(See full review in this week’s blog.) Tickling kisses of guitar music can’t feel much nicer, more gently moving, without the slightest hint of wimpiness or too much wispiness. This is music to restore your love for music, even at import prices.
Various Artists – One Kiss Can Lead to Another; Girl Group Sounds, Lost and Found four CD box set (Rhino/WEA)
This knockout 120-song collection (with 200-page book) would be the ultimate female-singing guide to the inexhaustible 1960s if they’d secured the rights to the catalogs of Motown, Stax, and the various PHIL SPECTOR-aligned acts, etc. That said, it’s hard to imagine who they neglected otherwise, and even to those of us who have been eating up this sound all our lives, a good half of these tracks will be unknown or barely remembered and unlikely to be in your collection. Which makes it the blockbuster box set of 2006, hands down! Go wild for the girls!
The non-fastidious production, folk-pop acoustics, light electrics, piano, and light air mean her voice is 98% of the record, and whether singing self-harmonies on “My Moon” (excellent!) or crooning simple torch tunes, there’s a tonality and command that’s gorgeous. It’s a lengthy breath of syllables until just the right time, like plucking the fruit at the ripest, that makes one think of ‘40s jazz singers. The Reminder is the overtly commercial LP of the year, and given her looks, charm, and a #8 LP, Feist’s a potential gold mine.
Having finally stopped obsessing on their most recent, absolute killed LP Never Hear the End of it, the album that I ended up playing the most in 2007, time to backtrack a bit and rediscover old delights. This week it’s been this inconsistent but often still fantastic 2001 album featuring the should have been huge hits “If It Feels Good Do It” (a traditional rock ‘n’ roll stunner) and the pop gem of the album, “The Other Man.” And hey, deep listens reveals a coda riff that ended up forming a song on the new LP.
When in a soul kind of mood, this 2001 reissue of Philly’s finest’s first LP from 1968 is as good a collection as any for those of us who insist on going deeper—much deeper—than any mere hits package for the great groups. What, you mean you never heard The Delfonics’ take on “The Look of Love?” Bet even Dusty Springfield dug this one, hard.
(See full review in this week’s blog.) An ideal document of this incredible early ‘70s power-pop powerhouse’s first-ever reunion tour in 2005, and another black eye to those who opine that great old bands should stay dead. If someone wanted all four original members to “Go All the Way” again, this document proves to those outside of the seven markets they hit (a few of which they hit again in 2007 promoting this) how great they really were coming back.
This Chicago punk-turned-post-punk band’s also revived 1980s-punk/indie era contemporaries have already proven that bands could regain bygone inspiration on LP in the ‘00s. But by picking up on 1986, not 1981, thus seizing their own post-punk thread never continued, The Effigies have no modern stylistic peers. And like Ink, it will take several plays before the layers of _Reside_’s smarts and subtleties become as apparent as its strident authority.
The side-project of MOJAVE 3 drummer IAN MCCUTCHEON has finally made an LP, and it is as great as the debut EP they made a few years back. McCutcheon’s tunes are on par with his sporadic Mojave writing: Tuned puts you in an L.A. 1966 mood—a little Canyon rock, a little sweet country-pop with pedal steel and banjo. Just lovely—again.
Just for the monumental opener, “Bad Memories Burn,” from 1988’s overwhelming Tilt-a-Whirl, the sardonically but in truth accurately titled Greatest would be a must. That 20 other flavors of its awesome blueprint follow, is enough to crown this collective the great unknown band of their time; that Greatest is fittingly dedicated to my late pal BEN VOSS, whose tragic 1999 loss to leukemia remains haunting, and whose dream it was to release this collection himself, makes its arrival smell like 4000 marigolds. Best $13 you’ll spend all year.
(See full review in this week’s blog.) Very good power-pop/’60s garage guitar rock update, with thick vocals, canny hooks, entertaining lyrics, and loose, ballsy playing.
