Album Reviews

Our latest Review Explosion Short Cuts serving tackles a trio of fine new LP sets thematically connected by a common love of British rock of the 1960s and ’70s. Included herein are an archival 2LP live set from The Flaming Lips circa 2003, a recent 1LP studio offering from the ever-prolific Guided By Voices, and the first official solo sojourn LP from acclaimed Irish singer/songwriter/producer Thomas Walsh. Read on to glean Mark Smotroff’s take on these wonderful LP sides that are collectively chock full of melody and imagination. . .

It’s not often you get new titles from three legendary artists of yesteryear like gospel icon Sister Rosetta Tharpe, piano virtuoso Art Tatum, and soul-jazz organ pioneer Brother Jack McDuff all released on the same day. But this year, all three of them are being celebrated on Record Store Day 2024 — this year’s first installment of which happens to fall on this upcoming Saturday, April 20 — with newly unearthed, previously unreleased, multidisc live concert recordings on 180g black vinyl. Read Mark Smotroff’s review of all three of these releases to see which one, or ones, belong on your “must have” RSD 2024 shopping list. . .

Released in the 1970s and ’80s by legendary jazz producer/impresario Norman Granz, albums on the Pablo Records label were often lush-sounding affairs — and now, all these years later, Analogue Productions has seen fit to reissue and remaster many of the label’s key titles as 180g LPs, all cut at QRP. Read Mark Smotroff’s Short Cuts combo review of a trio of Pablo titles — one each from Count Basie & His Orchestra, Count Basie Big Band, and Duke Ellington and Ray Brown — to see just how essential these three LPs are to have in your collection. . .

Sound quality aside, the very fact that this album has been reissued by Rhino on vinyl (anonymously mastered at Capitol from the original analog tapes) is astounding. More than a dozen years ago, Rhino begin a limp-wristed "Save the LP" campaign. Predictably, it went down in flames and the company issued a 12-inch package of Rhino catalog items called (I Guess We Didn't) Save the LP containing a three-CD set in a 12-by-12 slide-out insert. Cute.

Like a musical Old Faithful, Richard Thompson dependably spews an album’s worth of inspired material at regular intervals. He’s been doing this since 1972’s Henry the Human Fly (Island ILPS 9197), which is so deserving of a high quality all-analog reissue.

Thompson’s first acoustic solo album (with overdubbed guitars and some keyboards added by Debra Dobkin) in many years is as the title and cover art promises, an intimate drawing room recital by a seemingly timeless artist who doesn’t get better with time because he dropped in seemingly fully formed during his Fairport Convention days much as James Taylor did on his first Apple solo album.