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Album Reviews
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(166 reviews)
Date: 1973
Release: EPIC #EK 32134
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In many ways 1973 was the golden year of funky music, with classic hits produced by Berry Gordy, Curtis Mayfield, Philly masterminds Gamble & Huff, George Clinton, James Brown, and of course, Sly Stone. Admired as a genius among his contemporaries, Sly had really pushed the frontiers of American music across racial lines, capturing the hearts and ears of the Woodstock generation in the process. His legendary performance at the Woodstock festival kicked open the door for other African-American artists, and less than a decade later white kids would be dancing to “black music” in discos across the country.
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Date: 1969
Release: EPIC
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When it comes to Sly albums, MustHear.com opinion is torn between Stand! and Fresh. Sure, Fresh’s grooves show the band at its tightest and most mature while epitomizing the glorious “free your mind and your ass will follow” spirit of ’70′s funk. But, Stand!, which draws its foundations from the disparate musical styles of the ’60s while paving the way for that funk revolution, is, for my money, the more inventive album. Released in 1969, it makes the closing statement on the music of one decade and the opening remarks on the music of another. The album opens with “Stand!,” a booty-shakin’ number that embodies the energy and confidence of 1960′s individual, social, and political self-expression. The soulful James Brown–inflected rhythms energize the song’s optimistic lyrics.
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Date: 1985
Release: Warner / Sire #25426-2
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“Knock knock.
Who’s there?
Morrissey.
Morrissey who?
See, I told you I didn’t have any friends!”
–The Fantastic Morrissey Knock-Knock Joke, from the comic strip Great Pop Things
The long-standing, long-suffering caricature of Morrissey The Melancholy (or “Morosely,” as he is sometimes dubbed in Great Pop Things) looms large in rock ‘n’ roll mythology. And with joyless underdog laments like “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now,” “Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want,” and “Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me”–bleated with his typical heart-sleeved, slit-wristed bravado–it’s no wonder The Smiths icon has attracted such a fervent following of hypersensitive bedroom hermits and other assorted asexual/pansexual pariahs. (As an aside, I must warn you single folks out there, Smiths conventions are not the places to go looking for love: If you ever meet a prospective suitor who’s a card-/Prozac-carrying Morrissey obsessive…RUN! Chances are, this charming man/woman will cause you nothing but grief.)
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Date: 1987
Release: VIRGIN 90677-2
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In modern recorded music there has always been a section of sheer pop marketed to the masses. Every year we are shown beautiful faces that are soon lost in next years’ tide of the new. While some of the music might be catchy, it’s sadly just a part of a wider culture based on surface sheen. Only a handful of individuals born of this world have been able to break away and redefine themselves as true artists, listening only to their muse instead of the bottom line or the fashion of the times.
In 1982, British tabloids ran headlines featuring David Sylvian as “the most beautiful man in all of Britain.” A scant 5 years later, he would alienate the fans he had gained as the lead singer of the glam/early electronic band Japan. He was to do so by creating a work that was only about music, only about lyrics with such depth, complexity, and texture, that it remains a complete ‘must hear.’
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Date: February 8, 1968
Release: DCC #617
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Gabor Szabo is one of those gigantically influential guitarists whose name or music few have ever heard. Carlos Santana, John McLaughlin, Robbie Krieger, and Larry Coryell all seem to have spent some serious quality time soaking in Szabo’s hypnotic sound. Largely self-taught, Szabo‘s playing brilliantly fused elements of jazz, pop, Gypsy, Indian, and Middle-Eastern music, creating a highly mystical and totally unique style.
A refugee of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, Szabo spent his formative years playing guitar in underground jam sessions in Budapest. His distinctive sound matured during an important four-year tenure in Chico Hamilton’s pioneering quintet, which also featured saxophonist Charles Lloyd. Two years into his solo career and deep in the midst of the late ‘60s music revolution, Szabo released his studio masterpiece, Bacchanal. It was on this 1968 recording that he triumphed in his experiments with feedback and Eastern-tinged psychedelic re-workings of current pop tunes.
