to this nearly perfect record …

Joni Mitchell would go on from this ‘71 recording to make more popular, more ambitious, and more challenging albums, but she’s never made a better one. Working with minimal accompaniment (Stephen Stills and James Taylor are two of the four sidemen), the Canadian thrush summoned an involving song cycle of romance found and lost. Though Blue is an uncommonly intimate representation, it’s also astonishingly open and gracious. Songs such as “All I Want,” “Carey,” “California,” and “A Case of You” work equally well as poetry and pop music. –Steve Stolder

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Gorillaz

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45tunes.com says: “Demon Days” is one of the funnest records of the 2000’s.

Gorillaz Photos

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Gorillaz - Phase One - Celebrity Take Down	Gorillaz - Phase Two - Slowboat to Hades	Demon Days Live

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Cowboy Junkies

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On their sophomore effort, Canada’s Cowboy Junkies manage to make a one-day recording session in an old church one of their most satisfying listens. Featuring the sultry voice of Margo Timmins, the precise musicianship of her brothers Peter (on drums) and Michael (on guitar), and bassist Alan Anton, The Trinity Sessions is a spare, evocative, countrified-rock classic. Their inspired reworking of both “Blue Moon” and “Working On A Building” reveal the Timmins family to be talented interpreters and insightful neo-traditionalists. Mixing the ambitious songwriting of Margo and Michael Timmins with subdued covers of Lou Reed’s “Sweet Jane” and Hank Williams’ “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” The Trinity Sessions is an exquisite collection that holds up quite well under repeated listenings. –Mitch Myers

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Herbie Hancock

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45tunes.com says: Herbie Hancock’s grammy-winning album of the year featuring reworked Joni Mitchell songs

On paper, River sounds like a match made in several versions of heaven. Legendary pianist Herbie Hancock re-imagines Joni Mitchell with his hand-picked, star-studded band–including saxophonist Wayne Shorter–in tow. Luminary guests lend vocals to a song apiece: Norah Jones (”Court and Spark”), Tina Turner (”Edith and the Kingpin”), Corinne Bailey Rae (”River”), Luciana Souza (”Amelia”), Leonard Cohen (with an unsettlingly sanguine version of “The Jungle Line”), even Mitchell herself (”Tea Leaf Prophecy”). In the event, though, a few fundamental elements go awry. Hancock plays with almost saccharine understatement throughout, and even Shorter’s seminal “Nefertiti” and Duke Ellington’s “Solitude” fall into the album’s presiding, somnolent surface, though to a lesser degree does the instrumental version of Mitchell’s “Sweet Bird.” But girding, and in some measure, saving, the proceedings, the lyrics here testify to a subtler wisdom guiding Hancock’s set list. The mix includes a continuum from intrepid classics to dusty, fans-only fare, but a distinct reverence for Joni Mitchell the Poet threads them together, and, in the end, this album works best as a sleepy window into one fan’s giddy and particular love affair with his source material. Fans of Hancock win out. –Jason Kirk

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Buckethead

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45tunes.com says: Buckethead records can be hit or miss, there are great ones and there are other ones that are “not so much”. But the song “Pin Bones and Poultry” from “Somewhere Over the Slaughterhouse” is one of the funkiest, whackiest grooves ever. I’ve never really head much buzz about this tune, I don’t know if it is universally loved, but it should be.

If you don’t have anything by Buckethead, make sure you check out the sorta-supergroup album Praxis: Transmutation (Mutatis Mutandis)

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(((Powerhouse Sound)))

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Awesome project from Ken Vandermark.

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The Beach Boys

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If you need some pointy-headed pundit to sell you on the merits of Pet Sounds, your money might be better spent on an ear specialist. Brian Wilson’s gift to 20th-century music elevated this pop album into a beguiling musical and emotional cogency that still operates outside pop culture’s fickle space-time continuum–and limited critical lexicon. There’s never been another record to compare (Rubber Soul, its inspiration, is close; Sgt. Pepper’s, its response, misses the point), and certainly no album has been as dissected, overanalyzed, and predigested for public consumption. In 1997 Capitol Records devoted an entire four-disc box set, The Pet Sounds Sessions, to its thorough deconstruction. The techno-marvel centerpiece of that project–the album’s first true stereo mix, painstakingly conjured out of multitape session sources by producer-engineer Mark Linett (under Wilson’s supervision)–was at once heresy and revelation. Now the label has gratifyingly seen fit to offer both mixes on a single disc (along with alternate versions of “Hang On to Your Ego,” the original title of “I Know There’s An Answer”), an idea that should please the orthodox and heretics alike. And while the album has always clearly been The Brian Wilson Show featuring the Beach Boys, David Leaf’s concise new notes attempt to be more inclusive of a wider band perspective. The result (three of the five band members claim credit for the album title) sometimes resembles Rashomon. If Pet Sounds forever crystallized the band’s various creative (in)differences, it also became Wilson’s grand karmic joke on his band mates; its burgeoning reputation (Mojo magazine’s panel of pop experts once elected it greatest album of all time) guaranteed they would sing its songs–and praises–until the end. And if putting two different versions of the same album on one disc seems like overkill, look at the bright side: it’s a perfect excuse to listen to the glorious Pet Sounds twice. –Jerry McCulley

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Vampire Weekend

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This NY four-piece draw on their diverse backgrounds and interests, experimenting with African guitar music, the Western classical canon, hazy memories of Cape Cod summers, winters in upper Manhattan, and reggaeton. “Equal parts shruggy New York indie strumming and groovy Afro-pop, Vampire Weekend’s organ-and-drum runs highlight narratives about relationships, punctuation, and sometimes both” - Spin. Named “Hot New Kids” in Rolling Stone’s “Hot” issue. Vinyl contains MP3 coupon.

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The Lemonheads

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45tunes.com says:
Jingly-jangly pop perfection!

an amazon.com customer says:
all-time favorite feel-good album
Lemonheads-It’s a Shame About Ray (1992) My all-time favorite feel-good album, all songs are under four minutes long. The Boston-based band churns out the most catchy tunes I’ve ever heard. Singer/guitarist/lyricist Evan Dando’s songs have an air of innocence and wonderment that always leaves me feeling happy to be alive. Juliana Hatfield was a member of the band at this time, and Johnny Depp and Faye Dunaway starred in the video for album’s title track. “Rockin’ Stroll” is sung from the perspective of a baby in his stroller: “People’s knees and trunks of trees smile at me.” “My Drug Buddy” is about scoring some dope and just enjoying a female friend’s company. Lyrics like, “Thrilled to be in the same post-code as you…/Smile at me, I’ll hold you really tight/Follow you into bed,” are practically irresistible. And “Rudderless” must be one of the most catchiest songs ever made. I pop this cd in when I’m feeling low, and it never fails to cheer me up.

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Nick Drake

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The options where Nick Drake is concerned are limited, but wholly appealing. The downhearted singer-songwriter released only three albums in his 26 years; the posthumous rarities collection, Time of No Reply, rounds out his abbreviated oeuvre. The whole lot is contained in the exemplary four-disc Fruit Tree box set. Way to Blue is a scaled-back option for those who are enchanted by Drake’s intricate yet cozy lamentations, but feel no need to join the ever-growing legion of Drake completists. But while the 16 songs included here provide a fine introduction to the ill-fated Englishman’s work (which seems to fit together no matter how it’s sequenced), Drake is one of those rare artists whose entire catalog is worth owning due to its excellence and, sadly, its brevity. –Steven Stolder

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