Beautiful Delilahs: The Reason Why (End of the West)
Three Texan rock lifers—singer/guitarist Steve Schecter, bassist Nick Moulos and drummer Trey Robles—have joined forces as Beautiful Delilahs, a nasty outfit that takes the hormonal oomph of rockabilly and R&B and greasy garage rock with a chaser of early country. It’s a resilient sound that has survived for seven decades now with new enthusiasts taking up the mantle every year. But what those other acts are missing is Schecter. The long, lean frontman attacks each song on this fast moving set with a shredded growl and a withering shout. The sweat and fury and elation he exudes throughout feels as though it has seeped into every moment of this debut full-length, and the crack rhythm section only urges him to give more and more and more. Get your vaccine taken care of as quickly as you can so you can share some air with this band should they decide to tour.
Ethiopian and his All Stars: The Return of Jack Sparrow (Omnivore/Nighthawk)
Had fate conspired on his behalf, Leonard Dillon, the reggae artist known alternately as Jack Sparrow and the Ethiopian, would have seen this material released around 35 years ago. Captured in late 1987 with an all-star band providing this music, this collection of new material and re-recordings of some of Dillon’s classic cuts has been sitting on the shelf since the sessions wrapped up. The music was finally rescued from obscurity as part of Omnivore Recordings’ mining of the archives of Nighthawk Records, and originally issued on CD in 2017. This new vinyl pressing does equal justice to this same material. Dillon, who passed away in 2011, is in great form, his voice sounding lean and soulful. And the mastering work puts the right emphasis on the boom and bump of the music’s ample low end. Whatever format you choose, this is a must have for any serious reggae collector.
Russell Potter: A Stone’s Throw/Neither Here Nor There (Tompkins Square)
Tompkins Square’s Imaginational Anthem series has been a bounty for lovers of guitar playing. And the most recent volume, which focused on private press releases from the past, has yielded an abundance of returns for the label as they’ve since reissued a number of the rare albums they cherry picked for the compilation. Their latest stop is with Russell Potter, a musician who was besotted with the likes of John Fahey and Leo Kottke and recorded a pair of throwback albums of fingerpicked acoustic instrumentals in 1979 and 1981. Both are fantastic. The earlier LP, A Stone’s Throw, is crackling with energy and the excitable spirit of someone who has cracked a musical code and wants to share his findings with the world. The latter is much more controlled and contained as Potter’s studies of his chosen instrument allowed him to explore more textured compositions and traditional folk music from Europe.
Doug Carn: Revelation/Infant Eyes (Black Jazz/Real Gone Music)
Keyboardist Doug Carn recently got a bump from tastemakers Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Adrian Younge. The pair featured the underappreciated artist on the fifth edition of their Jazz Is Dead releases—albums that aim to modernize and celebrate the titular artform by pairing old hands with young bucks. That 2020 album will hopefully draw some fresh attention to Carn’s past work, including these ’70s albums, originally issued by Oakland label Black Jazz Records. Both are crucial documents of a spiritual jazz movement that blossomed in response to the social justice activism happening around the country at the time. That’s at the heart of 1973’s Revelation, a stirring album that prominently features the vocals of Carn’s wife Jean throughout. Together—with vital assists from trumpeter Olu Dara (aka Nas’ father) and the tense playing of bassist Earl Williams—the couple perform like they’re summoning the spirit of their ancestors to help join the fight for racial equality and spiritual transcendence. 1971’s Infant Eyes serves, in part, to connect Carn with the other jazz artists exploring these same themes via enrapturing takes on Coltrane’s “Acknowledgement” and Horace Silver’s “Peace.”
Sugar Candy Mountain: Impression (ORG Music/PIAPTK)
Psychedelic pop is a lot more difficult than it sounds. Finding that right balance of trippy and treacly usually results in an artist steering hard in one direction. Oakland outfit Sugar Candy Mountain figured out the formula by sacrificing the songcraft. Every cut on the group’s latest album Impression puts the hooks and melodies at the fore, augmenting them with just the right amount of spaced out details, sound effects and zooted sonics. This feels and flows like the music the Monkees would have made had they decided to make a sequel to Head or that Os Mutantes would have come up with if they were a modern day group. Give some credit to Papercuts’ Jason Quever for producing and performing on this but the bulk of the accolades go to Ash Reiter and Will Halsey. They captured the wispy wonder of the former’s voice and guitar work and surrounded it with music that turned it into something phantasmagorical.
