Album Reviews

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.

In August 1978, Akron, Ohio’s groundbreaking conceptual art rock band Devo released their Warner Bros. debut, which boldly posed the compelling Island of Lost Souls-inspired title: Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! Read Mark Smotroff’s review of the newly remastered Rhino High Fidelity Series 180g 1LP version of Are We Not Men? to see how well it stacks up against its previous vinyl editions. . .

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.

This lovely set of intimately arranged and meticulously recorded covers, originally issued in 2000, is precisely the kind of semi-obscure album in need of a quality all-analog reissue.