Album Reviews

The long running outfit known as Mercury Rev (first album, Yerself Is Steam issued 1991 on the UK Mint Films label and 1992 on U.S. Columbia) didn’t take its name from the liquid element. The first album’s back jacket offers a clue: with or without permission, it reproduces the ‘Stereo 35MM’ logo found on cloth-spined Command Classics LPs and that’s fine with me. “Fine”&#151get it? Fine? It even reproduces the part of the logo that says the recording was on 35MM magnetic tape, but I doubt that album really was. (Hint: those Commands were recorded by the legendary Mercury Records engineer (and mastered by George Piros for that matter).

The Concord catalog is filled with great sounding recordings made by top tier artists in the later phases of their careers. There's nothing wrong with that. It's to label founder and producer Carl E. Jefferson's credit that he had a jazz label vision and saw it through at a time when jazz was on the decline commercially.

The Clientele’s Alasdair Maclean has been seduced by the precious 60’s west coast soft pop of Curt Boettcher, The Association, Brian Wilson, Boyce-Hart, Papa John Philips and even Arthur Lee, though like his fellow seductee Sean O’Hagan of High Llamas, he hails from the UK.

The new Geffen/UMe 1LP edition of Steely Dan’s seminal September 1977 album, Aja, sounds pretty darn good, all things considered, given that it bears a key difference from the other entries in this reissue series to date. Read Mark Smotroff’s review to see what that difference is, and if this new edition of Aja is right for you either way. . .

“Jazz” and “clarinet” usually equals Dixieland in the minds of many jazz fans, which may explain, in part, why jazz clarinetist Jimmy Guiffre, a most imaginative, and free-spirited musician failed to achieve the acclaim he deserved-not that there's anything wrong with Dixieland.

Producer and concert promoter Norman Granz signed Ella Fitzgerald to his Verve label back in 1956 and thus began a series of stellar studio albums, orchestrated songbooks and live set releases, many of which have been reissued on both CD and deluxe vinyl.