• 

  Ladies Man Effect EP

  Selebrities

  2012 | Cascine / Redeye

  There was a French blog, and the guys that ran it were friends with a lot of people. It was good. I don't think the readership was more than a couple hundred people. He found a Selebrities demo on MySpace and posted it. It was awesome. I was flying from California to New York and I heard this track, and I was totally floored. Within 20 minutes I had reached out to... the address that was listed on their MySpace. I ended up meeting up with the guys in the band a few days later in New York. They had these five tracks called Ladies Man, and they were fucking awesome. I was just obsessed with the material. They were one of our first proper signings. Being a part of a band's process in the early stages is the most exciting thing.

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• 

  Pure Wet EP

  Jensen Sportag

  2012 | Cascine / Redeye

  They're total jokers. They sent some crazy message to us. It was an unsolicited email, it said something like "Wanna Party?" I opened the email, and it was nothing more than a sentence, something provocative and raunchy about wanting to party. There was a link to this FTP, where there must have been 30 plus demos and sketches. It all looked really old and antiquated. This was in the fall of 2010,... and we had gotten so few unsolicited emails that we were listening to everything at that point. Their tracks were brilliant. It didn't take us long to realize that something really special was happening. From the 30-something sketches they sent us, we chose five for Pure Wet. Then we gave them a bunch of notes and went back and forth for months to get the tracks tight. An EP emerged out of all of that. We felt really proud about that. They were one of the few bands we worked with on an old school, A&R level. I have such a good relationship with those guys it was more like a conversation.

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• 

  Realism

  Shine 2009

  2012 | Cascine / Redeye

  In a lot of respects, I credit Sami Suova from this band as the reason the label was founded. Sami was the very first artist to believe in the label. He believed in it, he said yes. We have a new album coming out with them in October. That'll mark three years of working together and three formal releases with a couple of singles in between. I feel such a deep connection... with them and a whole lot of gratitude. From a sound standpoint, if I had to pick one album to represent the label, that's as close to Cascine as possible. It's such a good definition of what we aspire to sound like.

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• 

  Young Hunger

  Chad Valley

  2012 | Cascine / Redeye

  He's such a pro. Speaking of artists where I'm able to offer feedback with tracks, Chad Valley [aka the recording alias of producer Hugo Manuel] is one that I don't ever do that with. He turns in material and we put it out. He always hits the mark. He never misses. I'm a perpetual fan. I've got a handful of sketches and things that he's played around with on keyboards. It's all... jaw-dropping. You either really like what Chad Valley does, or you don't. For me, it hits the sweet spot. He's also a total gentleman. He's not putting it on for anyone.
  
  Keep Shelly in Athens and Chad Valley are actually going on tour this fall. It'll be a co-headlining tour. Hugo's working on new material right now. We're going to try to roll out a new track or two prior to the tour.

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  Erika Spring EP

  Erika Spring

  2012 | Cascine / Redeye

  Erika is awesome. We were all such over-the-top fans of [her band] Au Revoir Simone. I remember, prior to even being involved in music, listening to Au Revoir Simone and loving it and being so stunned by the music. You conjure up these images: three beautiful girls traveling around, playing this really wistful, well-produced electronic pop. Then you fast-forward several years and you get to work with one of those artists. It... was really gratifying process for us, to work with someone we really respected for years prior. The material was so spot-on for us. Her manager sent over those demos. Instantly, they worked. They were so much fun.
  
  It was a little bit of a surprise. But Erika has her hands in so much stuff. She's such a renaissance woman in that sense. She's such a fixture in the New York community. Every time I turn around, she's doing a fun, collaborative thing with taste-making artists. She's a great musician and really talented. You can't pin her down too much. She's told me that she has new material that she's developing. So I know we'll do something else with her for sure.

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• 

  Caught the Breeze

  Boat Club

  2013 | Cascine / Redeye

  It's our first reissue. Those guys are from Gothenburg. It was one of the times I was first going to Sweden, knocking around and hanging with some of those guys. I was going around meeting with the Embassy guys and the Air France guys, these dudes that I had idolized for so long. Every one of these artists would name-check that Boat Club release. Everyone would say, "Oh you've got to hear... Caught the Breeze by Boat Club." One of the first conversations I had with [Service owner Ola Borgstrom] was when he told me I had to listen to the album. It's funny that all these really established dudes were nuts about this seven-song release.
  
  I heard it and loved it. It came out on CD and digital. It came out on a small label. It was never really rolled out in a grand way. I wanted to give it its day in the sun. I wanted to roll it out in a way that it deserved to be. It was released in 2007 — it's not like we dug back into the '70s or '80s. It's totally timeless and tasteful. It's one of those releases that I know I can come back to decades from now and feel confident in the material. Talk about an effortless style. I honestly think that's what makes the Swedish music scene so awesome. There's this sense of non-urgency. No one is in a rush to get the material out. There's not this hunger to capitalize on success or leverage popularity or go gunning for that next release. It's so refreshing. Nobody is hiding behind a musical wall.

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• 

  At Home

  Keep Shelly In Athens

  2013 | Cascine / Redeye

  They released a couple of EPs a couple of years ago. Since then, it's been nothing. They wanted to sign to a more permanent label home. We're really excited about this. It's really straightforward. They're not trying to invent new genres. It's a fun release. They do something simple very well. It's great, really confident electronic pop music. They play in that space that we really like. It's stylish, but it's a... little rawer than the Scandinavian breeziness. Sarah P's a damn good vocalist. Some of the melodies that they pull into this album are so good. Really warm, thoughtful, driving, musical stuff that really takes you to where you want to go.

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• 

  Said I Had a Vision: Songs & Labels of David Lee, 1960-1988

  Various Artists

  2013 | Paradise of Bachelors / Redeye

  I studied folklore at UNC and one of my first freelance folklorist gigs was consulting for the future Earl Scruggs museum in Shelby, North Carolina — about 40 miles west of Charlotte. The idea was to celebrate Scruggs's contributions to bluegrass but also to document the musical contributions from Cleveland County at large. It's an amazing place — home to a lot of incredible country, gospel and soul traditions. David Lee ran... three little independent record labels out of his stereo supply store in Shelby, North Carolina. He had one big hit with an Ann Sexton song; she's a singer from Greenville, South Carolina, who went on to some fame and now tours Europe all the time. David wrote her biggest hits from that era and recorded them. I interviewed him for the project and met Jason Perlmutter. Jason and I decided to do a compilation of Mr. Lee's recordings over the years. We did it to honor him and his accomplishments. We both were impressed by his work and felt like he had gone unrecognized.

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• 

  Poor Moon

  Hiss Golden Messenger

  Tompkins Square

  Beyond that original project with David Lee, we had no real plan or strategy for Paradise of Bachelors, and the next thing that crossed our paths was the Hiss Golden Messenger record, Poor Moon. It was very different from the David Lee compilation in many ways, except that it was another North Carolina artist who had navigated the industry in a similar way as Mr. Lee. Mike [Taylor, the creative force behind... Hiss Golden Messenger] was fiercely independent and had been frustrated by his experience in the music industry. He was already a friend, and we both went through the folklore program at UNC.

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• 

  Over There ... and Over Here

  The Red Rippers

  2013 | Paradise of Bachelors / Redeye

  The Red Rippers was a guy named Ed Bankston, who served in the Navy on an aircraft carrier in Vietnam and wrote about the experience on this record. It's one of the most brutally honest pieces of music I've ever heard about the experience of war. We're used to, even inured to, musical statements about the Vietnam War from the perspective of onlookers. Some of it is very powerful, but there's a... lot less music written from the soldier's perspective. Of that very small body of music, there is very little that is as unflinching and as frightening as the Red Rippers album. It is bathed in the blood of that conflict without glorifying anything. It's a very conflicted piece of music — not easy to listen to, but fascinating. Ed had had difficulty talking about those years. He did the album, then stopped playing music. It was like he needed to get those songs out of him. His children have told me that the reissue has offered him some access to those memories so that he can discuss that understandably very wrenching period in his life. I hope it's helped him be proud of that music.

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• 

  In Search

  Chance

  2013 | Paradise of Bachelors / Redeye

  Chance's story is an incredible one, and I think it's a story about Nashville and its strange, dark underbelly. Chance was on the fringes of the inside of the Nashville music machine, but he made this incredible outsider's statement. It's a strange and difficult, but really fascinating piece of music — kind of a private triumph of the imagination and a deeply personal document for Chance. It was unknown not only to... the world at large, but also to his friends and family. I was down in Nashville a few weeks ago, hanging out at Chance's house by the pool, and a number of people who worked with Chance at Sirius XM — where he DJs — dropped by. I was really excited to meet them, and they kept saying, "Oh yeah, Chance's record…we didn't know anything about that." It's not like he's kept it a secret or anything. He's proud of the album, as he deserves to be.

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  Promised Land Sound

  Promised Land Sound

  2013 | Paradise of Bachelors / Redeye

  Like most of the work we've been engaged in, this was really the product of serendipity. Chris and I were in Nashville this past fall, spending some time with Chance, and we DJed at the Stone Fox, which is our friend William Tyler's club. We were on a bill with James Toth of Wooden Wand, and opening up for him was this band that was known at the time just as Promised... Land. We were blown away. They were all between 19-22, but they sounded like they had torn through the history of Nashville and Los Angeles country rock. And they're developing so quickly, so what they're playing now is very different from what's on the record. They're moving more into West Coast and European psych territory. The songs are getting swampier and longer and more biting. So their next record is going to be very different.

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• 

  Haw

  Hiss Golden Messenger

  2013 | Paradise of Bachelors / Redeye

  Haw was the first record Chris and I did collaboratively. Mike's songwriting continues to develop in fascinating ways, especially how he's exploring notions of faith and spirituality in what is a highly secular musical form. This record has become a lot more relevant and powerful to me in the last few months, as my wife and I are preparing to have a baby in October. Haw is basically about children: having babies... and raising them. That experience is one Mike was really able to capture. I find myself listening to it a lot lately as we're making these preparations for this new phase in our lives. I think Hiss Golden Messenger makes music for adults, which is refreshing. There's a lot of adult music out there that is incredibly pasty and anemic and inconsequential. But his is adult music that gets at what it means to be terrified of being a grown-up.

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  Time Off

  Steve Gunn

  2013 | Paradise of Bachelors / Redeye

  Steve grew up with my label partner Chris. They're from the same Philadelphia suburb of Landsdowne, which is also where Kurt Vile grew up. So Chris has been able to watch Steve's artistic development. I've always been impressed by his playing, but thought he was beyond the purview of Paradise of Bachelors for some reason. When I heard the rough mixes for Time Off, though, I knew we needed to do this... record. I was exciting to hear this turn inward from his more exploratory solo guitar work. He was already headed in that direction, but this was just a huge leap forward. It's the opposite kind of career narrative from previous generations. You think of John Coltrane beginning as a phenomenally skilled bop saxophone and then take it further and further into the realm of free improvisation. Steve started in that realm, with a very free and largely improvised style that could be quite beautiful but also very challenging. He's gradually restrained himself and honed in on his skills in service of songcraft.

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Early Days

• 

  Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik

  Outkast

  1994 | Arista/LaFace Records

  Andre and Big Boi met, as many teenagers do, at the mall. They were 16, aspiring rappers in a city brimming with talent but few opportunities to be heard beyond it. The Dungeon became their after-school hangout and practice space and, in 1992, they signed a deal with LaFace to become the label's first rappers. Following a well-received anti-Christmas single ("Player's Ball") and a guest verse on a TLC remix, they... released their daring debut album in 1994. The tongue-twisting title foretold its fiercely leftfield thrills: It was proudly Southern; it was filled with colorful new tropes and characters; and, at a time when samples and penitent sneers ruled rap, it was built on patient, live grooves and Dre and Big Boi's amiable charisma. Suddenly, New York and the West Coast sounded a bit provincial, as Dre and Big leaned into their country drawls one moment and then broke land-speed records the next. "Git Up, Git Out" (featuring Cee-Lo and Big Gipp) was the emotional center, a seven-minute all-in-the-Family statement of class and purpose.

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• 

  Soul Food

  The Goodie Mob

  1995 | Arista/LaFace Records

  According to Cee-Lo, the first record from Goodie Mob ("the Good Die Mostly Over Bullshit") was originally conceived as a compilation. At the time, Cee-Lo and Big Gipp were solo artists and T-Mo and Khujo called themselves the Lumberjacks. The four of them formed a bond in the Dungeon, however, and they decided to become a group. Their 1995 debut showcased their diversity of voices, something you realize within minutes of "Thought... Process." These aren't boys passing around a crown, trying it on for kicks. "Frustrated, irritated, sometimes I don't/ Know myself, I be too numb" Khujo grunts, finding solace in his brothers, a blunt and the Dungeon. Meanwhile, the cherubic Cee-Lo pokes his head up from the grind and realizes, "I kinda like bein' poor/ At least I know what my friends here for." These aren't just great songs, they were the building blocks for movements to come: the local pride of "Dirty South" and "Soul Food," the paranoia and spiritualism of "Cell Therapy" or "Live at the O.M.N.I." If Outkast's stories promised fantasy and escape, Goodie Mob was trying to describe the feeling of visiting someone at the county jail, the micro-triumphs and aches of everyday life, the sound of a swinging screen door.

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• 

  The Pendulum Vibe

  Joi

  2012 | CAPITOL

Breaking Through

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  ATLiens

  Outkast

  1996 | Arista/LaFace Records

  Emboldened by the success of (and perceived slights toward) Southernplayalistic, Dre and Big Boi put a great deal of thought into their follow-up. It had only been a couple years since their debut but they were no longer kids, and they tweaked their personas accordingly, as "Two Dope Boyz (in a Cadillac)" — with its "Welcome, earthlings" robot intro — showed. If Atlanta was too exotic and strange for the hip-hop establishment,... then why not embrace your alien status? ATLiens was a far more confident and ambitious record than their debut, full of the unafraid, almost absurdist swagger ("I'm cooler than a polar bear's toenails," Big Boi famously bragged on the title cut) and quiet pensiveness that would power their next few albums. No longer recording exclusively in the Dungeon, Dre and Big began making their own beats, including the singles "Jazzy Belle" and "Elevators." Despite its futuristic imagery and feel, there was already a sense of nostalgia and appreciation for where they'd come from. "Every day I sit while my ni — a be in school/ Thinkin' bout the second album at the Dungeon shootin' pool," Big raps, describing just a couple years before.

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• 

  Set It Off - Music From The New Line Cinema Motion Picture

  Set It Off

  1996 | EastWest

  Soundtracks have always provided opportunities for labels and crews to test new artists or play with unorthodox styles between projects. For example, it's where you'll find some of Outkast's strongest ("Benz or a Beamer" for the New Jersey Drive soundtrack) and most experimental stuff ("Speedballin'" for Tomb Raider and "Land of a Million Drums" for Scooby Doo). The soundtrack for the 1996 heist flick Set it Off featured a few... classic Organized Noize moments. They collaborated with Queen Latifah on a really imaginative cover of Strafe's "Set it Off" and Goodie Mob, Cool Breeze and Backbone contribute the haunting, graveyard banger "Angelic Wars." But the biggest moment here — the one that helped the Set it Off soundtrack go platinum — was undoubtedly En Vogue's world-conquering "Don't Let Go (Love)," the Oakland quartet resplendent over Organized Noize's tamed swamp funk. (Random trivia: the song was originally written for Mick Jagger.)

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• 

  Brainchild

  Society Of Soul

  1996 | Arista/LaFace Records

  While it remains an overlooked moment of the Dungeon oeuvre, Society of Soul's sole release captures much of what made it such an exciting movement. Released a few months after writing and producing TLC's hit "Waterfalls," Organized Noize collaborated with Dungeon guru Big Rube and singer Espraronza "Roni" Griffin" to make Brainchild. From the opening drag of "E.M.B.R.A.C.E." and the "Waterfalls"-isms of "Changes" (featuring T-Boz) to the psychedelic soul of "Peaches n'... Erb" and dubby funk of Cee-Lo and George Clinton's "Blac Mermaid," it's an album that captures the Dungeon Family at their diverse best: tight, thoughtful songwriting; moments of adventure and play; a sense of collective struggle. Perhaps that lack of a single, distinct personality is why Brainchild — driven by Sleepy Brown's charming falsetto, but far from an autobiographical record — is rarely recognized as one of the best R&B (or, if you prefer, "neosoul") records of the '90s — because it certainly deserves to be.

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The Dungeon-as-Playground

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  Still Standing

  The Goodie Mob

  1998 | Arista/LaFace Records

  Cee-Lo, T-Mo, Khujo and Gipp followed up their 1995 debut Soul Food with the looser, wider-ranging yet no less absorbing Still Standing in 1998. Success hadn't changed Goodie Mob much — "What they know about the banana and mayonnaise?/ Slices of toasted bread on the nap-kin" Gipp goads on the slinking "Fly Away"; later, Cee-Lo reminds doubters they're still proudly from the "dirty, filthy, nasty dirty south," land of "silky drawls" and... gold fronts. They tinkered with some different sounds here — the rock snarl of "Just About Over," the minimalist, crystalline crunk of "Beautiful Skin" — but the highs were familiar ones. "Black Ice (Sky High)" was one of the Family's finest moments together, a Goodie Mob-Outkast relay run over a broken-down organ wheeze. A sense of desperation resounds through the chain-gang march of "Distant Wilderness," the "chill cold south" of "See You When I See You." The album closed with "Still Standing," a stirring, piano-backed reminder of why they've chosen to walk the righteous path, even as everyone else is "running out of things to say." "Unscathed, cause this is pain," they rap together on the chorus, "This is for soldiers to feel."

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• 

  Aquemini

  Outkast

  1998 | Arista/LaFace Records

  Released a few months after Still Standing, Outkast's third album marked a turning point for the duo. They produced most of the album themselves and it feels intimately "theirs." This was an album obsessed with balance, equilibrium, how righteousness and evil complemented one another — even the title was a play on their increasingly unlikely partnership (Big was an Aquarius, Andre a Gemini). This embracing of difference resulted in a record that... was both celebratory ("Rosa Parks," which sounded like nothing ever before) and paranoid (the George Clinton-assisted "Synthesizer"), futuristic yet rustically local, hungry for love yet still untrusting. You could get lost in Aquemini's worlds — the intersecting lives of "SpottieOttieDopaliscious," the back-in-the-day folks Dre and Big left behind on "Da Art of Storytellin' (Part 1)." In retrospect, perhaps this was the beginning of the end, this intense exploration of the-playa-and-the-poet chasm. At the time, though, that space-between represented — and sounded like — vast, open possibility.

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  Stankonia

  Outkast

  2000 | Arista/LaFace Records

  The approach toward the year 2000 was an ominous one: the techno-paranoia and doomsday millenarianism of Y2K, that mythic string of zeroes finally upon us. Whether it was this forward-looking urgency or not, it was a truly profound moment for pop music. In early October 2000, Radiohead released Kid A, a paradigm-shifting reset of arena rock. And on Halloween, Atlanta's Outkast released Stankonia, still one of the strangest and most ambitious hip-hop... albums ever made. The Outkast duo of Big Boi and Andre had already prepared us for artful contradictions, most notably on their masterpiece Aquemini. But the Stankonia moment was announced by "Bombs Over Baghdad," a triumphant, jungle-influenced oddball of a single that was nearly twice as fast as anything else on the radio. By the time Stankonia arrived, it was clear that the always-improving duo had crafted a true masterpiece. The album was like a history of the future in about an hour, and with all due respect to Aquemini it is probably the greatest distillation of the Outkast vision. There were hits that sounded instantly familiar, like the ice-water swagger of "So Fresh, So Clean" and the complex, grown folks earnestness of "Ms. Jackson." There were moments of nasty, reckless abandon, like "Gangsta Shit" or the coquettish "I'll Call Before I Come." And there were songs that yearned for or described a better world, like the post-Hendrix wail of "Gasoline Dreams" or the skyward, Erykah Badu-assisted "Humble Mumble." That Stankonia could accommodate such a range of images attests to its power. It is swampy and thick and earthy and funky; it is sleek and cold and futuristic. It is as complicated as everyday life.

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The Dungeon Diaspora

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  A S.W.A.T. Healin' Ritual

  Witchdoctor

  1998 | Interscope

  Witchdoctor's 1997 debut remains one of the strongest examples of how far one could take that early Dungeon aesthetic. Judging by his guest spots on Aquemini and Soul Food, it was hard to discern whether he was a fierce, eyes-agog rapper or a blissed-out gospel crooner. When it came time to compose his brilliant head-trip of a debut, he split the difference. He's an absorbing host, lazily stuttering through his verses and... then singing the cloud-high hook on "Island Koneelalee." "Lil' Mama's Gone" is stunning, Witchdoctor strumming an acoustic guitar and singing sweetly about love lost. S.W.A.T. clearly descends from the lineage of Outkast and Goodie Mob, but it takes that world-weary outlook in a different, distinctly God-fearing direction on tracks like "Heaven Comin'" and "Dez Only 1." "Atlanta got a bullet with yo name on it," he warns on "A.T.L. the Great Big Lick." For Witchdoctor, though, redemption won't come from fighting back.

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• 

  Deliverance

  Bubba Sparxxx

  2003 | Beat Club

  When Outkast and the Dungeon Family first broke in the early 1990s, Bubba Sparxxx was just a country kid scheming for a way out of remote LaGrange, Georgia. Timbaland handled the bulk of his successful 2001 debut Dark Days, Bright Nights but Bubba brought Organized Konfusion in for a few tracks on his acclaimed and more introspective 2003 follow-up, Deliverance. Bubba tried to rebrand the region over a din of electric guitar... on "New South" — "Inspired by the efforts y'all made to pigeonhole me/ I rose from the pig shit without a smidgen on me," he scoffs, laughing off all the Yank haters. The swinging horns, jittering drums and Sleepy Brown falsetto of "Like it Or Not" captured the poppier side of the early-2000s Dungeon sound, while the speed-rush pogo of "Back in the Mud" showed their more adventurous side. Bubba ended up making his allegiance to the Dungeon Family official by signing with Outkast's Purple Ribbon imprint for his third album, The Charm.

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• 

  The Killer

  Killer Mike

  Grindtime Official Inc. / INgrooves

  There have been a lot of great solo rappers — or rappers with great singles — who have been part of the Dungeon Family: Witchdoctor, Cool Breeze, Slimm Calhoun, Backbone. Killer Mike is the one who has emerged as the most successful. Groomed to be "next" just as Outkast was dissolving, Mike was the gruff foil to the dexterous duo on late-career tracks like "Snappin' and Trappin'," "The Whole World" and "Flip... Flop Rock." Mike's best solo moments capture a young rapper slowly mastering his mentor's playbook and paying homage at every turn. He was poised to follow his 2003 debut Monster with the forceful and politically charged Ghetto Extraordinary. It was shelved indefinitely, but some of its better moments surfaced on his 2006 mixtape, The Killer. On "Bad Day Worst Day" he talks trash about Creflo Dollar, Adolph Hitler and everyone in-between over some flickering organ, while "Ni---as Down South" is a majestic, sweltering planting-of-the-flag classic. Always the dutiful disciple, "Dungeon Family Dedication" pays tribute to the ones who made it all possible, the rise and the fall.

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  Star Kitty's Revenge

  Joi

  2002 | Universal Records
• 

  I Pledge Allegiance to the Grind

  Killer Mike

  2006 | Grindtime Entertainment / The Orchard
• 

  9th Wonder Of Tha World

  EJ da Witch Doctor

  2000 | Dezonly 1 / The Orchard
• 

  Dark Days, Bright Nights

  Bubba Sparxxx

  2001 | Interscope
• 

  Concrete Law

  Backbone

  2001 | Universal Records
• 

  Young Roscoe Philaphornia

  Roscoe

  2003 | PRIORITY RECORDS

Divisions and Diversions

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  Speakerboxxx/The Love Below

  Outkast

  2002 | Arista

  It was a break-up record without any real allusions to the break-up. Instead, they holed up in their separate corners and emerged with radically distinct versions of the Outkast legacy. Andre's half tried to establish him as some kind of twisted pop auteur, and the massive success of "Hey Ya!" brought the "group" an unprecedented kind of popularity. Despite its occasionally heavy-handed conceptualism, there were some truly gorgeous tunes here — the... melted thump of "Prototype," the showtunes-soul of "Roses," the IV-drip desperation of "Pink and Blue." Weirdly, Speakerboxxx is probably a better indicator of how extreme Outkast could have gotten had they stayed a mere rap duo. Dre deserved praise for his bewitchingly strange pop but Big's side was just as adventurous: the electro-onslaught of "Ghettomusick," the barnyard funk of "Bowtie," the brutally sweet melancholy of "Unhappy." The strange thing about the final "proper" Outkast album was that it yielded so few clues about Dre and Big's deteriorating relationship over the course of its two hours. They had already moved on, past where anyone could catch them.

