Budos Band V (Daptone) Pseudos Band? As part of the Daptone stable, Budos Band excels at dialing in various flavors—the collective has helped supply spot-on retro soul tracks for Sharon Jones and Lee Fields, and their own instrumentals have shown up on commercials, video games, and soundtracks for Tequila 1800, MLB: The Show, and “Entourage.” […]
Marvin Gaye You’re the Man (Universal) The follow-up that never was is finally here—and honestly probably sounds better now than it would have in 1972. You’re the Man could hardly have matched the gorgeously sighing melodies, elegant textures, and memorable aphorisms of What’s Going On, and when it tries, it suffers in comparison. Leadoff track […]
Mary Lattimore & Mac McCaughan New Rain Duets (Three Lobed) Essentially a 40-minute jam divided into four segments, New Rain Duets brings more exquisite atmosphere from Mary Lattimore, and, in a somewhat surprising role, Mac McCaughan. Best known for cofounding Merge Records and fronting Superchunk, McCaughan supplies not guitar but guitar-like synthesizer textures and samples, […]
Monsters of jazz: Led by former Charlottesville resident and current Chicagoan Christopher Dammann on upright bass, Restroy is a jazz sextet that combines electronic and acoustic resources to create a “traditional experimental” sound that’s endlessly rewarding. Also from the fertile Chicago jazz scene, James Davis supplies most of the melodic material on trumpet, and erstwhile […]
Faux Ferocious Pretty Groovy (Burger) When this Tennessee quartet played a C’ville house party back in 2012, they absolutely tore it up—apologies if you were there and I yowled in your face about the spirit of rock and roll. Faux Ferocious kicks out punky jams and bluesy boogie grooves and is supernaturally tight, like a […]
Cass McCombs Tip of the Sphere (ANTI-) The opener of Tip of the Sphere is an interesting mongrel—half Irish folk mantra, half space rock, and ending with three minutes of Jerry-Garcia-circa-1972 wah guitar. All of which sort of sets the tone for Cass McCombs’ latest. There’s easy loping folk on “Absentee” and tabla and David […]
DAWN New Breed (Young Action) Danity Kane veteran Dawn Richard has forged a reputation as an R&B iconoclast, collaborating with Dirty Projectors and working on Adult Swim. Here she puts forth her NOLA roots with wizened old- people’s voices at the start of several songs—though New Breed doesn’t sound particularly rooted in New Orleans, or […]
Tallies S/T (Kanine) Tallies kicks off with a frosty amalgam of ‘80s and ‘90s atmospheric alt rock—the Bunnymen and The Cran- berries come to mind—and when “Mother” follows up somewhere halfway between The Smiths and The Go-Go’s, it becomes clear that the past is where Tallies live. Sarah Cogan’s vocals get a little yelpy, and […]
Before 2018 completely disappears in our rear-view mirrors, here’s a recap of some box sets released last year that weren’t The Beatles’ White Album or Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks box. Tom Petty An American Treasure (Reprise) In 1995 Tom Petty released the 6-CD Playback box, and, especially because his career lasted two more […]