Album Reviews

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Album Reviews
The Enigmatic Foe's   The Original Plan
Evan Toth  |  Sep 14, 2021  |  1 comments
The Enigmatic Foe’s new album The Original Plan (S/R) offers up contemporary rock and roll in the vein of Real Estate with other jangle pop influences, including distant echoes of primordial U2 with some mid-80s leanings via occasional electronic drums and synth-pop production. Tight, yet airy, the band creates a satisfactory wall of sound - mostly via the shimmering guitars of Josh Dooley (Map, Fine China) and Jared Colinger. Colinger - writer, guitarist and vocalist of the group - explains the topical nature of his tunes, “Sometimes we go to great lengths to be miserable and stay miserable. I once heard a story about a musician who purposely created strife with their spouse to have song fodder. I certainly thrive on creating songs out of misery. Anything else outside that topic seems a novelty.” Colinger, however, camouflages these sorrows with chipper, sparkly production and plenty of guitar chime. Frank Lenz’s (Headphones, Richard Swift) drumming provides a tight, propulsive groove to the whole affair.

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Album ReviewsFeatures
Joni Mitchell The Reprise Albums (1968-1971) —The Perfect Box Set Reissue?
Michael Fremer  |  Sep 02, 2021  |  33 comments
Joni Mitchell first came to the attention of some folk music enthusiasts from the three songs heard on Tom Rush’s 1968 release The Circle Game (Elektra 74018). Rush covers “Tin Angel”, “Urge For Going” and of course “The Circle Game.” Rush also covers on the album songs from Jackson Browne and James Taylor before they too became well known.

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Album Reviews
Mungo's Hi Fi x Marina P  A Scottish Reggae Record
Mark Dawes  |  Aug 31, 2021  |  5 comments
Mungo’s Hi Fi is Glasgow’s biggest reggae sound system and named after the city’s patron saint. You may not be expecting such a thing in the rainswept streets of Scotland’s biggest city, but since 2001 Mungo’s Hi Fi has been producing reggae music, putting out over 90 releases on its own Scotch Bonnet record label, building a sound system and running numerous club nights. They have collaborated with some of reggae’s biggest vocalists, including Sugar Minott and Cornell Campbell, as well as current voices such as Soom T, Eva Lazarus, and Charlie P. This latest release from September 2020 brings to the mic Italian vocalist and songwriter Marina P.

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Album Reviews
Spiritualized’s Lazer Guided Melodies Gets Much-Needed Audiophile-Grade Reissue
Malachi Lui  |  Aug 31, 2021  |  5 comments
In February 1991, seminal space rock band Spacemen 3 released their long-delayed swan song, Recurring. During its long recording process, the group’s core members J. Spaceman (Jason Pierce) and Sonic Boom (Peter Kember) constantly fought; instead of composing together, Kember and Pierce had their own stylistically different LP sides. Pierce finished his side (side 2 on the original vinyl) relatively quickly. Kember, meanwhile, for months endlessly toiled away at his mixes until the group’s manager Gerald Palmer confiscated the tapes.

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Album Reviews
Happier Than Ever Is Billie Eilish’s Brilliantly Dark Fame Diary
Michael Fremer, Malachi Lui  |  Aug 29, 2021  |  7 comments
This July, Billie Eilish released her highly anticipated second LP, Happier Than Ever. After some contention as to who would review this release, AnalogPlanet editor Michael Fremer and contributing editor Malachi Lui agreed to both comment on it. Below is their conversation about the record.

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AAA VinylAlbum Reviews
Analogue Productions Unleashes the Funk on Herbie Hancock’s Headhunters
Simon Guile  |  Aug 18, 2021  |  14 comments
With a career spanning more than six decades, Herbie Hancock is one of the most treasured names in jazz. From his early days with Blue Note, to his last release (2010’s The Imagine Project), there are more than a few of his impressive 46 albums that people consider to be favourites. My personal favourite however, is the fusion classic, 1973’s Headhunters.

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Album ReviewsBeatles
On the All Things Must Pass  Remix “The Quiet Beatle” Gets the Final Word (Revised lacquer cutting info)
Michael Fremer  |  Aug 09, 2021  |  81 comments
When George Harrison, the youngest Beatle, passed away November 30th, 2001 at age 58, Allan Kozinn’s front page New York Times obituary referred to him as “the quiet Beatle”, which during the group’s touring years, is what the self-effacing youngest member of group was often called.

