It's been nearly a decade since Patty Griffin battled breast cancer—and the drugs and radiation that were her weaponry also took away her voice. She's regained much of her vocal strength now, and she sounds more powerful than she did on 2019's self-titled album. But there's no getting around the fact that she also sounds different. She lightly trills and vocalizes on "Born in a Cage" before leaning into her new huskiness. The song is a remembrance of how Griffin's mother observed nature around her as she was entering the last chapter of life, and the imagery is haunting: "All over the world/ The little birds stop singing/ Are they gone or do they hide/ In the eaves/ All that I know is/ More and more are disappearing/ They don't say goodbye/ And no one sees them leave." When Griffin whispers "So tired, so tired," it's chill-inducing. So is her hushed, knowing delivery of "I call out to the souls" on "Long Time," an eerie, swampy number with stray blues-guitar notes lightly kicking out against the steady, quiet rhythm. Griffin's former romantic partner Robert Plant haunts the background, shining a brief light into the fog around her. "

Brotherhood's "Complete Recordings" Show Another Side of Former Paul Revere and the Raiders Members. Rock's back pages are littered with "creative differences." Such differences split Paul Revere and the Raiders into two warring factions - Paul Revere and Mark Lindsay on one side; Phil "Fang" Volk, Mike "Smitty" Smith and Drake "The Kid" Levin on the other. The Volk-Smith-Levin triumvirate bristled at the more pop direction that the onetime garage band had been taking, and were none too pleased with the studio musicians being enlisted to beef up the Raiders' recordings. In early 1967, the trio departed the band, leading to litigation and acrimony. But both parties soldiered on. Revere and Lindsay were joined in The Raiders by Freddy Weller, Joe Correro, Jr. and Keith Allison, and Volk, Levin, and Smith formed The Brotherhood. But while Revere continued to notch hits, The Brotherhood wasn't quite so lucky. Its small three-album discography for RCA has gone all but forgotten in the ensuing years. Luckily, Real Gone Music has found this missing link in Raiders history. Brotherhood's The Complete Recordings (RGM-0220, 2014) brings together all three of these fascinating LPs in one deluxe 2-CD set.

Lookin’ For Boys! is the newest compilation from awarded collector’s-friend label Teensville Records. The CD boasts 32 tracks, 29 of which are in STEREO for the very first time. Alternate takes of girl favorites by The Exciters and Lesley Gore – plus dig the wide separation on previously-mono-only tracks by the likes of Diane Christian, Marcie Blane, Yvonne Carroll, The Pin-Ups, Marlina Mars and many more. Includes full colour booklet with annotations and pictures.

Hélène Grimaud made her first five CDs for the Denon label, when the pianist was in her mid-teens through early 20s. Brilliant Classics has reissued them as a super-bargain boxed set. Even in her formative years, Grimaud’s world-class pianism and first-rate musical mind seemed fully sprung. Listen as she fearlessly tears through Rachmaninov’s Second Sonata, or notice the way she brings out the symphonic underpinnings of the same composer’s Op. 33 Etudes-Tableaux and Liszt’s Dante Sonata and you won’t doubt that a mature artist is at work. She makes Chopin’s G minor Ballade colorful and exciting by playing it as the composer intended, rather than re-writing his dynamics, phrasings, and ritards. Sonically, her 1992 Rachmaninov Second scores over her later traversal on Erato (see my review by typing Q3366 in Search Reviews), while fans of her terrific Erato Ravel Concerto should find the earlier Denon version equally incisive and commanding.

5 CDs and one DVD (NTSC, region code 0) box set (LP sized) with a 250 page hardcover book. 'Atomic Platters' is the result of a years in the making musical 'Manhattan Project' that collects over 100 vintage Cold War songs and more than two dozen frighteningly naïve civil defense Public Service Announcements (many of these PSA's are voiced by celebrities such as Groucho Marx, Bob Hope, Pat Boone and Johnny Cash, to name just a few!) from the paranoid period that brought US fallout shelters, survival biscuits and uranium fever. The Cold War was a multimedia horror show and 'Atomic Platters' tops off it's mushroom cloud of entertainment with a DVD of nine bizarre civil defense and Anti-Communist short films from the '50s and '60s.

