Babes in Toyland – Painkillers – Reprise, 1993.
🪨🫧 🪩◐🤘⾾ ⚒️🎟️🏋🏽:
Power jams! This EP with a lengthy, live bonus track delivers on some angst that I feel is still relevant in our current demise. Babes In Toyland definitely do it hard and strange, but I find myself recalling all of their riffs and power. Their singer goes full throated through most of it and though the music is dark, it sticks the thumb into the eye of the World we are living in. I think that is the Punk element I appreciate and BiT still feels relevant 33 years later. “Istigkeit”
Overall = 5.3 (10) – A little long for an EP, but half is dedicated to a live set. Good, aggressive music. Get it!
Johnny Cash & the Tennessee Two – The Complete Sun Singles – Sun/Varese Saraband, 1955-1957/1999.
🇺🇸📣🌾✪❂🗝️🐴👁️🗨️⚰️🆑💰🎗️:
Collecting all of Johnny Cash’s early Sun singles, featuring iconic and classic American music. There are hits, Country, Gospel, a lot of braggadocia – similar to some Blues singers of the same era, but much of the music is of a similar groove and song type. Sun records had a recipe, canonized in these songs. Being released as singles you wouldn’t have necessarily listened to these songs back to back, all in a row. In this format they are strikingly similar, which puts more emphasis on Johnny Cash and the lyrics, he’s just singing over grooves. Even at this point, early in his career, he has a swagger that will build the infatuation people have for his image. ”Ballad Of A Teenage Queen/Big River” A ballad and a shit talker! “I taught the weeping willow how to cry”!
Overall = 9.4 (10) – Classic music by an American icon. Get it!
Charles Brown – The Chronological Classics 1944-1945 – Classics, 1996.
🇺🇸📣🏙️🎺🫧🎹🏌️:
Though these recordings are filed in my Blues collection, early Charles Brown recordings feature a trio that would best be compared to the Nat King Cole Trio that we have been reviewing in earlier ItS installments. This trio does perform more Blues songs than the Nat King Cole Trio, but Mr. Brown’s future most popular style was as a leading Blues vocalist and piano player. This is simply the Pop music of the 40’s, small group swing with a crooner and it includes significant Jazz and vocalist influences. He is not as spry as Mr. Cole on the keys, but the group is all-around solid and would excite despite not being quite in that top tier. Mr. Brown has a deeper voice, not as smooth as Cole’s (who is?), but it has its own lovely character. I think this format (the early piano trio) is the launching pad for Ray Charles, but he added a Louis Jordan vibe to it, a bigger band and his own great song writing. “Drifting Blues”
Overall = 5.7 (10) – A nice complimentary alternative to the Nat King Cole trio. Get it!
& The Chronological Classics 1946 – Classics, 1997.
🇺🇸📣🏙️🎺🫧🎹🏌️:
These tracks affirm the “Club Style Blues” that the radio played. At this time, despite Mr. Brown being the vocalist, the recordings are listed under Johnny Moore’s Three Blazers. Johnny Moore was Oscar Moore’s brother (the guitarist for Nat King Cole’s trio), he was also the eldest member of his trio and had the most experience, so it was named after him. Mr. Brown’s success would eclipse Mr. Moore’s despite them both performing in the Rhythm & Blues style that Mr. Brown becomes famous for. These songs still sound very much under the influence of the more popular Nat King Cole Trio, but they lean into the Blues material.”It’s The Talk Of Town”
Overall = 6 (10) – Great swinging tunes, just not the actual bag that Mr. Brown will show his greatest self in. Get it!
Brian Eno – Thursday Afternoon – E’G/Virgin, 1985.
🌌⚡️✆📀🌃🤿🛁 🦴🎑🦋🔭🗝️:
Another sublime beauty of Ambient, Minimalist Eno. Music that is gently unfolding and affirms the idea of both being focused and present, while letting go and allowing the music to recede into our sub-conscious offering a meditative challenge. I think this music is healing in nature and can offer us other paths to clarity and the ability to emphasize what is most important in life. Is it meant to entertain? Does that harken to something more ancient? This music is for the individual to answer questions like that for themselves. To me, right now, on a Thursday (7/2/26) it is anticipatory music, perhaps for the weekend, or to the Beach – one of the most crowded but liminal places one can be. There is a tide where a mass of people becomes so many waves of background noise and that’s in a sense this kind of music. Yes, being alone in space is part of its sound, but also alone in a crowd of people, can feel similarly remote. It also sounds, throughout its hour run time, like the beginning to an 80’s Pop song, before the beat would kick in. “Thursday Afternoon (Edit)”
Overall = 8.5 (10) – Gentle beauty. Get it!
Vernard Johnson – I’m Alive – Elektra Nonesuch, 1991.
🇺🇸📣🌳🗣️⛪️🎷👩🏼⚖️👁️🗨️🧀⌘:
Big tent, over-produced, Gospel saxophone, a unique message. This is the only album I’ve found of Dr. Johnson’s playing and it was something I picked up to hear what this legacy saxophone performer was and what Gospel saxophone could be. Blues & Gospel in the digital era has gone through some aural concepts that to me sound repetitive, glossy and uninspired – this recording has some of that and I’d love to find any of Dr. Johnson’s early albums, hoping for a grittier sound. I think this is what modern Gospel sounds like though, often cheesy but authentic. The saxophone playing is throaty and intense, with a wide vibrato and screeching high notes. Here the intent of the saxophone is as lead voice or instrumental preacher. “Call Him On My Horn”
Overall = 5.2 (10) – I’d like to find less produced albums, but this recording taught me a bunch. Get it!