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• 

  Mutant Mindframe

  Big Gipp

  2004 | In The Paint / Entertainment One Distribution

  Goodie Mob wasn't in great shape circa 2003. Cee-Lo had left a few years earlier and found success as a kind of hippie-funk charismatic. There'd always been surplus energy spilling from the goofy hard rock Gipp and that year he took a sabbatical from the group to release Mutant Mindframe, a collection of the trippier moments that outstretched the Goodie aesthetic. The daredevil flow of "Make the People Say," the bottom-heavy crawl... of "Make it Happen" and the Neptunes-tinged "Wildout" (featuring the underrated Slimm Calhoun) were all solid slabs that drew from Gipp's past. But it was the spaced-out moments that brought out the best in him. He and Andre 3000 try to out-style each other on "Boogie Man" while "Creeks" (featuring Witchdoctor) sounds like an inside-out P-Funk tune. The Sleepy Brown-powered "Steppin Out" is pure ecstasy, an irresistible steppers' classic.

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• 

  Mr. Brown

  Sleepy Brown

  2006 | VIRGIN

  With his bugged-out shades, Bic-clean dome and flashy threads, Sleepy Brown was always the most visible member of Organized Noize. Released in 2006, Mr. Brown was his third attempt at developing a solo profile, after neither the Society of Soul nor Sleepy's Room projects found the audiences they deserved. By now Sleepy was well known for his appearances on hits like Ludacris's "Saturday" and Outkast's "The Way You Move," and the festive,... romance/freak-centric Mr. Brown takes a more direct route to stardom. Big Boi and Pharrell — honors student at the Sleepy Brown School of Falsetto — show up for the joyous, buoyant "Margarita." Sleepy nicks a Jackson 5 tune for the majestic, carefree "Me, My Baby and My Cadillac." While they were no longer the go-to producers for their former disciples, Organized Noize showed that they were still full of ideas on the slow-motion writhe of "Oh Ho Hum."

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• 

  Sir Lucious Left Foot...The Son Of Chico Dusty

  Big Boi

  2010 | Def Jam Records
• 

  Cee-Lo Green And His Perfect Imperfections

  Cee-Lo Green

  2002 | Arista
• 

  Cee-Lo Green... Is The Soul Machine

  Cee-Lo Green

  2004 | Arista
• 

  The Man Not The Dawg

  Khujo Goodie

  2002 | A To Z Entertainment / The Orchard

Strength in Numbers

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  Even In Darkness

  Dungeon Family

  2001 | Arista

  Expectations were unreasonably high for the Dungeon Family album, and it's a compliment to the crew's high quality of output that 2001's Even in Darkness left most fans unsatisfied. There were some great songs — Cee-Lo's spine-tingling lead-in to the anthemic "Crooked Booty," Andre 3000's cavalier stroll through the Kraftwerk-tweaking "Trans DF Express," the celebratory reunion vibes of "6 Minutes," the punch-drunk funk of "Rollin'." Maybe too much of a good thing... was the problem. Organized Noize and Earthtone III (Outkast and Mr. DJ's production moniker) were in top form — Even in Darkness features some of the strongest crew productions of the era. But there was a sense of collaborative play lacking in some of the posse cuts, all these moments of individual brilliance at the cost of a larger struggle.

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• 

  Big Boi Presents... Got Purp? Vol. 2

  Big Boi Presents...

  2005 | VIRGIN

  After the dissolution of Outkast, Big Boi attempted to recreate the Dungeon Family with Purple Ribbon, a loose collective of local survivors and Family stalwarts. The only prerequisite was style and Big's approval, which helps explain why Got Purp? Vol. II can be so simultaneously absorbing and exhausting. There's a lot going on here — limber, pristine-sounding singers (Scar, Janelle Monae), old friends (Sleepy Brown, Cool Breeze) and new allies (Bubba Sparxxx,... who contributes the excellent "Claremont Lounge"). Still, the highs are a reminder of Big's adventurous spirit, especially the funhouse thrills of the posse cut "Kryptonite" to the deconstructed old-school of Big, Bun B, Big Gee and G-Rock's fantastic "808."

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• 

  Kinfolk

  Ali & Gipp

  2007 | Universal

  Slowly, the circle widened. In 2007, with Goodie Mob broken up, Gipp collaborated on an album with Ali of the St. Lunatics, who had helped do for the Midwest what Gipp and the Dungeon Family had done for Atlanta. It was a surprisingly good pairing; then again, Gipp's lumbering drawl sounds good alongside anyone. There was nothing conceptual about Kinfolk. It was heavy on features and a kind of newfound, multi-region solidarity:... Nelly and the irrepressible Pimp C show up for "Hood" while Cee-Lo and Bun B bring some menace to "I Told Ya." They were all drawn by the lowest common denominator, so to speak. "Work Dat, Twerk Dat" comes across as some stripped-down, country-fied Miami Bass, a spiritual companion to the minimalist thump of the rump-toasting "Go 'Head."

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• 

  Underground Atlanta

  Killer Mike

  SMC Recordings
• 

  Do U Speak Dungeoneze Mixtape

  Dungeon Family

  2006 | Underground Metro/Murray Music Group / The Orchard

The Legacy: Leftfield Pop (version 1)

• 

  St. Elsewhere

  Gnarls Barkley

  2006 | Downtown Recordings

  Cee-Lo always had star power: his pesky scampering rapping anchoring Goodie Mob's songs, the bright, inspired moments on his 2002 and 2004 solo albums. He finally broke through in 2006 with St. Elsewhere, the first of two collaborative albums he recorded with DJ and producer Danger Mouse. Here, Cee-Lo showed off his versatility as a singer rather than a rapper, commanding his partner's quirky pop arrangements with class, wit and just a... bit of grit. "Crazy" conquered the world and inaugurated the third act of Cee-Lo's astonishing career. Fitting that their first encounter was in the late 1990s after a Goodie Mob concert, Danger Mouse still and up-and-comer, pressing a demo tape into the hands of his heroes.

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  The Odd Couple

  Gnarls Barkley

  2008 | Downtown Recordings/Atl
• 

  The Lady Killer

  Cee-Lo Green

  2010 | Radiculture/Elektra

The Legacy: Leftfield Pop (take 2)

• 

  The ArchAndroid

  Janelle Monáe

  2010 | Bad Boy/Wondaland

  "I grew up on Outkast," the visionary singer Janelle Monae recently explained. "I grew up on Goodie Mob, I grew up on Dungeon Family." When Monae moved to Atlanta as an aspiring singer, she was drawn to the lineage of chart-topping iconoclasts the city had produced. She became part of Big Boi's Purple Ribbon collective and she featured on a couple Outkast songs for the Idlewild soundtrack. It was Big who recommended... her to Diddy, who signed her to Bad Boy and — somewhat shockingly — afforded her the space to make The ArchAndroid, a dizzying and meticulous hour of post-everything, hooks-and-provocation soul that was clearly indebted to the Dungeon Family. Maybe it's a sign of how successful and mainstream Outkast et al became that Monae was afforded the freedom to create her galaxies in peace. She hasn't forgotten where she came from — Big Boi guests on one of the album's brightest cuts, "Tightrope," and she recently guested on the Goodie Mob reunion single, "Special Education."

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• 

  Metropolis: The Chase Suite

  Janelle Monáe

  2008 | Bad Boy Records

The Legacy: Still Grinding

• 

  Pluto

  Future

  2012 | Epic

  The family business is in good hands: Janelle Monae's freak flag flies on behalf of the Dungeon, while Killer Mike continues to put out fantastic, bracing records. And then there's Future, whose 2012 debut Pluto was one of the year's best albums, a captivating mix of psychedelic highs and strange, bluesy wails. It opened with a voice familiar to anyone who had grown up on the Dungeon Family: "The future is now,"... crackled Big Rube, whose soft, grizzled voice and inscrutable adages have been a constant over the family's twenty year run. There are plenty of current-day Atlanta rappers who grew up on Outkast and Goodie Mob, but few grew up in their presence. Future experienced it all firsthand thanks to his cousin, Rico Wade. He got the name "Future" as a kid hanging out at the studio with Wade and his friends, back when they were all working their way up. He's proven their prophecy right.

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• 

  I Pledge Allegiance to the Grind II

  Killer Mike

  SMC Recordings
• 

  Diary Of An American Witchdoctor

  Witchdoctor

  2007 | Williams Street Records

• 

  R.I.P.

  The USA Is A Monster

  2013 | Northern Spy / Redeye

  While at ESP-Disk', we put out a new Talibam! recording. They were one of the first new artists signed to ESP-Disk' since the post-2000 reboot. We developed a friendship working with [Talibam's] Matt Mottel, and since Colin [from The USA is a Monster] and he are good friends, there was this sort of natural suggestion that brought us to USA is a Monster. We loved the band already, and when we put... on the master [recording] for R.I.P., we knew instantly that this should be our first record. It was subversive. It's rife with the Native American mythos the band is known for, including songs about Ranald MacDonald, the first Native American English-speaker to teach in Japan, and about Grey Owl and his wife Anahareo, who were known for their nature writing and animal rights activism. It also fit in [the same] weird trajectory [as] Fugs and Godz, who released records with ESP. So it seemed like a natural fit.
  
  At the time, we didn't know this was USA's last record, but we thought we could sell records based on the band's reputation — essentially that the incredible, intense music would speak for itself. They had done awesome records with Load and toured their asses off, playing in every basement in every town in America. So, yeah, our first record was all about being fans of the band, ignoring the business aspects. Essentially, we wanted to make an awesome statement. Our first releases were really our calling card, our intro to the world.

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  Dream Seeds

  Extra Life

  2013 | Northern Spy / Redeye

  A favorite Northern Spy release. We were very enthusiastic about Charlie Looker's songwriting. Dream Seeds is a real concept album, one that rewards multiple listens. The album seems to have secrets in it. As a fan, I want to keep listening, entering into the world the band created. As a label owner, I really wanted to share this music. One thing Charlie always said was that, as he toured, there would quite... often be light attendance at shows, but there would always be three or four people that drove far to see the band — the ones that would sorta creep up on Charlie, fascinated by his persona. That really struck me as interesting, that Charlie was connecting with fans intensely, even if it was just a small number.
  
  Seeing that band live at [Brooklyn's] St. Vitus was a game changer for us. We listen to Dream Seeds all the time — that final chorus in "First Song" still sounds totally fresh. Their first record on NSPY for them ended up being their last. The band broke up six months after the release. I think the darkness from touring got to them.

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  The Home of Easy Credit

  The Home of Easy Credit

  2013 | Northern Spy / Redeye

  An oft-forgotten album in our catalog. And it's a shame, because there are some incredibly wild things going on here. At points, you feel like you're floating endlessly in the sounds and at others you feel you're being thrown around the room. The whole team came to love the record. Tom Blancarte and his wife Louise D.E. Jensen brought us this record. They planned to tour heavily, playing to adventurous audiences throughout... the US and Europe.
  
  After almost 40 records, we've had it all…bands made up of divorced couples, bands breaking up during the tour, bands with members that used to date. We'd already released two albums from bands that had broken up. So around the time we were considering signing The Home of Easy Credit, we brought up the fact that this was a husband and wife duo. We discussed this internally, partially kidding around, but we didn't want to be responsible for breaking up a marriage. We knew they were going to be heading out on the road really hard. They did a couple tours I think of 40 or so shows each, all across the US. That's a lot of time together driving in a car. And they toured just as much in Europe. Their tour plan was laid out before we signed them, so we knew they'd be spending all this time together. And yeah, we got nervous. It's always a little scary.

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  Grain

  Zs

  2013 | Northern Spy Records / Redeye

  The Zs came to with the most expansive [ideas], sculpting this two-year plan to create an arc. It was exciting. We released Zs solo projects, then we collected the band's sextet records that were all out of print and housed them in a box set. It pulls together an immense amount of music, the entire output of the band during their sextet period along with an entire disc of unreleased material. One... of the discs features a live show [where] an audience member yells out "Slayer!" and "Sheet music rules!" It highlights the kind of punk venues Zs were playing in — setting up in dingy punk clubs with sheet music.
  
  In order to highlight this release as something new and vital, the band came up with a remix idea to breathe new life into the work and avoid canonizing the early work. The former resulted in an installation in an art gallery setting. People could come in, download tracks from [the box set] and remix them right there in the gallery.
  The box set was mastered by Ben Greenberg, who was in Zs for the post-sextet period. We released Ben's solo Terry Riley-like guitar project called Hubble. Ben is now a primary member of The Men. Tracks from Arms were played on Howard Stern's radio program. Howard did a couple segments on Zs, which included the entire Howard Stern family creating their own "avant-garde" jam. So, in a way, Zs are central to Northern Spy because we've done the most work with them, which has all been amazing and very rewarding.

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• 

  Streets

  Charles Gayle

  2013 | Northern Spy / Redeye

  Charles called [Northern Spy co-owner] Tom up out of the blue. He just called and said, "I want to do a record with you guys." Right away, we knew we had to get him playing tenor. Just being around him, for me, was humbling. He's a very special guy, very smart, just a real jazz musician. This was the first recording of Charles playing tenor in probably a decade or more.
  
  Charles... talked a lot about Streets [a clown character he first developed 20 years ago — Ed.]. He told me about being influenced heavily by Emmett Kelly, a famous pantomime clown. He loved the idea of a clown being a tragic figure, a performer that could make a crowd laugh, but also garner sympathy. While performing live as Streets, Gayle has been known to pantomime the catching of a fly only to accidentally kill it, which would lead to him playing sad notes on a piano.
  
  Wire magazine sent a photographer named Chris Verene to shoot Charles for a spread in the magazine that was published around the release of Streets. I attended the photo session, and we ended up walking around the East Village in Manhattan shooting Charles playing in the streets and subway stations. Charles used to busk in the subways and such, but he didn't talk too much about that. He doesn't do that anymore, though he did it for the photo shoot. He had a lot of fun, too. I remember watching him and realizing how much the city's sounds correlated to the free style of jazz. Charles even did a call-and-response with the horn and a passing bus and police siren.

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  Outdoor Spell

  Rhys Chatham

  2013 | Northern Spy / Redeye

  Most people know Rhys's minimalist guitar pieces, but when he came to us with this layered trumpet concept, we saw it as an opportunity to try to market him a in a different way. The record is really mesmerizing, and I encourage everyone to smoke a joint and let the layer of sound wash over you.
  
  We had Rhys and [his manager] Regina over for dinner. We made a home-cooked meal and opened... wine. We got along really well. During an early meeting, Rhys gave the Northern Spy family lessons on trumpet over a couple bottles of wine.
  
  You feel kinda lucky just to be in the same room with Rhys. He's got a big personality, very funny and sharp. Rhys wrote us complaining that someone had plagiarized his music, and sent us a link to the would-be-thief's video. Tom immediately wrote back that we would do whatever it took to remedy the situation. Then we watched the video and saw that it was just a homeless man doing armpit farts for his friends. Rhys was just joking around after reading a reviewer's comment that Rhys' trumpet sounded like flatulence.

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• 

  Make Memories

  Foot Village

  2013 | Northern Spy Records / Redeye

  Foot Village's new record was super exciting for us. We fell in love with it right when we heard it, and that love has only grown. Last summer, Adam played this record in the office, without any introduction. About five or six minutes into the first track, I go, "Wow, this sounds like Foot Village if they became the best band ever." And Adam, in a very Adam way, responded, "This is... Foot Village. They want us to put out their new record." Needless to say, this sent me in a frenzy. I saw the band at ATP in 2011, and their live show was electric. I just felt like they were missing a certain element — maybe it's the darkness, which I feel they tapped into on this record, particularly on "1600 Dolla Bill" and "The End of the World."
  
  It was also tied into the whole "end of the world" Mayan calendar thing that made the social media buzz cycle last year. Just in case the world really did end, we announced the phone number so people could hear the record before imploding. By calling their Emergency Hotline (951-262-2552), you could hear over the phone playbacks of the record. An automated voice would allow you to hear each track by pressing a number. You could also leave the band a message.
  
  It was a big step for the band, and they worked super hard, promoting themselves and coming up with ways to engage the audience and build fans. Their live show is incredible and fun, people circle around them, much like a Lightning Bolt live set. The band's friend served as the model for the photos on the packaging. They covered her in day-glo paint and took photos of her jumping on a trampoline with a huge, rainbow backdrop.
  
  As opposed to some of our other band names, I like the name Foot Village. We made a joke about Googling the band name and getting some spurious, sexual results, but all of the disturbing things that come up when you Google "foot village" are actually due to the band.

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  COL

  Colin L. Orchestra

  2013 | Northern Spy / Redeye

  When Colin ended The USA Is A Monster, I think people were excited to see what he did next. Turns out, he started a country-fried acid-y jam band to play super-long, Rhys Chatham-inspired minimalism. There was a month-long residency at Zebulon, and then Northern Spy put out the record. Since then, the Orchestra (which is two to three keyboardists, two percussionists, a bass player and usually five guitar players) has been playing... tons of shows in Brooklyn and beyond. They toured both coasts too. A song from the album actually got used for a climactic montage scene in the film I Do and I Don't, which starred Jane Lynch.

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  Your Turn

  Ceramic Dog

  2013 | Northern Spy Records / Redeye

  Marc Ribot is a guitar god. In New York City, Ribot is a legend. And when we heard he was working on a new Ceramic Dog record, five years since his last, we got in contact and really fought for this record. The trio includes Shahzad Ismaily and Ches Smith, who both contribute a tune and rock out. Before going to the album release show at [Manhattan's] (Le) Poisson Rouge, a track... from [Tom Waits's] Rain Dogs came on my shuffle while I was driving, and I thought, "Holy hell, we're putting out an album by Marc Ribot. That's him on this record, this legendary record."

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• 

  Cascine eMusic Sampler - 2013

  Various Artists

  2013 | Cascine / Redeye
• 

  Now Hear This! - The Winners of the 12th Independent Music Awards

  Various Artists

  2013 | Various Artists / TuneCore
• 

  Global Jukebox Records: An Alan Lomax Sampler

  Various Artists

  2013 | Global Jukebox / The Orchard
• 

  Burger Records Sampler

  Various Artists

  2013 | Burger Records / Redeye
• 

  A Sampler of Sounds

  Various Artists

  ESP-Disk
• 

  ATO Records Spring Sampler 2013

  Various Artists - ATO Records

  2013 | ATO Records
• 

  Polyvinyl SXSW 2013 Sampler

  Various Artists

  2013 | Polyvinyl Records
• 

  Here's To Another 21 Years! - SAMPLER

  Various Artists

  2012 | Kill Rock Stars / Redeye
• 

  Wind-up 15th Anniversary Sampler

  Various

  2012 | Wind-Up
• 

  Stash Rituals: Mexican Summer/Software Spring 2012 Sampler

  Various Artists

  2012 | Mexican Summer
• 

  Hey Girl, Hey

  Various Artists

  2012 | Polyvinyl Records
• 

  ATO Records Fall Sampler 2012

  Various Artists - ATO Records

  2012 | ATO Records
• 

  The Modern Jazz Stylings of Blue Canoe Records Volume 1

  Look What The Cats Drug In

  2008 | Blue Canoe
• 

  Broken Ground - Single (Alt Edit) [eMusic Exclusive Advance]

  Jodis

  2012 | Hydra Head Records / Redeye

• 

  Balearic Blend

  Various Artists

  2012 | CAR W.S. NEW RELEASE

  The most eclectic of EMI staffer Jens Peterson Hällefors's Balearic collections serves as an introduction to the Balearic series. Encompassing the folky classical minimalism of Penguin Café Orchestra, various permutations of UK New Wave and art-rock (Simple Minds, Spandau Ballet, Kajagoogoo, Roxy Music/Bryan Ferry), funky prog from Germany's Eloy, funky EDM from Japan's Logic System, Marcos Valle's Brazilian jazz with Bond-like strings, Working Week's gentle bossa nova, and much more, Balearic Blend... emphasizes that Ibiza's dancefloor aesthetics are far more concerned with mood than beats. Much of it is happy: You can't get more light-hearted than Sly Dunbar's reggae variation on the Sesame Street theme. But other tracks aren't exactly perky, as the "Death Disco" of Public Image Ltd. makes abrasively clear. The warmly inclusive result is only nominally club-friendly, and that's as it should be: This is what people dance to only when they're on vacation and/or very, very drunk.

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  Balearic Leftfield

  Various Artists

  2012 | CAR W.S. NEW RELEASE

  Balearic Leftfield focuses on offbeat dance records of the '80s, which is basically what this Balearic series is about. It's where the eccentric and disco-centric circles of UK New Wave (and their European cousins) overlap. Of course that includes Thomas Dolby's biggest hit, Duran Duran's first Giorgio Moroder-aping single, oft-overlooked Human League (and their pseudonymous spin-off, the Men), and Simple Minds at their most hypnotic. But it also includes Laid Back's club... classic, buried disco-not-disco treasure from Belgium's Telex and Allez Allez, Germany's Deutsch Amerikanische Freudschaft spoofing anti-immigrant phobias, a strikingly erotic UK hit from Hot Chocolate and some arty funk from prog guitarist Steve Hillage. And if you're looking for Swedish dancefloor esoterica, Diggy Tal & the Numbers, Micke Hagström and Ragnar Grippe have your number.

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  Balearic Electronic

  Various Artists

  2012 | CAR W.S. NEW RELEASE

  Although much of the Balearic series is a forerunner to today's EDM, Balearic Electronic is where its sounds are most pointedly synthetic. This is synthpop, unabashedly robotic for its time, yet also elegant in its emphatically European, quasi-symphonic alienation: '80s dance music doesn't get more estranged than Anne Clarke's poetically pained cult club hit "Our Darkness." An apt remedy to the summer heat, nearly everything else here is refreshingly chilly: OMD's 1980... early UK breakthrough "Messages" remains the coolest in its long discography. As with most other installments, there's a US pop smash here, When in Rome's deeply romantic 1988 single "The Promise," but a lot more from the margins, courtesy of B-sides, album cuts and should-have-bit-hits by early Heaven 17, China Crisis, Ultravox and other staples of the decade's alternative dancefloors.

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  Balearic House

  Various Artists

  2012 | CAR W.S. NEW RELEASE

  Leaving behind the synthpop era, Balearic House focuses on the late '80s and '90s to explore how the sound of Ibiza changed after it initially captured the UK imagination. House music may have ultimately lost much of its early quirks, but this installment of the Balearic series still packs plenty of diversity. There are the requisite divas — Judy Cheeks, Inner City's Paris Grey, Kym Mazelle, Soul II Soul's Do'reen, Loose Ends'... Jane Eugene and, of course, Adeva — but there is also plenty of textural, tonal, melodic and harmonic variation that far exceeds the house norm. Norway's Mental Overdrive goes on for 15 minutes in "About Erot," but the ever-evolving cut builds like a mini DJ set, encompassing ambient, jazz-funk, Afrobeat, and other flavors along the way. The Land of Oz mix of Frazier Chorus's "Nothing" captures Paul Oakenfold at the early '90s peak of his remixing powers, and Sasha's Quat Mix of Cheeks' "So in Love (The Real Deal)" is similarly shaded with emotional nuance. There's so much passion here.

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  Balearic World

  Various Artists

  2012 | CAR W.S. NEW RELEASE

  Given Ibiza's status as a tourist destination, one that was decidedly more esoteric in the '80s before its nightlife reputation exploded, it's totally appropriate that its club-music approach would be emphatically international. Balearic World combines two distinct takes on world music — native expressions of local styles, and appropriations from outside. Recorded under his short-lived Jesus Loves You moniker, Boy George's "Bow Down Mister" celebrates the Hare Krishna spirituality that helped the... star overcome his heroin addiction; it's wacky, but oddly moving. The Brazilian acts on the other end of the authenticity spectrum — Quarteto Em Cy, Os Borges, Evinha, and Elza Soares — all combine indigenous vibes and language with boundary-crossing sounds. The rest embrace exotica that's sometimes campy, sometimes sincere, but nearly always soothing.

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  Balearic Reggae

  Various Artists

  2012 | CAR W.S. NEW RELEASE

  A defining feature of the Ibiza DJ-ing approach is individuality through diversity, so it makes sense that Balearic Reggae is not only of the broadest collections of Jamaican (and quasi-Jamaican) music you'll hear, but also one of the most idiosyncratic. This is probably the only place where roots reggae, dub reggae, reggae-disco, reggae hip-hop, reggae trip-hop, a chart-topping reggae-ska smash and a Culture Club B-side all come together. As the inclusion of... the Mighty Diamonds, Burning Spear, Culture and other purists attest, there are plenty of authentic island sounds — no Swedish reggae here. But Sly Dunbar, Peter Tosh and Keith Hudson all mix their grooves with angular funk to rump-shaking effect. As their song goes, one-hit-wonders Althea & Donna are "strictly roots," but that didn't stop this female teen duo from topping the UK pop chart in 1978 with an unpolished gem that unjustly flopped in the US, "Uptown Top Ranking."

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  Balearic Pop

  Various Artists

  2012 | CAR W.S. NEW RELEASE

  Flaunting some ultra-mainstream names ordinarily anathema to other exhaustive catalog exhumations, Balearic Pop combines the familiar with the obscure to make the point that great music is great music, no matter who sings it or how it's marketed — a key tenant of Ibiza's club philosophy. Adult contemporary queens Kim Carnes and Sheena Easton rub shoulders with the far artier likes of Talk Talk and It's Immaterial, yet the whole set flows... smoothly from start. Don't be ashamed — you know you love Kajagoogoo's "Too Shy," particularly in Mark Kamins's 12" mix. Eighties pop doesn't mix sonic sophistication and psychological rawness better than the Blue Nile's "Tinseltown in the Rain," a taster from an album waiting to be rediscovered by today's fans of Rhye and Jessie Ware.

