Album Reviews

As good and desirable as blues guitarist Mel Brown’s 1967 Impulse Records debut album Chicken Fat is, the reality is he’s not quite a household name, even among many jazz and blues aficionados. That said, enough people have discovered Brown’s music to warrant its inclusion in a significant new reissue series from Verve By Request/UMe that’s being pressed by Third Man Records. Read Mark Smotroff’s dive-into-the-frying-pan review to see why you might want to add Mel Brown’s tasty-sweet funky 180g Chicken Fat LP to your vinyl collection. . .

It's easy to make a case for buying this double mono LP reissue of a 1956 Columbia release—unless you're not a jazz fan.

Veteran blues guitarist Walter Trout is obviously well known within blues circles and among blues fans I asked, but the name doesn’t elicit much of a response outside the blues core.

This psychedelic noise-rock band from Japan is  definitely not for everyone but if your tastes run towards free-jazz when you think of jazz and you find the opening of Axis: Bold As Love structurally symphonic, you will surely dig Acid Mothers Temple & The Melting Paraiso  U.F.O. and this album in particular, which definitely has a Hendrix vibe, right down to the cover art that has lettering like Are You Experience and some scantily clad gals like the UK Track edition of Electric Ladyland  that Jimi hated. 

This album was issued back in 2008 but gets reviewed here because though the name Nada Surf has popped through my consciousness for years, I’d never heard them. I know, I can go online and listen and probably even steal all of their stuff for free but I’m not wired like that, so I actually went out and bought this album on vinyl without hearing a note.

For a long time now, we’ve had the feeling there were seemingly a bazillion different versions of Vince Guaraldi’s beloved jazz soundtrack to the timeless “A Charlie Brown Christmas” 1965 TV special out there in the wilds of record collecting. Thus, we were quite excited to learn of the new, audiophile-leaning black vinyl 180g 2LP edition of “A Charlie Brown Christmas” — now in stores and very much in time for holiday gift giving, courtesy Fantasy/Craft Recordings — to hopefully provide us all with some higher-fidelity LP solace. Read Mark Smotroff’s review to see if this new, expanded 2LP edition of “A Charlie Brown Christmas” is worthy of getting for those on your gift list — and/or, in the spirit of the season, also get one for yourself. . .