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Mike Gordon/Leo Kottke – Sixty Six Steps (RCA)
I was wondering why RCA put out a Leo Kottke album, and why collaborator Mike Gordon had his name listed first. Then I saw that he’s the bassist from Phish, which solved both mysteries. Gordon’s got good taste in guitarists, and a nice wry sense of humor, and the result – spiced with Caribbean rhythms courtesy of percussionist Neil Symonette – is an album that’s always fun and occasionally brilliant. Neither Kottke nor Gordon is much of a singer, so the brilliant moments are musical, not vocal, and mostly come from Kottke’s still astonishingly nimble guitar playing. Adding to the fun are covers of Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac classic “Oh Well” and Aerosmith’s “Sweet Emotion.”
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The Nightblooms – The Nightblooms (Seed)
One of my favorite albums of the 1990s, but good luck fiinding it! Like many British bands making pomo-semi-punk (Lush, Cranes) back then, this Dutch group featured airy female vocals, sometimes atop off-kilter washes of guitar, other times rising above more energetic six-string squalls anchored by bass/drums power. Granted, you either love this stuff or don’t get it, but the imagination and variety displayed here put this quartet at the top of the heap, even though I can’t imagine anybody knowing what Esther Sprikkelman’s singing about.
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Robyn Hitchcock – Gotta Let This Hen Out! (Rhino)
An energetic concert-recorded career retrospective from 1985 covering Soft Boys material, songs from each of his solo/Egyptian albums, and a few rarities. With good sound and Hitchcock’s bizarre between-songs patter, it’s an excellent introduction that deserves to be available again.
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Seefeel – Quique (Astralwerks/Caroline)
Another lost classic. Sounding like a minimalist Robert Fripp playing ambient techno produced by Brian Eno, this great British group focuses more on the developing guitar lines than on the beat and mixes it accordingly. It’s equally viable as mellow background (I enjoy falling asleep to it) or fascinatingly textured foreground.
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Brian Eno – Before and After Science (EG)
Speaking of Eno…. This album has a split personality. What was side one of the original LP mostly offers forcefully skewed rock; “No one receiving” is downright funky (showing one source of Talking Heads’ Eno-produced Remain in Light sound). Side two is mellower, basking in a hazy nostalgia often tinged with bittersweet ambivalence. The simplicity of the lovely “By this River” (utilizing the talents of Cluster) is breathtaking.
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Funkadelic – One Nation Under a Groove (Priority)
Excuse me, THIS is “downright funky.” You could call it disco, but it’s more subversive and complex than anything else that shook asses. The title track became the slogan of a new generation, while “Who Says a Funk Band Can’t Play Rock?!” was George Clinton’s response to market pigeonholing. One Nation includes the tracks originally found on a guitar-heavy 7-inch single enclosed in the 1978 LP, with the famous live version of “Maggot Brain,” a heavy guitar classic.
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Neil Young – Zuma (Reprise)
We’re all big Neil fans at Sound Fix, so we keep this 1975 release around to play in those rare moments when we have a hankering for classic rock. Young returned to his fascination with Indians on “Cortez the Killer,” reaching the musical and lyrical peak of his use of the socio-mythical value of the theme. And, working with Crazy Horse on several tracks, he unleashed his heaviest guitar since Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere. The closing “Through My Sails”—with Crosby, Stills & Nash on harmony vocals—ends things on a pretty note.
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Bob Seger & the Silver Bullet Band – Live Bullet (Capitol)
Did I say “classic rock”? The ultimate rock journeyman went years without a hit outside hometown Detroit, and uncompromised shows like this 1976 LP were how he made his living. White working-class soul-rock at its most determined.
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Hank Mobley – A Slice of the Top (Blue Note)
This tenor saxophonist gained attention from his two-and-a-half-year tenure in Miles Davis’s group. His classic 1966 album deploys trumpeter Lee Morgan, altoist James Spaulding (also on flute, though it’s not listed in the credits), pianist McCoy Tyner, bassist Bob Cranshaw, Kiane Zawadi (on euphonium, a tuba-like instrument in trombone range), Howard Johnson (tuba), and drummer Billy Higgins in elaborate arrangements (by Duke Pearson, from Mobley’s instructions) of four wonderful Mobley tunes and an obscure standard. This is dense, complex bebop full of originality in small details, with Spaulding’s solos sometimes adding a touch of tension by stretching beyond the progressions.
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James Booker – Junco Partner (Hannibal/Rykodisc)
The greatest New Orleans pianist, bar none (he’s actually the pianist on some of Fats Domino’s recordings), Booker was versatile, virtuosic, and even a pretty damn good singer. This reissue of his first full-length album, from 1976, is a solo tour de force that includes everything from his arrangement of Chopin’s “Minute Waltz” to “On the Sunny Side of the Street” to rockin’ originals. A must-own for any piano fan.