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  Balearic Rock

  Various Artists

  2012 | CAR W.S. NEW RELEASE

  Combining glam, punk, post-punk, New Wave, Neue Deutsche Welle, space rock, alt-rock and several spaces in between, Balearic Rock is way hipper than its title or even its lineup implies. The oft-bootlegged "Theme from Great Cities" is a genuine Ibiza classic hailing from those pre-Breakfast Club days when Simple Minds proved themselves unlikely masters of trippy quasi-Eurodisco — just listen to that rattling bassline rip. Suzi Quatro gets sultry on an overlooked,... keyboard-led cut from her otherwise rowdy 1974 debut album while late '90s Norwegian surf rock revivalists Kåre & The Cavemen aka Euro Boys here suggest caffeinated Air.

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  Balearic Soft Rock

  Various Artists

  2012 | CAR W.S. NEW RELEASE

  Much of what's here isn't exactly soft: Would someone tell that guitarist in the Little River Band's otherwise lovely opus "It's a Long Way There" to just knock it off already? But there are mellow cuts from typically more anxious acts (Bryan Ferry/Roxy Music, Billy Idol, Kevin Ayers), funkiness from the otherwise folky (Julie Felix), a ridiculously catchy ditty from Shakespearian actor Brian Protheroe ("Pinball"), the Waterboys' horn-blasting hit ("The Whole of... the Moon"), and striking sensual balladry from the usually corny (Bobby Goldsboro). As usual, Scandinavians generate the most alien cuts: The voice of Woody in the Swedish edition of Toy Story, Blue Swede leader Björn Skifs steals the show with his jazzy translation of Carole King's classic "It's Too Late."

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  Balearic Prog

  Various Artists

  2012 | CAR W.S. NEW RELEASE

  With the exception of Babe Ruth's "The Mexican," a DJ staple on NYC's disco and hip-hop scenes, this brazenly esoteric set wanders furthest into murky areas of the European EMI catalog where the US could not follow. It also strays significantly from the smooth and sunny sounds commonly understood as Balearic; it's hard to imagine most of this unsteady stuff generating much action on any dancefloor. But even the gnarly bits sometimes... give way to unexpected grooves — dig that savage drum break in Swedish band Storm's crazy "Lt. Calley Bjuder Upp," a sonic blueprint for today's indie freakout favorites Goat.

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  Balearic Ambient

  Various Artists

  2012 | CAR W.S. NEW RELEASE

  Dance music for the very confident and/or very stoned, Balearic Ambient is, of course, low on beats and high on underwater vibes. Slow, sustained notes abound, and although there's often still too much going on here to qualify for Brian Eno's strict sense of what's ambient, much of it comes pretty close. Japan's brooding and strikingly beautiful "Ghosts" was a No. 5 pop hit in 1982 England; Talk Talk's even more abstract... "The Rainbow" signaled the band's 1988 break from its New Wave past. The rest is all instrumental and more minimal. Klaus Schønning and former the Soundtrack of Our Lives member Björn Olsson supply the Scandinavian connection; the former's 1982 cut "Cygnus" suggests the smoother side of current Daft Punk.

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“La Grange”

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  Tres Hombres [Expanded & Remastered]

  ZZ Top

  2006 | Atlantic Records/ATG

  Where else to start? "La Grange" is ur-Top. That rim-tapped drum intro, Gibbons's low-register mutter, imprecations to "have mercy" and his punctuating hums and growls, the way the thick and relentless boogie-blues onslaught kicks in, and of course the titular reference to the Texas brothel made famous by Dolly Parton in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. But lyrical innuendo is an afterthought, as Gibbons's jacked-up blues guitar work, bolstered by that... driving rhythm, is all-consuming, his "licks" a sensory metaphor: We're new kittens, tongue-bathed by Gibbons's loving, persistent, mother cat of a Stratocaster. The virtuosity displayed here and throughout Tres Hombres feels less ego-driven than compassionate; Gibbons offers up his chops as a gift.

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“I’m Bad, I’m Nationwide”

• 

  Deguello

  ZZ Top

  1979 | Warner Bros.

  In which our heroes, after a three-year hiatus, introduce the thematic triple enthusiasm for cars, women and flashy clothes that will carry them through their career — and, hell, make them millionaires a few short years down the road. Simpler in construction than many Top songs — verse, chorus, solo, rinse, repeat — "I'm Bad" is sing-along catchy, and Deguello's production is slicker than past efforts, but Gibbons's dusty-sunlight guitar lines and... the arpeggios he trades with Hill's bass give the track the tar-stick of hot asphalt.

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“I Gotsta Get Paid”

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  La Futura

  ZZ Top

  2012 | Republic Records

  Rick Rubin's production builds the rhythm section into a loading dock for the ramped-up crunch and lumber of Gibbons's guitar; the chorus, cribbed from the Houston Screwed-Up Click rap classic "25 Lighters," showcases his burnished shaman's voice, punctuated by Hill's impressive backup wail. What could be better (or weirder) for ZZ Top's comeback single than this anthemic Houston genre-crossing? How about debuting it in a malt-liquor commercial? Done.

“Sharp Dressed Man”

• 

  Eliminator

  ZZ Top

  1983 | Rhino/Warner Bros.

  The apex of 1980s ZZ Top. A furious, thickly-produced rhythm drive undergirds one of the hottest, simplest riffs in rock history, upon which Gibbons lays some of his wittiest lyrics. Hill punctuates with synthy Dolbian vocal accents, the era being what it is, but the whole thing resolves into a walking guitar solo so fine that it's possible to overlook the fact that those women in the video never would have really... gotten away with wearing leotards and jeans to all those black-tie events.

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“Just Got Paid”

• 

  Rio Grande Mud

  ZZ Top

  2011 | Rhino/Warner Bros.

  Barely more than a handful of verses thrown around an astonishing slide guitar solo, "Just Got Paid" is checklist blues — hitting the marks of lyric themes here, shuffling rhythm there — but sped up to double and triple time, the structure stretched to breaking point, folded back onto itself, and finally allowed to disintegrate completely to serve the raw, sweet glory of that guitar. Famously covered by both Rapeman and Ministry;... Steve Albini and Al Jourgenson are both avowed Top fanatics.

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“Heard it on the X”

• 

  Fandango [Expanded & Remastered]

  ZZ Top

  2006 | Atlantic Records/ATG

  A tribute to the midcentury radio pioneers stationed south of the border who, unfettered by U.S. wattage limits and commercial concerns, blasted a wide range of country, blues and rock into the radios of impressionable young Texans, "Heard it on the X" finds Gibbons and Hill trading vocals while an infectious, repeated rhythm figure careens like a Mustang driven by a teenager in body-thrall to his favorite late-night DJ.

“I Thank You”

• 

  Deguello

  ZZ Top

  1979 | Warner Bros.

  Notable for threading sexual innuendo throughout the Sam and Dave classic by switching around some pronouns ("You didn't have to squeeze me" becomes "You didn't have to squeeze it," and so on), the Top's cover is nevertheless spiritually, if not sonically, faithful. Gibbons's straining, gravel-scarred vocal delivery here is among his best ("Gibbons sings like a zipper," Lester Bangs wrote, praising the track in Rolling Stone), and his liquid-toned, meandering guitar solo... resolves into a tight, soul-revue a cappella breakdown before wandering off again.

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“Just Got Back From Baby’s”

• 

  ZZ Top's First Album

  ZZ Top

  2011 | Rhino/Warner Bros.

  The highlight of a debut album flawed by its overreliance on the mid-tempo groove, "Just Got Back From Baby's" is smooth and cool, with Gibbons's throaty, scraping vocal almost a croon; but the fuzzed-out insistence of his mournful, dust-bathed guitar wind-down exposes the grit underneath all that gleam.

“Ten Dollar Man”

• 

  Tejas

  ZZ Top

  2013 | Rhino/Warner Bros.

  Some of the most gloriously scuzzy guitar sounds ever laid to tape can be found on this highlight of 1976's Tejas, which owes as much debt to Zeppelin (better yet, AC/DC, though unless Gibbons and co. were importing records from Australia, probably not) as to Lightnin' Hopkins.

“Alley-Gator”

• 

  Mescalero

  ZZ Top

  2003 | RCA Records Label

  A swamp-stomp "Maneater" inexplicably bolstered by an accordion, "Alley-Gator" would be throwaway if it weren't for the lovingly dirt-damaged production and Gibbons's warm-as-Rio-Grande-mud guitar tone, lying down — in this deep album cut — the kind of licks that must keep Jack White up at night.

Bushy Black Imperial

• 

  Hot Rats

  Frank Zappa

  2012 | Zappa Records

  His curly thatch of hair and beard an instant identifier on nearly every record cover over his four-decade career, Frank Zappa has been that rare breed: an outsider to the music biz grind that has been able to pursue any and all avenues (snark rock, orchestral mayhem, tape jumble, absurdist doo-wop, goofy prog opera, oft times within a three-minute span) while keeping a rabid fanbase foaming. Hot Rats, his second album under... his own name (after the experimental Lumpy Gravy), Zappa gets grease from goateed musical ally Captain Beefheart crowing on the sleazy "Willie the Pimp" and multi-instrumentalist Ian Underwood on the "The Gumbo Variations," warping jazz and rock (and classical and funk and...) in his own image.

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Hep, Modified Van Dyke

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  Here And There

  Eric Dolphy

  2006 | Fantasy Records

  Multi-reedsman Dolphy is one of the rare jazz players to serve as sideman to three giants of modern jazz, working with Charles Mingus, John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman on their groundbreaking works. Dolphy mastered not just alto sax but the far more obstinate bass clarinet and flute and made their tonalities work in the post-bop vernacular. Culled and collected after his untimely death in 1964 from an untreated diabetic condition, Here and... There draws from three different sessions, though there's no reason to consider them shavings. Opener "Status Seeking" comes from a stand at the Five Spot with the similarly doomed Booker Little and second-line timekeeping whiz Ed Blackwell, and it remains lightning-quick and ferocious for its 13-minute duration. At the other end of the spectrum, Dolphy's solo bass clarinet reading of Billie Holiday's "God Bless the Child" stops the earth spinning on most days.

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Striking, White-Blemished Tuft On Otherwise Jet-Black Goatee

• 

  Spiritual Unity

  Albert Ayler

  2002 | ESP'Disk

  There will come a day when Albert Ayler's visage will become as prevalent and defiant an image as that of Che. Call him a freedom fighter, a revolutionary, a fire brand, seeking the ecstatic essence at the core of all music, not just jazz. Through the '60s, Ayler's fervent breathing and circular huffing through the simplest of children songs and New Orleans marches revealed the ecstatic and cathartic beneath the song's surface,... and he brought forth such energy so that each phrase flared like a comet through the cosmos. His fellow spacemen, drummer Sunny Murray and bassist Gary Peacock, provided a foundation that both tethered Ayler's mungo vibrato and launched him further into the stratosphere. On "Spirits" and the two versions of "Ghosts," such ethereal entities can be felt coursing through Ayler's music.

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Alternating Soul Patch & Goatee, Dyed Pink/Purple/Maroon

• 

  Monorails And Satellites

  Sun Ra

  Evidence Records

  How to encapsulate the sonic universe of extraterrestrial jazz pianist and arranger Sun Ra? It's as impossible as to calculate his exact trajectory through this terrestrial life. From polyrhythmic space chants to all out skronk and blat, from Ellingtonian swing to experimental electronic noise, from Africa to Saturn, Sun Ra and his disciples rocketed through it all. Rare was the man's solo outings though, and this one stands out in the vast... discography. While already employing ARPs and Moogs in his live set-up, Monorails and Satellites finds Ra focusing on his piano straight-up. Whether it's a standard like "Easy Street," playing the blues or boogie-woogie, Ra reveals that despite the foil-wrapped solar crown, sequined gown and cosmic dogma, he was first and foremost a working-stiff swing pianist from Alabama that knew his roots enough to eschew them for outer space.

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Dreader Than Dread

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  Open The Iron Gate 1973-1977

  Max Romeo

  Blood And Fire / Virtual

  Randy rude boy (and pretty boy) Max Romeo started off spouting X-rated skanks before growing out both his dreads and beard, putting down the lad mags for Marx's Das Kapital. Righteous Rastafarianism aside, Iron Gate encompasses the two Romeo records that bookend his outright classic, War Ina Babylon, but are fantastic in their own right. Communist dogma ("Revelation Time"), cries for repatriation and an outlook that's both F*#$ tha Police and f*$#... the Pope ("Fire Fe the Vatican") brunt up against a Romeo obsessed not just with Marley and Marx but also with Manson. Hear how he prophesizes the blood of the rich flowing freely down the hill on the violent "Warning Warning" and shiver at its smoothly crooned cry for Helter Skelter.

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Scruffy, Ginger-Tinged

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  Live At Leeds Deluxe Edition

  John Martyn

  2010 | ISLAND RECORDS

  Scottish guitarist John Martyn deftly melded American blues to British folk with his wife Beverly early on in his career. He then veered off the road taken by his more pensive and poppy contemporaries like Nick Drake and Al Stewart in favor of something more vague and disquieting. With the nimble shadow play that longtime upright bassist Danny Thompson brings to the table, the two utilized jazz's improvised openness on this live... outing at Leeds University to plunge down into the netherworlds implicit in songs like "Solid Air," "Outside In" and Skip James' menacing "I'd Rather Be the Devil," doubling (or even tripling!) their album lengths. Out at the edges, with Martyn's heavily echoplexed guitar thickening the snaking lines, the two players writhe and worm into very dark areas of the psyche here, something the record label wasn't too keen on loosing. Hence Martyn pressed the first 10,000 of these himself.

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Jet Back, With Optional Whiskey Slobber

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  Closing In On The Fire

  Waylon Jennings

  1998 | Ark 21 Records / The Orchard

  Waylon Jennings is not the Man in Black, unless it means he's swimming in black label Jack with a mind humming from a handful of Black Beauties. Too miscreant for Nashville's countrypolitan scene in the late '60s, Waylon rode off on his own, growing out a beard as greasy, grungy and black as his raven tresses. He spearheaded the "Outlaw" movement in country along with drinking buddies Willie Nelson and Billy Joe... Shaver in the early '70s, emphasizing hard loving, living and substances (not necessarily in that order). Making a comeback in the grunge era, Waylon casually creaks about such times and cronies on "Best Friends of Mine." His throat fissured, every bit the grizzled elder, Waylon still wades deep into the swamp of the title track and the Stones' "No Expectations" to stare down the blackness.

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Neatly trimmed, manicured, blonde

• 

  Hand Of Kindness

  Richard Thompson

  2006 | Ryko/Rhino

  A fiery-locked, guitar-prodigy lad back in his days with British folk-rock luminaries Fairport Convention, Richard Thompson left the classic group to make music with wife Linda in the early '70s. As both delved deeper into their newfound Sufi Muslim faith, Richard's long hair was replaced by a beard and headwrap. While the turban (and the missus) would be left behind in the early '80s, the beard stayed. His first album after the... couple's demise, Hand of Kindness veers from piercing bleakness (a quality of Thompson's pen, no matter how content) to jaunty. "Devonshire" and the title track are sullen and rueful in heavy doses, but get cut by the accompanying fiddle and button accordion on careening, Acadian-flavored tunes like "Both Ends Burning" and "Tear Stained Letter."

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Woolly, salt and pepper, matched w/ever-present shades

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  God, Time And Causality

  John Fahey

  2005 | Shanachie / Entertainment One Distribution

  Whether punching out director Michelangelo Antonioni or being grateful for the death of Jerry Garcia, John Fahey seemed less like the grandfather of new age music and more like a cantankerous grouch. Which he is, aside from being the most stunning and beatific of steel-string guitarists, connecting country blues to classical music structure, creating what would could be called "American cosmic folk" (though Fahey would contend with the last two words). Gone... missing most of the '80s, Fahey returned as grandfather to alternative music, finding his kin among Sonic Youth, Sun City Girls and Tortoise (named after his publishing company). This album from the early '90s found Fahey in a subliminal mode, intertwining traditional hymns with his own songbook to create epic medleys both entrancing and meandering, and as always, sublime.

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Grandfatherly, Zeus-like

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  Shleep

  Robert Wyatt

  2009 | Domino Recording Co

  What does it speak of Wyatt's paternal stature in the UK prog/ art-rock scene to have Brian Eno in his employ only as a backup singer on "Heaps of Sheep"? Or for asking free music master Evan Parker to honk a dizzying soprano sax solo on the already off-kilter "The Duchess"? Throughout his sixth solo album, Shleep, Wyatt has guitarists from Roxy Music and the Jam at his disposal, each and every... gent gratefully repaying their debt to Wyatt by adding gossamer leads and discreet layers to the man's ambient washes and pensive songcraft. The culminating effect is equal parts whimsy and wistfulness, mirroring the subconscious as well as the stream-of-consciousness (see his "Blues in Bob Minor"). As dreamy as such a name would suggest for that sleep-walking state.

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Curly, black, slightly speckled and long at chin

• 

  Memphis Blood: The Sun Sessions

  James Blood Ulmer

  2003 | Hyena Records / Entertainment One Distribution

  While he would've always been a post-bop guitarist of some regard, James ‘Blood' Ulmer took his craft further by bringing Ornette Coleman's revolutionary Harmolodic ideas to his instrument, imbuing labyrinthine funk and frenzied rock to his jazz chops. An influence not just on jazzmen like John Zorn and Bill Frisell but post-punks like Public Image, Ltd., Ulmer returned to his roots in the new century with a stop off at Sun Studios... for Memphis Blood. Here, with Living Colour guitarist Vernon Reid in the producer's chair, Ulmer dives into the muddy Mississippi to play blues like "Dimples" and "Little Red Rooster." Of course, all distinctions melt in Ulmer's hands, the variants —be it gutbucket, barrelhouse, or Chicagoan electric-juke— played sloppy or clean-toned, all have their primordial root dug out by the guitarist.

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Bushy, thick, soft

• 

  Nino Rojo

  Devendra Banhart

  Young God Records / Revolver

  Devendra Banhart, the barely-legal baby-faced wunderkind that babbled his surreal song slivers onto answering machines for 2002's lo-fi Oh Me Oh My… grew up quickly in a two year period. Banhart spearheaded America's free-folk resurgence that also uplifted his hippie cohorts Joanna Newsom, Vetiver and Coco Rosie. He released two stunning albums in that calendar year, Rejoicing in the Hands and its follow-up, Nino Rojo. For these 16 songs, Devendra re-pays his... debt to Ella Jenkins with her "Little Sparrow" and other furry creatures in the woodland. Yes, there are some capricious songs ("We All Know" and "Little Yellow Spider") but also a serious attention to craft. Banhart can fingerpick and sing with the best of them, and he touches on everything from American blues to campfire jamborees to South American tristes to the stark sound of UK folk, yet nimbly evades being pinned down in the end.

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• 

  The Best Of Philly Soul - Vol. 2

  Bunny Sigler

  2006 | That Philly Sound / CD Baby

  Whether growling like Sam and Dave, operatically thrilling and trilling like his hero (and fellow Philly native) Mario Lanza, or crooning like Smokey Robinson, Bunny Sigler — aka Bundino Sigilucci, Bunny Siglowitz, and Bunny O'Sigler (depending on the holiday) — is Philly Soul. Not to mention that he used to wear a Dracula cape and/or a Moses robe in the studio, drove a car called the Bunnymobile, and will break into Ave... Maria at the slightest provocation.
  
  A successful songwriter for PIR artists including the O'Jays, and Wilson Pickett, Bunny's own albums too often languish in vinyl-only obscurity. While this disc may not be his wild seventies funk, these Jackie Wilson-style soul burners will get you dancing around the house singing into your hairbrush. Confidential to Paul McCartney: listen to Bunny singing "Yesterday." And eat your heart out.

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• 

  The Philly Sound Get Down - Funky Philly Instrumentals

  Various Artists

  Funkadelphia Records / The Orchard

  The cover for these rare Philly instrumentals might seem weird. Who is that old guy, and why is he holding a (record freaks, chill) ridiculously rare Gamble label 45? Ben Krass was a purveyor of cut-rate suits, locally infamous for starring in his own Benny Hill-style TV commercials. Oh, and for being the only person in Filthy-delphia willing to invest in barely-out-of-his-teens Kenny Gamble's first foray into the record biz.
  
  As for extended... info about these mostly mysterious songs…Even my trusty bible of early Philly Soul, Tony Cummings's The Sound of Philadelphia, has little to offer other than that the Panic Buttons are a "blue-eyed" (white) group. It is also safe to assume that the funkiest of these tracks — i.e.: all the stuff by the Interpretations — is actually the MFSB rhythm section. The guys had to do something in the 45 minutes a day they weren't playing on PIR tracks, right?

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• 

  The Early Greatest Hits

  Patti Labelle and The Bluebelles

  1993 | Brookside Records / The Orchard

  Patti Labelle, Nona Hendryx, Sarah Dash and Cindy Birdsong must be about 15 years old on these tracks. While these doo-wop/R&B twisters don't give any obvious indications that the 'Belles would one day sprout bronze lamé wings and voulez vous their way to funk history, that's okay. The group's early hits are all accounted for on this collection, and Labelle's voice is already eerily powerful -- "Please Hurry Home" will give you... chills. Even on the more typical tracks, there are seriously special only-in-Philly moments. Check out the piano solo on "Itty Bitty Twist" (an uncredited Leon Huff or Thom Bell?), and Patti's break-the-glass finish on "Bridal Gown." Local faves "I Sold My Heart to the Junkman," and "When Johnny Comes Marching Home," will remind listeners how much the early sixties were still, culturally, like the fifties. Bring on the lamé.

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• 

  Philly Soul Girls

  Various Artists - Distortions Funkadelphia

  Distortions Funkadelphia / The Orchard

  These songs are just adorable, holding their own next to early sides of other girl groups out of New Orleans or Chicago. Unfortunately, as with every early compilation listed here, there are no personnel listings for the songs, but I can happily guess that every musician on these cuts went on to record with MFSB. That's probably the legendary rhythm section of Ronnie Baker on bass, Earl Young on drums, Vince... Montana on vibes, and (depending on the day) Norman Harris, Roland Chambers, and Bobby Eli on guitar. Any track listed as written by Huff most definitely means Leon, which indicates he's also playing keyboard — and that Gamble and Thom Bell are probably somewhere around as well. Lucky us.

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• 

  13th And Pine

  Nazz

  2004 | Its About Music.com / The Orchard

  If 13th and Pine seems an odd choice for this list, just listen to the opening bars of "Loosen Up/Under the Ice" — a Philly-style take off on Archie Bell and the Drells soul classic "Tighten Up." Before front man Todd Rundgren rocketed to psychedelic rock stardom (and his future as Liv Tyler's step-dad), he was in a Philly blues/R&B band called Woody's Truck Stop — along with my dad. Which I... tell you not as much to brag, as to illustrate yet again how interwoven the City of Brotherly Love's music scene was, is, and always will be. By the way, 13th and Pine is the Center City corner where Todd and the boys lived back when they started the band. Sorry, those stories are classified.

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• 

  Drowning In The Sea Of Love

  Joe Simon

  2013 | Ace Records / PIAS Digital

  One look at Drowning in the Sea of Love's supa-dupa soul-psychedelic cover in my parents' record collection, and of course I threw it on the turntable immediately. What I heard surprised me. Philly Soul goes country? In fact, Drowning is a great example of what Gamble and Huff did best: taking a "mature" singer whose hit-making potential seemed tapped-out, and then playing to his strengths. While the title track hit No. 3... on the Billboard R&B charts, the whole record deserves a lot of listening. About half the tracks are penned by the songwriting team of Bunny Sigler and Phil Hurtt, the others by Gamble and Huff themselves. "If" is an especially poignant social-ills ballad, and Simon's cover of "You Are Everything" takes the Stylistics to church way below the Mason Dixon line — and brings the Philly strings along on the field trip.

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• 

  The Sound Of Philadelphia (Live In London) (Digitally Remastered)

  Various Artists

  2009 | CW Music / EMG / The Orchard

  The Three Degrees' breathy repeated mantra of "People all over the world," and "Let's get it on, it's time to get down," on their No. 1 Billboard Hot 100 hit "TSOP" exemplifies latter Philly Soul to me: refined yet raw and sugar-sweet. Even more than with most girl groups, the Degrees' sound was a sum-of-their-parts blend; they're sirens, not soloists. Though the line-up switched almost as many times as the ladies changed... their diaphanous get-ups, you're hearing Fayette Pinkney, Valerie Holiday and Sheila Ferguson on the cuts from the group's '70s heyday. "When Will I See You Again?" with its heartbreaking lyric and gorgeous music, is understandably their most famous single. Other highlights: a cool cover of the Spinners' "I'll Be Around," and the saucy "Dirty Old Man."

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• 

  Philly Golden Classics

  First Choice

  2006 | Synergie OMP / The Orchard

  Young, fresh and bursting with seemingly relentless disco optimism, First Choice were natural dance floor queens. Sometimes posited as rivals to the supposedly smoother Three Degrees, First Choice's Rochelle Fleming, Joyce Jones and Annette Guest hardly sound rough-edged. If the grooves feel familiar, it's because many of these tracks boast MFSB guitarist Norman Harris as producer. The Afrobeat opening and street-yet-silly title of "Newsy Neighbors" is pure TSOP, and "This is... the House" is Martha and the Vandellas-esque. Fans of sound-effects heavy soul will appreciate both the gunning engine on "Hustler Bill," and the sexy soul song convention-reversing masculine moaning on "Don't Fake It."

