The Flaming Lips - Transmissions From the Satellite Heart 1993

The addition of guitarist Ronald Jones and drummer Steven Drozd recharges the Flaming Lips' batteries for the superb Transmissions From the Satellite Heart, another prismatic delicacy that continues the group's drift toward pop nirvana. In typical fashion, the record's left-field hit, the freak-show singalong "She Don't Use Jelly," bears little resemblance to the album as a whole; the remainder of Transmissions is much more sonically and structurally ambitious -- the towering "Moth in the Incubator" keeps generating new layers of noise before erupting into an amphetamine waltz, "Pilot Can at the Queer of God" dive-bombs with kamikaze recklessness, and the slow-burning "Oh My Pregnant Head" is as mind-expanding as its title. AMG.

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Violent Femmes - The Blind Leading The Naked 1986

A more mainstream effort courtesy of producer Jerry Harrison (Talking Heads). Gordon Gano returns to his troubled teen persona and the Violent Femmes rock harder than on their previous two releases. A nice cover of the T. Rex classic "Children of the Revolution" and the yearning "I Held Her in My Arms," complete with a horn section, are highlights. AMG.

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Midnight Oil - Diesel And Dust 1987

On Diesel and Dust, there's less in the way of bruising hard rock like "Best of Both Worlds," nothing as eccentric as "Outside World," and very little as esoterically regional as "Jimmy Sharman's Boxers," while the production favors the tuneful side of the band's songwriting (which, truth to tell, was always there) and buffs away some of the group's harsher edges. As a result, Diesel and Dust isn't an album for hardcore Oils fans, but as a bid for a larger audience, it was both shrewd and well executed -- it was the group's first real worldwide success, going platinum in America and spawning a massive hit single, "Beds Are Burning." While the album lacks the kick-in-the-head impact of their earlier work, Diesel and Dust also makes clear that the bandmembers could apply their intelligence and passion to less aggressive material and still come up with forceful, compelling music, as on the haunting "The Dead Heart" and the poppy but emphatic "Dreamworld." And as always, there was no compromise in the band's forceful political stance -- most of the album's songs deal openly with the issues of Aboriginal rights (hardly an issue pertinent only to Australians), and one of Midnight Oil's greatest victories may well be writing a song explicitly demanding reparations for indigenous peoples, and seeing it top the charts around the world. And the closer, "Sometimes," may be the finest and most moving anthem the band ever wrote ("Sometimes you're beaten to the core/Sometimes you're taken to the wall/But you don't give in"). Diesel and Dust is that rarity, a bid for the larger audience that's also an artistic success and a triumph for leftist politics -- even the Clash never managed that hat trick this well. AMG.

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Peter Gabriel - III 1980

Generally regarded as Peter Gabriel's finest record, his third eponymous album finds him coming into his own, crafting an album that's artier, stronger, more song-oriented than before. Consider its ominous opener, the controlled menace of "Intruder." He's never found such a scary sound, yet it's a sexy scare, one that is undeniably alluring, and he keeps this going throughout the record. For an album so popular, it's remarkably bleak, chilly, and dark -- even radio favorites like "I Don't Remember" and "Games Without Frontiers" are hardly cheerful, spiked with paranoia and suspicion, insulated in introspection. For the first time, Gabriel has found the sound to match his themes, plus the songs to articulate his themes. Each aspect of the album works, feeding off each other, creating a romantically gloomy, appealingly arty masterpiece. It's the kind of record where you remember the details in the production as much as the hooks or the songs, which isn't to say that it's all surface -- it's just that the surface means as much as the songs, since it articulates the emotions as well as Gabriel's cubist lyrics and impassioned voice. He wound up having albums that sold more, or generated bigger hits, but this third Peter Gabriel album remains his masterpiece. AMG.

