Each year, I receive an average of between 2,000 and 3,000 CDs or cassettes, and I listen to each of them--for a while, anyway. (I use what I call the Three-Song Rule: If a disc hasn't made a strong impression on me one way or the other by the third tune, it usually goes into the giveaway bin.) Of the original total, I keep approximately 800 recordings per annum, jotting down their titles on a tattered legal pad before shlepping them home. Then, in early December, I pore over my notes in order to determine which long-players should get extra recognition. Many of these choices are easy--I asterisk outstanding efforts on a weekly basis--but others are more difficult. (Truth to tell, I can hardly remember some of them--and there are times after relistening to such pieces that I find myself wondering why the hell I liked them so much in the first place.) Finally, I place the albums that made the final cut into categories designed to accommodate as many works as possible. Logic plays a part in this task, but to quote Leonard Nimoy, I am not Spock. If there's a choice between wedging a good CD into a moderately inappropriate grouping or leaving it out entirely, I tend to wedge.
The results below include approximately 100 recordings divided into seventeen brackets, including an expanded boxed-set compendium and three new sections: "DJs" (which replaces "Dance"); "Singer-Songwriters" (in lieu of "Folk/ Singer-Songwriters"); and "World Music" (taking over for "Reggae/Worldbeat"). I'm sure I've missed some fine records along the way--no one can listen to everything--but my goal is to introduce you and yours to an eclectic array of sounds that are definitely worth hearing. So listen up.
ALTERNATIVE
Beastie Boys
Hello Nasty
(Capitol)
Growing up is hard under any circumstances, but the Boys have managed to do so without growing old in the process. To call Hello Nasty mature would be to overstate the matter: They haven't lost their fondness for screwy references, loony juxtapositions and shouting through their noses. However, they've found a way to balance such obsessions with good-humored eclecticism that's riskier than it seems at first blush.
The Halo Benders
The Rebels Not In
(K Records)
Doug Martsch, of Built to Spill fame, and Calvin Johnson, who's led Beat Happening and Dub Narcotic Sound System, have diverse styles: Martsch sings in a high-pitched, eternally adolescent voice and plays a mean guitar, while Johnson is distinguished by a deadpan bark whose one tone fits all. But because neither is above checking his ego at the door, The Rebels Not In brings out the best in both.
PJ Harvey
Is This Desire?
(Island)
Bittersweet, heartbreaking but oddly beautiful, Is This Desire? confirms that Harvey is among the preeminent performers in music today. The disc is neither an uncompromising scorcher like Dry nor a canny revamp such as To Bring You My Love but an intermingling of these styles that allows her to move in any direction she chooses. Her every step has been mesmerizing thus far, and she shows no sign of stumbling.
The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion
Acme
(Matador)
In describing this album, most reviewers will be tempted to spell "stupid" with two "o"s: Spencer's over-the-top channeling of Elvis, Mick, Lou and God knows who else is almost cosmically goofy. Still, anyone who isn't offended by the notion of an alterna-disc that's actually entertaining should be able to get behind this trio's bold embrace of the riotous and the ridiculous. Orange, from 1994, is still the Explosion's highest achievement, but Acme is everything Wile E. Coyote could have wanted--and more.
Unwound
Challenge for a Civilized Society
(Kill Rock Stars)
Musically speaking, the songs of Justin Trosper, Vern Rumsey and Sara Lund aren't all that different from the ones being performed by any of a thousand indie-rock outfits at this very minute. But the numbers on Challenge for a Civilized Society are generally better than the rest because the musicians steer clear of stereotypes, refuse to settle for the most obvious solutions and play more from their hearts than their heads.
BLUES
R.L. Burnside
Come On In
(Fat Possum/Epitaph)
At times, producer Tom Rothrock and remixer Alec Empire seem to see Burnside less as a blues giant than as a sample of a blues giant: Their crazy programming tends to intrude on the craziness of Burnside himself. But in the end, ol' R.L. is able to shrug off the contributions of these youngsters and make himself heard. And he sounds fine.
W.C. Clark
Lover's Plea
(Black Top)
Clark's tenor can climb a song's ladder in a microsecond, hitting exalted highs that are beyond the reach of most blues vocalists. He plays the Texas blues, but he's no roadhouse rouser. Instead, he livens up a sometimes dusty rhythm section with sultry saxophones and guitar licks that keep on ticking.
Shemekia Copeland
Turn the Heat Up
(Alligator)
Yes, that last name is familiar: Shemekia is the daughter of the late Johnny Clyde Copeland. But this nineteen-year-old didn't land a record deal solely on the basis of her parentage. She's got a killer of a voice, and when she lets it out of its cage, no one is safe. She's at the mercy of her tunes on Turn the Heat Up, and given their spottiness, that's a pity. But when she lets it rip, even a mediocre tune can sound superb.
Tutu Jones
Staying Power
(Bullseye)
Jones's voice is better than serviceable; he handles all manner of songs with confidence. But what allows Staying Power to stick around is his guitar playing. The notes stream out in a continuous flow that's juicy enough to quench the fiercest thirst.