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• 

  Divorcing Neo 2 Marry Soul

  Jaguar Wright

  IndieBlu Music / Entertainment One Distribution

  Warning: Jaguar Wright is one of the best soul singers in the world, with a voice that melds the ferocity of Patti Labelle with the depth of Chaka Khan. I have stood three feet away from Jag while she was singing, feeling as if the top of my head was going to blow off; I've also heard her take down the stadium at Jones Beach while supposedly acting as a side act... for the Roots.
  
  Fave tracks on the cleverly titled Divorcing Neo include the cover of soul classic "Woman to Woman," and Jag's own bone-chilling composition, "Do Your Worst." Both tracks exemplify the singer as sort of the next generation-Philly Soul "devil" to Jill Scott's angel (check out Who Is Jill Scott? (Words And Sounds Vol. 1) if you don't know what I mean). As Jaguar herself explains, "Please just throw it down before I have to go and buy your moms a new black gown."

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• 

  Love Train: The Sound of Philadelphia

  Various

  2008 | Philadelphia International/Legacy

  This box is not only one of the best values on eMusic, it's also a perfect intro to Philly Soul. The four discs cover PIR basics ("Love Train" and "If You Don't Know Me By Now," to name two obvious choices), and this is also the only place on eMusic to hear such crucial artists as the Spinners ("Rubberband Man" and "I'll Be Around" are standouts), and Dusty Springfield (yes, she... cut a whole record in Philly, and yes it is as good — maybe better? — than Dusty in Memphis). You also get early Gamble/Huff/Bell confections including 1967's "Expressway to Your Heart," by the Soul Survivors (complete with honking horns), and 1968's tragi-comic "Cowboys to Girls," by the Intruders. And be sure to check out a couple of famous career revivers: Jerry "the Iceman" Butler's "Only the Strong Survive" — pre-Elvis, mind you — and the almost ludicrously funky "Don't Let the Green Grass Fool You" by Wicked Wilson Pickett.

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• 

  Collectors' Item

  Harold Melvin & the Bluenotes

  1987 | P.I.R.

  Purists may scoff that I've chosen a Best Of compilation for this group, rather than the more obvious Wake Up Everybody. I guess I can't resist that vinyl-sounding dusty opening on "The Love I Lost": solo organ (Leon Huff, probably), and then each member of the rhythm section joining in, one by one, until Earl Young swishes his way through what could be the first disco back beat on record. The... Bluenotes personnel can be confusing. Harold Melvin founded and led the band, but that's not his gruff voice singing lead — it's onetime drummer Teddy Pendergrass, before he went solo. What a voice he has here. Listen to "If You Don't Know Me By Now" after a fight with your lover and if you don't weep, you are made of stone. And be sure to check out looong versions of "Bad Luck" and "Miss You." Between McFadden and Whitehead's lyrics and Teddy's extended vamps, the songs are perfect vignettes of inner city life.

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• 

  Teddy

  Teddy Pendergrass

  2009 | Legacy Recordings

  How do I describe this record? Take Barry White's unselfconscious love-man persona, add a dash of Al Green's gospel roots, mix with full-on last-days-of-disco hedonism, add a paper umbrella, and sip while lying in a Jacuzzi. There is just something about listening to a man instruct you to rub him "down with hot oils, baby!" I mean, gosh. It's no surprise that at Teddy's Ladies Only concerts in the '70s, fans showered... the singer with panties and stuffed bears. Heavy breathing aside, this is a fabulous record that most (younger) soul freaks don't seem to know too well, though back in the late '70s, Teddy was Gamble and Huff's premier solo act. This is probably because his career was cut short after he became paralyzed in a car crash in 1982. Check out the later records as well — his voice is still miraculous — but also be sure to listen to the amazing "Love TKO" on 1980's TP.

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• 

  MCFadden & Whitehead

  McFadden & Whitehead

  2007 | Legacy Recordings

  John Whitehead and Gene McFadden were both dear friends of my family, and both passed away in recent years. I was lucky enough to interview them and hear them sing in the studio many times. Therefore, it's tremendously difficult for me to capture this record in a blurb. They sang together from the time they were teenagers, backing Otis Redding on his last tour and then coming home to Philly to write... hits for Teddy Pendergrass and the O'Jays, among others. They wrote "Back Stabbers," PIR's first No. 1 hit in 1972. In 1979, their "Ain't No Stoppin' Us Now" was the label's last. That song is known as the "unofficial black national anthem" (as opposed to the "official" genteel hymn, "Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing"). See Colson Whitehead's Sag Harbor for a longer riff on the tune — John and Gene would have loved it.

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• 

  The Jacksons

  The Jacksons

  1987 | Epic

  It's always shocking to me when even die-hard soul fans don't know that, after leaving Motown in the mid '70s, and before Michael made Off the Wall, the Jacksons took up musical residence in City of Brotherly Love. This lack of awareness is probably because The Jacksons (1976) and Goin' Places (1977) were not monster hits in the vein of, say, ABC. But really, who's counting? The world's most famous siblings hardly... waited out their awkward adolescences in silence. Instead, they recorded Gamble and Huff tracks, hung with writers/producers Gene McFadden, John Whitehead and Dexter Wansel, and — for the first time in their already formidable careers — played their own instruments and penned some of their own songs. My personal faves here are "Show You the Way to Go" and "Enjoy Yourself." However, how can my heart not drop to hear Michael, voice almost cracking, sing his own lyric, "Circumstances have me in a terrible fix," on "Dreamer"?

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• 

  That's How I'll Be Loving You

  Bunny Sigler

  2008 | Legacy Recordings

  I've already said my piece about Bunny, so I think I will take this opportunity to let the man speak for himself: "I was the seventh child born with a tooth on the day after Easter, plus they heard me crying in my mother's womb before I was born. So they knew I would sing." As tempted as I may be to leave you with that, and just let you listen to... this fabulous record, I have to add that the title track, with its churchy chords and caramel-sweet vocal is one of those dream "lost" classics. "Shake Your Booty" somehow brings Sesame Street to Studio 54. And mere words cannot describe Bunny's slowed-down street-preacher cover of the O'Jays "Love Train." Switch off the lights, turn up the volume and get ready for goosebumps.

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• 

  Love Is The Message

  MFSB

  2008 | Legacy Recordings

  When Kenny Gamble wrote the theme for Soul Train, PIR's rhythm guys had been playing together for years. "T.S.O.P." showed that the group was the tightest rhythm section north of Memphis, and the best (yes, I'm biased) pop strings and horns anywhere. MFSB's core included (but was not limited to): Norman Harris, Roland Chambers and Bobby Eli on guitars, Ronnie Baker on bass, Vince Montana on vibes, Earl Young and Karl Chambers... on drums, and Leon Huff and Lenny Pakula on keyboard — not to mention violinist Don Renaldo leading the strings and horns. Like Motown's Funk Brothers and Stax's Booker T and the MG's, the group named themselves, but with a Filthydelphia twist. MFSB stands for Mother Father Sister Brother, or Mother Fucker Son of a Bitch, if you're in the loop. Most of Love is the Message's arrangements are by Bobby Martin, but I would be remiss if I didn't add credits for Vince Montana and first flute Jack Faith.

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• 

  Here To Create Music

  Leon Huff

  2007 | Legacy Recordings

  If Kenny Gamble is the voice of the Sound of Philadelphia, Leon Huff is the body — actually, make that the hands. Born in Camden, New Jersey, Huff taught himself to play by listening to the radio, and to his mother accompanying their church choir. Eventually, he became a session player on songs by the Ronettes, and other bubblegum acts. He and Gamble met in their teens, and the... rest, as they say, is history. When I went to interview Huff, he invited me to meet him at the PIR office on North Broad Street. As a young assistant led me through the labyrinth of gold and platinum record-hung hallways, I heard boogie-woogie piano playing, it seemed, all around me. I didn't realize it wasn't a recording, until I got to the studio. There, at the instrument, sat Leon Huff. As I approached, he finished with a glissando. "So what would you like to know?" he asked. Now you, too, can experience something like that amazing moment.

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• 

  Travelin' In Heavy Traffic

  Don Covay

  2008 | Legacy Recordings

  Gamble and Huff's makeovers were always strokes of production genius. They'd sign up artists who'd been huge pre-British Invasion, and Philly-fy them with songs custom-written for their specific vocal chops — and maturity. This gave new professional life to Wilson Pickett and Jerry Butler, so why not try it with the lesser-known soul man Don Covay? Covay's musical life could give Bunny Sigler and McFadden & Whitehead a run for their money.... He was a behind-the-scenes southern soul legend, writer of smashes for, among others, Aretha Franklin ("Chain of Fools"), and small but beloved hits for himself ("Mercy, Mercy," also covered by the Rolling Stones). The Dexter Wansel-produced Travelin' is an odd record. Covay channels Mick Jagger on the title track — though reportedly, Mick's whole sound is based on copying Don — and doesn't always hold a tune. But "No Tell Motel" is pure funk fun, and "Six Million Dollar Fish" is weirdly stirring.

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• 

  Ebony Woman

  Billy Paul

  2008 | P.I.R.

  Another anomaly from the Philly International vaults. Everyone knows Billy Paul for the illicit love ballad "Me and Mrs Jones." While Paul sang the hell out of that song, he was, in a sense, cheating with it on his own true love: jazz. Before signing with Gamble and Huff, Paul played with jazz greats from Charlie Parker to Nina Simone. Ebony Woman showcases the singer's elastic tenor voice, with pared down jazz... combo arrangements on some truly inspired covers. Any version of "Windmills of Your Mind" is amazing, and who knew "Mrs. Robinson" could get so beatnik cool? Billy Martin did the bigger arrangements here (unfortunately I cannot locate the identities of the players on most of these tracks).

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• 

  Gonna Take A Miracle

  Laura Nyro & LaBelle

  2002 | Columbia/Legacy

  I am ashamed to say that I didn't know about this record until recently. Where had it been all my life? Miracle is one of the most feminine records I have ever heard, but it refuses to conform to "women's music" stereotypes. It's not Labelle at their sexy Nightbirds funkiest, or Nyro at her most girl-singer introspective. Instead, here is a collection of covers, sung by a still-young New Yorker who grew... up with her ear pressed to the R&B station on her transistor radio. Meanwhile, home in Philly, Patti Labelle, Nona Hendryx and Sarah Dash were selling their hearts to the junkman, and teasing out their bouffants. Then came the Women's Movement, without which this record would have been impossible. Miracle feels more like the early-'70s coming-of-age feminist novels — Fear of Flying or Memoirs of an Ex Prom Queen — than it does like other records of the era. And that's a beautiful thing.

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• 

  Ship Ahoy

  The O'Jays

  2003 | Epic/Legacy

  It was ridiculously hard to choose one O'Jays album for this roundup. How could I pass over Back Stabbers? I mean, "Love Train," come on! Or Family Reunion, with its cover of the band surrounded by a multi-culti throng including a Hassidic man and a blonde girl holding a Raggedy Anne? Or So Full of Love, with "Used to be My Girl" and Bunny Sigler's raunchy "Strokety Stroke"? I ended up picking... Ship Ahoy because is it my favorite Philly Soul record, period. But why? Is it the Roots-reminiscent title track, the eco-disco "This Air I Breath"? Or "For the Love of Money," one of the most sampled songs ever? No. It's "Hooks In Me," another Bunny composition. When I first heard it as a teenager, I thought: This song is life. Even now that I understand the best relationships are peaceful, hearing Eddie Levert lead-up to the chorus makes me remember that revelation. Which, in the end, of course, turned out to be about the music.

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• 

  Presents Don Cello and Friends

  Larry Gold

  2003 | Rapster Records / !K7 Records

  Don Cello is my father, and the hilariously appropriate nickname is from Jay-Z. When he told me he was doing this record, I knew it was a phenomenal idea. He was already collaborating with these amazing artists. How could he not get everyone together? Even if this collection/collaboration did not represent my DNA, I would still include it. It's a time capsule of Philly Soul's second golden age. Back in the '80s... and early '90s, it was hard to tell if Philly Soul would rise again. We should have known: of course it would. The older players and singers were still around — New Jack just hadn't played to their strengths. And there was a younger generation on the way, honing their chops the way musicians always will, in church and school choirs, piano lessons, their parents' basements and living rooms. I obviously love everything on this disc, but several songs are bittersweet. John Whitehead, Gene McFadden and Eddie Levert all passed away in the last few years. They are missed.

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Borhman and Rickard’s Burger Picks

• 

  Power Drowning

  Audacity

  2013 | Burger Records / Redeye

  Bohrman: This album is the reason we started getting bands and expanding past bands we knew or were in. We did a couple of tapes and then we did this album. It was like "We're here!"
  
  Rickard: Audacity are just an amazing band. They were teenagers who had just graduated high school and they had so many amazing songs, so we told them, "Let's do an album." So we went in the... studio and recorded it with them, and that became our first LP. This album is all first takes, 17 songs recorded in a day.
  
  Bohrman: They've talked shit about it, but you know what? For a teen punk record, it's a fucking classic. Ty Segall will tell you the same thing.

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• 

  Salutations

  Fletcher C Johnson

  2013 | Burger Records / Redeye

  Bohrman: We were turned on to Fletcher by King Tuff. He grew up with Fletcher they were in a band together at one point, and he'd been recording these same songs over and over — he had multiple recordings of these songs. Finally he had it all done and he gave it to us, and we fell in love with it.
  
  Rickard: We were like, "You gave this [record] to Sub Pop and... they didn't want to do anything with it? OK, we'll take it."
  
  Bohrman: It's a masterpiece, it really is.
  
  Rickard: He just moved here. He left New York and now he's living next to me — we're both living in our vans. He's one of us. He'll probably go home, eventually. He just hooked up our stereo for us. We've been rearranging [the store], getting our feng shui funky and straight.

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• 

  If You Wanna Die Then I Wanna Die

  The Cosmonauts

  2013 | Burger Records / Redeye

  Bohrman: They're great. Cameron from Audacity turned us on to them. They jumped on to one of the Burger shows that we had — it was New Year's '09. So we started working with them and did some tapes, and this album is their second full-length.

• 

  Peach Kelli Pop

  Peach Kelli Pop

  2013 | Burger Records / Redeye

  Rickard: [Principle member] Allie [Hanlon] is also in White Wires. We met her at SXSW one year, and she was really awesome. I followed her around all weekend. She and her sister, they just rule.
  
  Bohrman: [JEFF the Brotherhood's label] Infinity Cat put out her first LP and we really liked that one, so we put it out on cassette. When the second one was done, she asked if we wanted to do... it, and we were totally down. It's definitely on the poppier side, but it's all lo-fi, DIY-recorded. It's very playful.

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• 

  Gap Dream

  Gap Dream

  2013 | Burger Records / Redeye

  Rickard: Gabe from gap Dream just moved out here. He lives in our storage space and just recorded his new album which is even better than the first one. That's a Burger success story if ever there was one. We met at the first [Burger] Caravan of Stars in 2010, and he wasn't even really aware of the Burger thing. I was like, "You gotta watch this band" — it was Conspiracy... of Owls. That blew him away, changed his life, so he started writing songs and he became a big Burger fan. And we just fell in love with the songs, so we turned those songs into a tape, and the tape eventually turned into an album. And then he moved here and lives here and is making his next record here. So, there you go: just meeting a kid on the street and asking him where the weed's at, next thing you know I'm smoking weed with a kid in front of the club, he's inspired, turns his weird energy into a song — that all unfolds because of a chance meeting. From "Hey, how's it going?" to "Dude, I live with you now." It's crazy, but amazing.
  
  Bohrman: From the moment we posted the first Gap Dream song, it took off like nothing else we put out before. I got hit up buy a guy who works at 4AD asking me to buy a record.
  
  Rickard: People were trying to sign him and he was like, "Nope. I'm a Burger Boy for life."
  
  Bohrman: He even got his Burger catalog number tattooed on his arm.

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• 

  Love is the Law

  Memories

  2013 | Burger Records / Redeye

  Bohrman: Kyle from Audacity showed us the video for their song "Higher," but then they took it offline so you couldn't watch it anymore. On Easter two years ago, Uncle Funkle [from Gnar Tapes] posted a Christian song [they wrote] and that was really, really good. And not jokey in any way. The whole time you're expecting him to say something funny or make a joke, but from the beginning... to the end, it's just a solid Christian rock song. I just fell in love with it, and I was like, "Guys, you have to make a whole album like this and create the persona of a Christian band." Then I was like, "You know I also want to see that 'Higher' video again." So they sent me a private link so that I could watch it, and then started sending more [Memories] songs, and then immediately we fell in love. What's good about them is there's no filler — they just get straight to the catchiness of the song. There's no boring solo you're sitting through. It's just pure pop and pure hooks and pure fun and love and…
  
  Rickard: …and weed. They're a big inspiration. They run Gnar Tapes and they're really prolific. Before I was even aware of their music my friend Christian from Mean Jeans was telling me, "You're really gonna like my friend Eric who runs Gnar Tapes." When we finally did meet, we were like, "Oh, yeah, you guys put out music just because you love it."
  
  Bohrman: When our two crews met, we just immediately hit it off.

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• 

  Crummy Desert Sound

  The Resonars

  2013 | Burger Records / Redeye

  Bohrman: We were on tour driving from Chicago to Milwaukee with our friend Addie and we're talking about power pop, and she's like, "Have you heard the Resonars?" and we were like, "No." It was like three in the morning, we got to her house and she puts on Lunar Kick and I was just like, "Oh my god, this is an amazing record." The day I got home, I bought everything... I could by the Resonars. It's just one guy doing everything. He records in his mom's garage. He bounces two cassette four-tracks off each other. Crummy Desert Sound is his sixth record. He's been in bands since the '80s. His old band, the Knockout Pills, Estrus put out a record by them. He's one of the most kind, friendly people — he's like, angelic. He's a rock god.

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• 

  You'll Never Walk Alone

  Burnt Ones

  2013 | Burger Records / Redeye

  Bohrman: [Burnt Ones] passed out a ton of free copies of their last record at SXSW a few years ago. I don't know how they got all these free copies, but everyone I know had one. So we brought it home and we listened to it, and it ruled.
  
  Rickard: It looked cool — William Keihn, who does the art for Thee Oh Sees records, did the art. It was super trashy —... kind of T. Rex, glitter rock & roll. And then we met them and they were really sweet and rad. Sean went on tour with them.
  
  Bohrman: The van was infested with ants. I was sitting in the back seat covered with them.

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• 

  Papa Cremp

  Cherry Glazerr

  2013 | Burger Records / Redeye

  Rickard: Cherry Glazerr is my favorite teenage band at the moment. Steele O'Neal, who now does Burger TV, was just this weird kid who'd come and dig through bargain 45s and buy, like, one Michael Jackson record or something. So he comes in one day and is like, "You should check out Clementine Creevy." So we checked her out, and it was awesome. We started digging deeper and tracked her down.
  
  Bohrman:... I sent her an email and was like, "I really like your music." We just fell in love with her songs. They're songs for teenage girls, by teenage girls, about teenage girls' life, captured so perfectly. I've never been a teenage girl, but after listening to Cherry Glazerr, I can kind of start to get what it's like. They're sophomores in high school, they're all 15 years old. Right now, they're the youngest band on the label. She's so good at writing pop songs already, at 15. Who knows what the future is gonna hold. When she first told me, "My band is called Cherry Glazerr", we assumed that she did that because she's saving her own name for when she gets really big.

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• 

  Conspiracy Of Owls

  Conspiracy Of Owls

  2013 | Burger Records / Redeye

  Rickard: This is actually The Go. For some reason they couldn't use their real name. We've been Go fans since before the label — superfans, the guys who were first to get on line and buy [new albums] immediately and listen to them 10 times as soon as we get them. We became friends with them and they hit us up in 2010 and were like, "We've got this new project and... we want to do it with you guys." We didn't even hear it, but we were like, "Yeah, of course."
  
  Bohrman: The first pressing had spray-painted cover, it had different artwork. Then there was a version that was just black, there was one that was glow-in-the dark. There was one that was gold. There was a red one, there was a white one…

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• 

  i

  Mmoss

  2013 | Burger Records / Redeye

  Rickard: I actually discovered them. It was a Sunday, Sean was out dealing records. I was in the shop cleaning up, and there was a demo by the boombox. And I was like, "I can't believe this band sent us this" — because it had, like, a screenprinted cover, and it was nicer than anything we'd done before. So I was like, "Why are they sending us their shit? They've got it... all figured out!" Then I listened to it, and listened to it again, listened to it like three times, and when Sean came in my jaw was on the ground. I was like, "Listen to this!"
  
  Bohrman: Four-part harmonies, guitar, flute, bass, organ, drums, a million other instruments. We were listening to it for hours and I remember one night at like one or two in the morning we were like, "We should call them right now and tell them how much we like this." It was like four in the morning where they were. But we called them anyway, woke them up, and were like, "Hey! We're listening to your tape!"
  
  Rickard: I remember talking to Sean and saying, "If they dig our wacky cold-call stuff, if they can handle this weirdness —" And they loved it. They came out here and lived with us for about a week or so, and we took them on a West Coast tour in our van, and they lived here without showers — they're good sports, they're down for whatever. I love 'em.

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• 

  Raw Romance

  Nobunny

  2013 | Burger Records / Redeye

  Bohrman: This came out after [Nobunny's breakthrough debut] Love Visions, but a lot of the stuff was recorded before Love Visions. It's demos and live recordings — it's a hodgepodge of stuff.
  
  Rickard: We became friends in 2007. We were in New York [with Thee Makeout Party], we were both playing fringe shows of this power pop festival. He was by himself in a big-ass van that he sold his entire life to... buy just so he could go on tour. It ended up catching fire in NYC.
  
  Bohrman: Love Visions was blowing up, and he dropped this tape on everybody. And no one was releasing tapes back then, so everybody was like, "A tape?! What is this?! You're releasing your new album on tape?!" And people bought it because that was the only way you could get it. He really helped start the tape movement that's happening right now.
  
  Rickard: That was our first real hit. We did 500 tapes in a week and a half. And [Nobunny] really wanted some money to go back to the kids, and that's when Sean found Katenge.
  
  Bohrman: We adopted a kid from Children International named Katenge Mduduzi, from Zambia. We charged an extra dollar for the first 500 Raw Romance cassettes and we were able to increase his family's income by 50 percent for two years after just a week and a half of selling that one cassette. We continue to support him and his family — he's a part of the Burger fam now.
  
  Rickard: [Nobunny] is just so wide-eyed and kind and sweet and loving and really genuinely cares. He's one of my favorite people. He's Burger family. He really is far out. He likes to hang out behind dumpsters when he's on tour just to get away from it all.

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• 

  FIESTA

  The Go

  2013 | Burger Records / Redeye

  Rickard: I was on tour with The Cuts in 2004, and they were constantly talking about The Go being the best band in America and all that shit. And I was like, "Really?" I just remember reading about them in, like, magazines previewing their first album on Sub Pop. I was barely aware of them. The Touch were my favorite band at the time. So we're on tour, we're in Detroit, and... we wind up sleeping at [Go frontman] Bobby Harlow's place, and he was playing us demos for what became the next Go album, and the shit was just amazing. I was like, "Whoa, this crazy little guy's playing these pop songs?" When we left, he gave everyone stickers, and he gave us all a CD EP, the Capricorn EP, and so I came home and played them for our friends. They're just this weird off-again on-again band, but they're our favorite modern rock band.
  
  Bohrman: They were gonna quit music altogether. Bobby was like, "I'm gonna push carts for grocery stores and Zen out. I'm not interested in making music anymore. I'm done with it." And me and Lee just grabbed him and were like, "There is no possible way that's gonna happen. You're gonna continue making music, and you're gonna make awesome music." And he was like "Yeah! I am gonna do that." And that perked him up.

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• 

  Get Out Of My House

  The Pizazz

  2013 | Burger Records / Redeye

  Rickard: Another awesome Detroit band that Bobby Harlow turned us on to. It's one of the greatest records of our modern rock 'n' roll era. It's catchy, it's pop — Bobby produced it, and he's a great producer.
  
  Bohrman: If you listen to the demos and then the stuff that's on the record, he definitely put is stamp on that band.
  
  Rickard: They're a good band, he turned it into a classic record. This... is an early Burger, too — it's in the 30s. It's like, Burger 35 or 36.

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• 

  Careful Houndy

  The Hound Of Love

  2013 | Burger Records / Redeye

  Rickard: This is Andrew [Bassett] from Mean Jeans. It's really fucking awesome, he's been working on it for years.
  
  Bohrman: This is a collection of songs he's been working on for years and years. At the beginning of the year we started working with Gnar Tapes, co-releasing a bunch of stuff. We listen to this all the time — we're addicted to it. It's so catchy and weird and good and all over... the place.
  
  Rickard: He's a fun guy. We took the Mean Jeans on their first West Coast tour. They're East Coats dudes, so they're all wound up. Then they come out to the West Coast where there are all these laid-back vibes and they're, like, drinking Jager bombs.