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Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros - Streetcore 2003

Like Muddy Waters, whose final albums were among the best in his catalog, Streetcore by Joe Strummer & the Mescaleros (Martin Slattery, Tymon Dogg, Simon Stanford, and Scott Shields) sends Strummer into rock & roll heaven a roaring, laughing, snarling lion. Unlike the previous Mescaleros outings, which were rooted in various world and folk musics and tempered by rock, Streetcore anchors itself in rock & roll and deadly heavy reggae (and for anyone who needs a reminder, Strummer's former band, the Clash, played reggae in the late '70s and early '80s better than a lot of that genre's artists). From "Coma Girl," the album's opening track, there is no doubt that Strummer hits bedrock with this fusion of garage band wail and dread beat. "Coma Girl" uses lean and mean guitars and Phil Spector's 1960s girl groups, then crosses them rhythmically with rocksteady basslines and enormous backbeats. Yes, it does sound like a lost cut from London Calling. A love song for a wasted mascot who flirts and inspires the various metaphorical socio-politcal gangs that are trying to rule the dawn of the end of the world, Strummer and band -- the Mescaleros, with their killer rhythms and over-the-red-line guitar and keyboard lines are as tight and tough as anybody out there -- truly find the flowers borne by suicide divas in the dustbin of the apocalypse. Writing like Bob Dylan at his most expressionistic, Strummer's urgency is beyond the warnings of the Clash's London Calling or Sandinista! Strummer's protagonist is living on the nether edge of reality, where the worst has already happened, he can only celebrate what's left in the ahses of civilization. Listening to the crunchy rocksteady thunder in "Go Down Moses," with its monstrous dubbed-out bass and lyrics about the sellout of the world wholesale, listeners can hear Strummer laughing in the face of all the darkness multinationalism can muster. "Long Shadow," with its minor-key architecture and acoustic guitars played in pure Americana rambling style, was written for Johnny Cash but never recorded. Its protagonist crosses deserts and rivers; he haunts the places of desolation in order to speak with the voice of the Storyteller. The song's style and spirit evokes the ghost of Cisco Houston as Strummer sings: "I'll tell you one thing that I know/You don't face your demons down, you gotta grapple with 'em Jack/And pin 'em to the ground...And I hear punks talk of anarchy/I hear hobos on the railroads/I hear mutterings on the chain gangs/It was those men who built the roads/And if you put it all together/You didn't even once relent/You cast a long shadow/And that is your testament...." Other rockers include the burning revolution drama of "Arms Aloft," with a refrain that is among the most anthemic and raucous Strummer ever wrote. With wah-wah guitars, distorted bass, boombastic drums and cymbals, it is the hardest rocking track on the set. Also strong are the searing "All in a Day," with its razor-wire Telecaster stomp, and the medium to slow heaviness of "Burnin' Streets." There are two covers on Streetcore. First is a deeply moving reading of Bob Marley's "Redemption Song," played acoustically by Strummer, Smokey Hormel, and Benmont Tench, and produced by Rick Rubin. This is the only cut that the Mescaleros don't appear on; it wasn't recorded for this set but is included by Luce (Strummer's widow) and the band as a hinge piece for the front and back of the album to hang on, and it works gloriously. The other is the closer, a cover of the Bobby Charles' classic "Before I Grow Too Old," retitled here as "Silver and Gold." It's a barroom song played in elegiac, Anglo country style -- think of the Mekons on Fear and Whiskey. Strummer's last line in the song is, "I've got to hurry up before I grow too old," before he speaks to us in his grainy Cockney voice, "OK, that's a take." It's almost as unbearable as it is unforgettable. Streetcore is the sound of Joe Strummer hitting his stride with his own band on his terms both lyrically and musically. The fact that this is a final album for Strummer is beside the point; this is one of the best rock & roll albums of 2003, and truly the finest, most cohesive work he did after London Calling. AMG.

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Catherine Ringer - Ring N' Roll 2011

After 2008's La Cigale live album and tribute to Nino Rota, former Les Rita Mitsouko vocalist Catherine Ringer returns with her debut solo record and first studio effort since the death of her musical and life partner, Fred Chichin. Produced by Mark Plati, the highly emotional affair deals with the aftermath of her loss on 12 tracks, which include collaborations with Wu Tang Clan's RZA and former Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist John Frusciante. AMG.