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Album Reviews
Reassessment: The 1975’s Notes On A Conditional Form
Malachi Lui  |  Jul 24, 2021  |  10 comments
Glaring errors in music criticism, whether out of ignorance, misunderstanding, rushed deadlines, personal happenings, or whatever else, are at some point in the fields unfortunately commonplace; at some point in the field, you’re bound to make mistakes. When revisiting my past reviews, I balked at my original review of The 1975’s 2020 double LP art pop extravaganza Notes On A Conditional Form. Back then, I called it “frontman Matty Healy’s overblown vanity project [...] a miserably scattered, fake deep musical torture session.” How did that happen? Before dissecting my oversight, however, I’ll provide extended context and a much-needed reassessment.

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Album Reviews
ZAPPA '88: THE LAST U.S. SHOW
Nicholas Coleman  |  Jul 15, 2021  |  4 comments
Zappa ’88: The Last U.S. Show contains mostly unreleased material capturing Frank’s full Nassau Coliseum Long Island, NY performance plus additional tracks from MD and RI shows. The ’88 band, a well-oiled machine intended to be Frank’s Fox television show “house band”, included some of the finest musicians that had ever worked with him. Naturally, Frank was to have complete show control including guest selection. He intended to choose people with wildly different backgrounds and viewpoints, but at the last minute, Fox pulled the plug.

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Album Reviews
Jon Batiste Resurrects a “Lost Soul” on WE ARE
Nathan Zeller  |  Jul 09, 2021  |  7 comments
You’ve no doubt heard of Jon Batiste in conversation and song, for he’s currently an integral piece of the complex puzzle that is today’s version of musical entertainment and of being a musical entertainer. Being bandleader of Stay human, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert’s house band provides a steady gig and the financial stability that allows him to flourish and more easily express himself.

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Album Reviews
Roy Hargrove, Mulgrew Miller In Harmony—A Not To Be Missed Upcoming RSD Release
Michael Fremer  |  Jul 08, 2021  |  12 comments
On Sunday January 15th, 2006 following a blizzard, the late musical greats trumpeter Roy Hargrove and pianist Mulgrew Miller flew into Newark Liberty International Airport, cabbed it to 449 seat Merkin Hall in the Kaufman Music Center near Lincoln Center—a venue with near perfect acoustics—and with no soundcheck or preparation and after standing in the wings and calling out some tunes, stepped onto the stage and delivered some of the remarkable music making documented on this two LP set. A second equally impromptu performance almost two years later (November 9, 2007) at Lafayette College in Easton PA where Miller lived with his family fills out the set of mostly standards indelibly performed.

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Album Reviews
“Loss & Gain Are The Same:” Bladee & Mechatok’s Immersive Good Luck
Malachi Lui  |  Jul 02, 2021  |  6 comments
In 2014, Swedish cloud rap artist and Drain Gang collective leader Bladee (Benjamin Reichwald) emerged with the lo-fi cloud rap single “Into Dust.” The song’s shallow lyrics (“I’m gonna bleed in the club/I got weed in my lungs/I don’t need any love/I can’t feel when I’m drunk”) and rudimentary video (a sunglasses- and sweater-clad Bladee stumbling through a forest with “WHYY” superimposed over the footage) are often memed, though he’s shifted styles several times since then.

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Album Reviews
Pikefruit's Inflorescence Reviewed + an Interview
Evan Toth  |  Jun 30, 2021  |  3 comments
Pikefruit - a duo (Alex and Nicole) from the Pacific Northwest that creates ethereal, electronic music - recently released a new album titled, Inflorescence. Iridescence? I know what that is. Fluorescent? I get that. Incandescent? Got it! But, inflorescence? I have to admit, even this English major was a bit stumped on that vocab word. Good old Webster’s was able to help out, of course: inflorescence is “the mode of development and arrangement of flowers on an axis” or “the budding and unfolding of blossoms.” As their first full-length reveals, Alex and Nicole are indeed blossoming.

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Album Reviews
Masabumi Kikuchi’s Virtuosic Swan Song Hanamichi Is Worth A Listen
Malachi Lui  |  Jun 30, 2021  |  6 comments
As jazz vinyl sees a great resurgence, new labels issuing archival material and recent recordings contribute to a now-overwhelming catalog of available records. Run by former ECM producer Sun Chung, Red Hook Records bills itself as “a place for encounters, where musicians have opportunities [to] carve new adventurous ways of creative wayfaring [and] dissolve musical boundaries.” Red Hook’s release focus and target audience remains unclear; not all jazz buyers are audiophiles, and not all audiophiles accept newer recordings. The label’s inaugural release is Hanamichi,
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Album Reviews
Rhino Delivers a Worthy Reissue of Pantera’s Vulgar Display of Power
Simon Guile  |  Jun 13, 2021  |  16 comments
You don’t hear much about the band Pantera in either the audiophile or even in the vinyl community. Its music and lyrics come across as brash, and thrash metal definitely isn’t the first genre that comes to mind when thinking of records to show off the sonic capabilities of one's stereo equipment.

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