Joe Louis Walker
Preacher and the President
(Verve)
Following along the path previously trod by Robert Cray, Walker gives his blues an infusion of soul that's sly and slinky. His lyrics are insightful and diverting, his voice doesn't strain for effect, and his guitar solos pour down like silver. Folks with an appetite for gut-bucket stuff won't be satisfied, but less picky consumers could do far worse than to vote for Preacher and the President.
BOXED SETS
John Coltrane
The Classic Quartet: Complete Impulse! Studio Recordings
(Impulse!)
When saxophonist Coltrane, pianist McCoy Tyner, bassist Jimmy Garrison and drummer Elvin Jones last recorded together, in September 1965, they likely had no idea how influential the music they made in their three-plus years together would become. But any Nineties jazz fan who listens to this sumptuously packaged, meticulously researched eight-CD package will understand immediately why this material has cast such a long shadow. The sonic equivalent of a love supreme.
Miles Davis
Quintet: 1965-1968
The Complete Bitches Brew Sessions
(Columbia/Legacy)
Using the same design approach employed on the fascinating 1996 Davis-Gil Evans box The Complete Columbia Studio Recordings, Columbia/Legacy has assembled two more gems. The six-CD Quintet celebrates the transitional period during which the trumpeter played with the sterling lineup of Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter and Tony Williams; the four-disc Bitches Brew Sessions explores the 1969-1970 tapes that gave birth to that most controversial of musical bastards, jazz fusion. Proper due is given to these essential American sounds.
Herbie Hancock
The Complete Blue Note Sixties Sessions
(Blue Note)
Hancock has long been praised for his work as a sideman (see above), but his solo work is generally regarded with a more jaundiced eye: His harshest critics have gone so far as to brand him a sellout. The six CDs here, culled from Hancock's work in the early and mid-Sixties, won't settle that debate, but they display the keyboardist's unquestioned virtuosity across a broad canvas.
Bob Marley
The Complete Wailers 1967-1972, Part I
(JAD Records/Koch)
Reggae didn't spring full-blown from the brow of Marcus Garvey; rather, the form evolved over time from rock steady and ska. Complete, a raw but spirited three-CD package, traces this development through the personage of Marley, the genre's most goliath figure. The Wailers provide jolts of pleasure whether they're espousing Rasta-isms in "Selassie Is the Chapel" or making like the Archies on a daffy cover of "Sugar, Sugar."
Randy Newman
Guilty: 30 Years of Randy Newman
(Warner Archives/Rhino/Reprise)
Newman isn't an ideal candidate for boxing: His best records (such as 12 Songs, Sail Away and Good Old Boys) should be digested in their entirety, not cut up into pieces. Still, Guilty does a commendable job of mating an intelligent overview of his solo compositions with assorted demos, live tracks and ditties originally written for films as disparate as Ragtime and James and the Giant Peach.
Bruce Springsteen
Tracks
(Columbia)
Most boxed sets are stuffed with padding--alternative takes that are hardly different from the official versions, studio chatter and so on. Tracks, by contrast, is four discs' worth of mainly unfamiliar items heard most often in completed form. Better yet, the offerings compare well to the songs Springsteen actually released. The package is more than just an excellent box; it's also a quartet of individual albums strong enough to stand on their own.
Various Artists
Have a Nice Decade: The '70s Pop Culture Box
(Rhino)
On the way to becoming the top archival record company in the U.S., Rhino has acquired the rights to a staggering variety of music, as this seven-CD cavalcade demonstrates. The packaging here is typically gimmicky (it comes wrapped in shag carpeting dotted with happy faces), and the audio clips from news events of the time that are inserted between tunes can be obtrusive, but the songs chosen effectively represent the good, the bad and the ugly sides of popular music circa the Seventies. The boxed-set equivalent of a coffee-table book.
Various Artists
Nuggets: Original Artifacts From the First Psychedelic Era, 1965-1968
(Rhino)
Compiled by Lenny Kaye, who would go on to serve as a guitarist for Patti Smith, Nuggets was initially a double album filled with garage-rock treasures by artists obscure and really obscure. That must-have is joined here by three more discs filled with songs from the era, and while the selections as a whole aren't as strangely perfect as they were the first time around, they'll provide garage aficionados with hours of greasy, grimy fun.
Hank Williams
The Complete Hank Williams
(Mercury)
In all too many cases, the word "complete" doesn't belong in the titles of anthologies; it's more of a sales pitch than anything else. But there's no arguing about the accuracy of the moniker affixed to The Complete Hank Williams. These ten--count 'em, ten--CDs serve as a reminder why the senior Hank is among the seminal artists to emerge during our dying century.
XTC
Transistor Blast: The Best of the BBC Sessions
(TVT)
Andy Partridge, XTC's main man, is renowned for his dislike of live performances--an opinion that, rightly or wrongly, has been interpreted as stage fright. But the two gigs commemorated by Transistor show that the only thing scary about XTC on stage during its early days was how impressive the band sounded. Add two more discs of BBC studio recordings and you've got a first-rate look at one of pop's most underrated acts.