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The Rural Alberta Advantage - Departing 2011

The snow squall cover art for Canadian indie rock trio the Rural Alberta Advantage's sophomore effort, while skillfully echoing the opening scene of Fargo, perfectly sums up the spirited, shiftless, and heartfelt ten tracks contained within. It’s like they took 2009’s Hometowns, stuffed it in a snow globe, and shook it mercilessly. More confident, explosive, and produced than their lovable but ultimately flat-sounding debut, the aptly named Departing finds the trio ditching the living room scene for the road, carving out a solid collection of fiery, understated, nostalgia-laced indie pop gems that fly by like mile-markers. Singer/guitarist Nils Edenloff's throaty, conversational vocals, laced with lyrics drenched in lovelorn, small-town sociology, bring to mind a less cosmopolitan Hold Steady, and the punchy, unfussy production gives standout cuts like “Under the Knife” and “Stamp” an earthy and visceral inclusiveness that’s often absent from the current glut of anthem-heavy, stadium-primed indie rockers. AMG.

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The Dukes of Stratosphear - 25 O'Clock 1985

XTC spent the first half of the '80s dropping out of the new wave rat race in favor of cultivating an eccentric English garden. It was a move that mirrored the Kinks ignoring psychedelia for songs about subdivisions and afternoon tea, but when XTC decided to cut loose, they did so by adopting alter egos to create a riotous tribute to the very psychedelia the Kinks shunned. They turned into the Dukes of Stratosphear and cut the EP 25 O'Clock, a brilliant, clever distillation of the sounds of 1967, filled with knowing allusions and outright thievery from psychedelic classics both popular and well-known. For those well-versed in '60s rock, it's irresistible to draw parallels to the Beatles, the Yardbirds, the Move, and Pink Floyd, but 25 O'Clock practically begs listeners to connect the dots through its swirling kaleidoscope of phased tapes, fuzz guitars, murmured voices, and burbling Mellotrons -- and that's not even taking into account lyrical allusions, like how "Bike Ride to the Moon" twists around Tomorrow's "My White Bicycle." All this makes 25 O'Clock something closer to pop art than mere homage, but what makes it enduring -- even strangely timeless -- pop music is how XTC's reinvigorated creativity extends far beyond the mere form to the songs themselves. The six songs on the EP are XTC at their very best, their braininess tempered by the discipline of writing six songs that could have been legitimately seen as forgotten gems from the late '60s (which indeed this EP was initially presented as upon its April Fools Day release in 1985). Although there is certainly considerable pleasure in peeling back the layers of the production to puzzle out the references or simply revel in its sound, what is striking about 25 O'Clock is how joyous and immediate it feels, a trait it shares with the very best pop music -- which it certainly is. AMG.

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Van der Graaf Generator - Real Time (Live) 2007

Van der Graaf Generator went through a number of lineups in its eventful life, most of which went by undocumented as live units, at least officially (and even on the bootleg front, VDGG fans have few quality recordings to fall back on). There has been one official live album, Vital, but, as necessary as it was in chronicling the group's transformation into a ferocious stage beast, it features a short-lived incarnation of the band. All in all, what is largely considered the "classic quartet" lineup was never decently recorded on-stage, and would never be. At least, that was the story up until May 6, 2005, when Hugh Banton, David Jackson, Guy Evans and Peter Hammill walked on-stage together for the first time in almost 30 years. Recently re-formed, VDGG had released a new studio album (the more-than-decent Present) and a European tour had been booked. The quartet would get better, meaner and wilder with every show (as bootlegs testify), but the one show that mattered, the one that had to be recorded for posterity (righting the aforementioned wrong in the process) was that historical first reunion at London's Royal Festival Hall, in front of a sold-out and very international house. Nostalgia was in the air, of course, and it soon became clear that this first reunion tour would be about giving old neglected fans what they wanted and letting younger unsuspecting fans catch up with VDGG as a live force. The set list almost picks up where this particular lineup had left off in early 1977, with the exception of two tracks off Present, here given the typical VDGG live treatment: louder, heavier, grittier. The concert opens with the first two pieces off the group's magnum opus Godbluff, performed with lots of gusto. If "Refugees" suffers from Hammill's less-than-delicate vocals, several other songs are rightfully treated, including "Darkness," "Childlike Faith in Childhood's End," "Lemmings" (with improvised introduction), and probably the definitive live version of "(In The) Black Room," a song written for and first performed by VDGG, even though it ended up on one of Hammill's solo records. After the encore, "Killer," has burned the house down, the guys come back for a second encore, a lovely rendition of "Wondering," which not only seems to question the reality of the whole experience ("Wondering if it's all been true"), but brings the concert full circle as Jacksonconcludes with a single repeated flute note, just like the beginning of "The Undercover Man" played a little over two hours earlier. Yes, this is nostalgia, but unlike most reunion shows, this one features four men still in full possession of their talent and eager to push onward. Real Time (so titled because nothing has been edited out or added) is a must for the fan and, with such a stellar cross-section of material, an excellent starting place for the newcomer. AMG.