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Donald Byrd, “Jeannine”

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  At The Half Note Cafe: Vols 1 & 2 (The Rudy Van Gelder Edition)

  Donald Byrd

  2004 | BLUE NOTE

  Donald Byrd assembled a great band in the late 1950s, and At the Half Note Cafe captures them in sizzling form. There's a vigor and energy to this live recording that's lacking in some of Byrd's early Blue Note studio sessions. On the joyous "Jeannine," Byrd is economical and restrained, willing as always to give ground to those around him. In this case that includes Pepper Adams's nervy, wild sax and Duke... Pearson's spritely piano.

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Donald Byrd, “Hush”

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  Royal Flush

  Donald Byrd

  2006 | BLUE NOTE

  By 1961, the 29-year-old Byrd had established himself as a hard-bop cornerstone, recording five studio albums for Blue Note and guesting on many more. Few listeners who dropped the needle on Royal Flush could have guessed they were witnessing the debut of a legend. The breezy, bluesy gem "Chant" introduced the world to Herbie Hancock, who Byrd had mentored throughout the early 1960s. Years later, Hancock would remain grateful for Byrd's belief... in him, as well as this piece of advice from Byrd that the young, struggling pianist wouldn't understand until years later: never give away your publishing rights.

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Donald Byrd, “French Spice”

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  Free Form (The Rudy Van Gelder Edition)

  Donald Byrd

  2004 | BLUE NOTE

  By 1962's excellent Free Form, Byrd was beginning to stray from the bop-derived formulas that had long defined mainstream jazz. His band was evolving, thanks to an increasingly confident Hancock, and here they're joined by Wayne Shorter, in one of his last freelance gigs before signing on with Miles Davis. Byrd's role as a connector of ideas is particularly evident here on the moody, abstract title cut, the funky "Pentecostal Feelin'" and... the playful, elegant "French Spice."

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Donald Byrd, “Christo Redentor”

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  A New Perspective (The Rudy Van Gelder Edition)

  Donald Byrd

  1999 | BLUE NOTE

  Byrd was entering a fruitful, adventurous phase of his career by the time of 1963's A New Perspective. But if the album cover suggested a turn toward the modern — Byrd leans against the door of a curvy sports car — his experiments would have to plumb the distant past first. This was one of Byrd's best "spiritual" records, essentially a hard bop record featuring a gospel choir. Fantastic and life-affirming from... start to finish, the choir's textures and exhortations perfectly complement the band's rhythms and effervescent solos. It's highlighted by "Christo Redentor," Byrd's mournful trumpet rising above a chanting din.

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Donald Byrd, “Fancy Free” and “The Dude”

After cutting a few solid, if straightforward, Blue Note sides in the mid ’60s, Byrd began moving away from acoustic jazz in the later part of that decade. Miles Davis had gone “electric,” and soon others were following suit. For Byrd, it began with Duke Pearson’s electric keys, which radically shaped the texture of 1969′s Fancy Free, lending everything a freer, more felicitous feel. In 1970, he released Electric Byrd and there was no going back. In retrospect, plugging in suited Byrd’s accommodating style. “The Dude” isn’t radically different from some of his more rhythm-driven numbers from the early 1960s, only the groove is front and center. Fusion remains a dirty word among some jazz devotees, but it was more than a tweaking of the jazz sound. It was also a new approach to composition and recording. Electric Byrd‘s “Xibaba,” for example, is an absorbing, almost shapeless piece that finds Byrd and his new band — featuring Brazilians Hermeto Pascoal and Airto Moreira — concerned more with ambience and energy than structure.

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  Fancy Free

  Donald Byrd

  1993 | Blue Note Records
• 

  Electric Byrd

  Donald Byrd

  1996 | BLUE NOTE

Donald Byrd, “Black Byrd”

• 

  Black Byrd

  Donald Byrd

  1992 | BLUE NOTE

  Electric Byrd and 1971's Ethiopian Knights had formalized Byrd's turn toward the funkier, fusion sound then sweeping the jazz community. It was 1973's Black Byrd that turned jazz's civil war into a popular phenomenon. Thanks largely to production from Larry and Fonce Mizell — a member of the Corporation, Motown's hit-making production squad — Black Byrd didn't sound like anything else around. "Black Byrd" was a groove, but one you could sing... along to. While Miles was flirting with avant-garde classical composition and psychedelic chaos, Byrd and the Mizells were turning toward radio-friendly rhythm and blues. To the horror of traditionalists, Black Byrd — with its attention-grabbing synths, funky percussion and vocals — was one of Blue Note's best-selling albums of the decade.

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Blackbyrds, “Blackbyrds’ Theme”

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  The Blackbyrds

  The Blackbyrds

  2007 | Fantasy Records

  Byrd held a series of university teaching posts throughout the 1970s, and at least two bands formed out of his classes: North Carolina Central University's N.C.C.U. (which later became his backing band in the late 1970s) and Howard University's Blackbyrds. Byrd and the Mizells produced the first few Blackbyrds records, but they were never just a Byrd vanity project. They always seemed like a very creative funk band with jazz chops, especially... on their trio of classic early albums — 1974's self-titled debut ("Funky Junkie," "Summer Love"), Flying Start ("Walking in Rhythm," "Blackbyrds' Theme") and 1975's City Life (featuring the B-boy classic "Rock Creek Park").

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Donald Byrd, “Think Twice” and “Wind Parade”

The partnership between Byrd and the Mizells peaked on these two albums from the mid ’70s, Stepping into Tomorrow and Places and Spaces. It was on tracks like the sensual “Think Twice” or the genial funk of “Dominoes” that they began distinguishing their sound as more than just jazz with R&B characteristics. The compositions are sophisticated and atmospheric, as indebted to the instrumental interplay of Byrd’s past as to the technology of their present. There’s an open, spacey feel to the albums, a sign of Byrd and the Mizells’ growing confidence within this new jazz idiom. Occasionally, the songs from this era are also ridiculously catchy, as on the adventurous, frequently sampled classic “Wind Parade.”

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  Stepping Into Tomorrow

  Donald Byrd

  2000 | BLUE NOTE
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  Places and Spaces

  Donald Byrd

  1997 | BLUE NOTE

Donald Byrd and 125th St. N.Y.C., “Love Has Come Around”

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  Love Byrd

  Donald Byrd And 125th Street, N.Y.C.

  2008 | Rhino/Elektra

  By 1981, Byrd could safely claim some kind of connection to every significant jazz musician of the previous 30 years. The only thing left, obviously, was to record an album with soul man Isaac Hayes. Backed by 125th St, N.Y.C. (previously known as N.C.C.U.), Love Byrd is a fairly snoozy effort highlighted by an unlikely gem: "Love Has Come Around," a dancefloor scorcher (and playlist staple of legendary DJ Larry Levan).

Black Moon, “Buck em Down (remix)” and Guru and Donald Byrd, “Loungin’”

Hip-hop and dance music made jazz relevant to kids in the early ’90s. Not everyone cared for the repurposing of their old sounds, but Byrd embraced it. After all, Byrd’s jazz-funk had been divisive in the ’70s, but decades later it was these intrepid works that producers like DJ Premier of Gang Starr or the Beatminerz gravitated toward. Byrd was sampled countless times, but I’ve always loved how the Beatminerz’s Evil Dee rearranged “Wind Parade” for Black Moon’s “Buck ‘em Down” remix, lending the steely original a bit of grace. For Guru, Gang Starr’s other half, his Jazzmatazz series was essentially a way to give back. “Donald Byrd — word/ On the track, quite exact,” Guru hails, and Byrd matches the rapper’s gruff monotone with some playful, old school riffing.

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  Diggin' In Dah Vaults

  Black Moon

  2005 | Nervous Records
• 

  Jazzmatazz Volume 1

  Guru

  1993 | NOO TRYBE

J Dilla, “Think Twice”

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  Welcome To Detroit

  Jay Dee aka J Dilla

  2003 | BBE Music / !K7 Records

  Jay Dee made a name for himself as one-third of A Tribe Called Quest's beat-making faction (the Ummah). Thanks to his work on Common's critically acclaimed Like Water for Chocolate and Q-Tip's post-Quest endeavor Amplified, Dee has also established himself as a hip-hop super-producer. While Dee's stock continues to rise (working with Janet Jackson, Erykah Badu, and Macy Gray), his underground projects have been less fruitful. Reason being, when it comes to... enlisting new MCs to collaborate with, Dee has yet to locate a lyricist capable of augmenting his sublime production. This fact became apparent during Dee's short-lived stint as a member of Slum Village, and the trend continues with his first solo outing, Welcome 2 Detroit. Here, Dee continues to showcase a diverse assortment of sensuous melodies and booming funk samples. The Detroit-bred MCs who Dee chooses to highlight -- Phat Kat on "Rico Suave Bossa Nova" and Beej on "Beej-N-Dem, Pt. 2" prove to be very mediocre lyricists. Yet Dee did manage to round up a few hometown prospects, as Frank N Dank liven up "Pause" and Elzhi rips a few furious verses on "Come Get It." Though Dee flips a few clumsy bars as well, Welcome 2 Detroit really takes off when he sticks solely to an instrumental script, retouching trumpeter Donald Byrd's "Think Twice" and transforming Kraftwerk's indelible "Trans-Europe Express" into the strippers'-anthem-in-waiting "B.B.E. (Big Booty Express)."

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Los Pirañas,Toma Tu Jabón Kapax

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  Toma Tu Jabón Kapax

  Los Pirañas

  2012 | Vampisoul / The Orchard

  These three young guys from Bogotá had the same backround as I did in rock, punk and DIY, and they decided to bring back cumbia in their own manner. They recorded this live studio album in a very free, experimental way. When their recordings came into the office, we had to figure out how to tag them for distributors: Basically, it sounds like Krautrockers playing experimental cumbia on bass, guitar, and drums... with no overdubs. Their main sound is cumbia, but it's a natural sort of fusion that really works. Their other bands are Frente Cumbiero and the Meridian Brothers.

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Cumbia Beat, volumes 1 & 2

We did this in collaboration with a good Peruvian friend who turned me on to his country’s music. He brought all his records to Europe and played me stuff every time I was at his place. This Amazonic psychedelic stuff was totally unheard and really vibrant. He said, “Let’s put them out. No one else is and I know the labels and musicians. I saw some of these bands with my father as a kid. On Sundays we’d go to a park and drink beer, eat food, and dance.”

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  Cumbia Beat Vol. 1

  Various Artists

  2010 | Vampisoul / The Orchard
• 

  Cumbia Beat Vol. 2

  Various Artists

  2012 | Vampisoul / The Orchard

Back to Peru, volumes 1 & 2

When you open a music book in the occident, it says things like, “In the ’60s, rock ‘n’ roll turned into the British invasion, then psychedelia, then progressive and then blah blah blah.” Peru has a similar progression but it’s not so clearly defined: It’s very mellow and mixed and special. Back to Peru is provides a general introduction to Peruvian music of the ’60s and ’70s. There’s some dance music, like the Gozalo compilations, but there’s a lot that’s moodier, midtempo and more psychedelic, like good Badfinger or late Beatles. They’re also good with melodies, like the Brazilians; maybe it has to do with their weather, food and education. Most of them are self-taught but were serious about making it sound good in the studio. You can find stuff like We All Together or Telegraph Avenue, who make a terrific sound comparable to any American band of the time.

• 

  Back To Peru Vol 1

  Various Artists

  2010 | Vampisoul / The Orchard
• 

  Back To Peru Vol 2

  Various Artists

  2009 | Vampisoul / The Orchard

¡Gózalo!, volumes 1 & 2

Gozalo means “enjoy” in Spanish, and these compilations focus on tropical dance music for partying and good times. Like Colombia, Peru is like a little continent unto itself. So much was happening there in the ’50s, ’60s and early ’80s, before the military took over in South America and everything turned a bit grayer. Listening to this music makes me jealous of anyone who lived there during that time because it was very open.

• 

  ¡Gózalo! Vol 1

  Various Artists

  2010 | Vampisoul / The Orchard
• 

  ¡Gózalo! Vol 2

  Various Artists

  2010 | Vampisoul / The Orchard

¡Saoco! The Bomba and Plena Explosion in Puerto Rico 1954-1966

• 

  ¡Saoco! The Bomba and Plena Explosion in Puerto Rico 1954-1966

  Various Artists

  2012 | Vampisoul / The Orchard

  We got in touch with Yannis Ruel, a French journalist. His wife is Puerto Rican, so he spent a lot of time there and found out about all this music. It was like when we started reissuing Fania stuff: You could find it in markets on cheaply done CDs with no liner notes. He thought it should be done right, and very few albums in Puerto Rico are like it. He wrote... an incredible essay that reads like a sociological and musicological dissertation. We're at work on volumes two and three.

  more »

Rangarang: Pre-Revolutionary Iranian Pop

• 

  Rangarang

  Various Artists

  2011 | Vampisoul / The Orchard

  A guy based in Washington, D.C., claimed to be the grandson of the guy who recorded these tracks. His grandfather was killed by the Iranian revolutionaries. He sent us a bunch of material to select and compile. It was very difficult. We couldn't find much information about some of the artists. We went by the music rather than by famous names or big hits. It's fascinating to think about this music in... the context of where it was being made and what came before it — a musical explosion in a strange social moment.

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Bola Johnson, Man No Die

• 

  Man No Die

  Bola Johnson

  2010 | Vampisoul / The Orchard

  The guy representing Nigeria's Premiere label sent us a batch of 1960s and '70s material this trumpeter and bandleader recorded for Phillips. We learned that Bola has even more recordings out, but we don't know how many because even though he's on Facebook, he never replied to us for information or pictures or anything. He's still playing but doesn't seem to care. The world may seem much smaller these days, but there... are still big holes everywhere. Bola's a complete performer who can play all kinds of African music. This compilation has everything from soft highlife to hard funk like Fela Kuti's, who influenced him.

  more »

Flipper Psychout

• 

  Flipper Psychout

  Various Artists

  2010 | Vampisoul / The Orchard

  This was compiled by Alessandro Casella, a record collector and DJ who runs Rome's Micca Club. He got deep into Italian library music and was hired by Flipper to go into its vaults and find material to offer to labels. Mainly, it's music done for publicity, films and television in the early '70s, and the number of different moods and styles was endless. Alessandro came to us with tracks that are psychedelic,... sexy and quite incredible. That kind of music was being produced in Britain, of course, but it was also being done in southern Europe — France, Italy and even Spain. There's a lot more on the way. We're working on a project with the Spanish library music of Warner Chappell, which has something like 15,000 recordings. But it's too much. You need an expert or else you'll spend half your life on it.

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Los Saicos, ¡Demolición! The Complete Recordings

• 

  ¡Demolición! The Complete Recordings

  Los Saicos

  2010 | Munster / The Orchard

  This is the most significant Munster release at the moment for me. Los Saicos recorded six singles in 1964 and '65, but no albums at all. It was very mysterious. I used to play them for all my friends. I'd put the needle down and they'd say, "What is this?!" The band only played its own stuff, no covers. Their themes were a bit sinister: cemeteries, jails, executions, bombings and demolition. They... even had their own Peruvian TV show. They were stars, and then they split up, quit and didn't play any more music. The bandmember we got in touch with lives a very wealthy life in Washington, D.C., where he works for NASA. He became an engineer. We've gotten many licensing requests for them. I'm very proud of this because we may never see anything as unique as Los Saicos again.

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Lyres, Lyres, Lyres

• 

  Lyres Lyres

  Lyres

  2012 | Munster / The Orchard

  I really worshipped the Lyres during my formative years when I was doing the fanzine, and I saw them live a few times. A gap opened between the punk explosion and grunge, and the Lyres were one of the more interesting bands to appear. It was not easy to deal with Jeff Connolly; he's a bit of a perfectionist [laughs]. But it's very good music and I'm glad we did it. No... one else had reissued them except for Matador more than 15 years ago. I'm happy we've made them wider-known.

  more »

Andy Votel Shares 5 Treasures from the Finders Keepers Trove

• 

  L'enfant Assassin Des Mouches

  Jean Claude Vannier

  2007 | B-MUSIC

  Orchestral, psych-rock concept album by Gainsbourg's right-hand man, and FK's first release.
  
  
  When we set up Finders Keepers, I'd already had this record for about four years. There was a rumour going around that there was a sequel to Histoire de Melody Nelson by Serge Gainsbourg, who I'm a big fan of, but it soon became evident that I was more a fan of his arranger, Jean-Claude Vannier, as most of the stuff... I like was between 1968-73 — their years together. Nobody could find this album because there's nothing written on the sleeve — no title or name — but after years and years, I just found a copy in a shop. Everybody in France put me off speaking to Vannier — they told me he was arrogant and that he couldn't speak English — but it was like they were protecting him, really. When I finally met him I discovered he was a polite, encouraging and influential man who has since become a good friend — and he can speak English better than I can. No one dared release this record in France, but I just thought, it has to be out there.

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• 

  Minor White

  Emma Tricca

  2010 | B-MUSIC

  Spare and timeless, finger-picked folk-blues from John Renbourn-approved singer-songwriter.
  
  One of the key attractions of music for me is its femininity and sadly, you don't get that much in Manchester. All I ever talk to Emma about is Italian horror films, because she's Italian. I never talk to her about music, because I'm really not qualified; she's almost like a genius. Jane [Weaver, recording artist and Votel's wife] and I saw her at... the Green Man Festival in 2006 and couldn't believe how brilliant she was, but you could put her up a tree and she'd be amazing. Emma could have existed 300 years ago and she could exist in 300 years time. What she does is 100 per cent honest.

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• 

  Possession

  Andrzej Korzyñski

  2012 | FINDERS KEEPERS

  Polish composer's previously unreleased, experi-chestral OST for the 1981 horror classic.
  
  Korzynski was a mainstay in my record collection for years, but I didn't know anything about him. It's hard to find out about anything Polish, really, but I've been collecting Polish records since I was about 18, when I went to there on an art-school trip. Soundtracks were never released as records in their own right in Poland, and as Korzynski was... primarily a soundtrack artist, he wasn't a household name. But he did go to Paris in the late '60s and that explains everything about Korzynski's sound — people always say he's like the Polish Jean-Claude Vannier.

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• 

  Selda

  Selda

  2007 | B-MUSIC

  Debut Anatolian folk/psych-rock album from acclaimed Turkish singer/ songwriter and musician.
  
  Selda's a folk heroine, but super-militant; she'll wear Gucci sunglasses and a Fendi handbag, with a parka and a bullet-belt. I discovered Turkish music when I was in Germany and there was a really heavy, fuzz guitar sound on this record that blew my mind. Then I realized it was actually a saz, put through a fuzz pedal. People say The Beatles... are the most influential band in the world, but they're not. The Shadows are, because they're instrumental, so language isn't an issue. That's how the Andalou rock scene started and Selda was one of its earliest female musicians. She has this incredible voice, full of pain that's just unrivaled.

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• 

  Man Chest Hair

  Various Artists

  2012 | FINDERS KEEPERS

  Compilation of hirsute and avowedly male '70s rock from the Mancunian underground.
  
  Manchester has got a habit of approaching music with its elbows out, pushing to the front of the queue; it's very male-oriented. But the stuff that didn't force its way to the front got forgotten. It sickens me that people think music in Manchester just went straight from The Hollies to The Smiths, like the '70s didn't exist. In the '60s... when all the clubs in the city centre got shut down, the music went to satellite towns like Bolton and Stockport. There was a German record I'd been after for years and years, and then I found out the band were from Stockport and that blew my mind.

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eMusic Editors’ Finders Keepers Picks

• 

  Pomegranates: Persian Pop, Funk, Folk and Psych of the 60s and 70s

  Various Artists

  2010 | B-MUSIC
• 

  Sarolta Zalatnay

  Sarolta Zalatnay

  2009 | B-MUSIC
• 

  Paint a Lady

  Susan Christie

  2007 | B-MUSIC
• 

  Well Hung

  Various Aritsts

  2009 | B-MUSIC
• 

  Selda

  Selda

  2007 | B-MUSIC
• 

  Absolute Belter

  Various

  2010 | FINDERS KEEPERS
• 

  Solla Solla

  Ilaiyaraaja

  2011 | FINDERS KEEPERS
• 

  The B-Music of Jean Rollin

  Various Artists

  2012 | FINDERS KEEPERS

Waxahatchee

• 

  Cerulean Salt

  Waxahatchee

  2013 | Don Giovanni Records / Believe Digital

  I was a huge, huge fan of [Waxahatchee singer/songwriter Katie Crutchfield's former band] P.S. Eliot — they were an incredible band. They were from Alabama, but they were a Don Giovanni band that wasn't on Don Giovanni. We just didn't do their records, because they weren't local. Katie and her sister moved to Brooklyn, and they did this project called Bad Banana. I e-mailed Katie and told her I wanted to do... a Bad Banana record. By that time, they were barely around, but she told me, "But I'm doing this new thing, Waxahatchee." We put out their first album [American Weekend] in January of last year, and no one cared — and by the end of the year, it was like the biggest record ever. You don't know what's going to happen, sometimes. We would do records like that if they never picked up, but it's always really nice when they do.

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Hilly Eye

• 

  Reasons to Live

  Hilly Eye

  2013 | Don Giovanni Records / Believe Digital

  They're one of the most recent bands to join the label, and a band that sort of came into the scene through the label. They played with Shellshag and Screaming Females a lot; I bought their demo at one of their shows, and I just really liked it. Until this year, we really only worked with local bands. But I booked them on shows, and at some point I told them, "Just... so you know, we would do your record if you want — I like your band." They got back to me when they were doing a record, and it was just a natural fit: They fit with all our ideals, they fit with all our bands. They're great people.

  more »

California X

• 

  California X

  California X

  2013 | Don Giovanni Records / Believe Digital

  I'm working on a Ph.D. right now, and I live in Ithaca, but before I was in Ithaca I was in Syracuse. And in Syracuse, I met this guy Josh who moved to Amherst and was in California X, and was going to put out their record. I heard them and I thought, "I love that band." I booked them for shows — I usually book bands I like, it's not, like,... a label thing. Josh left the band on really friendly terms, but he wasn't putting out their record, and they were kind of in a quandary. I talked to Zach about it. We'd kind of cemented our "only doing local bands" thing, but we thought, "Fuck it, the record's awesome, it's the kind of thing we'd do anyway, we can help the band, let's do it." And then it was easy. They're part of the scene anyway — Waxahatchee played the first California X show.

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Shellshag

• 

  Rumors In Disguise

  Shellshag

  2011 | Don Giovanni Records / Believe Digital

  They're my favorite band. They're a really important band, not just to me but to the world, and I hope someday the world realizes that. I remember when they moved from California to Brooklyn — they were famous to me and my 10 friends. I don't like playing favorites, but Shellshag are probably my favorite band on the label, and I don't think any of the others would be upset to hear... that. Any label that was thinking about the bottom line would never do some of the things we do for Shellshag, but I think it's really important that their records exist and get noticed. The lyrics they write — they're old but they're young. The fact that they just keep doing what they're doing, and damn the music industry, is really inspirational to me. I got married in August, and we only had two bands play: a Misfits tribute band, and Shellshag.

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Big Eyes

• 

  Hard Life

  Big Eyes

  2011 | Don Giovanni Records / Believe Digital

  Big Eyes have just been around our scene forever. I met Kate when she was 14, and when she was 18 she started a band called Cheeky, who were maybe the best band ever when they were around. We were supposed to do their album — there's even a feature on YouTube about the making of the album for our label — and then they broke up and didn't finish it. I... said, "Kate, let me do your next band," and that was Big Eyes. They relocated to Seattle at a certain point, which is partially why we're not doing their records any more. But there's no bad blood. I love them. I'm booking a Don Giovanni show for them right now.

