Danko Jones - Sleep Is The Enemy 2006

If there's one thing Danko Jones knows how to do at this point, it's how to rock. They did it in We Sweat Blood, and it's exactly what they do again in their fifth full-length album, Sleep Is the Enemy. The formula for both these albums has been pretty consistent: fast power chords with a distorted bass echoing the guitar; loud, driving drums; and vocals that fluctuate from a low growl to a mellifluous croon to a full-out scream. But that doesn't mean the new album is ever boring: there are too much raw emotion and sexual energy to allow anyone even a brief moment to nod off. For the band, this is a very important thing; the name of the record is Sleep Is the Enemy, after all, and the simple, to-the-point choruses are just meant to be shouted along to in packed, sweaty stadiums. Jones himself is all testosterone and bravado and is in great form vocally, expressing his indifference toward a jaded lover in "Baby Hates Me," instructing the less confidence in when and how to give "The Finger," and angrily yelling his plans for revenge in "Time Heals Nothing." Yes, the themes here, like they always have been with the band, are women and sex and aggression, which are practically the same thing for Jones, but in Sleep Is the Enemy his willingness to explore the ambiguity of the topics shows his (slightly greater) maturity. In "She's Drugs" (which contains the fantastically catchy chorus "She's drugs, she's drugs/Just one look and you get addicted/She's drugs, she's drugs/You take a look and now you're hooked, that's what I predicted"), he chides a friend for being seduced by a dangerous woman, but then in "Invisible," he goes on to list a number of extreme things he'll do for another who isn't noticing him (burning his house down, maxing out his credit card, and making his mother cry being three of the least violent examples). Yeah, Sleep Is the Enemy isn't a musical genius by any standard, but it is a loud, confident, straightforward, and fun album that skips guitar solos and instrumental frills to focus on what truly matters to Danko Jones: rocking. AMG.

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Randy California - Restless 1985

After the one-off reunion of the original Spirit lineup that produced the 1984 album Spirit of '84 (aka The Thirteenth Dream), singer/guitarist Randy California returned to his solo career, signing to Vertigo, a British subsidiary of PolyGram Records, to record his third proper solo album, Restless. By the time the LP was released in June 1985, the management of the record company had changed, and the album was given virtually no promotion. California, who retained the rights to the Spirit name, returned to the U.S. and went back to billing himself, drummer Ed Cassidy, and whatever bassist and keyboardist they could hire as Spirit for the rest of his life. Restless, meanwhile, was a fairly typical effort for him. Depending on your point of view, it sounded like Spirit, or like most of the Spirit albums released after the band's initial breakup, on which California was the main songwriter, lead singer, and lead guitarist. That is to say, it was melodic hard rock, for the most part, dominated by California's ringing guitar work, which recalled that of his mentor, Jimi Hendrix, in places. The mix favored the guitar over the vocals, which was just as well since California was more accomplished as a guitar player than he was as a singer or songwriter. AMG

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Was (Not Was) - Hello, Dad... I'm In Jail 1992

Was (Not Was) play contemporary R&B dance music, with lyrics that range from the satiric to the bizarre. The group is led by Detroit natives David Weiss (David Was), who plays flute and writes those lyrics, and Don Fagenson (Don Was), who plays bass and writes music, but the group is fronted by singers Harry Bowens and Sweet Pea Atkinson. Was (Not Was) first gained notice for a dance single called "Wheel Me Out" in 1980. Their first album, Was (Not Was) (1981), did not reach the charts, but its follow-up, Born to Laugh at Tornados (1983), did. Then little was heard from the group for five years. They returned in 1988 with What Up, Dog?, which featured the number 16 hit "Spy in the House of Love" and the number seven hit "Walk the Dinosaur." (During this period, Don Was had become a prominent record producer, handling the board for Bonnie Raitt's Grammy-winning Nick of Time, among many other mainstream pop records.) The fourth Was (Not Was) album, Are You Okay?, appeared in 1990. Are You Okay? wasn't as commercially successful as the previous What Up, Dog? After the album's release, Don Was continued to pursue his production career, which began to increase tensions between Don and David. In 1993, they parted ways but returned 15 years later with Boo!, an album featuring several Was (Not Was) vets, including Bowens, Atkinson, Wayne Kramer, David McMurray, and Luis Resto. AMG.