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Date: 1988
Release: EMI/Parlophone4
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Spirit of Eden’s potently eerie but beautiful aural textures is worlds apart from the bubbly synth-pop hits—”It’s My Life” and “Talk Talk”—that typified Talk Talk’s early-’80s new wave sound. After scoring a bestseller in 1986′s The Colour of Spring, EMI gave the band (Hollis, Friese-Greene, Webb, and Harris) a hefty recording budget for their next effort. Moving into an abandoned church, Talk Talk embarked on a lengthy 14-month recording session. When the group finally delivered Spirit of Eden, EMI execs—who had been refused advance access to the recordings—were shocked: The album’s classical and freeform jazz influences and art-rock leanings broke from traditional pop expectations, resulting in something utterly uncategorizable!
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Date: 1983
Release: RHINO
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Animals like earthquakes, tornadoes and volcanic activity. Rich people will travel great distances to look at poor people. There is always a party going on somewhere.
from the liner notes
I can remember when I didn’t like the Talking Heads. I first heard their music in college when my favorite bands were U2 and Pink Floyd, and these Talking Head characters were silly and ridiculous. I took my music seriously and U2 was serious music. Thankfully, I had the big “a ha” that allowed me to hear the juicy, swirling genius in the Heads’ silliness. No other band is as accomplished at ridiculousness as the Talking Heads, and there is no better recording of their feverish carnival sounds than Stop Making Sense.
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Date: 1999
Release: Soul Brother Records #SBPJ1
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Leon Thomas possessed a voice that went far beyond what was once thought possible in singing. His trademark yodeling (for lack of a better term) turns jazz “scatting” on its head, transforming the art of song into a deeply cosmic exploration of the soul. On Anthology’s two most rewarding tracks, “Prince of Peace” and “The Creator Has A Master Plan (Peace),” Thomas’ instrument-like voice soars to a plane of higher spiritual consciousness, becoming one with the transcendent saxophone sounds of Pharoah Sanders. According to Thomas, it was during his partnership with Sanders that he spontaneously invented his unique style of singing:
“I didn’t know where it came from. I realized that the ancestors had arrived and had given me what we call throat articulation…This voice is not me, my voice is ancient.”
Anthology compiles the finest recordings Thomas made for the legendary Flying Dutchman label from 1969 through 1973. Sadly, this is the only available work of his still in print. Soul Brother Records cherry picked 12 of Thomas’ best songs from his most creative period, making this collection a must hear introduction to his music.
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Date: May 24-26, 1966
Release: VERVE #314 519 812-2
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Cal Tjader was a Swedish-American vibraphonist who led pioneering Latin jazz bands from the 1950s until his death in 1982. He was instrumental in bringing Latin music into the mainstream of jazz, creating a fluid, cool-toned vibraphone sound that perfectly embraced both musical styles.
His 1966 collaboration with Latin pianist Eddie Palmieri, El Sonido Nuevo, is one of the most intense mixtures of hot salsa and cool jazz ever recorded. For this session, Tjader and his bassist Bobby Rodriguez joined forces with Palmieri and his high-spirited band, La Perfecta, creating a new unit with a new sound.
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Date: 1996 (release)
Release: Island #524219
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“Reggae means comin’ from d’people, you know. Everyday ting, like from the ghetto. Majority beat. Regular beat that people use like food down there. We put music to it, make a dance out of it. I would say that reggae means comin’ from the roots, ghetto music. Means poverty, suffering, and, in the end, maybe union with God if you do it right.”
– Fred “Toots” Hibbert, interviewed by Stephen Davis, The New York Times
While Bob Marley & The Wailers have now come to symbolize reggae, Toots & The Maytals were equally important figures in the evolution of Jamaican music, from ska, through rock steady, and into reggae. Formed in Kingston during the ska wave of the early ’60s, the Maytals were comprised of Toots, Nathaniel “Jerry” Mathias and Raleigh Gordon. A favorite singer of Bob Marley and Peter Tosh, Toots is not only one of reggae’s most glorious founding fathers, he is widely credited with giving the genre its name with his 1968 hit, “Do The Reggay.”
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