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Screaming Females

• 

  Ugly

  Screaming Females

  2012 | Don Giovanni Records / Believe Digital

  They were one of my favorite bands in New Brunswick, and we didn't work with them until their third album because they were doing their own records. I thought that was really cool — I love it when bands put out their own records. Then, one day, a mutual friend of ours played matchmaker: "You know, Screaming Females really like your label, Joe, they want you to put out their records…" And... he told them, "You know, Joe really likes you guys…" So we talked, and I think I said something like that I was going to kill myself if they didn't let me put out the next record, and thankfully they didn't call my bluff on that. At the time, for all I knew, that would be all we ever did: Most of our bands, at that point, did one record and broke up and that was that. But I can go back and see that that was a huge thing — we've ended up working with them for six years. A lot of the way Don Giovanni functions is because of working with Screaming Females and figuring out how to do new things: licensing, royalties, booking agents, all these things we didn't know about and they didn't know about, and we've figured everything out together. I don't think Marissa realizes her own talent sometimes. There are things she can do so effortlessly that she's so modest about. Everyone thinks she's really serious and scary, but people don't know that she's really silly and funny.

  more »

Free SXSW Sampler

Pissed Jeans

• 

  Honeys

  Pissed Jeans

  2013 | Sub Pop Records

  Snarling and spitting, growling and kicking, Honeys won't surprise those who love the Allentown, Pennsylvania-based Jesus (Lizard) freaks Pissed Jeans, nor is it likely to attract those that deplore the band. "Write what you know," as they say, and Pissed Jeans knows pummeling, antisocial punk. When lead yeller Matt Korvette isn't "in the hallway screaming" (that's from riotous opener "Bathroom Laughter"), he can often be found smirking. You'd think four dudes who... all recently became fathers would be tamer than this. — Austin L. Ray

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Marnie Stern

• 

  Marnie Stern

  Marnie Stern

  2010 | Kill Rock Stars / Redeye

  In years past, Marnie Stern's shorthand description usually involved the words "guitar" and "shredding," but the New Yorker has grown equally adept over her career at revealing just how big her heart is. Stern's frenetic fingertapping and the bonkers drumming of Kid Millions illustrate the way that the best response to bone-crushing sadness is, sometimes, a pealing laugh. Confidence and the lack thereof are also common lyrical themes, although the bravado with... which Stern wields both her guitar and her anguished voice masks those facts on first listen. — Maura Johnston

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Waxahatchee

• 

  Cerulean Salt

  Waxahatchee

  2013 | Don Giovanni Records / Believe Digital

  As Waxahatchee, Katie Crutchfield uses her brief tracks to paint a very specific but familiar portrait of 20-something American youth, first on the deeply personal, lo-fi acoustic guitar-filled American Weekend, and now on the plugged-in Cerulean Salt, in which her subtle gut-punches translate just as powerfully once the volume's been dialed up. — Carrie Battan

Charles Bradley

• 

  No Time for Dreaming

  Charles Bradley

  2011 | Daptone Records / The Orchard

  It's time to put to bed, once and for all, Charles Bradley's oft-repeated origin story as a James Brown impersonator. The Screaming Eagle of Soul, The Original Black Swan and, most recently, The Victim of Love, Bradley is at this point a performer fully his own, possessing boundless charisma, gallons of passion and the kind of unstudied, unadulterated joy that SXSW — a week fully fucking lousy with marketing and branding and... consumer-facing outreach opportunities — desperately needs. To stand in the presence of Charles Bradley is to be basked in 100 percent pure love — so completely unsullied and unpolluted you feel yourself choking up before the first song ever hits the chorus. To put it another way: if James Brown were alive today, he'd be impersonating Charles. — J. Edward Keyes

  more »

METZ

• 

  METZ

  METZ

  2012 | Sub Pop Records

  On their debut album, Canadian trio METZ has delivered a sound that's reasonably scarce in 2012: post-hardcore, pre-grunge, noise-addled punk rock. You can hear the influence of the Jesus Lizard in particular everywhere: in Alex Edkins's strained screams; in Hayden Menzies's crashing drum assault; in their relentless wave of screeching guitars, in the frenzied pace of "Wet Blanket," in the sludgy industrial instrumental "Nausea," and in their grim, dour lyrics. But the... sheer volume and force of the music don't take away from their musicianship. — Evan Minsker

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Torres

• 

  TORRES

  TORRES

  2013 | TORRES / TuneCore

  Torres's songs feel as if they were bound to come crawling out of singer-songwriter Mackenzie Scott's body no matter what she did or where she was. Dominated by the wavery tones of her Gibson 355 electric, the songs explore the fragile architecture of human relationships, often finding Scott standing amid a steaming pile of rubble, wondering not about what caused the house to fall but what to do, now, with all the... shattered pieces left behind. — Rachael Maddux

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Parquet Courts

• 

  Light Up Gold

  Parquet Courts

  2013 | What's Your Rupture?

  On Light Up Gold, the irresistible debut from Brooklyn band Parquet Courts, the principal songwriters Andrew Savage and Austin Brown cast a jaundiced eye on our troubled times with a series of infinitely quotable bon mots: On regional cuisine? "As for Texas: Donuts Only. You cannot find bagels here." On the value of wisdom? "Socrates died in the fucking gutter." These nuggets are dropped between jagged guitar lines that sound like they... were lifted from Wire's 154 — bent-coathanger leads that teeter on the steep incline between punk and post-punk. — J. Edward Keyes

  more »

Matthew E. White

Roc Marciano

• 

  Reloaded (Deluxe Edition)

  Roc Marciano

  Decon

  Roc Marciano's music exists to remind you what NYC rap sounds like in the idealized bubble of your memory, and he's frighteningly good at it. He's so good, in fact, that after awhile you forget that his music is a kind of Civil War reenactment, one in which Swizz Beatz plays General Sherman and the Battle of Five Forks is the moment he started fooling with a Casio. Marciano's rap world exists... before all of that, a vanished kingdom of urban despair, gnarled street slang, and unglamorous night shifts conducted out in front of public housing. — Jayson Greene

  more »

Mac DeMarco

Solange

• 

  True

  Solange

  2012 | Terrible Records / The Orchard

  Sure, Solange is the sister of R&B/pop princess Beyoncé — a fact that will probably never be omitted from her CV. But while her musical means (a soaring soprano; wisely chosen collaborators) are similar to the elder Knowles, the ends are significantly different. For her 2012 EP True, she enlisted production help from Blood Orange's Dev Hynes and ended up with a candy-coated, left-of-center R&B playground. — Laura Studarus

The Coup

• 

  Sorry To Bother You

  The Coup

  2012 | Anti/Epitaph

  Boots Riley has had a few other things to do than rap for Oakland collective the Coup as of late — appearing at the forefront of the Occupy movement, for one. But for their seventh album in 20 years, Riley's loose sense of humor remains intact in much the way as his taste for lyrics that spell out rebellion. — Michaelangelo Matos

Samantha Crain

• 

  Kid Face

  Samantha Crain

  2013 | Ramseur Records / The Orchard

  Oklahoma singer-songwriter Samantha Crain has always sounded like an old soul, her dusty alto worn down by restless thoughts and free-floating anxiety. On her latest LP Kid Face, she comes into her own as a lyricist, using the songs to examine her place in the world. — Annie Zaleski

Autre Ne Veut

• 

  Anxiety

  Autre Ne Veut

  2013 | Software

  Arthur Ashin typically spends the duration of his performances as Autre Ne Veut curled up on the ground like a potato bug. So if you go to see him at SXSW, you should kind of prepare for the fact that you might not actually see him. That's OK, though: His music is more about feeling than seeing. If Terence Trent D'Arby returned from self-imposed exile and pulled off the perfect comeback record,... it might sound a lot like Ashin's recently-released Anxiety: supple, R&B-informed vocal lines glide over stormy-sea synthesizers, the tensions perfectly mirroring the existential unease in his lyrics. Case in point? His most beautiful song, the slinky "Counting," is about his terror that his grandmother was going to die. How can you expect a man to have the strength to stand upright while singing about things like that? — J. Edward Keyes

  more »

Maria Minerva

• 

  Will Happiness Find Me?

  Maria Minerva

  2012 | Not Not Fun / Revolver

  Maria Minerva, a somewhat mysterious artist from Estonia, has a playfulness that's alternately cerebral and coy, and a lightness of touch at the controls. She sings too, with a voice that stretches out and rises up from deep pools of echo. On her latest effort, Will Happiness Finds Me?, she plays with different sounds and different tempos, with a mind toward both vintage club music and futuristic pop at once. — Andy... Battaglia

  more »

My Gold Mask

• 

  Leave Me Midnight

  My Gold Mask

  2013 | Goldy Tapes / CD Baby

  Chicago duo My Gold Mask amplify the effects of a breakup album on their debut, Leave Me At Mightnight. They don't skimp on dramatics, with Gretta Rochelle's pleading vocals, Jack Armondo's spiraling guitar riffs, and lyrics that grapple with psychosis and reference Gothic literature and Italo horror flicks. The result achieves a spellbinding emotional intensity that's easy to inhabit. — Marissa G. Muller

Skeletonwitch

• 

  Forever Abomination

  Skeletonwitch

  Prosthetic / The Orchard

  Hands-down the most fun you will ever have a metal show, period, Skeletonwitch combine blasphemous guitar firepower with a self-aware sense of humor without ever tipping once into icky archness or loathsome, smirking heavy meta. It helps that they're an astonishingly tight band, whipping from one burst of split-second riffery to the next with all the frenzy and fury of a speed-of-sound rollercoaster car desperately hugging the curves. Who knew unabashed Satanism... could be so uplifting? — J. Edward Keyes

  more »

Icona Pop

• 

  Iconic EP

  Icona Pop

  2012 | Big Beat Records/Atlantic

  Here is Swedish duo Icona Pop summed up in six words: "I don't care! I love it!" That refrain — cribbed from last year's giddiest breakup song — perfectly captures Caroline Hjelt and Aino Jawo's exuberance and reckless abandon. Their songs are straight-up sugar shots, firework synths and hollered vocals and drum machines that wallop and squelch like medicine balls full of purple Kool-Aid. It's the sound of pure joy — a... nonstop barrage of leaping neon exclamation points. — J. Edward Keyes

  more »

Pearl and the Beard

• 

  Killing the Darlings

  Pearl And The Beard

  2011 | Family Records / The Orchard

  Pearl and the Beard are a trio of loud and goofy Brooklyn songwriters, their songs a mix of acoustic folk and jazzy cabaret via a soft-voiced guitarist (Jeremy Styles) and a cellist and percussionist (Emily Hope Price and Jocelyn Mackenzie) who seamlessly switch between brassy wails and Disney-princess croons. — Laura Leebove

Chelle Rose

• 

  Ghost of Browder Holler

  Chelle Rose

  2012 | Lil' Damsel Records / TuneCore

  Even Satan knows better than to fuck with Chelle Rose. That's the truism she lays out in the center of the slow-moseying, creepy-as-hell "Leona Barrett," seething, "I don't know who I trouble more: The mean ol' devil or the good ol' Lord." Need further proof? It's all over the brooding, beautiful Ghost of Browder Holler, a record that takes the same sinister spirit found in bands like Nick Cave & the Bad... Seeds and transplants it to ragged booze-bucket country music. Rose's voice is a wonder, a smartass sneer that jabs like a hundred middle fingers. Her pronunciation drips with delicious contempt: she shrugs off a louse of a lover by drawling, "My skin ain't sowft enuff, my kisses would not douww." She dispenses with him like she's flecking a fly from the lip of her MGD. — J. Edward Keyes

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Night Beats

• 

  Night Beats

  Night Beats

  2011 | Trouble In Mind Records / TuneCore

  Here's the ideal environment for enjoying the music of gloomy garage ghouls Night Beats: It's 4 a.m. and you've ended up, after a long night of boozing and carousing, at some sparsely-attended party in a barely-furnished loft apartment in some remote part of the city, and a band is bashing out sneering numbers that sound like Nuggets with an upset stomach while a movie projector beams lava-lamp-like images on to their swaying... bodies. Also, it's 1967 and you're in an instructional film about the hazards of LSD. Failing that, a stage in the sunlight in Austin, Texas, is the next best thing. — J. Edward Keyes

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Dana Falconberry

• 

  Leelanau

  Dana Falconberry

  2012 | Antenna Farm Records / The Orchard

  Dana Falconberry writes delicate orchestral-folk songs; her airy mezzo accompanied by plucked strings, fingerpicked guitar and gentle rim clicks. Though she's now based in Austin, her debut LP is an ode to her childhood spent in northern Michigan's lush Leelanau peninsula. — Laura Leebove

Royal Thunder

Holydrug Couple

• 

  Noctuary

  The Holydrug Couple

  2013 | Sacred Bones Records / S.C. Distribution

  In case the name didn't clue you in: This is heavy-lidded, slow-moving, psyched-out, pinwheel-eyed bliss. The Chilean duo Holydrug Couple imagines what might happen if you put a brick on the turntable while you were playing old Byrds records. A loose netting of guitars drifts down slowly, drums thud and shudder and vocal lines — keening and melodic — expand like echoes in the Grand Canyon. In the midst of the hyperactive... Austin chaos, Holydrug Couple provide a grinning, dreamy respite. — J. Edward Keyes

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Jacco Gardner

• 

  Cabinet of Curiosities

  Jacco Gardner

  2013 | Trouble In Mind Records / TuneCore

  Indie rock's own Little Prince, Jacco Gardner's music is magic and precious, sumptuous orchestral pop that summons the spirits of The Zombies and The Left Banke while sounding openly derivative of neither. In fact, it's Gardner's own assured gift for melody that makes Cabinet of Curiosities such a wonder — even more than the swirling, meringue-like strings. His vocal lines dart off at odd acute angles, poking rude holes in the tissue-paper... orchestration. Witness opener "Clear the Air": xylophones and mellotrons and violins pirouette like tiny ceramic music box ballerinas; but then Gardner's weirdo trapezoidal voice spirals in, making what was once simply soothing seem suddenly ominous and mysterious. It's like the unadulterated versions of Aesop's Fables, where childlike fantasy often gives way to moments of genuine, thrilling danger. — J. Edward Keyes

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“Peaches En Regalia”

• 

  Hot Rats

  Frank Zappa

  2012 | Zappa Records

  Begin here. The opening track of 1969's Hot Rats, with which Frank Zappa pretty much invented jazz-rock fusion, is a regal distillation of Zappa's musical personality at its most slyly inviting. With Ian Underwood's keyboards and winds simulating an entire orchestra, an immaculately concise FZ guitar solo, and a teenaged Shuggie Otis on bass, "Peaches" blends pomp, wit, rock, jazz and classical flavors into a rich, palate-cleansing overture for the extended jams... that follow.

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Over-Nite Sensation and Apostrophe’

Zappa’s two most commercially successful albums, recorded mostly during the same 1973 sessions, tantalize with psychedelic scatology and catchy comedy-rock tracks. Initiate yourself into the mysteries of yellow snow, dental floss and Sears ponchos, but don’t miss the subtly akimbo arrangements, rocking set pieces, and stellar guitar playing. Fun fact: Tina Turner and the Ikettes sang uncredited backing vocals for $25 per track.

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  Over-Nite Sensation

  Frank Zappa

  2012 | Zappa Records
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  Apostrophe (')

  Frank Zappa

  2012 | Zappa Records

Waka/Jawaka

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  Waka/Jawaka

  Frank Zappa

  2012 | Zappa Records

  Zappa's thoroughly entertaining 1972 sequel to Hot Rats recalls the sort of sophisticated big-band jazz played by Don Ellis and Bob Brookmeyer. Bookended by the 17-minute "Big Swifty" and the 11-minute title track, W/J makes 7/8 and 11/8 time signatures sound as normal as 4/4. Also, "Sneaky" Pete Kleinow plays one of the finest pedal-steel solos ever on the hallucinatory "It Just Might Be a One-Shot Deal."

Roxy & Elsewhere

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  Roxy & Elsewhere

  Frank Zappa

  2012 | Zappa Records

  Percussionist Ruth Underwood earns MVP honors on this 1974 live album that balances Zappa's compulsive perfectionism with gleeful improvisation and infinite hooks. The original double-vinyl's side-long sequence of "Village of the Sun," "Echidna's Arf (Of You)," and "Don't You Ever Wash That Thing" contains as much heart as humor thanks to George Duke's vocals, Chester Thompson's ridonkulous drumming, and the ringmaster's obvious delight at the fleet-footed mischief he hath wrought.

“The Adventures of Gregory Peccary”

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  Studio Tan

  Frank Zappa

  2012 | Zappa Records

  Zappa considered himself first and foremost a modern classical composer, and often complained about needing to tour with a rock band to subsidize his serious stuff. Somewhere between three-chord rock and Webern-ian dodecophony, however, he sometimes hit a sweet spot of semi-serious rock operatics, most notably in this 20-minute orchestral work from 1978's Studio Tan. Zappa's subtlest social satire, "Gregory Peccary" mocks consumerism, mechanization, religious exploitation, and the very nature of time... itself with blithe melodic pastiches.

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Burnt Weeny Sandwich

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  Burnt Weeny Sandwich

  Frank Zappa

  2012 | Zappa Records

  After disbanding the original Mothers of Invention in 1969, Zappa released both this album of (mostly) studio leftovers and the (mostly) live collection Weasels Ripped My Flesh the following year. Weeny is a grand gateway into the Mothers' peculiar mix of high and low styles. Doo-wop gems "WPLJ" and "Valarie" bookend a classically inclined set whose nineteen-minute multipart centerpiece "The Little House I Used to Live In" features a fiery Don "Sugarcane"... Harris blues-violin solo.

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“Inca Roads”

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  One Size Fits All

  Frank Zappa

  2012 | Zappa Records

  Considered Zappa's quintessential composition by many, the rhythmically treacherous One Size Fits All (1975) opener pokes fun at progressive-rock pretension even as it inspired some of FZ's most beautifully composed guitar solos. This version's solo, played originally onstage in Helsinki, exemplifies Zappa's notion of xenechrony, a recontextualizing of material between stage and studio. Shut Up 'N Play Yer Guitar's title track, for example, snags a particularly stunning "Inca Roads" solo from a... 1979 tour.

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Make a Jazz Noise Here

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  Make A Jazz Noise Here

  Frank Zappa

  2012 | Zappa Records

  Zappa's final tour, in 1988, featured an ultratight 12-piece band with a hard-swinging five-man horn section. The third of three live albums documenting the excursion, Jazz Noise mixes artfully arranged Mothers classics like "Cruisin' for Burgers," extended sample-driven improvisations such as "When Yuppies Go to Hell," and jazz-inflected instrumentals like "Black Napkins." The whole affair runs more than two hours, contains numerous quotes from the classical canon, and has a valedictory maturity... reminiscent of Dutch jazz oddballs like the Willem Breuker Kollektief.

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We’re Only in It for the Money

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  We're Only In It For The Money

  Frank Zappa

  2012 | Zappa Records

  Beginning with Cal Schenkel's Sgt. Pepper's-spoofing cover art, the Mothers of Invention's 1968 conceptual masterpiece satirized the hippie "flower punk" subculture even more venomously than Zappa had skewered their parents a year earlier on Absolutely Free. Short, sharp melodies, musique concrète, analog electronics, astounding tape-speed manipulation, orchestral leftovers from Lumpy Gravy, and both broad and laser-sharp parodies of contemporary hits (e.g., "Hey Joe") add up to a brain-scorching album of singular collagic... velocity.

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Uncle Meat

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  Uncle Meat

  Frank Zappa

  2012 | Zappa Records

  Notoriously gnarly but endlessly rewarding, Zappa's often-conflicting pop and "serious" sides come to a jittery and often transcendent resolution in the grooves of this double album containing "most of the music from the Mothers' movie of the same name which we haven't got enough money to finish yet." The title track and Zappa ür-theme "King Kong" emerge and dissolve throughout the album like Wagnerian motives performed by a Darmstradt serial composer conducting... Arkham Asylum's institutional orchestra — only funnier.

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Brooklyn

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  Reasonable Doubt

  Jay-Z

  1996 | Roc-a-fella / TuneCore

  Every rapper needs a creation myth — Illmatic opened with Nas and A.Z. counting money over snippets from Wild Style, the devil's sons redeemed by hip-hop. Biggie opened Ready to Die with a gripping audio collage of his first twenty-odd years, as though his rag-to-riches tale was one you needed to learn. Jay opened Reasonable Doubt with a heartbeat, but its quickening pace suggested it was the sound of fear —... of moving your first package; of holding your first gun; of seeing a man die; of the moment when you realize you have grown up too fast. This wasn't an album deeply concerned with where Jay had been, since he had already built his name as a rather successful drug dealer. This album was about one man's rebirth, and as soon as that ticking heart gave way to the gloss and floss of "Can't Knock the Hustle," it was clear that Jay, too, had arrived.
  
  
  
  "My pops knew exactly what he did when he made me/ Tried to get a nut and he got a nut," he bragged on that opening cut, as Mary J. Blige bellowed an achingly hopeful chorus borrowed from Mel'isa Morgan's "Fool's Paradise." But was Jay really a "nut," our "worst fear confirmed"? There is something cool and composed about Reasonable Doubt, as he plays straight man to Biggie's true nut on "Brooklyn's Finest" or earns his stripes on the icy "Dead Presidents II" — two of the finest songs of Jay's career. "We used to fight for building blocks/ Now we fight for blocks with buildings that make a killin'," he raps on the truly disturbing "D'evils." But even there he sounds chillingly assured against DJ Premier's spooked Allen Toussaint sample.
  
  
  
  History recognizes Reasonable Doubt as evidence of Jay's genius, but it all could have ended up very differently. Reasonable Doubt arrived during a tumultuous turn in the history of hip-hop. Nas'disappointing It Was Written would come out a week later, and hip-hop's obsession with the Mafioso lifestyle would soon bloat to cartoonish extremes. The Wu-Tang Clan would spool out of control, and within the next year, Tupac and the Notorious B.I.G. would ascend to martyrdom. Yet the culture's growth was still exceeding all expectations, and hip-hop would need new, larger, flashier heroes. And in Jay-Z, it found its pinnacle.

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  Daily Operation

  Gang Starr

  1992 | NOO TRYBE

  Straddling the very fissures where the old school gave way to the new, Gang Starr's 1992 masterpiece Step in the Arena was the sound that took rappers 15 years to perfect. In the few months that followed, New York would be scrambling to reinvent itself in the year Los Angeles broke, but Daily Operation was coolly classic-sounding; like Led Zep's Physical Graffiti, it's an unstoppable summary of everything that makes its genre... great — the most rollicking breaks, the silkiest rhyme patterns, the most nimble cutwork, the most head-knocking snares.
  
  For being the greatest MC/DJ duo in rap history, Gang Starr were never flashy, gaudy or showy. Guru and DJ Premier are jazz heads at heart, and they understand the idea of "being in the pocket" — note how Guru brags that his vocals "complement the slow phat groove" in "Stay Tuned." But don't mistake their smoothness for soft: The production (handled by the duo) cycles through some of the most harried samples around, always hiccupping with hums and tics and audience noise and hummingbird strings — peaking with a manic one-second loop of hard-funk footnote Sugar Billy Garner in "B.Y.S."
  
  The magic is in the details — how Premier gently stretches and bends KRS-One's voice in "Ex Girl to the Next Girl"; the way Guru can makes something as devilishly simple as "You see the mic in my hand? Now watch me wreck it now" seem like liquid perfection; how "Take It Personal" adds extra bass drums hits to the iconic "Skull Snap" break to make it even more skull-snappy. Daily Operation is an uncluttered masterpiece by a group with a catalog full of them.

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  Life After Death

  The Notorious B.I.G.

  1997 | Bad Boy Records

  Released just 16 days after his March 9 death by drive-by shooting, there's an eerie prescience to the Notorious B.I.G.'s Life After Death. Several things — that title, the hearse-featuring album cover, the crushing closing track, "You're Nobody (Til Somebody Kills You)" — gave Life After Death a bizarre resonance. But this is much more than paperwork from the morgue. In fact, rap stardom gave The Notorious B.I.G. a new lease; he... attacks with testosterone-filled glee. The album's title is about second chances at money, fame and sex after a tumultuous youth; a true second life. The result, worth every second of its expansive double-LP running time, is actually more about light and wealth than its predecessor, which was defined by a grim fatalism. The hits say as much. Consider that old speedboat-riding chestnut of hip-hop opulence, "Hypnotize" or the Diana Ross-lifting exuberance of "Mo Money Mo Problems." The giddy, quite funny "I Got A Story To Tell" finds Biggie creeping with the lady friend of a New York Knicks player and then retelling the tale to his boys, embellishing like a grandfather serenading some awestruck tots. Biggie's desire to croon — really, croon — crops up repeatedly here, as on the goofy extended "Playa Hater" or the thudding Miami bass of "Another." Even "Ten Crack Commandments," a steely DJ Premier production and drug-dealing manifesto has a delightful service-y quality — memorable and useful! So many of his lyrics became sampled and repeated hip-hop aphorisms — "If you don't know, now you know"; "It was all a dream..."; "Went from ashy to classy"; and so on. This is a crucial part of the Biggie mythology, the stickiness of his writing.
  
  After the success of Ready To Die Biggie used his follow-up to indulge his fantasies. Working mostly with Puff Daddy's in-house production crew, The Hitmen (Carlos "July Six" Broady, Nashiem Myrick, Deric "D-Dot" Angelettie, Stevie J, Ron "Amen-Ra" Lawrence), it's surprising how many of the songs here are about sexual conquest; at times you may yearn for his debut's brutality. But over time, Life After Death reveals itself as a sensual work — the lyrics to the R. Kelly-featuring "Fuck You Tonight" are specific, attentive, lascivious in ways that might make Luther Campbell blush. Biggie is less rapid-fire throughout, whether rapping or singing, letting that charismatic, jowly burr traipse into Isaac Hayes territory. His reach is longer, too, featuring paeans to his beloved '80s R&B, production from distinguished contemporaries like Mobb Deep's Havoc and Wu-Tang Clan's RZA, and guest shots from stars old (DMC, Too $hort) and new (onetime paramour and protégé Lil' Kim, a young friend named Jay-Z, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony).
  
  That collaboration with Bone Thugs, the whirring "Notorious Thugs," forced a flood light on rap's ever-expanding regional purview. Exposing — and paying homage by emulating their distinctive half-sung double-time flow — to Cleveland's own was just one more example of Biggie's almost perverse palm-reading — he simply knew where the genre needed to go. The song's reference to "So-called beef with you know who" anchors the album's more serious undertones. Biggie, of course, was feuding with ex-friend 2Pac for some time as he began recording the album. Pac was gunned down in Las Vegas six months before its release, but that didn't stop Big from including "Going Back To Cali," a perhaps too-braggadocious act of defiance in the service of an insatiable ego.
  
  The backend of the second disc is the most tremulous and grandiose. The underrated single "Sky's The Limit," a defiant turn on "My Downfall," and RZA's "Long Kiss Goodnight" are all mythmaking songs that ultimately sting in light of Big's fate. And the closing track, "You're Nobody (Til Somebody Kills You)," is the hazy epilogue to a cinematic reconfiguration. That it all doesn't end in death is its own sort of optimism, tragically inaccurate though it was.