COLLECTIONS
Johnny Hartman
The Johnny Hartman Collection, 1947-1972
(Hip-O)
A smooth-toned romancer in the Nat "King" Cole mode, Hartman never shied away from bop as did many of his less adventurous contemporaries: Among the performers who backed him were Dizzy Gillespie and John Coltrane. Collection contains two CDs of prime Hartman--effortlessly voluptuous songs perfect for rainy nights with the mate of your dreams.
Ted Hawkins
The Ted Hawkins Suffer No More
(Rhino)
When Hawkins died, he left behind a cache of marvelous music, but much of it was out of print or otherwise unavailable. Suffer No More partially amends this situation by linking ditties from several hard-to-find Eighties and Nineties LPs with three cuts from his final valedictory, 1994's The Next Hundred Years. This CD should keep boosters going until the fine day when the entire Hawkins catalogue is reissued.
Van Morrison
The Philosopher's Stone
(Polydor)
The notes to this two-CD keepsake are disappointingly sparse, but the music's not. Stone shines up thirty unreleased Morrison recordings laid down between 1971 and 1988, and although the early material is preferable to his more recent works, the quality throughout is top-notch. Discards that are vastly superior to the choicest stuff issued by many of Morrison's counterparts.
Stereolab
Aluminum Tunes
(Drag City)
Between 1995 and 1997, Stereolab was on a hot streak; practically everything the band recorded sounded exciting and audacious. This impression is confirmed by Aluminum Tunes, a double album that assembles hard-to-find remixes, B-sides and oddities from the period. It's an unanticipated present from a group that's already wrapped more than its share.
Barry White
Boss Soul: The Genius of Barry White
(Del-Fi)
This king-sized performer didn't start out as the love god he became. Boss Soul is a snapshot of White during the mid-Sixties, when he made his living as a producer and songwriter for Bronco Records. Several songs growled by the big man himself (including the snappy "I Don't Need It") are joined by White-penned compositions as done by Johnny Wyatt, Felice Taylor and Viola Wills, three willing but forgotten R&B wannabes. "Genius" it's not, but the disc is a tuneful look at a very, um, well-rounded artist.
COMPILATIONS
Various Artists
George & Ira Gershwin: Standards & Gems
(Nonesuch)
Gershwin Standard Time: The George Gershwin Centennial Tribute
(Hip-O)
S'Wonderful: The Great Gershwin Decca Songbook
(MCA)
These recordings were released this year to capitalize on the 100th anniversary of Gershwin's death, but the mercenary intent behind them doesn't make them any less worthy. Standards is the iffiest of the discs, but a song list that avoids the obvious and a couple of nice turns by John Pizzarelli give it a reason for being. The other discs are from-the-vault affairs in which Judy Garland, Al Jolson, Lena Horne, Ray Charles and more take advantage of Gershwin's superlative craftsmanship.
Various Artists
The Rough Guide to Brazil
(World Music Network)
A spinoff from the successful series of international travel books, The Rough Guide to Brazil is a welcome single-disc primer to Brazilian music. Stars such as Ivan Lins are joined by Guinga, Rosa Passos, Papete and others whose music opens a window onto a culture that percolates to distinctive rhythms.
Various Artists
Sci-Fi's Greatest Hits, Vol. 1-4
(TVT)
This set comes complete with a stamp of approval from the Sci-Fi Channel, and no wonder. The four Hits contain over 130 themes from science-fiction films, live-action TV series and even cartoons: Fanatics who've been searching high and low for the title tunes from Atom Ant, X-Men and The Tick can rest their weary heads. Answering-machine fodder for the next millennium.
Various Artists
Tommy Boy's Greatest Beats: The First Fifteen Years, 1981-1996, Vol. 1-4
(Tommy Boy)
Tommy Boy was one of the first labels to recognize hip-hop as a viable genre, not just a way of keeping the guests at rent parties happy. Greatest Beats gathers fifteen years of the company's peak products, from "Planet Rock," by Afrika Bambaataa and Soul Sonic Force, to Coolio's "Gangsta's Paradise," with stops along the way to check out De La Soul, Naughty by Nature, Queen Latifah and the like. The liner notes are lacking, but fledgling producers will be pleased to discover that each CD in the series comes loaded with a MixMan program that will allow them to remix a rap milestone on their own personal computer.
Various Artists
AVaya Rumba!: Fiery Rhythms From the Heart of Catalonia
(Music Collection International)
As writer John Armstrong points out inside this disc's jacket, Catalan gypsy music, from which sprang the Spanish rumba, is ideal for "dancing, drinking, loving and fighting to." The hot-blooded extravaganzas on AVaya Rumba!, by Antonio Gonzales, Rumba Tres and even Los Del Rio (who gave us "The Macarena"), bare out this boast. Listen to it with someone you love--or despise.
COUNTRY
Vern Gosdin
The Voice
(BTM Records)
During the dog days of the Seventies and Eighties, Gosdin stood in opposition to the Alabamas of the world by singing the truest country songs he could write or find. Nashville's short memory has forced him to take the independent-label route, but on The Voice, produced by Barry Beckett, he still sounds sublime. It's great to hear him again.