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Kevin Morby - Harlem River 2018

Woods bassist and Babies singer Kevin Morby is in a reflective mood on his solo debut, Harlem River. Meandering like the eight-mile-long river of its namesake, the album is a brief journey through the New York that Morby called home for the five years prior to its recording. Now relocated to sunny California, the Kansas City-born Morby made it his first act of business to send a fond farewell to the city that has begun so many careers and inspired so many songs. Gone is the lo-fi experimentalism of Brooklyn's Woods and the uptempo city punk of the Babies. Instead, Morby employs a decidedly vintage aesthetic more in keeping with the ramshackle, folky bustle of Dylan's Blonde on Blonde or early Leonard Cohen records. Long, wistfully downcast poems about city life play out over a bed of warm, jangling guitars and chirping organ. Harlem River is a moody affair, head tucked into an old pea coat, walking into the wind. The songs are refreshingly personal and deep with echoes of the 1960s Greenwich Village rather than the self-conscious stylings of Brooklyn's modern age. Sure, the intentionally retro production (courtesy of Babies producer Rob Barbato) is a style of its own, but it only serves to class up the already well-written songs and doesn't come off as a blatant throwback without substance. It's the sound of an artist making the right choice for his material. No trendy cassette tape manipulation or pseudo-psych effects were needed to make songs like "If You Leave and If You Marry" and the excellent Cate Le Bon duet "Slow Train" stand out. Even the nine-minute title track rumbles along organically, seeming more like a meditative sojourn than mere lazy experimentalism. Harlem River is a journey worth taking and an excellent debut from an emerging singer/songwriter. AMG

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Adam Torres - Pearls To Swine 2016

Arriving ten years after his debut, Pearls to Swine is the spacious sophomore LP from Austin-based singer/songwriter Adam Torres. While few had access to Nostra Nova, Torres' compelling 2006 small-batch release, the chamber folk opus slowly gained an air of cult status, finally earning itself a proper national reissue from Misra Records in 2015. As for its creator, Torres moved on from his college days in Athens, Ohio, dedicating several years to charity work in South America and eventually landing in the Lonestar State for graduate school and life beyond academia. He emerged just once in 2012 with a set of ethereal, lo-fi demos released in a limited run by a Washington, D.C. cassette label. His reemergence as a performer and the mystique of his brief back catalog landed him a deal with Fat Possum, yielding this dusty, lonesome follow-up. More focused than his comparatively sprawling debut, Pearls to Swine was tracked live to tape with Torres' lofty, warbling falsetto and delicate guitar picking accompanied by violinist Aisha Burns, percussionist Thor Harris (of Swans fame), and bassist/pianist Dailey Toliver. Almost cinematic in tone and timbre, these are songs of the contemporary indie folk rambler, evoking scenic beauty and the journeys of both mind and body. At his best, Torres offers bucolic road meditations like "High Lonesome" and paeans to the natural world like "Mountain River," honing in his soaring toward an earthbound nadir. If the rest of the album is a hair more mystical in scope, his wide, introspective vistas are still quite compelling. AMG.

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Eyeless In Gaza - Caught In Flux 1981

Lacking the fascinating flaws of Photographs as Memories, the anti-pop of Rust Red September, and the unpolluted minimalism of the band's post-reformation releases, Eyeless in Gaza's Caught in Flux was a frustratingly isolationist transition piece. The fractured funk of Peter Becker's basslines and Martyn Bates' garroted Pere Ubu vocals combined with a refreshingly underproduced sheet of electronics in unquestionably interesting ways, but the end effect felt more exploratory than experimental. Recalling the best bits of the band's debut, only "Every Which Way" retained its impact over time, a haunting art rock funeral hymn that sounded like Alphaville's "Forever Young" watching its leg melt off. AMG.