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Blurt - Pagan Strings 1992

Blurt is a new wave band originally consisting of Ted Milton(saxophone, vocals), Pete Creese (guitar), and Jake Milton(drums). Herman Martin (keyboards) replaced Creese after the release of Bullets for You (1984). Steve Eagles (guitar) replaced Martin after Six Views in Black (1985). Paul Wigens (drums, violin) replaced Jake Milton as of Poppycock (1986). Nick Murcott replaced Wigens on Kenny Rogers' Greatest Hit (Take 2) (1989). AMG.

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The Del-Lords - Frontier Days 1984

It's hard to say what anyone should have expected from a band fronted by the former rhythm guitarist for the Dictators and featuring Joan Jett's ex-lead guitar player, but it probably wasn't the tough, populist roots rock of the Del-Lords. The group's debut album, Frontier Days, proved that Scott Kempner knew enough to hold on to several of the Dictators' key virtues (quick wit and hard rock passion) while adding a few touches of his own (left-leaning politics with a strong blue-collar stripe, a sound that blended the best of blues, country, and no-frills barroom rock), while Eric "Roscoe" Ambel hadn't lost touch with the streamlined kick-ass rock & roll that was the hallmark of his former boss, Ms. Jett. The Del-Lords were smart without losing touch of their streetwise instincts, and rocked hard without sacrificing melodies that would stick in your ear long after the songs were over; however, while Frontier Days is a reasonably accurate document of the Del-Lords' blazing live show, the overly tidy and oddly hollow-sounding production by Lou Whitney robs this band of a goodly share of its full power, especially in Kempner and Ambel's guitars and Frank Funaro's drums. Frontier Days has some great songs and spirited performances, but one senses this band wanted to rock a lot harder than the circumstances permitted -- a presumption that was confirmed on the group's next album.

In 2009, Frontier Days made its belated CD debut in a new edition from American Beat Records. For the reissue, Frontier Days was expanded with five bonus tracks, featuring demos of "Shame on You" and "Heaven" -- the latter appeared on the group's second album, Johnny Comes Marching Home -- and rough takes of "Wastin' Time Talkin'," "Love Among the Ruins," and "Love on Fire." "Love Among the Ruins" is a bit too melodramatic for its own good, but the other two tunes are great rockers that would have kicked up the album's pace. The new version also includes liner notes from Scott Kempner on how the band came together and the recording of Frontier Days; it's great reading for fans of the band, and folks who've been carefully protecting their aging vinyl copies of the album will definitely want to pick up the CD release. AMG.