The Mavericks
Trampoline
(MCA)
"Dance the Night Away," this album's first song, starts out with a blast of horns and a Tex-Mex melody that's a warning to expect the unexpected. The rest of the recording delivers on this promise, nervily bounding from style to style. Trampoline doesn't play by the rules, and thank goodness for that.
Moonshine Willy
Bastard Child
(Bloodshot)
Had commercial C&W not degenerated so severely, there would have been no need to invent the term "insurgent country" to describe the music of this frisky Chicago band and its Bloodshot brethren. But since it has, be grateful that groups like this one are keeping the spirit of the genre's founders burning so brightly.
Willie Nelson
Teatro
(Island)
By putting himself in the hands of Daniel Lanois, a producer not known for keeping his distance, Nelson left himself open to complaints from longtime fans who want him to keep making the same record until he's in the grave. Fortunately, he ignored such entreaties. Lanois's swampy settings on Teatro are prominent, but they allow enthusiasts to gain a new perspective on an artist who most people probably figured had surprised them for the last time.
Dwight Yoakam
A Long Way Home
(Reprise)
Dismiss this California cowboy and fledgling actor at your peril. A Long Way Home figuratively finds Yoakam back in Bakersfield with a passel of grade-A compositions that fits his high, lonesome pipes like a pair of those shrink-wrapped leather pants he loves to wear. The disc avoids the pitfalls that claim most Nineties hat-wearers by embracing country classicism--and by reveling in twanginess rather than apologizing for it.
DJs
DeeJay Punk-Roc
Chicken Eye
(Independiente)
The secret weapon of the Korn "Family Values" tour, Punk-Roc is a turntable wildman who's more interested in blowing people away than in tantalizing them with discreet charm. While a few of the morsels on Chicken Eye don't quite roar out of the speakers, the primest cuts are relentless beat monsters with a passion for blood. Everybody loves a Punk-Roc party, 'cuz a Punk-Roc party don't stop.
Dimitri From Paris
Sacrebleu
(Atlantic)
Sacrebleu is lounge music with machine-driven beats, cosmopolitan flair and a cheeky attitude that stops just this side of novelty. Songs such as "Reveries" move at a lazy gait that may foil dancers, but wallflowers will revel in the atmosphere, which twins sophistication and silliness. The perfect soundtrack for the modern Francophile.
DJ Spooky
Riddim Warfare
(Outpost)
When he's under the DJ Spooky umbrella, Paul Miller (who subtitles himself "That Subliminal Kid") isn't bound by the physical laws that govern musical mortals. Riddim Warfare uses hip-hop, DJ stunt work and classical constructs to break through genre boundaries that lesser artists have been unable to crack. It's not often that an album actually nudges the art of music forward. This one does.
Mix Master Mike
Anti-Theft Device
(Asphodel)
One of the Invisibl Skratch Picklz, Mike popped up on the mainstream's radar screen this year via his participation in the Beastie Boys' summertime jaunt, but he's too adept on the wheels of steel to be typecast as a supporting player. Anti-Theft Device is a thrilling melange that sounds like pop culture run amok: Selected snippets run the gamut from Dr. Evil to Grandmaster Flash. If there's a better turnta-blist on the scene than Mix Master Mike, let him speak now or forever hold his peace.
Wink
Here Hear
(Columbia)
Josh Wink is a dance-world celeb, in part because he's able to innovate in an extremely accessible way. He's as adept at subtlety of the sort that accents "Back in Tha' Day" as he is with the edgier moods of "Black Bomb (Jerry in the Bag)," which turns on the guest effusiveness of Trent Reznor. Here Hear is both a fine introduction for scene novices and a veritable banquet for vets.
ELECTRONIC
Lord Runningclam
Fun for the Whole Family
(Moonshine/Bottom Heavy)
David de Laski, aka the Lord, is a man who knows his way around a sampler, but what separates him from other knob-twisters are his good ideas--like his decision to borrow the dulcet tones of Ken Nordine for "Faces in the Night" and "Fibberty Jib" and his insertion of a clip from Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex...But Were Afraid to Ask into "Sweet Little Hats." These efforts and others are cool, witty and alluring.
Madonna
Ray of Light
(Maverick/Warner Bros.)
The key to successful trend-hopping is to choose a style that's compatible, not contradictory. Madonna's dalliance with electronica, represented here by co-producer William Orbit, follows this formula to perfection. Orbit's sounds lend gravity to her more serious offerings even as they add bracing beats to dance-floor raveups that are more effective than any she's conceived this decade.
Massive Attack
Mezzanine
(Virgin)
Trip-hop pioneers Robert del Naja, Grant Marshall and Andrew Vowles have been at this game longer than practically anyone, but they continue to sound ahead of their time. Mezzanine is a cogent cluster of tenebrous grooves, otherworldly noises and bewitching vocals from a cast that includes onetime Cocteau Twin Elizabeth Fraser. Some of the Nineties' most intriguing sounds can be found in this one convenient package.
