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Most Popular Featured Releases

Details: Written by: Joseph Taylor; Category: Featured Releases; Created: 01 February 2020

Columbia/Legacy 19075978662
Format: CD

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When, after an eight-year pause, Leonard Cohen returned to the studio in 2012 with Old Ideas, he was 78, and mortality was already very much on his mind. That album and the ones that followed, Popular Problems (2014) and You Want It Darker (2016), looked at spirituality, past loves, joy, and pain -- life, in other words, in all its glory and awfulness, its redeeming moments and its agonies. Cohen’s health was failing when he worked on You Want It Darker, recorded in his home with the help of his son, Adam Cohen, a well-regarded singer-songwriter in his own right.

Details: Written by: Joseph Taylor; Category: Featured Releases; Created: 15 January 2020

4AD 0070 LDX
Format: 2 CDs

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Singer-songwriter Gene Clark’s career was filled with the kinds of bad decisions, personal problems, and bad timing that lead to cult status for someone who should have been a star. As a founding member of the Byrds, Clark wrote or cowrote some of their most popular songs, including “I’ll Feel a Whole Lot Better” and “Eight Miles High.” He left the Byrds in 1966, after three albums, and over the next few years released two solo albums, Gene Clark with the Gosdin Brothers (1967) and White Light (1971), that were early examples of country rock and Americana.

Read more: The Who: "Who"

Details: Written by: Joseph Taylor; Category: Featured Releases; Created: 15 December 2019

Blue Note 00602577888090
Format: Vinyl EP

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One of my favorite albums of 2018 was GoGo Penguin’s fourth album, A Humdrum Star, which showed the piano trio’s versatility and its ability to use a number of current influences, from electronica to the experimental rock of Radiohead, to create jazz that’s smart, fresh, approachable, and potentially appealing to younger listeners. While the group, based in Manchester, England, plays acoustic instruments, pianist Chris Illingworth, bassist Nick Blacka, and drummer Rob Turner are not averse to using studio technology and electronics to occasionally alter the sound and impact of their music.

Details: Written by: Joseph Taylor; Category: Featured Releases; Created: 01 December 2019

Republic B0030192-02
Format: CD

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On October 1, 1969, James Brown performed with his band at the Bell Auditorium, in Augusta, Georgia, the city in which he spent much of his childhood. Brown’s time in the state’s second largest city was troubled, to say the least, but by 1969 he was a huge international star, and the city claimed him proudly. He was going to record his show there for release that December, but his plans changed, and instead he released Ain’t It Funky, a compilation of mostly instrumental tracks recorded between 1966 and 1969.

Details: Written by: Joseph Taylor; Category: Featured Releases; Created: 15 November 2019

dBpm DBPM-010-20-LP (LP), DBPM-010-20-CD (CD)
Formats: LP and CD

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I was three songs into my second playing of Ode to Joy, Wilco’s 11th album, when I realized that drummer Glenn Kotche wasn’t using cymbals anywhere. He plays drums and other percussion, but no ride or crash cymbal, no hi-hat to fill in time or sound. That doesn’t keep him from providing a rhythmic foundation for these songs, even as he helps them flow and adds texture -- much as jazz drummer Paul Motian did on many of his recordings.

Read more: Brittany Howard: "Jaime"

Details: Written by: Joseph Taylor; Category: Featured Releases; Created: 15 October 2019

ECM 2654
Format: CD

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Although saxophonist Joe Lovano has appeared on a number of ECM recordings since the early 1980s, Trio Tapestry, from earlier this year, was his first release as leader for the label. On his own recordings, Lovano is probably best known as a post-bop player with a solid, unerring sense of swing. Trio Tapestry was a move in a slightly different direction -- Lovano’s 11 compositions were atmospheric and contemplative without descending into background music. He was aided greatly by his accompanists, pianist Marilyn Crispell and drummer Carmen Castaldi.

Details: Written by: Joseph Taylor; Category: Featured Releases; Created: 01 October 2019

Warner Bros. 093624900658
Format: CD

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The Flaming Lips’ 15th studio album, King’s Mouth: Music and Songs, is part of a larger work that includes a book and an art installation, the songs being part of a unifying narrative. The overarching concepts of Flaming Lips albums are usually more evoked than spelled out, and while the whimsical fairytale on which King’s Mouth is based helps embody the album’s themes, it’s the layers of sound in the music and Wayne Coyne’s emotionally charged singing that convey the album’s felt meaning.

Details: Written by: Joseph Taylor; Category: Featured Releases; Created: 15 September 2019

Rune Grammofon RCD2207
Format: CD

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Even after listening to and collecting records for a few decades, I’m still on the lookout for new music worth hearing and telling others about. To that end, I read music publications and new-release announcements, looking for recommendations. The Norwegian trio Elephant9 isn’t really new -- they’ve been together since 2006 -- but when I read descriptions of their music that compared it to Soft Machine, a genre-crossing British prog-rock band of the late 1960s that’s among my favorites, I wanted to hear them.