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Leon Ware - Leon Ware 1982

This is the follow-up to 1981's much loved Rockin' You Eternally. While that effort had Ware engaged and willing to do rich and melodic work with no commercial consideration, Leon Ware more often than not seems to be overly concerned with making a big hit. Leon Ware was co-produced by Ware and the legendary Marty Paich. Although Paich had everyone from young Ella Fitzgerald to Boz Scaggs on his resumé, there wasn't much he could do with Ware. Paich also arranged the rhythm here, which is undoubtedly Ware's forte. That's not to say Leon Ware is a dismal failure -- far from it. The first track "Slippin' Away" is Ware's best track here but it's reminiscent of a so-so track from Earth, Wind & Fire's Faces. In fact, Leon Ware employs some of the same players and writers from that effort. The oddly peppy "Lost in Love With You" was no doubt aiming for the charts but it possesses little or nothing of what makes Ware musically special. The track that comes closest to Ware's style is "Deeper Than Love" despite its smoldering sax solos from Gato Barbieri; the song is a little overdone. Perhaps the most telling is the duet with Flora Purim, "Somewhere." The track's promise seems to evaporate with the intro. If Purim wasn't going to light a fire under the proceedings, no one could. Throughout this effort, Ware's sounds wan and hemmed in. Given the fact that this didn't include many great songs, Leon Wareisn't the best way to get acquainted with the artist. AMG.

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Tom Waits - Bad as me 2011

Bad as Me is Tom Waits' first collection of new material in seven years. He and Kathleen Brennan -- wife, co-songwriter, and production partner -- have, at the latter's insistence, come up with a tight-knit collection of short tunes, the longest is just over four minutes. This is a quick, insistent, and woolly aural road trip full of compelling stops and starts. While he's kept his sonic experimentation -- especially with percussion tracks -- Waits has returned to blues, rockabilly, rhythm & blues, and jazz as source material. Instead of sprawl and squall, we get chug and choogle. For "Chicago" -- via Clint Maedgen's saxes, Keith Richards' (who appears sporadically here) and Marc Ribot's guitars, son Casey Waits' drums, dad's banjo, percussion and piano, and Charlie Musselwhite's harmonica (he appears numerous times here, too) -- we get a 21st century take on vintage R&B. Indeed, one can picture Big Joe Turner fronting this clattering rush of grit and groove, and this album is all about groove. Augie Meyers appears on Vox organ and Flea on bass to guide Waits' tablas and vocals on "Raised Right Men," a 12-bar stagger filled with delightful lyrical clichés from an America that has passed on into myth -- Waits does nothing to de-mystify this; he just makes it greasy and danceable.  The slow, spooky "Talking at the Same Time" is still in blues form albeit with ska-styled horns to make things more exotic, as Waits waxes about the current state of economic affairs. He showcases history's circular nature as he bridges our national narrative from 1929-1941, and up to the present day: "Well it’s hard times for some/For others it’s sweet/Someone makes money when there’s blood in the street...Well we bailed out all the millionaires/They got the fruit/We got the rind..." Rockabilly rears its head on "Get Lost," with David Hidalgo strutting a solid '50s guitar snarl above the horns. Dawn Harms' violin and Patrick Warren's keyboards add textural dimension to Hidalgo's and Ribot's arid guitars on the apocalyptic blues of "Face to the Highway," with Waits offering startling, contrasting images in gorgeous rhymes. This track, and the two proceeding ones -- the forlorn carny ballad "Pay Me" and the wasted lover's plea in the West Texas mariachi of "Back in the Crowd" -- set up the latter half of the record, where there are more hard-edged blues and rockers, such as the spiky stomping title track, the cracked guitar ramble in "Satisfied," and the clattering, percussive anti-war rant "Hell Broke Luce" (sic). Between each of these songs are ballads. In the jazzy nightclub blues of "Kiss Me" and the country-ish folk of "Last Leaf" lie lineage traces to Waits' earliest material: the latter features Richards in a delightfully ruined vocal duet. Indeed, even the set-closer "New Year's Eve," with Hidalgo's guitars and accordion in one of Waits' signature saloon songs, quotes from "Auld Lang Syne" in the song's waning moments to send the platter off on a bittersweet, nostalgic note, reminding the listener of Waits' use of "Waltzing Matilda" in "Tom Traubert's Blues" all those years ago. Brennan's instincts were dead-on: it was time for a set of brief, tightly written and arranged songs -- something we haven't actually heard from Waits. Bad as Me is an aural portrait of all the places he's traveled as a recording artist, which is, in and of itself, illuminating and thoroughly enjoyable. AMG.

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