Propellerheads
Decksanddrumsandrockandroll
(Dreamworks)
Like the Chemical Brothers' Dig Your Own Hole, the latest from Propellerheads is so unbelievably catchy that it can produce feelings of guilt and suspicion among true electro-believers. I mean, dance music isn't supposed to have this many hooks, is it? But in the end, resistance is futile. The disc functions equally well as pop music and booty motivator.
Sugar Plant
Happy/Trance Mellow
(World Domination)
This little-known Tokyo combo swaddles pop drones in electronic quilts that are warm and comforting. Happy, the first disc here, is a bit more upbeat than Trance Mellow, its well-named companion, but the differences are relative. Sugar Plant whips up aural environments that perform a new-age purpose without succumbing to the genre's trademark banality.
HARD ROCK
Monster Magnet
Powertrip
(A&M)
When Monster Magnet lead singer Dave Wyndorf swears he wasn't joking when he made this record, well, he's joking--sort of. The good times that were had while taking this Powertrip can be heard in every throaty scream, pummeling power chord and instrumental freakout on the disc. The metal is heavy, but the musicians' hearts are light.
Rocket From the Crypt
RFTC
(Interscope)
These San Diegans have never hidden their fondness for old-time rock and roll, so the spunky horns and quasi-rockabilly gestures that turn up on RFTC don't come as a shock. But the Rocketmen have never played with more potency and zeal, and each and every song makes it into orbit with fuel to spare.
Season to Risk
Men Are Monkeys
(Thick)
Men Are Monkeys definitely isn't over-produced. In fact, it's barely produced at all--but its serrated sound has everything to do with its effectiveness. Big riffs and brittle drums collide in an occasionally atonal thunderstorm of righ-teous racket courtesy of a yet-to-be-discovered quartet from Kansas City, Missouri.
Slayer
Diabolus in Musica
(American)
In some ways, the years have caught up with Slayer: Thanks to the legions of imitators it's spawned, the band no longer sounds as indescribably hellish as it once did. But experience has benefited the players, who have learned how to channel their rage into brutally efficient salvos that will leave death-metal aficionados feeling shaken and stirred.
Rob Zombie
Hellbilly Deluxe
(Geffen)
With each passing year, Rob Zombie becomes more of a cartoon--and since he was mighty cartoony in the first place, that's really saying something. Still, Zombie remains a Halloweener for the ages, and he's sharp enough to dress up his bottomless bellowing with industrial-strength pounders that are more treat than trick.
HIP-HOP
Aceyalone
A Book of Human Language
(Project Blowed)
E.M. Hayes Jr., formerly an enrollee in Freestyle Fellowship, is barely on the hip-hop map these days, and that's distressing, because A Book of Human Language is a brilliant piece of work. Jazzy beats a la Native Tongues serve as the backdrop for rap erudition for the ages. This is one Book that will have you riveted until the final chapter.
Black Star
Mos Def & Talib Kweli Are Black Star
(Rawkus)
Conscious hip-hop seemed on the road to extinction a few years back, but young, gifted artists such as Mos Def and Talib Kweli are proving that the movement still has a lot of life in it. Without seeming either preachy or didactic, they offer a convincing argument that what's being said in rap songs matters as much as the sounds that surround them.
Gang Starr
Moment of Truth
(Noo Trybe)
Guru and DJ Premier make up one of the peak partnerships in hip-hop history: The former is blessed with an eloquent flow and a love of knowledge he's not afraid to share, and the latter is a pioneering mixologist who's able to stay current without seeming to paddle upstream. Moment of Truth may not be their most towering triumph, but it's yet another smart, solid LP from one Gang that belongs together.
OutKast
Aquemini
(LaFace)
Southern hip-hop doesn't begin and end with the Master P brigade; Dre and Big Boi, known jointly as OutKast, also assemble songs whose beats have Georgia and its neighbors on their minds. But what lifts Aquemini to another level is the twosome's ability to merge the forbidden-fruit aspect of hardcore rap with words of wisdom. The disc brings old and new schools together under the same roof.
RZA
RZA as Bobby Digital
(Gee Street/V2)
Being prolific can have its drawbacks--just ask Prince. But even though RZA's production blueprint no longer seems as fresh as it once did due to the innumerable recordings he's overseen, it works well on Bobby Digital, an elaborate blaxploitation epic whose fantastic elements take the edge off the misogyny and anti-intellectualism that mark many of the rhymes. Let's just hope the movie is as good as the soundtrack.
JAZZ
James Carter
In Carterian Fashion
(Atlantic)
Unlike so many young men with horns, Carter actually sounds his age: He doesn't reject tradition, but neither does he seem in thrall to it. Here he uses the Hammond organ (played alternately by Henry Butler and Craig Taborn) as a way to get some R&B nastiness into his oeuvre. The down-and-dirty moments provide just the right contrast to those sequences in which he concentrates on blowing down the house.
