Staff Picks for March 2024

A stunner of an album that merges crunchy alt-rock with electronic flourish ranging from electronica to trip-hop, this third set from the English duo has only gotten better with age. Bolstered by the timeless cut "Chinese Burn," Come Clean is split between beat-forward rockers and atmospheric groovers that could easily slide onto a playlist alongside Garbage, Goldfrapp, and Nine Inch Nails.
- Neil Z. Yeung

The band's scary, funny, and ambitious 2010 album reasserts them as masters of uneasy listening. With jolting dynamic shifts , woozy atmospheres, and tense electro-rock collisions, Liars eloquently convey urban sprawl -- and the secret worlds behind the faces you pass on the street.
- Heather Phares

Released 50 years ago today, Mott the Hoople's first album without guitarist and sounding board Mick Ralphs still delivers glammy punchy rock with Ian Hunter virtually alone at the helm. The hits hit hard, including the piano driven rave-up "The Golden Age of Rock & Roll" featuring a throwback '50s horn section, and the undeniable orgiastic strut of "Roll Away the Stone."
- Zac Johnson

The final album by this dreamy noise pop group is a collaboration with poet Jenn Morea, following a young girl and her animal sidekick on an adventure through the Mesozoic era. An ethereal sound and lyrics influenced by natural history make this a transportive listen. "Pangaea Girls (Magic Feeling)" is a particularly lovely track, with infectious bass and fuzzy, distant guitar.
- Hannah Schwartz

Mississippi bluesman R.L. Burnside recorded this album in a single afternoon, with some help from a good stash of liquor and the accompaniment of the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. A Ass Pocket of Whiskey was controversial upon release for the surreal vigor of Spencer's vocal interjections and the band's muscular noise, but ultimately what they do is give Burnside license to hit these songs hard, and the results are explosive and satisfying.
- Mark Deming

Recorded in 1968, this album was conceived by producer Andrew Loog Oldham as the British answer to the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds. While aiming for a similar emotional tone and baroque instrumentation, Would You Believe lands somewhere markedly different, replacing Brian Wilson's feelings of adolescent uncertainty and searching with nonchalant psychedelia and easygoing chamber pop sunshine.
- Fred Thomas

Finally, after almost half a decade of serious dues-paying, Earth, Wind & Fire took off commercially with its fifth album, Open Our Eyes, released 50 years ago today. EWF had been delivering great albums since 1971, but it wasn't until 1974 that the public proved genuinely receptive to Maurice White's mystical and unorthodox take on soul and funk.
- Alex Henderson

While not their most critically-acclaimed, the dream pop band's final album is a guaranteed delight of ethereal beauty and atmospheric vibes. Some music trivia worth mentioning is the connection to C-pop icon Faye Wong, who covered "Rilkean Heart" (1997's "Huai nian") and duetted with Fraser on a rare Asia-only version of "Serpentskirt." (For more artistic overlap, check out the Cocteau covers on Wong's Hu Si Luan Xiang and Fuzao, and "Yu Le Chang," penned for Wong by Guthrie/Raymonde.)
- Neil Z. Yeung

The last thing you would expect from the star of Barbie is that he was once one half of a Halloween-themed alt rock duo, but Ryan Gosling provides guitar, piano, and eerie vocals on this album. The story behind the group is almost as fun as the music itself - Gosling and Zach Shields bonded over their love of horror movies and the Haunted Mansion, and vowed not to do more than three takes of any song while recording. A particular standout is the delightfully creepy and catchy "In the Room Where You Sleep."
- Hannah Schwartz

Released 50 years ago today, the musically similar follow-up to the commercial breakthrough of Over-Nite Sensation, Apostrophe (') became Frank Zappa's second gold and only Top Ten album with the help of the "doggy wee-wee" jokes of "Don't Eat the Yellow Snow," Zappa's first chart single (a longer, edited version that used portions of other songs on the LP).
- Steve Huey