Beach House – Thank Your Lucky Stars – Sub Pop, 2015.
🪨🫧 🪩🗣️⎄💰🚘🌊🦋❤️🔥:
Probably my least favorite album from a favorite band? I still love it though. My fan theory is that this album and Depression Cherry, which was released 6 months prior to this recording, should have been mixed into an epic double album, that I would have ranked up with my 3 favorite Beach House albums (Devotion, Teen Dream & Bloom). The issues I have with this album is that the tempos are too similar and the overall sound of the songs blends more. Interspersing the songs from the two albums could have made for a more dramatic listening experience. Minor quibbles. “Rough Song”
Overall = 7.6 (10) – I enjoy all of their music. Get it!
VA – Music of Indonesia 18 – Sulawesi: Festivals, Funerals and Work – Smithsonian Folkways, 1999.
🍏🌾🇮🇩🌎:
It scares me that this is “#18” of this collection, because I would like to own them all. Yet, one can’t have everything. It is important to acknowledge that each culture has a wide variety of Music connected to aspects of Life. Before recording most music was connected to an activity of some kind, entertainment yes, but not to the degree to which music is considered almost entirely for entertainment now. It used to be for celebration and for stories, laws, dawn & dusk, work, dance, learning etc. now music is something we economically commodify. In contrast to the Sambasunda Quintet recording below, these songs are connected to the occasions they would accompany. The music is not of a sound with Gamelan music and thus fresh and intriguing. We are out of touch with the concept, and unaware, of functional music in America, as well as the value of it. “Rikong”
Overall = 6.1 (10) – Field recording style. Get it!
VA – Bachata Roja: Acoustic Bachata From The Cabaret Era – IASO/Ryko, 2007.
🌍🇩🇴🦋⌘ ✺❂🪩⚙︎:
This is how I like my compilations/various artists albums to be – a collection of music that I wouldn’t know to look for and would also be nearly impossible to collect individually because of the sheer rarity. Additionally, these types of collections are telling a type of historiography or story about the music. That can be hit or miss, often deceptive projects that offer little information or too much outside influence on the music, which can turn it into something inauthentic. This collection is well focused: Acoustic, Party music from the Dominican Republic, from the cabaret era of Dominican popular history. And it delivers, somewhat reminiscent of other Caribbean dance music traditions, but a bright and vibrant mix – transportive. “Si Me La Dan La Cojo”
Overall = 6.4 (10) – Music I had little knowledge of before hearing this collection. Get it!
Sambasunda Quintet – Java – Riverboat/World Music Network, ?.
🇮🇩🌎🗣️🦴꧂ 🔮🫧:
Modern Fusion music from Java/Indonesia, but featuring a smaller group of musicians for this typically large ensemble. The songs have a Gamelan origins, but many of them don’t really seem to be as rooted in those traditions, probably because of the smaller group of instruments, but also because of a Modern perspective in its design. The singer is the same female singer for Idjah Hadidjah, which I reviewed a few weeks ago in an In The Stacks – one of my favorite recordings. This is a different bag, but her voice still haunts and it is interesting to hear this modern approach to Indonesian music. “Kembang Tanjung”
Overall = 6.8 (10) – Not quite as riveting as other modern gamelan music I have heard, but a delight nonetheless. Get it!
The Daktaris – Soul Explosion – Daptone/Desco, 1998.
🌎🫧⚙︎ 🪦🪄⚒️:
Despite a deceptive form of advertising, with a fictional back story, this is a fun and listenable simulacrum of James Brown, Fela Kuti and Mulatu Astatke as an AfroPop band. Despite being from Brooklyn, some of the members were of African origin and some would continue on from the Daktaris to form Antibalas. To my ears this could have been formed at a DJ table, the JB influence evokes Rap-like samples of JB and the short, funky JBs instrumental tracks. Every groove tracks more metrically than the original example, evidence of its more modern origins, and if they were original 70’s AfroPop the tracks would be 20 minute long jam/grooves. Excellent playing, a bit thin on the compositional side – the music is often missing a centering element of vocals or melodies. It is fun to hear more Jazz/Funk inspired horn improvs in this setting. The Funk tongued saxophone playing is very different from the choppier African style, except when it intentionally imitates that approach. “Eltsuhg Ibal Lasiti”
Overall = 4.2 (10) – Fun, but missing something and I dislike that the deceptive packaging tricked my senses initially. Get it!
The Durutti Column – Vini Reilly – Factory, 1989/2024.
⏺️🪨🫧 🪩⎄ ❂➕⚡️🎸🎟️:
A box set of the Durutti Column album Vini Reilly, which seems like a solo album as Vini Reilly himself is the only consistent member of the group Durutti Column. It includes the original album with 3 discs of outtakes and live extras! It is difficult to successfully create instrumental Pop music, Rock leaning in this case. Durutti Column released mostly non-vocal Pop music. I’m not sure they ever achieved mass Popularity, though many of their sonic fingerprints are etched into the 80’s. This recording, from the mid-point of a band that went through many incarnations, is experimental through using sampled vocal tracks. Mr. Reilly, in this case, adds vocal elements to well crafted Pop miniatures (mostly). I never miss the vocals in this music and I find Mr. Reilly’s guitar playing is iconic and representative of the sound of the 80’s, my childhood and one direction that the guitar was going at that time. Often with instrumental music there is a see-saw effect where song structure and simple singable melodies give way to technical ferocity – that can leave me cold and never happens in a Durutti Column song. “William B” & “Shirt No.7”
Overall = 6.4 (10) – Durutti Column occupies a unique sonic space, which I love. Get it!
Found Sounds 