Roy Haynes
Praise
(Dreyfus)
Percussionist Roy Haynes has been around for quite a while, and his formidable sticks are the reason. But what makes Praise even more deserving of same is the vamping of Haynes's brass section--tenor man David Sanchez, alto/soprano expert Kenny Garrett and flugelhornist/cornetist Graham Haynes. They don't venture out onto too many limbs, but they make the usual jazz vocabulary sing.
Other Dimensions in Music
Now!
(AUM Fidelity)
At least a modicum of structure is evident in all the tracks here, but trumpeter Roy Campbell Jr., saxophonist Daniel Carter, bassist William Parker and drummer Rashid Bakr don't let it get in their way. Rather, they use it as a launching pad for free-form blasts that explode on contact. "Tears for the Boy Wonder," dedicated to "Winston Marsalis," is a discerningly snide bit of skronk, while "For the Glass Tear/After Evening's Orange" heaps invention upon invention for 33 dynamic minutes.
Salim Washington & RBA
Love in Exile
(Accurate)
Saxophonist/flutist Washington is a deft instrumentalist and a benevolent bandleader who gives his versatile associates more than their share of moments in the sun, and wisely so: Contributions from players such as pianist Joe Bonner and bassist Artie Moore, two of the most iconoclastic figures in recent Denver jazz, add immeasurably to the scope of the disc. When it's working, the music is like a deep pool perfect for cliff-diving. Jump in.
The Gerald Wilson Orchestra
Theme for Monterey
(Mama Foundation)
Wilson, who's been jazzing it up since the Forties, wrote the suite that forms the backbone of this CD as a tribute to the Monterey Jazz Festival on the occasion of its fortieth anniversary, and it's a splendid piece--a swinging recapitulation of jazz's orchestral era. His arrangements of "Summertime" and "Anthropology" are equally sweeping: Once a listener takes this musical voyage, he may never want to return.
MISCELLANEOUS
Cornelius
Fantasma
(Matador)
Japan's Cornelius, who borrowed his stage name from one of the cleverest simians in Planet of the Apes, likes to monkey around. Fantasma covers a huge amount of ground, drawing from pop, lounge, hip-hop, soul, DJ culture and more--often in the same song. A restlessly intelligent connoisseur of the wacky and the weird.
Olu Dara
In the World: From Natchez to New York
(Atlantic)
Dara is a jazz musician with a penchant for envelope-pushing, but In the World is no atonal jam. The disc, recorded with a loose ensemble and guests such as his son (the rapper Nas), is a relaxed, down-home stew of blues, jazz, Cajun music and Americana that couldn't be more charming. An outstanding record that will make you hungry for more.
Sex Mob
Din of Inequity
(Columbia/Knitting Factory)
The gaggle of New York jazz scenesters who make up this Mob are dedicated to making the avant-garde fun again. In addition to several febrile compositions from the pen of trumpeter Steven Bernstein, Din of Inequity reinvents Prince's "Sign 'O' the Times" and two James Bond faves ("Goldfinger" and "Live and Let Die") as eccentric instrumental showcases. The album is so winning because it's dead serious about not being dead serious.
Tortoise
TNT
(Thrill Jockey)
John McEntire, Dan Bitney and the other Tortoises have frequently been described as indie rockers playing jazz, but that definition isn't quite right. The songs on TNT have very few improvisational elements: They're composed down to the last eighth note and often have as much to do with classical minimalism as they do with fusion. Such techniques produce music that's genuinely mind-expanding.
Tricky
Angels With Dirty Faces
(Island)
Tricky has had every opportunity to water down his strikingly intense sound for financial gain, but he hasn't succumbed yet. Angels With Dirty Faces is as dark and foreboding as ever, with Tricky turning trip-hop into bad-trip-hop like an avenging angel. He's digging even further into his music these days, and what he's unearthing is consistently compelling.
R&B/SOUL
Faith Evans
Keep the Faith
(Bad Boy)
Plenty of baggage could have been loaded upon this disc: It's the first Evans album since the death of the Notorious B.I.G., who was once her husband, and it was overseen by Sean "Puffy" Combs, the entrepreneur responsible for turning Biggie-mourning into a growth industry. But Puff Daddy's sole cameo (on "All Night Long") is relatively unobtrusive, and the material concerning loss is softened by the presence of creamy love-and-hope songs that Evans caresses with savvy and subtlety. A Faith worth keeping.
Aretha Franklin
A Rose Is Still a Rose
(Arista)
A diva who's earned the designation (unlike several of the women she sang with on a prima-donna-heavy VH1 special), Franklin has spent most of the Eighties and Nineties making the most of second-rate tunes. Rose, by contrast, boasts a handful of noteworthy songs (particularly the Lauryn Hill title cut) and production that puts the Queen of Soul in settings that are simultaneously up-to-date and appropriate to a performer of her status.
Lauryn Hill
The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill
(Ruffhouse)
Miseducation includes more than its share of hip-hop, but the CD's soulful melodies have made it a format-crossing force. Hill's contributions to the Fugees were thrilling, but her lyrical command and musical intelligence come through more clearly than ever when she's not having to share the stage. She was already a star; now she's an artist.
