The Pharaohs Awakening (Luv N’ Haight/Ubiquity) The Pharaohs In the Basement (Luv N’ Haight/Ubiquity) Like James Brown on a psych-jazz bender or Charles Mingus dabbling in avant-garde funk, the Pharaohs cut a singular path up the center of R&B, making room to further explore the sonic innovations introduced in the…
Graham Parker Acid Bubblegum (Razor & Tie) Acid Bubblegum is meant to be a return to form for Graham Parker, a reprise of his classic Seventies days as a bitter, punky pub-rocker. The album is certainly filled with bitterness, and for a while that’s okay. The opening track, “Turn It…
Sun Ra The Singles (Evidence) Even in death space-traveling jazz man Sun Ra makes listeners choose sides. His admirers, whose numbers include Phish, Michael Ray’s Cosmic Krewe, and George Clinton’s P-Funk mob, remember him as a madcap entertainer and an eccentric, creative genius. Many avid jazz buffs give Ra his…
Snoop Doggy Dogg Tha Doggfather (Death Row/Interscope) Various Artists Dr. Dre Presents … The Aftermath (Aftermath/Interscope) Makaveli The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory (Death Row/Interscope) In the wake of Tupac Shakur’s death, these three albums have little chance of being heard objectively. Certainly the conventional wisdom about each lacks…
Intrigue Acoustic Soul (Universal) Tony Toni Tone House of Music (Mercury) Think back to the abyss of early Eighties urban thump-thump music. New technology had yet to be mastered by artists like Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, black pop music was in assembly-line mode, and it seemed that maybe real…
Robert Bradley’s Blackwater Surprise Robert Bradley’s Blackwater Surprise (RCA Records) The late rock critic Lester Bangs once wrote that he would pay almost any price to hear Aretha Franklin sing; he didn’t especially care what she sang. That’s how it is with certain singers. Marvin Gaye, John Lennon, and Janis…
El Vez G.I. Ay, Ay! Blues (Big Pop) The world’s most popular Hispanic Elvis impersonator uses his latest album G.I. Ay, Ay! Blues to attack current anti-immigrant fervor, adding his usual mingling of music cultures and a broad spectrum of rock history that begins with the King. From the resounding…
Sublime Sublime (Gasoline Alley/MCA) No fan of the hyperactive, macho ska-punk slop that’s seemingly everywhere these days, I avoided Sublime’s MCA debut in spite of the glowing reviews and despite my empathy for the group, on whom tragedy fell before the damn album was even released. (Surely you know by…
Various Artists Sweet Relief II — Gravity of the Situation: Songs of Vic Chesnutt (Columbia) The second of what is sure to be a series, this star-studded, politically correct benefit/tribute album showcases the music of Athens-based songwriter Vic Chesnutt. Using a wheelchair as a result of a car accident, Chesnutt…
Scenic Acquatica (Independent Project/World Domination) Like Ennio Morricone on peyote, or Dick Dale after a couple of bong loads, Scenic makes dreamy, hypnotic instrumental music of operatic scope but minimal construction. The quartet — fronted by ex-Savage Republic mastermind Bruce Licher — build their evocative soundscapes around slinky twang-guitars and…
Keb’ Mo’ Just Like You (OKeh/Epic) Alvin Youngblood Hart Big Mama’s Door (OKeh/550 Music) California-born bluesmen Alvin Youngblood Hart and Kevin Moore (Keb’ Mo’ for short) share more than just a label and a birth state. Both men are in their thirties and are equally dazzling guitarists and vocalists. More…
Metallica Load (Elektra) Soundgarden Down On the Upside (A&M) For headbanger careerists like Metallica and Soundgarden, heavy-metal angst can present some real artistic problems when all those bad vibes and bad-ass guitar riffs start sounding like the same old bitch-and-boogie. But as their latest albums indicate, Metallica knows this and…
Los Lobos Colossal Head (Warner Bros.) All artists show their influences in their work. What separates the sublime from the hapless in this regard is the ability to do it without being crass. And there’s certainly nothing crass about Colossal Head, the seventh long player from Los Lobos. Genius is…
The Specials Today’s Specials (Virgin/Kuff) You can’t say the time isn’t right for the triumphant return of the Specials, the English group that way back in the late Seventies combined punk’s rant-and-roll dynamics with the slippery grooves of Jamaican ska. Close to fifteen years after the Specials broke up, their…
Guided by Voices Under the Bushes Under the Stars (Matador) Three albums after the rock press discovered them in 1993 (and nine since the band formed about ten years ago), Guided by Voices remains the rarest of indie-rock rarities — a critically hoohahed outfit that actually deserves the hosannas. Robert…
Jesus Alemany Cubanismo! (Hannibal/Rykodisc) Various Artists The Montuno Sessions — Live from Studio “A” (Mr. Bongo) There is little in life that can top the excitement and exhilaration of hearing a group of musicians taking off on an impassioned flight of inspired innovation, soaring atop wandering chord progressions, navigating solos…
Brother J.T. and Vibrolux Music for the Other Head (Siltbreeze) John “J.T.” Terlesky has more extracurricular music projects than anyone this side of George Clinton. In addition to his regular gig as frontman for garage rockers Original Sins, Terlesky has released a slew of savagely bent albums and singles over…
Iggy Pop Naughty Little Doggie (Virgin) Wayne Kramer Dangerous Madness (Epitaph) As punk rock’s generational cycle spins ever onward, with last week’s angry young thing replaced by this week’s rabble-rousing shaver, it’s reassuring to know that two of the music’s fortysomething architects are still around spewing bile and caustic protest…
Aimee Mann I’m With Stupid (DGC) Aimee Mann has been hauling her dented and dinged heart around for more than a decade now, pulling it out of a box for show-and-tell on three albums by her old band ‘Til Tuesday, and on two solo records, 1993’s remarkable Whatever and now…
Dread Zeppelin No Quarter Pounder (Birdcage) According to official legend, Elvis Presley once remarked, “I may not be Led Zeppelin, but I can still pack ’em in.” This was in the mid-Seventies, when Led Zep was the biggest band in the world and Elvis was, well, big. The twin ocean…
Sixteen years ago record company executives scoffed at the idea of marketing the work of genre-fusing acoustic guitarists Jorge Strunz and Ardeshir Farah. So after one too many rejections, the duo decided to release their first album themselves. Now, after seven Strunz and Farah albums on a host of labels,…
Mutiny Aftershock 2005 (Black Arc/Rykodisc) Of all the spin-off satellites orbiting George Clinton’s Parliafunkadelicment mothership, Mutiny was arguably the best A and one of the few to distance itself from its former employer. The group was formed in the late Seventies by drummer Jerome “Bigfoot” Brailey, the coauthor of several…