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Chip White - Harlem Sunset 1994

A fine drummer who performs in advanced jazz settings, Chip White is also a talented composer. He began studying percussion when he was nine. White attended Ithaca College, studied at the Berklee School of Music and later took orchestration and arranging lessons from Frank Foster. In the '70s,'80s and '90s, he played with many top jazz musicians including Carmen McRae, Jaki Byard, John Abercrombie, Johnny Coles, Enrico Rava, Mulgrew Miller, Gary Bartz and John Hicks, recording with many of them. He formed the Chip White Ensemble in 1984, produced a jazz musical (Manhattan Moments) in 1990 and toured with the Houston Person-Etta Jones Quintet. In 1994, Chip White recorded Harlem Sunset (for Postcards), his debut set as a leader. AMG.

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David Sylvian & Robert Fripp - The First Day 1993

Robert Fripp and David Sylvian's first official release together, The First Day, is a much funkier and more percussive affair than its bootleg predecessor, The Day Before (which contained radically different versions of these songs). An obvious reason for its higher quality is that it was recorded in a studio, while the bootleg consisted of in-concert demos, and the songs here have been worked to completion. Fripp has found an extremely talented singer/partner in Sylvian, who adds a lot to his quirky compositions. Trey Gunn (who plays a bass-like instrument called the stick) makes each track practically groove and breathe on his own, and allows Fripp to stretch out and experiment in ways previously unheard by this guitar icon. The First Day is a very consistent album, with the musician's excitement and energy easily being felt on such tracks as "God's Monkey," "Brightness," and the ten-minute tour de force "Firepower." Other lengthy tracks follow (the 11-minute "20th Century Dreaming" and the 17-minute "Darshan"), but it never becomes self-indulgent or boring. Certainly one of Robert Fripp's best and more inspired King Crimson side projects. AMG.

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Femi Kuti - One People One World 2018

In the five years between Femi Kuti's Grammy-nominated No Place for My Dream and One People One World, he's been a busy man. He regularly performs at The Shrine, the performance space he built as a memorial to his late father Fela Kuti, he's a touring musician, and he also serves as a traveling ambassador for Amnesty International. (He also found time in 2017 to break the Guinness world record for the longest-held single note on a saxophone -- 51 minutes and 35 seconds.) 
One People One World is Kuti's tenth album with his longstanding band Positive Force and its musical director and guitarist Opeyemi Awomolo. Unlike the righteous anger that inspired almost all of his previous recordings, One People One World is by contrast more affirmative; it's celebratory without sacrificing its activism. While Afrobeat is at the core of these 12 songs, Kuti picks up on the mosaic he began weaving on No Place for My Dream by incorporating the harmonies and rhythms of reggae, highlife, soul, R&B, hip-hop, and other global sounds into its mix, adding depth and complexity without sacrificing immediacy and accessibility.
The title-track single commences with driving Afrobeat horns, but the rest of the band erupts into calypso and highlife celebration as Kuti and his backing singers deny racism, greed, and hatred the power to conquer the earth. With an infectious, swinging organ, "Africa Will Be Great Again" is a protest jam that details the corruption and greed that hold her back as a continent, but its pulsing wave of salsa, soca, and highlife makes it an irresistible anthem as Kuti posits the reclamation of the continent as the cradle of civilization and the heartbeat of the world. The D'Angelo-esque soul in "It's Best to Live on the Good Side" is carried by slinky, bubbling basslines, vamping R&B guitars, and a swirling organ. When the horns enter, thunder cracks as circular drumming and percussion thread in Afro-Cuban (Yoruban) rhythms. Second single "Na Their Way Be That" opens with cooking reggae before Femi's soulful saxophone solo and an Afrobeat chant cut in from the margin. "Evil People" is stomping, funky R&B, fueled by J.B.'s-style horns, layers of breakbeat drums, chunky wah-wah guitar, and congas. Immediately following is "Equal Opportunity," where Kuti and his backing chorus evoke the celebratory vibe of Curtis Mayfield's "Move on Up," and add jazzy Rhodes piano and Afrobeat horns and rhythms. Even straight-up Afro-funk jams like "Dem Militarize Democracy" open to embrace driving son rhythms, popping R&B basslines, and souled-out vocal and guitar choruses. The dubwise soul of closer "The Way Our Lives Go" is the set's most poetic and inspiring track. Kuti and Positive Force don't let up at all during One People One World. Impeccably sequenced, it runs from strength to strength, dazzling with expansive sonic textures, killer arrangements, and a musical genre palette that exists seemingly without boundaries. As a recording artist, Kuti has been reliably consistent, but this date is his masterpiece.