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  Mos Def & Talib Kweli Are Black Star

  Blackstar

  2002 | Rawkus Entertainment

  While Puff Daddy and his followers continued to dictate the direction hip-hop would take into the millennium, Mos Def and Talib Kweli surfaced from the underground to pull the sounds in the opposite direction. Their 13 rhyme fests on this superior, self-titled debut as Black Star show that old-school rap still sounds surprisingly fresh in the sea of overblown vanity productions. There's no slack evident in the tight wordplays of Def and... Kweli as they twist and turn through sparse, jazz-rooted rhythms calling out for awareness and freedom of the mind. Their viewpoints stem directly from the teachings of Marcus Garvey, the legendary activist who fought for the rights of blacks all around the world in the first half of the 20th century. Def and Kweli's ideals are sure lofty; not only are they out to preach Garvey's words, but they also hope to purge rap music of its negativity and violence. For the most part, it works. Their wisdom-first philosophy hits hard when played off their lyrical intensity, a bass-first production, and stellar scratching. While these MCs don't have all of the vocal pizzazz of A Tribe Called Quest's Phife and Q-Tip at their best, flawless tracks like the cool bop of "K.O.S. (Determination)" and "Definition" hint that Black Star is only the first of many brilliantly executed positive statements for these two street poets.

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  Liquid Swords

  Genius/GZA

  1995 | Geffen
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  Return To The 36 Chambers: The Dirty Version

  Ol' Dirty Bastard

  2009 | Rhino/Elektra
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  Black On Both Sides

  Mos Def

  2002 | Rawkus Entertainment
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  Reflection Eternal [Train Of Thought]

  Talib Kweli

  2002 | Rawkus Entertainment
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  When Disaster Strikes

  Busta Rhymes

  2007 | Rhino/Elektra
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  Wrath Of The Math

  Jeru The Damaja

  1996 | Island Def Jam
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  Hard Core

  Lil' Kim

  2005 | Atlantic Records
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  Ill Na Na

  Foxy Brown

  1996 | RAL

Queens

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  Paid In Full

  Eric B. & Rakim

  2005 | ISLAND RECORDS

  One of the most influential rap albums of all time, Eric B. & Rakim's Paid in Full only continues to grow in stature as the record that ushered in hip-hop's modern era. The stripped-down production might seem a little bare to modern ears, but Rakim's technique on the mic still sounds utterly contemporary, even state-of-the-art -- and that from a record released in 1987, just one year after Run-D.M.C. hit the mainstream.... Rakim basically invents modern lyrical technique over the course of Paid in Full, with his complex internal rhymes, literate imagery, velvet-smooth flow, and unpredictable, off-the-beat rhythms. The key cuts here are some of the most legendary rap singles ever released, starting with the duo's debut sides, "Eric B. Is President" and "My Melody." "I Know You Got Soul" single-handedly kicked off hip-hop's infatuation with James Brown samples, and Eric B. & Rakim topped it with the similarly inclined "I Ain't No Joke," a stunning display of lyrical virtuosity. The title cut, meanwhile, planted the seeds of hip-hop's material obsessions over a monumental beat. There are also three DJ showcases for Eric B., who like Rakim was among the technical leaders in his field. If sampling is the sincerest form of admiration in hip-hop, Paid in Full is positively worshipped. Just to name a few: Rakim's tossed-off "pump up the volume," from "I Know You Got Soul," became the basis for M/A/R/R/S' groundbreaking dance track; Eminem, a devoted Rakim student, lifted lines from "As the Rhyme Goes On" for the chorus of his own "The Way I Am"; and the percussion track of "Paid in Full" has been sampled so many times it's almost impossible to believe it had a point of origin. Paid in Full is essential listening for anyone even remotely interested in the basic musical foundations of hip-hop -- this is the form in its purest essence.

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  Raising Hell

  Run DMC

  2005 | Arista

  There's no mistaking Run-DMC's loud-and-proud staccato flows for today's crop of mumbly-even-when-they-shout rappers; if one thing dates the trio's rhymes, it's that they sound like they're having fun lobbing lines back-and-forth, rather than monomaniacally droning through gangsta clichés. (Just listen to the way Run shouts "Ronald's!" to DMC's "Those burgers are..." set-up on the 27-second personal history lesson "Son of Byford.") It's no surprise why Raising Hell became one of the first... hip-hop albums to truly break through to Middle America after a few years of post-"Rapper's Delight" woodshedding for the genre: that sense of play between the two MC's is infectious. With one of the best opening four-song runs of any old-school hip-hop album, these Hollis boys may not have expected to change pop, but they sure knew how to put their best foot forward.
  
  
  
  That quartet is the core of Run-DMC's legacy: "Peter Piper" introduced many a non-New York resident to the sampled drum break, with its effervescent scratched-in segue from a terse, monochromatic drum machine beat to the funky, full-color bells of Bob James' "Take Me to the Mardi Gras." Future auctioneer-shaming fast-rappers may have made "It's Tricky" sound slow, but even if it's no longer the tongue-twister to beat, Russell Simmons' and Rick Rubin's cut-up of "My Sharona" makes it the funkiest, fuzziest rock-rap this side of Tone Loc's Delicious Vinyl classics. With some of Jam Master Jay's most vicious scratching and zilch in the way of ear-friendliness, "My Adidas" is one of the most counter-intuitive, and perversely catchy, examples of corporate name-dropping in rap history. And "Walk This Way," the culturally ingrained collab with a brink-of-extinction Aerosmith, is the model of raunchy, no-sell-out selling-out. Perhaps nothing, even near-numbing familiarity, can fully clean up Joe Perry's riff.
  
  
  
  But that's only four songs out of 12. The rest of Raising Hell may lack the first quarter's immediacy, but it's a reminder that, even as one of the groups that put hip-hop over the top from a pop standpoint, Run-DMC were first-and-foremost servicing a hardcore audience of rap fiends who'd stuck with the genre through its commercially lean years. "Is It Live" is as much a percussion workout as a flow showcase, the backing track little more than an agitated duet for drums and scratching. And "Hit It Run" subsists on just a steady thwacking rhythm, frenetic beat-boxing, and more amelodic turntable interjections. What sells the album's minimalist excursions into almost pure rhythm is that aforementioned vocal enthusiasm. Like those millions of fairweather pop fans tricked into picking up Raising Hell on the basis of its MTV-monopolizing hit, the rappers 'glee sells the album as "pop" even if it resembles the modern-day version even less than 1986's crop of Billboard hitmakers.

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  Illmatic

  Nas

  Columbia

  The very first thing you hear on Illmatic is the lonely sound of a subway train rolling over the tracks and disappearing into the distance. It's followed by the faint sound of young Nasir Jones's very first on-record appearance, on Main Source's "Live at the Barbeque." The "Barbeque" verse made clear that this kid was A) excitable, and B) very eager to make an impression: before his 32 bars are over, he... has dubbed himself a "police murderer"; kidnapped the president's wife "without a plan,"; compared himself to the Ku Klux Klan; and confessed that he "went to hell for snuffing Jesus" (when he was twelve). As far as ear-grabbing first appearances go, it's pretty serious stuff, right up there with Busta Rhymes's jack-in-the-box verse on "Scenario."
  
  But here it's just background music, prelude. Only two years have passed since "Live At the Barbeque," but from the first moments Nas's voice enters on "The Genesis," it's clear that it might as well have been a thousand. "Niggas don't listen, man," he sighs wearily while his crowing buddies count cash behind him. At 23, he had already become the oldest soul in the room, and Illmatic is a document of every single thing that soul has seen. In one long, deep breath, Nas unfolds all of 1980s New York City — "The ghetto is like a maze, full of black rats, trapped" — with himself rattling around inside, neither the hero nor the anti-hero, just the observer. Illmatic is a life's work — a life — in eleven songs, and it's no wonder Nas will never top it. It can't be topped. He can title his late-period albums as many controversial things that he wants, but Illmatic will reverberate forever beyond him, for it is a reinvention of New York rap, an unimpeachable poetic document, a timeless bildungsroman, and a source of more ill rhymes than almost all other rap albums ever recorded combined. You may recoil at gangsta rap's nihilism, it's zero-sum view of life, it's anger and darkness, but if you have any desire to know anything about hip-hop, than you must own this.

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  The Infamous

  Mobb Deep

  1995 | RCA Records Label

  An album featuring "Shook Ones Pt. II" repeated 16 times probably would have been enough to secure Mobb Deep's legend. Their signature song — one of the 1990s' signature songs — remains haunting both musically and lyrically, a collection of moments wherein the listener is awestruck by how Prodigy and Havoc wrote, arranged or said that.
  
  Luckily, The Infamous, the diminutive Queensbridge duo's 1995 follow-up to the patchy Juvenile Hell, is one of... the greatest albums ever made. It feels as desperate, claustrophobic and exhausting as Havoc and Prodigy's rhymes, from the somber "Survival of the Fittest" or the nightmarish "Trife Life" to the depressingly upbeat "Drink Away the Pain" and the Queens anthem "Give Up the Goods." Even the carefree Crystal Johnson hook of "Temperature's Rising," their radio lunge, is neutralized by their weed-pushing lyrics and a bed of face-smack drums. It's a punishing, relentless hour of music — the sound of two kids who've grown up too fast, not wanting to forget a second of it. A personal favorite is "Right Back At You," a funeral march of a posse cut that features plucky Mobb disciple Big Noyd, Raekwon and Ghostface, back when they together ruled the food chain and took no orders, every stereo "bangin' Nas, Mobb Deep and Wu."

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  4,5,6

  Kool G Rap

  1995 | Cold Chillin'
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  The Low End Theory

  A Tribe Called Quest

  1991 | Jive
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  The Best Of Organized Konfusion

  Organized Konfusion

  2008 | Nasty Habits Music / The Orchard
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  Legal Hustle

  Cormega

  eOne Music / Entertainment One Distribution

Manhattan

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  Licensed To Ill

  Beastie Boys

  1995 | Def Jam/RAL

  Wherein being a dickhead is an asset. Adam Horowitz, Mike Diamond, and Adam Yauch — three punk-y, pissant Jewish kids from New York's Lower East Side — took rap in its nascent years and predicted the future: lying. Or, at least, kidding. Before the Beasties came along rap had certainly been fun, and clever, too, but rarely this funny. And their debut, a colossal success that eventually sold 9 million copies, bridged... a social gap with producer Rick Rubin's chest-caving classic-rock refixes that nicked Sabbath and Zeppelin and Steve Miller. Rubin's perfunctory drum programming and keen ear for mega-riffs makes these songs as pumped as ever. But it's the kids who kicked it.
  
  What has traveled through the cycle of examination in the 20-plus years since its release, are the relative merits of cultural appropriation. When Licensed was released, many rap allegiants rejected the caustic and puerile punchlines of these three white boys. It's not hard to see why — rhyming about robbing, drinking, drugging, and girls. And the hits — particularly "Fight For Your Right" and "No Sleep Till Brooklyn" — have developed a kind of mustiness, used in one too many movies, championed by too many dunderheads. What early critics missed was the skill the Beasties brought with them. On songs like "The New Style" and fan favorite "Paul Revere," we hear three hip-hop loyalists doing their best Run DMC impression, rapping furiously, dropping their shrill voices hard on the one, and doing the mic-sharing routine as well as any of their contemporaries. That sort of lyric-writing, from line-to-line, rather than verse-to-verse is a complex process, but it sounds seamless here. And when it really sings, as on the booze-binge ode, "Brass Monkey," you can hear these nice boys completely redefining party music.

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  Straight Out the Jungle

  Jungle Brothers

  1989 | Warlock Records

  If you heard DJ Red Alert's Hot 97 radio show in the late '80s, the Jungle Brothers — MCs Afrika Baby Bam and Mike G, with DJ Sammy B — were familiar fixtures, and this record is a beautiful throwback to the so-called Golden Age.
  
  
  
  The production on their debut, by the group, with some seasoning from Red Alert (who is, in fact, Mike G's uncle), is far from polished. And that's part... of its allure. One listen to "Braggin'and Boastin'" and it's clear that Sammy B was cutting live as Mike and Bam threw loose rhymes back and forth.
  
  
  
  "Jimbrowski" is equally sloppy, with a Funkadelic drum sample so amplified it almost feeds back. And the mock-tender "I'm Gonna Do You" let's you know that these guys love booty, but aren't going the LL "I Need Love" route to get it. And just when you think that all the JBs are about is goofin', they hit you with one of the more important "conscious" (before the word was ever bandied about) cuts of the decade, "Black Is Black."

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• 

  No Way Out

  Puff Daddy & The Family

  2005 | Bad Boy Records

  Before releasing his first solo album, Puff Daddy (aka Sean "Puffy" Combs) was famous as the producer of the Notorious B.I.G., Junior Mafia, Craig Mack, Lil' Kim, and many other rappers. As he was making his solo debut, the Notorious B.I.G. was murdered, and that loss weighs heavily on Puff's mind throughout No Way Out. Even though the album has some funky party jams scattered throughout, the bulk of the album is... filled with fear, sorrow, and anger, and it's not only evident on the tribute "I'll Be Missing You" (a duet with Faith Evans and 112 that is based on the Police's "Every Breath You Take") but also on gangsta anthems like "It's All About the Benjamins." That sense of loss makes No Way Out a more substantial album than most mid-'90s hip-hop releases, and even if it has flaws -- there's a bit too much filler and it runs a little long -- it is nevertheless a compelling, harrowing album that establishes Puff Daddy as a vital rapper in his own right.

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  Lifestylez Ov Da Poor & Dangerous

  Big L

  1995 | Columbia
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  Best Of / 20th Century

  Kurtis Blow

  2003 | ISLAND MERCURY
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  The Message

  Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five

  Rhino
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  6 Feet Deep

  Gravediggaz

  IndieBlu Music / Entertainment One Distribution

The Bronx

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  By All Means Necessary

  Boogie Down Productions

  1988 | Jive

  The murder of DJ Scott La Rock had a profound effect on KRS-One, resulting in a drastic rethinking of his on-record persona. He re-emerged the following year with By All Means Necessary, calling himself the Teacher and rapping mostly about issues facing the black community. His reality rhymes were no longer morally ambiguous, and this time when he posed on the cover with a gun, he was mimicking a photo of Malcolm... X. As a social commentator, this is arguably KRS-One's finest moment. His observations are sharp, lucid, and confident, yet he doesn't fall prey to the preachiness that would mar some of his later work, and he isn't afraid to be playful or personal. The latter is especially true on the subject of La Rock, whose memory hangs over By All Means Necessary -- not just in the frequent name-checks, but in the minimalist production and hard-hitting 808 drum beats that were his stock-in-trade on Criminal Minded. La Rock figures heavily in the album opener, "My Philosophy," which explains BDP's transition and serves as a manifesto for socially conscious hip-hop. The high point is the impassioned "Stop the Violence," a plea for peace on the hip-hop scene that still hasn't been heeded. Even as KRS-One denounces black-on-black crime, he refuses to allow the community to be stereotyped, criticizing the system that scoffs at that violence on the spoken recitation "Necessary." "Illegal Business" is a startlingly perceptive look at how the drug trade corrupts the police and government, appearing not long before the CIA's drug-running activities in the Iran-Contra Affair came to light. There are also some lighter moments in the battle-rhyme tracks, and a witty safe-sex rap in "Jimmy," a close cousin to the Jungle Brothers' "Jimbrowski." Lyrics from this album have been sampled by everyone from Prince Paul to N.W.A, and it ranks not only as KRS-One's most cohesive, fully realized statement, but a landmark of political rap that's unfairly lost in the shadow of Public Enemy's It Takes a Nation of Millions.

  more »
• 

  Return Of The Boom Bap

  KRS-One

  2007 | Jive

  Released in 1993, KRS-One's first official solo album opens with "KRS-One Attacks," a DJ Premier-hatched collage of the legendary rapper's most famous moments with his previous group, Boogie Down Productions. It was a bold gesture, especially for someone who had spent the previous seven years redefining the sound of hip-hop — but by the end of Return of the Boom Bap, KRS-One's old credentials no longer mattered. This was a fantastic, hard-hitting... record, its creator's preexisting legacy notwithstanding.
  
  It was important that KRS' solo debut didn't merely feel like another B.D.P. record, and his collaboration with producers like DJ Premier, Showbiz and Kid Capri helped move him toward a new, more stripped-down style. "Outta Here" is hip-hop history in less than five minutes, as KRS runs down his autobiography over a hammering Premier beat. The blunted escapades of "I Can't Wake Up" is a rare moment of levity, while the title track is exactly what you imagine "boom bap" should sound like. The most memorable moments are shout-outs to law enforcement: the furious "Black Cop" and the still-thrilling "Sound of Da Police." Return of the Boom Bap is a milestone in two regards: while it's a bracing update of the B.D.P. sound, it's also the beginning of a wholly new legend.

  more »

• 

  The Art Of Storytelling

  Slick Rick

  1999 | RAL
• 

  Capital Punishment (Explicit Version)

  Big Pun

  1999 | LOUD Records
• 

  It's Dark And Hell Is Hot

  DMX

  1998 | RAL
• 

  Looking For The Perfect Beat 1980 -1985

  Afrika Bambaataa

  2005 | Rhino

Those Other Two Islands

• 

  It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back

  Public Enemy

  1995 | Def Jam/RAL

  There are no words too hyperbolic, no expressions too excited to describe the tectonic impact Public Enemy's second album had on the world. It is that vital and that infecting. Nominally a rap album, It Takes A Nation... is more like a sound grenade, thanks to the Bomb Squad's quadruple-stacked sampling, hypeman par excellence Flavor Flav's sonorous squeal, and leader Chuck D's stentorian flow — dependent not so much on meter, like... most rappers, but instead a kind of confident, formless roar.
  
  "Chuck's a powerful rapper. We wanted to make something that could sonically stand up to him," The Bomb Squad's Hank Shocklee told the Daily News when the album was released. So drum maniacs Hank and his brother, Keith, along with the musical heart of P.E., Eric "Vietnam" Sadler, seized the challenge, creating songs, if you can call them that, that whinny and snarl and ping and clash, incorporating screeching saxophones, cross-cutting vocal samples, hissing teapots, hard-nosed breakbeats, and empty hallway pianos lines. It's a fast and new kind of electric blues — or, in places, a broken, discordant jazz — they stumbled upon. Chuck takes the music and uses its harshness to deliver unrepentant political jeremiads. "The follower of Farrakhan/ Don't tell me that you understand/ Until you hear the man/ The book of the new school rap game," he raps on "Don't Believe The Hype," the totemic single. Chuck's politics are confusing beyond calls for righteous Black Panther and Nation of Islam-inspired unity. But as The New York Times' Jon Pareles wrote at the time of the album's release, P.E. refracted the notion of "individualism" in rap, demanding a new "community," encouraging activism and cynicism in equal measure. Whether denouncing a rotting, rotten prison system and governmental authority on "Black Steel In The Hour of Chaos," or the locally debilitating crack epidemic on "Night Of the Living Baseheads," Chuck's fury is so persuasive, you may find yourself punching the sky during these songs without regret. It Takes A Nation... has aged remarkably well, as sonically arresting, and socially unforgiving as any album you're likely to hear. No one made being uncompromising so inspiring.

  more »
• 

  Enter The Wu-Tang

  Wu Tang Clan

  1993 | RCA Records Label

  Along with Dr. Dre's The Chronic, the Wu-Tang Clan's debut, Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), was one of the most influential rap albums of the '90s. Its spare yet atmospheric production -- courtesy of RZA -- mapped out the sonic blueprint that countless other hardcore rappers would follow for years to come. It laid the groundwork for the rebirth of New York hip-hop in the hardcore age, paving the way for everybody... from Biggie and Jay-Z to Nas and Mobb Deep. Moreover, it introduced a colorful cast of hugely talented MCs, some of whom ranked among the best and most unique individual rappers of the decade. Some were outsized, theatrical personalities, others were cerebral storytellers and lyrical technicians, but each had his own distinctive style, which made for an album of tremendous variety and consistency. Every track on Enter the Wu-Tang is packed with fresh, inventive rhymes, which are filled with martial arts metaphors, pop culture references (everything from Voltron to Lucky Charms cereal commercials to Barbra Streisand's "The Way We Were"), bizarre threats of violence, and a truly twisted sense of humor. Their off-kilter menace is really brought to life, however, by the eerie, lo-fi production, which helped bring the raw sound of the underground into mainstream hip-hop. Starting with a foundation of hard, gritty beats and dialogue samples from kung fu movies, RZA kept things minimalistic, but added just enough minor-key piano, strings, or muted horns to create a background ambience that works like the soundtrack to a surreal nightmare. There was nothing like it in the hip-hop world at the time, and even after years of imitation, Enter the Wu-Tang still sounds fresh and original. Subsequent group and solo projects would refine and deepen this template, but collectively, the Wu have never been quite this tight again.

  more »

• 

  Strictly Business

  EPMD

  2010 | SNOOP DOGG CATALOG
• 

  Supreme Clientele

  Ghostface Killah

  2000 | Epic/Razor Sharp Records
• 

  Wu-Tang Forever (Explicit)

  Wu Tang Clan

  2007 | LOUD Records

• 

  Boys & Girls

  Alabama Shakes

  2012 | ATO Records

  The chatter that southern blues-rockers Alabama Shakes have generated in the months leading up to their debut is usually reserved for legends twice their age, or at least groups with more than a couple of songs to their name. There have been Janis Joplin and Otis Redding comparisons, endorsements from the likes of Jack White and Adele, and fans talking about their raucous live shows like they're enough... to convert you to a new religion. And — if you can believe it — the Athens, Alabama quartet's full length debut Boys & Girls lives up to the hype.
  
  The first thing that will bowl you over is that voice. "Bless my heart, bless my soul/ I didn't think I'd make it to 22 years old," howls singer/guitarist Brittany Howard in the opening moments of stellar single "Hold On," showing off her gritty, soulful pipes and making those Joplin comparisons feel earned. But they're not the whole story, either: Boys & Girls finds the Alabama Shakes pulling from the greats of rock and blues (catch the Bo Diddley reference in the opening lyric?) into a distinctive, and occasionally downright personal, sound. ("Come on Brittany!" she hollers to herself. "You gotta come on up!")
  
  From the barroom piano stomp of "Hang Loose" to the Stones swagger of "Be Mine," Boys & Girls sounds like the work of a group of weary, wizened road warriors who've been playing together for decades, rather than a group who formed a couple of years ago when its principle players were still in their teens. With all this talent and confidence already on full display on their debut, imagine all they can do with the years ahead.

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• 

  Seeds (Deluxe Edition)

  Hey Rosetta!

  2012 | ATO Records
• 

  Traveler

  Trey Anastasio

  2012 | ATO Records

• 

  Carry Me Back

  Old Crow Medicine Show

  2012 | ATO Records

  Folk music purists might argue that Old Crow Medicine Show don't actually play traditional bluegrass, old-time country, or any of the other Americana labels they routinely get slapped with. There's a certain punkish disregard to the band's frenzied acoustic tangle — which nods to the last hundred years of American vernacular music, from the Carter Family through Black Flag — and spirit trumps nearly everything else. Carry Me Back, the band's latest... LP, follows a substantial personnel change (Willie Watson, once a lead vocalist and guitar player, was officially replaced by founding member Critter Fuqua, who'd been notably M.I.A. for the last several years), but the band's heart is still intact: Carry Me Back is full of hometown longing (the album's title track), harmonica-honking odes to once-in-a-lifetime love ("Ain't It Enough"), and hard-time, pass-the-jug stompers ("Mississippi Saturday Night"). It confirms somewhat definitively that Americana is, in fact, more a feeling than a sound — and that feeling is something like joy.

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• 

  Heat Lightning Rumbles in the Distance

  Patterson Hood

  2012 | ATO Records
• 

  The Bloom and the Blight

  Two Gallants

  2012 | ATO Records

• 

  The North

  Stars

  2012 | ATO Records

  The wistful Canadian indie-pop band Stars built its fanbase smushing dance music and indie pop into an endearingly awkward embrace. Set Yourself On Fire, their 2005 high mark, found the perfect midpoint between the squirm and the hip-shake. The North, the band's sixth full-length studio album, carries right along in this tradition. Beats range from pitter-pattering to hammering, while jangling guitars share space with synths. And the band's two singers, Torquil Campbell... and Amy Millan, take turns singing lead when they're not delivering lyrics in conversational rounds.
  
  The album on the whole has a vaguely retro bent. Awash in reverb and shot through gently with Millan's cooing vocals, the hazy "Through the Mines" sounds like vintage Mazzy Star. "Lights Changing Colour" could've been an old Cocteau Twins demo, while a rave-up called "Hold On When You Get Love And Let Go When You Get It" has the soaring, synthetic thrill of Cut Copy at its best.
  
  And yet it's the kicker, "Walls," that takes fullest advantage of Campbell and Millan's boy-girl interplay. Campbell has the kind of delightfully fey accent that turns "party" into "pahty," and Millan sings in a breathy coo that can melt a record clerk's heart, and together they come off as an indie-rock answer to Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald, singing back and forth. Him: "I had a secret." Her: "Yeah but I knew it, love." Him: "And we were children." Her: "We danced to 'Hand in Glove.'" On it goes, with a chirping keyboard and a beat that won't sit still and a relationship drama unfolding before your ears.