Monica
The Boy Is Mine
(Arista)
In a year when teenage girls ruled the singles charts like powerhouses in training bras, Monica outdistanced her peers because of a voice with a womanly timbre and songs so unbelievably commercial that it prevented cooler heads from prevailing. "The Boy Is Mine," a hit duet with the far-less-inspiring Brandy, is better than it should have been; "The First Night," another smash, became a just-say-not-now anthem; and the rest of the record suggests that Monica has a shot at sticking around even after she's old enough to order a mixed drink.
Nicole
Make It Hot
(The Gold Mine Inc./Eastwest)
Missy "Misdemeanor" Elliott is listed as the executive producer of Make It Hot, which appears on her Gold Mine imprint, and she definitely takes a hands-on approach to the project: On "The Time Is Now," the lead cut, she introduces the ostensible star of the show, and she guests on two other numbers. Elsewhere, Elliott uses Nicole's sweet, supple voice like a particularly bright color in her provocative palette. Seductive and irresistible.
REISSUES
Cheap Trick
Cheap Trick
In Color
Heaven Tonight
(Epic/Legacy)
Cheap Trick delivered these albums in quick succession; just two years separated the first from the third. At the time (the late Seventies), they were largely taken for granted by reviewers, but two decades later, they remain the yardstick by which great power pop must be measured. Supplementing the collections are a dozen extra tracks and spruced-up sound quality that brings the songs into even sharper focus.
Eric B. & Rakim
Paid in Full: The Platinum Edition
(Island)
Rakim, rapper supreme, and Eric B., ruler of the turntable, put out Paid in Full in 1987, but while the album turned on the hip-hop nation, it didn't break through on a mainstream level and eventually drifted into vinyl oblivion. Platinum brings it to the forefront again, pairing it with a bonus remix disc that was made from scratch.
The Kinks
Muswell Hillbillies
(Konk/Velvel)
Velvel is in the midst of reintroducing to the marketplace most of the Kinks' work from the Seventies and Eighties. Too bad that platters such as Soap Opera and Schoolboys in Disgrace get lost in their high concepts and more straightforward packages, like Give the People What They Want and State of Confusion, are merely workmanlike in comparison to the band's glorious Sixties masterpieces. Muswell Hillbillies, from 1971, isn't quite as indelible as Something Else and The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society, either, but it's close enough for government work--a terrific song cycle highlighted by the title track, "Alcohol" and "Acute Schizophrenia Paranoia Blues."
The Pretty Things
S.F. Sorrow
(Snapper Music)
One of the "lost" records of the first art-rock era, 1967's S.F. Sorrow may strike today's music lover as a ripoff of Tommy, but that's far from true: It was completed a year before the Who's opus, and Pete Townshend himself has publicly cited it as an inspiration. Indeed, the disc, which was recorded at Abbey Road studio during the same period as Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band and Piper at the Gates of Dawn, may very well be the first-ever rock opera--and quite a decent one at that. History passed it by, but the CD revolution has given it one last chance.
Ray Price
The Other Woman
(Koch)
Dating from 1965, The Other Woman is country at its most melodramatic. Price's voice is ripe and emotional, wringing every drop of pathos from songs such as the title cut, an awesomely sexist fantasia in which Price blames his cold-blooded bride for driving him into the arms of a rival ("Most of all, I feel wanted again," he wails). They don't make 'em like this anymore.
ROCK/POP
The High Llamas
Cold and Bouncy
(V2/Alpaca)
Sean O'Hagan, who worked with Fatima Mansions leader Cathal Coughlan in an Eighties band dubbed Microdisney, is a Van Dyke Parks for the Nineties--a performer whose synthesis of pop, lounge and electronic experimentation is extraordinarily lush and incontrovertibly idiosyncratic. The title of the album sums up the High Llamas nicely: It contains chilly but spellbinding instrumentals with vocal numbers of which Brian Wilson would approve.
Sean Lennon
Into the Sun
(Grand Royal)
Okay, he's a little bit nutty (you would be, too, if you'd lived his life), but his instincts are good. Instead of allowing himself to be packaged by major-label dolts like his half-brother, Julian, did, he signed with an imprint whose execs let him do his own thing and who didn't whine when he failed to deliver a guaranteed blockbuster. The lack of pressure should allow Lennon to build on Into the Sun, a modest dollop of whimsy that lingers like the sweetest of daydreams.
Neutral Milk Hotel
In the Aeroplane Over the Sea
(Merge)
Produced by the Apples' Robert Schneider and featuring an array of Elephant 6 all-stars, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea is a little miracle of an album. Singer-songwriter Jeff Mangum has managed to get all of his quirks into an exceptional batch of songs that he delivers with the sort of sincerity that can't be faked. If I was forced to narrow down this list to just one disc, this would be the one I'd pick.
Elliott Smith
XO
(Dreamworks)
Fixating on Smith's mopiness is easy to do, since smiling is not something he seems to do all that often. But XO can't be dismissed as a litany of complaints from someone lucky enough to be on Steven Spielberg's payroll. Although the songwriter's tales read well on the page, they take flight when they're combined with the off-kilter pop that's another of Smith's specialties.