Heralded by the spectacular "Peek-A-Boo," interpolating what sounded like the Charleston into hip-hop rhythms with a brilliant, choppy arrangement, Peepshow proved the band's best album in years. If their moments of total flash are subsumed for the overall arrangements, it's to the benefit of the songs, overseen with another fine production job from semi-regular Banshees studio cohort Mike Hedges.
- Ned Raggett

A new album from Watford, England-based indie folk act The Staves is right around the corner, so it is a perfect time to revisit their debut album. Sisters Emily, Jessica, and Camilla Staveley-Taylor harmonize with alternately sweet and haunting voices, beginning with the a cappella "Wisely and Slow" and rolling slowly through earthy laments like "Pay Us No Mind" and "Winter Trees," each with their own subtle beauty.
- Zac Johnson

This album, released 50 years ago today, marked a return to the simpler style of Cat Stevens' earlier albums. No song ran much over five minutes, the arrangements were sparer and featured more acoustic guitar, and the lyrics did not take off into discursive ruminations about the state of the universe. It was very much as if Stevens was deliberately trying to make an album like Teaser and the Firecat, his commercial and artistic apex.
- William Ruhlmann

Before expanding the project to a trio and becoming an Academy Award nominee, Ryan Lott's third album under the then-solo moniker served as its breakthrough. It not only marked the project's debut on the Billboard Vinyl and Heatseekers charts, its stark, fanciful, attention-demanding songs were covered and sampled by artists ranging from Lorde and Halsey ("Easy") to Fall Out Boy ("Lost It to Trying").
- Marcy Donelson

The quirky chamber group's third set is worth the price of admission simply for its marvelous opening track, "Music For a Found Harmonium," composed by bandleader Simon Jeffes on an abandoned instrument found in a Japanese alleyway. Fortunately, the rest of the album is nearly as memorable.
- Timothy Monger

Taken from the "vaults" of Hotpie & Candy Records, More Original Raw Soul appears to be a just-uncovered archival find of rare '70s uncut James Brown-style funk. The telltale fat bass and porno wah-wah guitar, augmented by golden horn sections and gritty Hammond organ vamps, are straight out of the era of denim suits and wide lapels.
- Zac Johnson

Often overshadowed by the subsequent twin highlights of Toys in the Attic and Rocks, Aerosmith's 1974 second album, released 50 years ago on this date, is where Aerosmith became Aerosmith -- it's where they teamed up with producer Jack Douglas, it's where they shed much of their influences and developed their own trademark sound, it's where they turned into songwriters, it's where Steven Tyler unveiled his signature obsessions with sex and sleaze.
- Stephen Thomas Erlewine

Released 50 years ago today, Einsjäger & Siebenjäger (Earth & Sky) is certainly one of the most beautiful albums Popol Vuh issued in the 1970s, and remains a watermark for their trademark of melding beauty and free-flowing composition.
- Thom Jurek

Ron Carter's Uptown Conversation may very well be the most intriguing, challenging, and resonant statement of many he made over the years as a leader. As a prelude to his funkier electric efforts for CTI and the wonderful dates for Milestone Records, where he emphasized the piccolo bass, these selections showcase Carter with unlikely partners in early creative improvised settings, a hint of R&B, and some of the hard-charging straight-ahead music that he is most well known for.
- Michael G. Nastos

Spain's fifth album added additional players to the mix creating a sound that was fuller and more open, compared to the band's previous intimate, almost cradling sound. Humming organ and additional guitar lines resonate in the background of nearly every song, creating an almost Phil Spector-like "wall of sound"…well maybe not to that extreme, but when compared to Spain's previous albums, I Believe sounds almost bombastic.
- Zac Johnson

An electronic bedroom-pop concept album about the relationship between the characters Jeanine and Sylvia, Burn Pygmalion!!! takes a cheeky, lighthearted look at the difficulties of romance with a fun, psychedelic sound. Liz Lehman's sweet voice produces luxuriant, dreamy love songs like "Jeanine", quirky narratives like "Admire the Architecture," and a confrontation of the Greek mythological character that is the album's namesake, calling Pygmalion "a monster with a BFA."
- Hannah Schwartz