Various Artists: The Trojan Story (Trojan/BMG)
It is without hyperbole to say that without the existence of Trojan Records, the last 50 years of U.K. music would not at all be the same. Rob Bell’s label tapped into the hunger for reggae, ska and rocksteady from both the growing West Indian population and the white hipsters enraptured by the music’s bounce and groove. Trojan fed them dozens of 45s and compilations featuring the likes of Jimmy Cliff, Lee “Scratch” Perry and the Maytals. They proved enormously influential on the men and women that would form groups like the Selecter, UB40 and Matumbi. And as those acts garnered worldwide acclaim, compilations like The Trojan Story, originally released in 1971, spread the good word even farther. This welcome reissue of that collection fleshes out the story even more with extensive liner notes delving into the story of each track and some crucial memories from Bell himself. At the same time, this pressing is incredibly noisy. To be fair, the original version was, in part, mastered by using vinyl drops of the singles being compiled. So having the sound diminished that much further on this new edition is forgivable. And the joy of having all this amazing material in one easy to use set cannot be understated. I’ll suffer through a bit of surface noise to hear the Three Tops’ “It’s Raining” and Lynn Taitt’s “Way of Life” whenever I care to.
Cochemea: Vol II: Baca Sewa (Daptone)
There’s a more contemplative tone to Baca Sewa, the second solo album from Dap-Kings saxophonist Cochemea Gastelum. The themes and inspirations behind the music are the same as this talented artist explores his indigenous heritage (he claims Yaqui and Yoeme roots) but the mood of his latest full-length is far more sedate and devotional. All My Relations, from 2019, was a call to his ancestors, living and dead, to come to his aid. Baca Sewa finds them all joined together in humble prayer. There’s still plenty of energy to be found—”Mimbreños” is sultry and insistent, while “Tukaria” falls right in an Afrobeat groove—but the heart of this album is in its spiritual moments. Particularly the title track, which features multiple generations of Gastelum’s family chanting as one. It is exhilarating in its simplicity and raw power.
Lennie Tristano: The Duos Sessions (Dot Time)
The latest entry in Dot Time’s Legends series is one for the obsessives and deep collectors only. That’s not a knock on the performances compiled here: a series of previously unreleased recordings of pianist Lennie Tristano performing in duets with either saxophonist Lenny Popkin, pianist Connie Crothers or drummer Roger Mancuso. Tristano is as great as ever, his fluid playing lifted to greater heights by the passion and care he exhibits throughout. It’s simply that the source material for this release was clearly in rough shape before it was mastered for vinyl. There’s an annoying tapehead squeak that runs throughout “Concerto Part 2.” The duets with Mancuso are hampered by some audio drops. Even the otherwise bubbly tracks recorded with Popkin, which take up the a-side of this LP, have an audible haze to them. Bless Caspar Sutton-Jones and Popkin for doing what they could to restore this material to its full flower, but they couldn’t quite get there.
Rod Stewart: 1975-1978 (Warner)
This five-LP set spotlights a fascinating transitional period for British superstar Rod Stewart, as he moved past the soccer hooligan rock of his first run of solo albums and his work with Faces. The goal was pop superstardom. And he accomplished that mission by slowly and steadily giving a slick makeover to his R&B-infused take on modern rock. The four albums collected here—1975’s Atlantic Crossing, 1976’s A Night on the Town, 1977’s Foot Loose & Fancy Free and 1978’s Blondes Have More Fun—carry the whiff of awkward musical adolescence as Stewart beefs up Motown favorites; dabbles in hard rock, prog and disco; and playacts at domestic bliss while still lyrically playing the field. Original copies of these albums are not at all hard to find used, but longtime Rod fans will likely thrill to the nice remastering work done to each LP (“You’re Insane” from Foot Loose is particularly loud and bright, and the bass work on Blondes really pops) and the addition of a fifth disc of rarities including three lovely soul covers Stewart recorded with Booker T. & the M.G.’s.
The Enigmatic Foe: The Original Plan (self-released)
There’s something so elemental about the sound of the Enigmatic Foe, the pop project of Jared Colinger. The music on this double-LP set was constructed from the same raw materials that built the sounds of dream pop and shoegaze (Cocteau Twins, the Wedding Present, Aztec Camera), but Colinger has added an earthiness born of his studies of the ’70s singer-songwriter explosion as well as an understanding of how to avoid the overwrought mistakes of other modern artists pulling from the same sources. He keeps his songs simple and direct, with hooks that stick like briars and lyrics that worry over broken relationships, personal failings and those fleeting moments of bliss. Colinger helps his cause with the pressing of this LP. Mastering it at 45 RPM allowed the songs to breathe and the lovely production work to shine.
Lucy Gooch: Rain’s Break (Fire)
Recorded in the thick of the pandemic, the music on Lucy Gooch’s second EP carries none of the desperation, fear or anxiety that this fraught period of our collective history is marking so much modern art with. Her synthesized soundscapes are dense, colorful and luscious like sinking into a soft bed of Muppet fur. Gooch’s lyrics tell the fuller picture of her mindset during this time. It feels as though the isolation of lockdown was accompanied by a heartbreak. The added blow has Gooch questioning her own sanity in the devastating “6AM” and begging for a reprieve in the title track (“I’ve been waiting for the rains to break/didn’t know it would be so long”). The combined effect is harrowing and unforgettable—the soundtrack to a collision of planets or the picture of a rainforest slowly melting into a puddle.