Album Reviews

Jenny Lewis can be coquettish, seductive, aggressive, sweet, warm, nostalgic, empathetic and, yes, acid tongued— though it’s a literal reference on the title tune.

The merger of Sony Music and BMG combined two of the world’s great film music catalogs, offering the potential for a truly exceptional film score compilation. This isn’t it. Instead this piece of shit excuse for an “essential” film score package is indicative of everything that’s wrong with the music business today. It lists for $25.00.

An excellent new, 180g half-speed-mastered vinyl reissue of The Who’s December 1967 classic third studio album The Who Sell Out has recently been released by Polydor/UMC, and the results are quite impressive. If you are a serious fan of this record, there is enough significant new detail resonating in this new Abbey Road Studios-cut 1LP edition to make it worth your while to pick up. Read on to find out all the details. . .

Coincidentally (or not?) this more than one year old release came to my attention, and I first played it on the daythe Exile on Main Streetreissue hit record stores. The band has been around for 15 years and has nine albums. I plead appalling ignorance but better late than never.

The history of the storied 1962-1966 and 1967-1970 retrospective albums by The Beatles, alternately known as the Red Album and the Blue Album, is quite fascinating — and now they’re both newly available in expanded, 50th anniversary 180g 3LP editions with a number of additional tracks not on either of the original 1973 releases, one of them being the “final” Bealtes song, “Now And Then.” Read Mark Smotroff’s review to see if either/both of the new Red and Blue 3LP sets belong in your collection and on your turntable. . .

Elvis delivers the album opening “Santa Claus Is Back In Town” on this fall of 1957 release with bawdy, bluesly, burlesque-like delight. There’s nothing in his voice that’s even remotely subtle when he sings “Santa Claus is coming down your chimney tonight,” or any of the rest of the tune’s normally innocent lyrics. At one point in a break Elvis utters some guttural grunts not normally associated with Christmas no how! This probably had teenaged girls tingling and their parents repulsed.

For once, all of the hype is justified: Kathleen Edwards is a genuine, fully formed musical force. Failer, her debut, delivers everything one could want from a record except great sound, but that one failing will not interfere with the pleasures to be derived from this 10-song gem recorded on a shoe-string budget. The 24-year-old Canadian mid-tempo rocker/singer/songwriter has been compared to Lucinda Williams, but Neil Young backed by Crazy Horse is more apt in my book.