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A. Savage - Thawing Dawn 2017

The debut solo LP from Andrew Savage of Parquet Courts finds him singing more intimately about love in quieter, more rustic settings. In its own peculiar way, it speaks to our current condition.

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16 Horsepower - Low Estate 1998

Sixteen Horsepower's second full-length album, Low Estate, finds them at the peak of their powers, moving their hypnotic, rustic country-rock into neo-gothic territory. Producer John Parish helps the group reach its potential, accentuating the darkness and mystery inherent in its music. There are still a few weak moments on the record, but overall, Low Estate is an impressive leap forward for Sixteen Horsepower, an album that clearly separates the band from its alt-country contemporaries. AMG.

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Earthless - From The Ages 2013

The San Diego-based Krautrock/stoner rock trio Earthless feature the talents of Nebula guitarist Isaiah Mitchell, Electric Nazarene bass player Mike Eginton, and Hot Snakes/Clikitat Ikatowi drummer Mario Rubalcaba (who also played with Rocket from the Crypt under the alias Ruby Mars). The band's debut, a collection of jam-heavy instrumentals titled Sonic Prayer, was released on the Gravity label in 2005. It was followed in 2007 by Rhythms from a Cosmic Sky, which marked the band's first release for Tee Pee Records. Live at Roadburn appeared the following year, showcasing the band's strength as a live act. From the Ages, the band's third studio long-player, arrived in 2013, with a pair of concert albums, Live at Freak Valley and Live at Tym Guitars, Brisbane Australia, arriving in 2015. The following year saw the trio release a split LP with fellow West Coast psych-rockers Harsh Toke, and in 2018, they issued their fourth full-length outing Black Heaven.

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Barney Wilen - Sanctuary 1991

Barney Wilen's mother was French, his father a successful American dentist-turned-inventor. He grew up mostly on the French Riviera; the family left during World War II but returned upon its conclusion. According to Wilen himself, he was convinced to become a musician by his mother's friend, the poet Blaise Cendrars. As a teenager he started a youth jazz club in Nice, where he played often. He moved to Paris in the mid-'50s and worked with such American musicians as Bud Powell, Benny Golson, Miles Davis, and J.J. Johnson at the Club St. Germain. His emerging reputation received a boost in 1957 when he played with Davis on the soundtrack to the Louis Malle film Lift to the Scaffold. Two years later, he performed with Art Blakey and Thelonious Monk on the soundtrack to Roger Vadim's Les Liaisons Dangereuses (1960). Wilen began working in a rock-influenced style during the '60s, recording an album entitled Dear Prof. Leary in 1968. In the early '70s, Wilen led a failed expedition of filmmakers, musicians, and journalists to travel to Africa to document pygmy music. Later Wilen played in a punk rock band called Moko and founded a French Jazzmobile-type organization that took music to people living in outlying areas. He also worked in theater. By the mid-'90s, he was working once again in a bebop vein in a band with the pianist Laurent de Wilde. Much of Wilen's later work was documented on the Japanese Venus label. AMG.

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