Album Reviews

The May 15, 1953 performance at Massey Hall in Toronto by The Quintet, five of the most important mid-century change agents who transformed jazz music as we know it today — Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Charles Mingus, Bud Powell, and Max Roach — is incredible on so many levels. Celebrating that historic concert’s 70th anniversary, Craft Recordings have issued a 180g 3LP package called Hot House: The Complete Jazz at Massey Hall Recordings, and it may well be the final word on this iconic moment in music history when five titans of jazz performed on the same stage together for the first and only time. Read Mark Smotroff’s review to see why the expanded Hot House belongs in your collection and on your turntable. . .

Musician, composer, singer, and producer Zach Condon has somehow found a way to mesh the sounds of pump organs, real acoustic horn sections, ukuleles, drum machines, world-beat oriented percussion, and synthesizers into a distinctive blend that is immediately identifiable as the group called Beirut — a sound that bears a genuinely international flair processed through adventuresome recording situations. Read on to find out why ace reviewer Mark Smotroff feels Beirut’s new album Hadsel may be Condon’s most complete statement to date and why it’s so well-suited to spinning it again and again on vinyl. . .

When Steely Dan’s Gaucho came out in November 1980 on MCA, it was at a time when that label was notoriously cutting corners, and quality control suffered. Fast-forward four-plus decades to the here and now, wherein we have a new 180 1LP edition of Gaucho to consider, one that’s been remastered by Bernie Grundman from a 1980 analog tape copy originally EQ’d by Bob Ludwig. Read Mark Smotroff’s review to see if this new vinyl edition of Gaucho is worth putting on your turntable. . .

Craft Recordings’ new four-disc 40th anniversary deluxe edition box set celebrating the timeless, self-titled April 1983 debut LP from Violent Femmes, Milwaukee’s pioneering folk-punk trio, has as its centerpiece an AAA version of the original LP along with one additional LP full of demos and another LP with choice of-era live material, plus a bonus 7-inch single. Read Mark Smotroff’s review of this near-undefinable, infectious slab of post-new-wave, post-punk classic combined with a sizable collection of bonus material all adds up to a worthwhile analog spinning-and-listening investment. . .

The Move, in their heyday — which was roughly 1967-71 — were quite popular in England and in Europe, despite never quite breaking through in a big way here in the States. Even so, The Move’s reputation has since continued to grow in stature — and their celebrated, hard-to-find sophomore LP, February 1970’s Shazam, has just been reissued by Esoteric Recordings. Read Mark Smotroff’s review to see if the Esoteric update of Shazam belongs in your collection and on your turntable. . .

In the circles of soul music fans, Isaac Hayes’ seminal June 1969 LP Hot Buttered Soul is well-known as a landmark recording, an album that helped break down conventions of what a hit soul recording could be. This four-song album originally went gold on the Enterprise label, but Craft Recordings just may have taken Hot Buttered Soul to new aural heights with their recently released AAA Small Batch 180g 1LP edition. Read Mark Smotroff’s review to see if the Small Batch version of this seminal soul LP belongs in your collection, STAT. . .