Album Reviews

Trying to describe in simple words the sound and scale of a beautifully crafted new progressive rock work from a multi-disciplinary composer presents a number of journalistic challenges — but we’re up to the task. The work in question is a new 2LP deluxe box set by Armenian pianist Tigran Hamasyan titled The Bird of a Thousand Voices, which is both eye and ear popping in its presentation and sonic execution. Read Mark Smotroff’s review to see how and why both discs of The Bird of a Thousand Voices are worthy of many multiple spins. . .

If you go for Waits’s “Louis Armstrong meets Screamin’ Jay Hawkins meets Captain Beefheart” blues/jazzbo thing, obtaining it live or recorded live is probably as pure as it gets and arguably the best way to consume an artist energized by the crowd’s adulation and an adept touring backup band capable of creating thick, churning atmospherics.

In 1972, Stax Records — the influential Memphis-based label that brought the likes of Otis Redding, Booker T. & The M.G.s, and Albert King to the world — recognized the need for a large-scale, highly visible public event to help heal America’s fractured African American communities. Craft Recordings, the current owners of Stax’s tracks, has seen fit to honor the gamechanging event that was duly dubbed Wattstax with a fantastic 50th anniversary reissue series, the jewels of which are a pair of timely analog-mastered gems: Wattstax: The Living Word and The Living Word: Wattstax 2. Get into the Wattstax groove by reading Mark Smotroff’s review of both of these fine 140g 2LP collections. . .

The winner is physicist Richard Horton, in Huntsville, Alabama. Yes, a scientist who prefers vinyl! And here are the winning answers:

Don Sebesky’s glib big band charts for “California Dreaming” and for a few other tunes on this 1966 Creed Taylor Production may exude almost comical “action television series” theme music swagger (I’m thinking “Mannix”), yet Wes Montgomery’s physical daring and sense of lyrical beauty quickly overcome any reservations you might have about being seen enjoying a blatantly commercial enterprise like this.