This 2012 release of computer music pioneer Laurie Spiegel's 1980 album extends its running time with 100 extra minutes of cosmic synthesizer sounds and code-derived melodies. It's an incredible display of early digital music at its most human, ironically rich in personality and thoughtfulness for being a blazing rush of ones and zeroes.
- Fred Thomas

While Wilco was inarguably Jeff Tweedy's band at this point, Summerteeth, released 25 years ago today, was the apex of his collaboration with Jay Bennett, and while John Stirratt and Ken Coomer were their strong, reliable selves as a rhythm section, it's Bennett's keyboards and production smarts that give life to a set of great, uncompromising songs. If Being There was the album where Jeff Tweedy embraced all that was possible with Wilco, Summerteeth was where he closed the door on the past and boldly stepped into a very different future.
- Mark Deming

Queen II, released 50 years ago today, has a kind of insular drama is quite alluring in its own right, which makes it one of the favorites of their hardcore fans. At the very least, it illustrates that Queen is starting to pull all their ambitions and influences into a signature sound, and it's quite powerful in that regard.
- Stephen Thomas Erlewine

Alternately sparse and lush, Red Dirt Girl can be seen as a companion piece to 1995's Wrecking Ball with the production credits going to Malcom Burn (who previously worked with Harris engineering and mixing Wrecking Ball). Here, drum loops and middle eastern melodies nestle in comfortably next to warm guitar work and Harris' gently wavering voice.
- Zac Johnson

Phases and Stages, released 50 years ago today, is easily the equal of its remarkable predecessor, a wonderful set of music that resonates deeply, as deeply as the words. Make no mistake -- the deceptively relaxed arrangements, including the occasional strings, not only highlight Nelson's clever eclecticism, but they also heighten the emotional impact of the album.
- Stephen Thomas Erlewine

Like the rest of their recordings, the first LP from this Monkees-inspired, prefabricated-for-television entity features all session musicians (including drummer Hal Blaine and guitarist Larry Carlton), with the exception of cast members Shirley Jones and David Cassidy, who were permitted to do their own singing. It yielded a pair of U.S. Top Ten hits, including the Tony Romeo-penned Cassidy classic "I Think I Love You," which went all the way to number one.
- Marcy Donelson

As groundbreaking as Run-D.M.C.'s first album was, they became a better group when they started rhyming faster and embraced dense, busy, sample-heavy production. Raising Hell is obviously their pinnacle, and an all-time classic, but Tougher Than Leather is nearly as good, nodding to fellow Rick Rubin associates Public Enemy and LL Cool J while building on the group's own innovative style.
- Paul Simpson

Long considered a classic and a revelation to listeners who had taken guitarist Jim Hall for granted, this set of duets with bassist Ron Carter has near-telepathic communication between the two musicians and quiet music full of inner tension and fire.
- Scott Yanow

The debut comedy album from the sweet-miened comedian/actor was recorded at Denver's Comedy Works, where he gracefully juggled topics including pop culture (Ludacris, Muppet Babies), past service jobs, racism, and regional U.S. cultures with an often-silly, always-warm ribbing. Likewise, explicit content is delivered with a radiant smile that's palpable through audio. Highlights include "Wear Yo' Scarf" and "Not Tough," during which he admits that he "giggles like an Asian princess."
- Marcy Donelson

Active for only a few years in the early-to-mid-'80s, Chico, California band 28th Day was loosely connected to the Paisley Underground, making songs of psychedelic jangle and punky angst as filtered through Beatles-informed melody. The Complete Recordings includes their only full-length, demos, and other miscellaneous tracks, giving a glimpse of Barbara Manning as a young songwriter crafting some gems at the very beginning of her lengthy run.
- Fred Thomas