Ray Wonder
Good Music
(Huggermugger)
"The Cad," the instrumental that opens this blast of pure pop for now people, is a crazy carnival of sounds that serves as a harbinger of things to come. The other tunes sport overpowering melodies that have been dipped in treble for maximum penetration and lyrics that know when to go pre-verbal. A smart band knows when to ditch the rhymes in favor of la-la-las and na-na-nas--and Ray Wonder is a smart band.
SINGER-SONGWRITERS
Paul Kelly
Words and Music
(Vanguard)
Although Kelly, an Aussie by birth, has been generating literate songs that operate in the zone between rock and folk for two decades, the modesty and understatement that make his lyrics so rewarding have acted as a barrier reef to greater popularity. But he hasn't let this injustice still his voice. The title cut here is a wonderful tribute to the power of song, and that creative energy is plenty evident in the other tunes as well. A talent worth discovering after all these years.
Cheri Knight
The Northeast Kingdom
(E Squared)
Once a member of the Blood Oranges, an acclaimed but sadly underheard indie act, Knight is a performer of uncommon grace whose compositions are deeply rooted in the soil. The Northeast Kingdom is filled with flowers that grow, bloom and die in an annual pageant whose radiance and sadness is echoed by her gorgeous melodies and clear-eyed fatalism. A recording that will sound wonderful for many seasons to come.
Lyle Lovett
Step Inside This House
(Curb/MCA)
Because Lovett is practically unparalleled as a tunesmith, the release of House, a two-disc set filled with compositions by others, initially seems incongruous. But Lovett has become such a strong stylist that he's able to put a personal stamp on tunes written by a distinguished group of strummers headed by Guy Clark, Townes Van Zandt, Walter Hyatt, Vince Bell and Robert Earl Keen. A man with taste this impeccable should be able to show it off every once in a while.
Gillian Welch
Hell Among the Yearlings
(Almo Sounds)
Welch doesn't have the pedigree of a dyed-in-the-wool folkie, but the comeliness of her music more than compensates for any perceived lineage shortcomings. She hangs her songs on imagery with a timeless feel, then renders it with a purity that pierces the heart. Producer T Bone Burnett mainly stays out of the way, allowing Welch to rise or fall on the strength of her material and her insinuating voice. And rise she does.
Lucinda Williams
Car Wheels on a Gravel Road
(Mercury)
Previous efforts by Williams have been estimable, but they hardly prepared listeners for the quality of her latest album. Car Wheels had a troubled production history; it skipped from Steve Earle to Springsteen associate Roy Bittan before Williams was finally satisfied with it. But all that matters in the end are lyrics that are poetic without once trying to be, music that melds country and rock into a uniquely American amalgamation, and singing that's as real as real can be. Roll on.
WORLD MUSIC
Argan
Berberism
(Barbarity/Barraka el Farnatshi)
Recorded in Casablanca and featuring a mix of Western and Arabic instruments, Berberism is an endlessly beguiling dip into a forward-looking scene that gets precious little exposure in these parts. What's more, the CD is nearly matched in quality by several other recent releases on the Barbarity imprint: Also highly recommended are Amira Saqati's Al Bharr, Sapho's Digital Sheikha and Mara & Jalal's Immigri. Learn more about them on the Internet by typing in www.maroc.net/barraka.
Waldemar Bastos
Pretalutz [Blacklight]
(Luaka Bop/Warner Bros.)
Angola's Bastos isn't an Afro-beat warrior: His songs are quiet laments and love songs that can be almost impossibly stunning. Producer Arto Lindsay shapes the tunes with care while keeping the spotlight squarely on Bastos, whose voice alternates between a sandpaper croon and a delicate lilt that's like an express ticket to heaven.
Boukman Eksperyans
Revolution
(Tuff Gong)
Politics and music sometimes make odd bedfellows, but not when Boukman Eksperyans brings them together. This Haitian ensemble makes the occasional misstep, most notably on "Sevelen (No More Excuses for the War)," which uses the shlock landmark "Sukiyaki" as its musical frame. But for the most part, Revolution is rhythmically captivating and spiritually unimpeachable. Unlike someone else we know.
Sierra Maestra
Tibiri Tabara
(World Circuit/Nonesuch)
A Cuban outfit that's been around for more than two decades, Sierra Maestra wants only to make dancers sway, spin and smile, and with its latest, it manages to do just that. The music is bright, the vocalists (there are five of them) are a torrid lot, and the rhythms make sitting still while listening an extremely difficult proposition. Sheer joy on disc.
Tom Ze
Fabrication Defect
(Luaka Bop/Warner Bros.)
Ze is a veteran performer from Brazil whom David Byrne brought to light shortly after founding Luaka Bop--and for this, the no-longer Talking Head should be showered with admiration. On his new album, Ze comes across like a South American Captain Beefheart, assembling a one-of-a-kind sound from apparently incongruous elements. There's nothing wrong with Fabrication Defect: It works on its own terms--as do all the best albums from 1998.
Visit www.westword.com to hear sound samples from many of the recordings reviewed above.
