Short Cuts

Several iconic, pop-rockin’, punk-adjacent artists from the late 1970s and early 1980s new-wave era have new albums out now — and there are also a number of encouraging audiophile-oriented reissues as well. For this somewhat thematic Short Cuts installment, Mark Smotroff zeros in on a mixture of both by exploring a pair of fun new releases from The Vapors and Peter Holsapple, plus an AAA reissue of a Violent Femmes album we suspect many of us overlooked at the time of its original 1984 release. . .

Fifty-plus years ago, John Cale effectively drew a line in the sand between his past with The Velvet Underground and his future. Two of Cale’s seminal solo releases from that era — 1972’s The Academy in Peril and 1973’s Paris 1919, both long been out of print on vinyl here in the States — are the subjects of a great new LP reissue series from England’s Domino label, expanded and approved by the artist himself. Read Mark Smotroff’s review to see if either/both of these remastered vinyl editions deserve multiple spins on your turntable. . .