With the release of the band’s first EP, “Shadow” (2015) and the release of their first full length LP “Sands of Time” (2017) Scardust positioned them as a promising newcomer of the new progressive metal scene. Scardust rapidly rose to the top of the local metal scene, selling out shows and opening for the likes of Symphony X, Therion and Epica and started touring overseas playing festivals and headline shows in Germany, China and the UK as well as continuing to headline shows and festivals at home. The band showed since the beginning an artistic and instrumental attitude not common, the knowledge of each members instrument is at the highest level and the voice of Noa Gruman enchant the listeners, from her most sweet tone to the most aggressive one…

Neil Young is rightly regarded as one of the most influential singer-songwriters, ranking with Bob Dylan and Paul McCartney in influence and prolificacy. And much like the other two, he has amassed an extensive archive of unpublished and unreleased songs which he’s begun to touch with his massive Archive series of box sets. Road Of Plenty is perhaps the most ambitious unofficial Neil Young release in recent memory. It is a comprehensive six disc collection of songs which have never been released (and probably never will). A majority are sourced from excellent live audience recordings (since that is the only source we have for them), but there are other excellent quality studio outtakes included as well.

When Richard Berry sold his 'little song' for a few hundred dollars so that he could get married, he could not have had any idea of the millions of dollars that were saying 'me gotta go' to him. A prolific songwriter and self confessed 'studio hound', Richard had appeared on countless recordings, under many different group names. He had a bunch of hits at Modern Records, and then moved to Flip. Louie Louie was initially the flip of his second 45 for the label, but was quickly flipped to the top deck. It still wasn't a hit. So when Richard sold the rights along with a bunch of other tunes, it was no big deal.

A compilation of laidback porn beats.

This is an awesome 2-CD collection of folk, freak-folk and folk-rock rarities from Holland, mostly recorded in the mid-to-late 1970s, when folk-rock and psychedelic folk from abroad had really suffused the Dutch music scene. There are obvious influences from British folk-rockers like Fairport Convention, but also from the Celtic folk revival, and from the freak-folk and sunshine pop scenes of the US and UK. Great stuff, mostly sung in Dutch, but with a few English-language songs that give a glimpse of just how hippie-dippy this stuff actually was. If you like rare, weird, lovely music, you'll want to check this out. (DJ Joe Sixpack, Slipcue Music Guide)

A truly unique expanded edition of one of the most iconic albums of all time. This new edition takes us on incredibly personal journey through the entire songwriting and recording process - from the very first writing and demo sessions at John’s home studio at Tittenhurst Park through to the final co-production with Phil Spector - providing a remarkable testament of the lives of John Lennon and Yoko Ono in their own words.
After the harrowing Plastic Ono Band, John Lennon returned to calmer, more conventional territory with Imagine. While the album had a softer surface, it was only marginally less confessional than its predecessor. Underneath the sweet strings of "Jealous Guy" lies a broken and scared man, the jaunty "Crippled Inside" is a mocking assault at an acquaintance, and "Imagine" is a paean for peace in a world with no gods, possessions, or classes, where everyone is equal…

Baritone Will Liverman is an unusually versatile singer, performing both mainstream operatic repertory and music rooted in the African American tradition in which he grew up. He has performed in the premieres of several new works.

Born September 2, 1928, Horace Ward Martin Tavares Silva - later to be known as Horace Silver - was among the most accomplished American jazz pianists and composers of all time; coming out of the hard bop school of jazz, Silver was known for his distinctive playing style and pioneering compositional contributions to the form. Influenced by a wide range of musical styles, notably gospel, African music, and Latin American, Silver also later ventured into the soul-jazz genre. This 4CD collection features Horace Silver's eight finest Blue Note albums, made between 1952 and 1963, the first, and many would say most productive and challenging, decade of this masterful composer, performer and musician's career. Despite living a long and hugely influential life, Horace Silver sadly passed away on June 18th 2014, albeit at the age of 85 and of natural causes, having generally enjoyed good health until his final hour. This compilation serves as both an ideal starting point for those new to Horace Silver's music, and as a perfect reminder for those already familiar.

A mini-retrospective of Herbie Hancock's early years as a jazz artist, this six-track CD touches on some of his best-known small-ensemble works from that period. Of his first five albums for Blue Note Records from 1963-1965, Takin' Off, My Point of View, Empyrean Isles, and Maiden Voyage are represented - his third and perhaps most individually realized LP, Inventions & Dimensions, is not. You get hits "Canteloupe Island," "Watermelon Man," "Maiden Voyage," and three lesser titles, which remove it from "best-of" status. His sixth and seventh full-length Blue Note recordings, The Prisoner and Speak Like a Child, are also omitted. This is a decent, edited, and concise, but far from comprehensive view of Hancock's salad days, which some purport might still be his best.

Duke Ellington was a bandleader and musical director, pianist, in-house composer and arranger for his own big band, he left behind around 2000 works, composed film scores, for revue theatre and show stages, but also for the classical concert hall. He combined jazz with elements of the Western European musical avant-garde of the time as well as the classical-romantic tradition and thus became one of the pioneers of the ‘Third Stream’.