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• 

  You, Anniversary

  Lindsay Fuller

  2012 | ATO Records
• 

  Women & Work

  Lucero

  2012 | ATO Records

• 

  Songs of Patience

  Alberta Cross

  2012 | ATO Records

  As a Swedish-English duo who met in East London and have now relocated to Brooklyn via an unsuccessful spell in L.A., it's no wonder that Alberta Cross sound a little like a lot of things. The Southern-rock twang of their 2009 debut Broken Side Of Time has been side-lined here, and there's a craning toward big, booming stadium epics of the kind once routinely delivered by Oasis (with whom they toured) or... Kings Of Leon. Yet they're also adept at the more soulful strain of non-boring boogie mastered by Tom Petty, so the album avoids plodding and achieves plaintive liftoff.
  
  Petter Ericson Stakee, who says that between the two albums he hit "rock bottom" in L.A., sings with sandpapery desire in his voice, elevating rote numbers (influenced by the Gallaghers' songbook) to something more affecting. Although Songs Of Patience involved a glut of producers and (post-L.A.) had to be re-addressed inNew York, it hangs together dramatically, from the opening percussion-led drive of "Magnolia" to the stripped-down, intimate "Bonfires," which boasts a dash of Neil Young. "Crate of Gold" crunches in on fuzzy, serrated guitar riffs and makes a belligerent, bruised blues motif of the Occupy movement, while the more leisurely "Lay Down" — again sounding oddly Mancunian — surges toward its sing-along chorus of self-betterment.
  
  "Wasteland" is perhaps the best track, a well-crafted anthem blending falsetto and dynamics to tether the clichés and unleash genuine passion. In taking their time on the "difficult" second album, Alberta Cross has honed a new, subtly Anglicised direction.

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• 

  Allen Stone

  Allen Stone

  2012 | ATO Records
• 

  Strength to Survive

  SOJA

  2012 | ATO Records

• 

  Area 52

  Rodrigo y Gabriela

  2012 | ATO Records

  Rodrigo y Gabriela have become unlikely stars, a pair of Mexican metal guitarists who reinvented themselves as wild flamenco players after moving to Ireland. They've carved an admirable niche for themselves, with fiery playing and adventurous ideas that draw heavily on their rock past. Area 52 takes that basic formula one step further, teaming the duo with a 13-piece Cuban orchestra for a fresh look at some of their older material that... offers a vibrant, unusual union of Latin cultures, an imagined place where Mexico, Cuba and the sense of old Spanish culture swirl effortlessly together.
  
  Opener "Santa Domingo" sets the tone for much of the album; beginning with a heart-pounding riff, the duo crank up the tension until there's an explosion of brass, all of the elements powered by the punch of the wah-wah pedal - almost a trademark of the couple these days - before sprinting to a breathless finish. The album is deliberately brash, laced with incendiary guitar work (listen to the electric playing on "Hanuman," for example), and Cuban rhythms making a loud, colourful wrapper around the songs.
  
  But it's not all relentless; the group injects plenty of light and shade, as on "Diablo Rojo," where flute and guitar breathe softly together before spiralling through some intense, slick picking to a satisfying climax. Or "Logos," with its delicate interplay between guitars and piano, the calm before the whirlwind of the two final cuts. Area 52 roars with Latin fire throughout, full of passion and sweat, a workout for all the senses. Yet at the same time, this re-imagination of old material, not matter how adventurously it's done, feels like the end of a chapter. It's as if Rodrigo and Gabriela had one final statement to make with these pieces before moving on to something fresh and different, a new phase in their career. And they've done it in spectacular fashion.

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• 

  Ownerless

  Everest

  2012 | ATO Records
• 

  Feathers & Fishhooks

  Rayland Baxter

  2012 | ATO Records
• 

  ITALIA (1988-2012)

  Jovanotti

  2012 | ATO Records
• 

  ATO Records Fall Sampler 2012

  Various Artists - ATO Records

  2012 | ATO Records

Portia Sabin, Label Dude

• 

  Two Ton Boa EP

  Two Ton Boa

  2009 | EP/SINGLE

  Super dark and heavy, bass-driven album with Sherry Fraser at the helm. One of the great voices in rock that almost no one has heard.

• 

  Thao & Mirah

  Thao & Mirah

  2011 | Kill Rock Stars / Redeye

  Two very different singer/songwriters who manage to compliment and even elevate each other on this album. Terrific, unique songs that make people happy and make people think.

James Squeaky, Media Manager

• 

  Young People

  Young People

  2009 | 5RC / Redeye

  Criminally underrated weird-folk album from 2002 that might have been huge if it had come out a few years later. This album has been on heavy rotation in my life the last decade; "Rich Bitch" is one of my favorite songs of the '00s.

Benjamin P. Parrish, Complaint Department

• 

  Marnie Stern

  Marnie Stern

  2010 | Kill Rock Stars / Redeye

  The third Marnie Stern studio album and also the best one (until Chronicles of Marnia is released in February). More mature songwriting, crazier shredding and insane drumming from Zach Hill. Includes the power ballad "Transparency is the New Mystery." I'm guessing everybody with good taste already owns this album, but buy it again anyway!

• 

  26 Monster Songs for Children (Sing Your Babies to Sleep)

  Jad And David Fair

  1998 | Kill Rock Stars / Redeye

  Jad and David fair of DIY institution Half Japanese sing 26 songs about monsters. One for each letter of the alphabet! A is for Abominable Snowman, B is for Bigfoot, and so on. I guess the X song is kind of cheating because it's about the "Man With X-Ray Eyes." Something for everybody on this one!

Gray G., Bad Cop

• 

  Glowing Mouth

  Milagres

  2011 | Kill Rock Stars / Redeye

  Beautiful, somewhat dark debut album from this Brooklyn quintet. The songs are introspective and atmospheric without being dreary. Every tune exhibits great songwriting, but the album amounts to more than the sum of its parts. It's best taken all in one sitting.

• 

  Her Majesty The Decemberists

  The Decemberists

  2009 | Kill Rock Stars / Redeye

  By far my favorite album from this band. I feel like this is the one that solidified and perfected their super-distinctive sound. "The Gymnast, High Above The Ground" may be my favorite song in the entire Kill Rock Stars catalog.

Melissa Stars, Social Media Manager / Avid Indoorsman

• 

  Dig Me Out

  Sleater-Kinney

  2009 | Kill Rock Stars / Redeye

  The album has everything that people love about this band: Blistering riffs, incredible harmonizing, dance-along beats and unforgettable songs. If you're looking for an introduction to the incredible all-out rockness of Corin Tucker, Carrie Brownstein and Janet Weiss, you only need to give this album one listen to know you're in the company of greatness.

• 

  Quilts - EP

  Explode Into Colors

  2011 | EP/SINGLE

  Proving once again that female drummers seriously kick ass, Explode Into Colors' Lisa Schonberg delivers thumping beats that create a volatile foundation for the band's soaring post-rock. The unapologetic rhythms paired with ethereal vocals and driving guitar make for intense grooves that get your feet moving and your head bobbing.

John Lamm, Secret Weapon

• 

  Thistled Spring

  Horse Feathers

  2010 | Kill Rock Stars / Redeye

  The second release from Horse Feathers opens a window and fills your room with hope and bittersweetness. Justin Ringle's pained vocals, layered with beautifully-nuanced strings, banjo, and acoustic guitar, has that wonderful ability to transport you from being in your life into feeling like you're in a movie, complete with soundtrack. One of the more subtly powerful records in the KRS catalog.

• 

  Either/Or

  Elliott Smith

  2009 | Kill Rock Stars / Redeye

  I don't know if it's possible for a legendary record to still be under the radar, but Either/Or feels that way. With Elliott's guitar and his heartbreaking whispered lyrics over minimal drums and bass, it's Elliott's first prolonged forays into full-band instrumentation. To me, it's the record where Elliott knocks down the door between him and all the pantheon songwriters before him, and says he belongs. A truly great record that deserves... to be listened to all the way through.

  more »

eMusic Picks

• 

  Standing in the Way of Control

  Gossip

  2009 | Kill Rock Stars / Redeye

  The Gossip's lead singer Beth Ditto, a milky-white mound of charisma and sass, topped the likes of Jack White and Thom Yorke on the NME's "Cool List" this year. The triumph may seem trite, but not for legions of punks who have been waiting for Ditto to get her due. And coolness effectively made Standing in the Way of Control what it is: groovy garage-punk shimmied upon a more refined dance floor,... thanks to the crisp percussion of new drummer Hannah Billie. Meanwhile, Ditto worked off guitarist Brace Paine's attitude-laden riffs and delivered her southern goods with fierce aplomb. The result is crazy-sexy and yes, cool.

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• 

  9 Patriotic Battle Hymns for Children

  Born Against

  2009 | Kill Rock Stars / Redeye
• 

  Pottymouth

  Bratmobile

  2009 | Kill Rock Stars / Redeye

• 

  Singles and Sessions 1979-1981

  Delta 5

  2009 | Kill Rock Stars / Redeye

  Delta 5 emerged from the same Leeds, England, post-punk scene as Gang of Four and the Mekons. All three bands clustered around the university's Fine Art department, which goes some way to explaining the almost conceptual starkness of Delta 5's sound and their unusual format (two basses, three female voices, one guitar, one drum kit).
  
  Stern and clenched, Delta 5's minimalist punk-funk has obvious debts to Gang of Four. "Mind Your Own... Business," their debut single, is a sister-song to "At Home He Feels Like a Tourist." Both tunes resemble diagrams of disco, bearing the same relationship to Chic and Earth Wind & Fire that an architect's blueprint bears to the finished building, or a skeleton has vis-á-vis a fully-fleshed body. The person-is-political lyric explores the tension between intimacy and autonomy, oscillating from bleakness ("listen to the distance between us") to the simultaneously absurd and disturbing chorus, "Can I have a taste of your ice cream?/ Can I lick the crumbs from your table?/ Can I interfere in your crisis?/ NO, MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS!" The sense of alienation is intensified by the way the unison vocals of Julz Sale, Bethan Peters and Ros Allen alternately mesh and slip out of alignment.
  
  If "Mind" is one of UK post-punk's all-time most thrilling singles, the follow-up, "Anticipation" b/w "You," is close on its heels. "Anticipation" evokes the nervous excitement of sexual longing prior to consummation; "You" flashes forward to the getting-stale-and-slightly-sour stage of the settled, long-term relationship. Sales hurls out hilariously mundane accusations like, "Who left me behind at the bakers?/ Who likes sex only on Sunday?" "Try," their third single, also depicts a relationship in terms of friction and miscommunication, but is more poignant than recriminatory.
  
  After these three brilliant singles for the legendary independent label Rough Trade, Delta 5 signed to a major label and cluttered up their sound with embellishments in a misguided bid for pop color. This compilation shrewdly bypasses that phase of failed crossover in favor of more spartan-sounding BBC Radio sessions and live performances from a 1980 Berkeley, California, gig, capturing the group's paradoxical vibe of dour exuberance and grim glee in its absolute prime.

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• 

  Apple O' LP

  Deerhoof

  2010 | Kill Rock Stars / Redeye
• 

  Realistes

  Comet Gain

  2009 | Kill Rock Stars / Redeye

• 

  Now We Can See

  The Thermals

  2009 | Kill Rock Stars / Redeye

  There aren't many punk rock bands more straightforward, in some ways, than the Thermals; there also aren't many more smart and ambitious. One way to hear the Portland band's fourth album is as their toughest, sturdiest punk record yet, a fusillade of wired, hammering, fist-in-the-air anthems. Listen to it that way, and it's built around its title track, a declaration of victory ("Our enemies lie dead on the ground, and still we... kick") with an irresistible "oh-way-oh" hook. But it's also a precisely crafted, despairing concept album that sets up its central conceit with its opening salvo, "When I Died," in which a man tries in vain to save himself by becoming a fish and returning to the ocean.
  
  Recorded as a duo of core members Hutch Harris (singing and guitar) and Kathy Foster (bass and drums) — the same lineup that made an album as Hutch and Kathy before the Thermals began — Now We Can See is packed stem-to-stern with images of reverse evolution: too much water, disintegrating bodies, collective transformation and collective delusion. Harris's lyrics are often in the first-person plural, in the past tense, or both; they're more about the human condition than about a particular persona. They're also as punchy and bitter as a triple espresso, and you can almost smell the caffeine through the speakers as he declaims them.
  
  As always, every Thermals song crams in as many foursquare, head-banging riffs as they can get away with, although this time they've augmented the basement-practice-space arrangements with a few subtle touches, like somebody walloping the bejesus out of a piano in the background of "You Dissolve." The album's even punctuated in the middle by the longest and most restrained Thermals song yet — nearly six minutes of "At the Bottom of the Sea," a slowly respiring variation on the Velvet Underground's "Ocean." That "restrained" is relative, of course: by the end, they've stomped on their fuzzboxes again, and Harris is yowling a repudiation of the air itself. You can hurl yourself around to Now We Can See, but it also rewards sitting very quietly and thinking about it.

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• 

  The Shapes We Make

  Mary Timony

  2009 | Kill Rock Stars / Redeye

• 

  Fanfare in the Garden

  Essential Logic

  2009 | Kill Rock Stars / Redeye

  As the sax-playing part of the two-woman frontline in X-Ray Spex, Lora Logic quickly became a name to drop during 1977. By the end of the year, though, she was out of the band and seemingly destined for obscurity. Happily, Logic realised there was more to punk than three-chord cliché and bounced back with her own band, Essential Logic. A one-off 45, "Aerosol Burns," notable for its two-sax front-line, and Logic's shrill,... scat-style vocal peculiarities, confirmed that things were changing fast on the newly constituted 'Independent' scene. An album, Beat Rhythm News, followed a year later, refining the jazz-punk collision and wrapping it up in an odd but pleasingly treble-heavy production. It was offbeat, it was a mini-masterpiece, and it was largely ignored. Logic's 1982 solo set, Pedigree Charm, was similarly idiosyncratic — and the best of both, together with single cuts and more recent (though admittedly less stunning) recordings are gathered here.

  more »

• 

  Mortal Mirror

  Quix*o*tic

  2009 | Kill Rock Stars / Redeye
• 

  3

  Slumber Party

  2009 | Kill Rock Stars / Redeye

• 

  Lend You a Hand

  Tight Bro's From Way Back When

  2009 | Kill Rock Stars / Redeye
• 

  The Switch is Down

  Universal Order Of Armageddon

  2009 | Kill Rock Stars / Redeye

• 

  Here's To Another 21 Years! - SAMPLER

  Various Artists

  2012 | Kill Rock Stars / Redeye

• 

  Merry Christmas, Baby

  Rod Stewart

  2012 | Verve
• 

  Christmas

  Michael Buble

  2011 | 143/Reprise

• 

  Elvis Presley Christmas Duets

  Elvis Presley

  2008 | RLG/Legacy

  We've all had that moment, sitting around the Christmas tree alight with our extended family, when Elvis's Christmas album comes up on the sound-reproducing machine. You can be sure, if the nog is egging everyone on, that by the second chorus of "Blue Christmas," your aunt or uncle or even your red nose reindeer'd self will get up and sing along, perhaps adding a few swivel hip rolls and well-placed Presleyisms that... allude to the hound dog in all of us.
  
  Christmas Duets — in space, through the miracle of modern overdubbing, if not in time — reprises Elvis's classic Christmas canon and places him in flagrante delicto with several jingle belles from the modern pop-country manger that is Nashville. The pairings seem particularly gift-wrapped, with Elvis's eye for the ladies winked in kind by such pearful partridges as Carrie Underwood, Amy Grant, Martina McBride, and Olivia Newton-John. The results are respectful and sweetly shy, with each gal perched on Elvis's knee and letting him know that what she really wants for Christmas is to hit a harmony note with him. The call-and-response is most effective when the given femme matches Elvis's sense of faith and believing — after all, many of these Christmas chestnuts are yuletide gospel — and I have a fondness for Sara Evans's coupling on "Silent Night" and Gretchen Wilson trading blues-fours on "Merry Christmas Baby." For that silk stocking placed on the chimney with care.

  more »

• 

  Christmas with Scotty McCreery

  Scotty McCreery

  2012 | Interscope (American Idol)
• 

  Christmas Spirit

  Richard Marx

  2012 | TourDForce
• 

  NOW That's What I Call Christmas Volume 3

  Various

  2006 | SBME Strategic Marketing Group
• 

  Home For Christmas

  Amy Grant

  2007 | AMY GRANT / SPARROW
• 

  All Is Well - Songs For Christmas

  Clay Aiken

  EP/SINGLE
• 

  James Taylor At Christmas

  James Taylor

  2012 | UMe
• 

  Christmas Dreaming

  Susie Arioli

  2012 | Jazzheads
• 

  Tennessee Christmas - EP

  Lindi Ortega

  2012 | EP/SINGLE

• 

  Merry Christmas

  Mariah Carey

  2008 | Columbia

  Merry Christmas, Mariah Carey's fourth full-length, at last gave the schmaltziness that defined the diva's early career a suitable venue. 'Tis the season to be broad and sentimental, and Carey happily unleashes her then-superhuman voice on a smattering of holiday favorites and new tracks. Not only is this a document of the woman's pipes in top form, Merry Christmas is also the perfect snapshot of the genre balancing pre-hip-hop Carey (along with... former writing/producing partner Walter Afanasieff) struck. These tracks chime, ring and twinkle at every turn, whether it's a poppy piano, soulful church organ or, in the case of "Joy to the World," stiff pop-house beats doing the driving. There's a strong preference for the Phil Spector side of musical cheer — Darlene Love's "Christmas (Baby Please Come)" is covered, "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town" is in the style of the Crystals', and Carey's own "All I Want for Christmas Is You," is the greatest Spector track he had no hand in. This contemporary classic is worth the price of admission. As it's often mistaken for a cover, Carey loves to point out that she wrote it, seemingly oblivious to the compliment inherent in mistook nostalgia. Carey has become such a grande diva that it's hard to believe that a concept exists that's bigger than her persona; with Christmas, though, she met her match.

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  The Andy Williams Christmas Album

  Andy Williams

  2004 | Columbia/Legacy
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  Cheers, it's Christmas.

  Blake Shelton

  2012 | Warner Bros.
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  A Very Special Christmas 25th Anniversary

  Various Artists

  2012 | Big Machine Records, LLC
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  NOW That's What I Call A Country Christmas

  Various

  2009 | Legacy Recordings
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  A Laurie Berkner Christmas

  The Laurie Berkner Band

  2012 | Two Tomatoes Records
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  A Twisted Christmas

  Twisted Sister

  2006 | Razor & Tie
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  Irving Berlin's White Christmas

  Irving Berlin

  2006 | Razor & Tie
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  KIDZ BOP Christmas!

  Kidz Bop Kids

  2012 | Kidz Bop
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  Vintage Christmas

  David Ian

  Prescott Records

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  Christmas Album

  Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass

  2008 | Shout! Factory

  The year was 1968, and superstar trumpeter Herb Alpert rode higher than ever with his chart-topping rendition of Burt Bacharach and Hal David's devastatingly shy "This Guy's in Love With You." So Alpert, a Jew, donned a fake Santa beard and applied the equally ersatz Latin sparkle of his Tijuana Brass to a campy collection of Christmas classics where nearly every song sounds like his hit "Spanish Flea." This is a good... thing! West Coast jazz pioneer Shorty Rogers swings by with a studio choir to hang some vocal tinsel on Alpert's delightfully garish tree: Check how his serene choral interludes in "My Favorite Things" contrast with Alpert's holiday shopper bustle. The very year, the horn man couldn't get a hit, and wouldn't for another decade. Who says ol 'Saint Nick doesn't have a vindictive streak?

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  The Lost Christmas Eve

  Trans-Siberian Orchestra

  2004 | Lava
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  Punk Rawk Christmas

  MXPX

  2009 | Rock City Recording Company / TuneCore
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  A Very Special Christmas

  Various Artists

  1987 | A&M
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  A Charlie Brown Christmas [2012 Remastered & Expanded Edition]

  Vince Guaraldi Trio

  2012 | Fantasy Records
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  Christmas Country

  Christmas Country

  1996 | Warner Bros./Nashville
• 

  Christmas With The Chipmunks (2010)

  Alvin & The Chipmunks

  2010 | CAPITOL
• 

  Christmas Collection - 30 Holiday Favorites

  BFM Christmas Hits Singers

  BFM Hits / BFM DIGITAL
• 

  Find Your Voice

  Sarah McLachlan

  2012 | Tyde Music / TuneCore

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  Bing Crosby - Christmas Classics

  Bing Crosby

  2006 | CAPITOL

  This collection of holiday favorites remains a good representation of Bing Crosby's many seasonal recordings. Among the highlights are a Nelson Riddle arrangement of Crosby's biggest hit, the perennial "White Christmas," as well as "Winter Wonderland," "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," and "Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!" Any fan of Crosby, as well as good Christmas music in general, will want to hunt this down.

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  Christmas

  Alabama

  2007 | BMG Special Products
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  Christmas To Christmas

  Toby Keith

  2000 | Universal Motown Records Group
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  Glee: The Music, The Christmas Album

  Glee Cast

  2010 | Columbia
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  Christmas Memories

  Barbra Streisand

  2001 | Columbia
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  That Christmas Feeling

  Glen Campbell

  2010 | CAPITOL NASHVILLE
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  Merry Christmas

  Johnny Mathis

  1984 | Columbia

“Digital Bath”

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  White Pony

  Deftones

  2000 | Rhino

  Deftones were awfully fond of namedropping the Cure as an influence and this is perhaps the one time they really nailed it. The chord clusters of the verse recall the inky despondence of Faith or Seventeen Seconds before a typically pummeling chorus conveys a sensuality and lust that was as foreign to rock radio then as it is now.

“U, U, D, D, L, R, L, R, A, B, Select, Start”

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  Saturday Night Wrist

  Deftones

  2006 | Maverick

  One of the many instances of the Deftones' impeccable taste in song titles, "Contra Code" bisects Saturday Night Wrist with dubbed-out ambience and jazzy interplay that invokes Tortoise's TNT. It's the only instrumental in their discography and one that makes you wish they made more.

“You’ve Seen The Butcher”

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  Diamond Eyes

  Deftones

  2010 | Reprise

  Diamond Eyes was the first Deftones record made without Chi Cheng and while his presence is clearly missed, it forced the band to relearn their approach to rhythm. "You've Seen The Butcher" is an example of this, a total outlier that resembles the fractured jazz-punk of Jawbox's "Cruel Swing," the title of which is an apt descriptor of what Deftones do here.

“Be Quiet And Drive (Far Away)”

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  Around The Fur

  Deftones

  1997 | Maverick

  The first true sign of greatness from Deftones comes courtesy of the second single from Around The Fur. They'd attempt to emphasize its prettiness with acoustic versions and a post-OK Computer remix, but this is the definitive one, essentially "There Is A Light That Never Goes Out" for alt-metal kids.

“Change (In The House Of Flies)”

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  White Pony

  Deftones

  2000 | Rhino

  A debauched Sophie Muller video underlined the narcotic bliss that courses through throughout Deftones' finest song, whether in the pulverizing wall of guitars or Chino Moreno's striking harmonies during the transcendent bridge. Hands down one of the greatest singles of the 2000's, and the embodiment of White Pony's merging of sex, drugs and metal without devolving into Sunset Strip parody or groupie-bating mythology.

“Minerva”

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  Deftones

  Deftones

  2003 | Maverick

  Deftones followed up their commercial and critical breakthrough by making a logical sequel to "Change," distilling the loud/soft dynamics of the former into a consuming tidal wave of slow-motion, churning distortion somewhere between the obliterating metal-gaze of Jesu and Hum's saturated alt-rock.

“Hole In The Earth”

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  Saturday Night Wrist

  Deftones

  2006 | Maverick

  Saturday Night Wrist is Deftones' murkiest and most difficult record, one that anticipated a much-needed break that would span nearly four years. "Hole In The Earth" is reflective of their state of mind, the single that exaggerates both the Cocteau Twins influence on their guitars (check that chorus riff) and the abrasiveness.

“Sextape”

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  Diamond Eyes

  Deftones

  2010 | Reprise

  There's always been a bit of Bono's emotive stridency in Chino Moreno's voice, but Deftones never aspired to retrace U2's steps until this intriguing experiment in unapologetic prettiness. The guitars glisten and peal without slamming on the distortion pedals, the tempo remains elegiac throughout and when Moreno belts "the sound of the waves collide tonight," the last word is cooed in a feminized harmony.

“Knife Party”

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  White Pony

  Deftones

  2000 | Rhino

  If you needed any more proof of Deftones making their own lane in a time where "Nookie" and Puddle of Mudd's "Control" were what passed for sexualized rock, here's their alluring and rhythmically daring tribute to complicit bloodsport in the bedroom. If you listened to any Jane's Addiction record after Ritual De Lo Habitual, this is what you were looking for.

“Poltergeist”

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  Koi No Yokan

  Deftones

  2012 | Reprise

  Typically, the most "ambitious" Deftones songs are signified by longer song lengths or softer textures. "Poltergeist" is an exception, three and a half minutes of coil-and-strike math-rock dynamics punctuated by drum machine claps that suggest the Sacramento band might just be keeping their ear titled north towards the Bay Area's hip-hop scene.