Popular Music CDs for Adults
Hundreds of CDs are added to the Library's collection each month. Here are the most popular Music CDs for adults.
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Fragments: Time Out of Mind Sessions (1996-1997)
The latest chapter in the highly acclaimed Bob Dylan Bootleg Series takes a fresh look at Time Out of Mind, Dylan's mid-career masterpiece, celebrating the album and its enduring impact 25 years after its original release. (syndetics)
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Bataclan
After decades of being circulated on inferior-sounding bootlegs, the January 1972 reconvergence of Velvet Underground (VU) co-founders Lou Reed (vocals/acoustic guitar), John Cale (guitar/viola/piano/vocals), and Nico (vocals/harmonium) in Paris at Le Bataclan has been committed to commercial release. A suitably noir mood hangs over them as they stonily amble through VU staples and key entries from their concurrent solo endeavors. They commence with a slow and almost methodical "Waiting for the Man" as Cale offers up a simple piano accompaniment to Reed's casual guitar and lead vocal. Reed aptly describes the bleak torch reading of "Berlin" as his "Barbra Streisand song" before unveiling a profoundly minimalist interpretation. It captures the unnerving mood inescapably defining the city in the wake of WWII. They return to the early VU for an inspired "Black Angel Death Song." Reed's rhythmic chiming guitar incongruously fits beside Cale as he whittles away an austere viola counterpoint. Back briefly to Reed's eponymously titled debut for a very Dylanesque delivery of "Wild Child." The reconnection between the duo begins to jel significantly, if not audibly throughout an intense "Heroin," immediately recalling what makes the Cale/Reed combo so appealing. Cale seizes the reigns for the melodically and lyrically involved "Ghost Story" from Vintage Violence (1970). One rarity is Cale's "Empty Bottles," which he contributed to Jennifer Warnes' Jennifer (1972) album. Nico finally takes the spotlight for a healthy sampling of her work, couching a trio of post-VU efforts around three of her most memorable sides during her brief time in the band. They saunter into an intimate and warmly received mini-set featuring "Femme Fatale," "No One Is There," and "Frozen Warnings" of off Marble Index (1969), as well as "Janitor of Lunacy" from Desertshore (1970). The show concludes with another trip into the VU songbook on a comparatively optimistic "I'll Be Your Mirror" duly juxtaposed against an edgy and sinister "All Tomorrow's Parties." While fans and pundits hopefully proclaimed the performance as the return of the Velvets, alas it would not be so. Le Bataclan '72 (2004) is a no-brainer for all dimension of VU, John Cale, Lou Reed, and/or Nico enthusiasts. ~ Lindsay Planer (syndetics)
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Ben
After a long six-year absence, Seattle pop-rap star Macklemore reintroduced himself with Ben. Taking the title from his birth name, this third solo effort is his most vulnerable confessional to date, one that allows him to purge some inner demons and share a bit of himself with fans who might be more accustomed to his rousing hit singles with Ryan Lewis. While 2017's Gemini peppered pop-leaning anthems amongst a glut of timely, trap-laden hip-hop, Ben is almost an even split, with the first half of the set dedicated to radio-friendly fare like the '80s synth pop gem "1984," the inspirational "Chant" with Tones and I, and the bouncy, cheerful bop "No Bad Days" with Collett. He rejoins Windser and Lewis -- who both participated in 2021's big "Macklemore & Ryan Lewis" reunion, "Next Year," which oddly doesn't appear on this album -- for the midtempo, acoustic guitar highlight "Maniac." The production and songwriting on this first half are upbeat and endearing, which feels great until you really listen to the lyrics, which reveal the true heart of Ben. Hardened ruminations on life and death, his relapse and overdose during the COVID-19 lockdowns, struggles with faith, and the ebb and flow of his mainstream popularity fill songs such as "Faithful," "God's Will," and "Day You Die." On "Tears," he takes his creative storytelling to another level, framing his alcohol addiction as a lifelong, love-hate relationship. It's a no-frills, honest approach that is much appreciated after all these years since his earlier, more thoughtful days. Fans of that period will delight when Ben pivots to old-school boom-bap -- DJ Premier even has a credit on "Heroes" -- with standouts such as the head-nod, horn-sampling bar-fest "Grime" and the contemplative sprawl of the dreamy "Lost/Sun Comes Up," which could have been a late-era Mac Miller track. Imagining how the world would react to his death (and facing addiction and the deaths of his friends), it's melancholy and moving all at once. Balancing the personal with biting social commentary, he later adopts a Kendrick Lamar flow for the popping "I Need." Altogether, Ben feels like the first time Macklemore has truly let listeners into his inner world, showcasing his underrated lyrical skills and enough varied production to keep the album moving forward toward a hopeful finish. ~ Neil Z. Yeung (syndetics)
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Signs of Life
A gorgeous, groundbreaking, and genre-bending collaboration between an iconic author and a unique musical ensemble. Part songwriting, part poetry, part storytelling; all encompassing, all engaging, all beautiful. (syndetics)
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Sometimes You Hurt the Ones You Hate
After two decades of working with producers and prestige indie labels such as Sub Pop and Secretly Canadian, and, significantly, following the death of his good friend and frequent collaborator Richard Swift, Damien Jurado set up shop as an independently operating entity with the self-produced The Monster Who Hated Pennsylvania, the 2021 debut of his own Maraqopa Records label. Two years later, his third self-released album, Sometimes You Hurt the Ones You Hate, follows a wide-angle formula he established in 2018 with his first self-production, The Horizon Just Laughed (released on Secretly Canadian), his most personal album to that point and one that reflected back on the 1970s and '80s of his childhood. While subsequent releases (all self-produced) were more populated with characters of his own making as well as major and minor celebrities of the era, they continued to dwell in an unbeautified nostalgia for a bygone era filled with vinyl records, ashtrays, and TV antennas. These albums were also all recorded -- some exclusively -- with multi-instrumentalist Josh Gordon. Gordon returns for Sometimes You Hurt the Ones You Hate, one of Jurado's most expansively arranged outings of this fruitful period, with a trio of horn players, a trio of string players, four backing vocalists, and programming and "noise" among the album's credits. It's a compact, eight-song set consisting of track titles like "Neiman Marcus," "Match Game 77," and (soul singer) "Mr. Frank Dell," but he kicks things off with "James Hoskins," a work of psychedelic rock inspired by an employee of a Cincinnati TV station holding his workplace hostage in 1980. (After 90 minutes, the hostages were released unharmed, but Hoskins had murdered his girlfriend earlier that night.) The song opens with an unstable chord and sustained attack of drums before settling into an ominous, racing rock groove powered by a dancing bassline and overdriven, low blurts of noise as Jurado, in typical literary fashion, takes the point of view of the desperado ("They don't play for the common man/Doing his best to swim"). Now that he has our attention, he slows things down for the folkier, strings-embellished "Neiman Marcus" ("Losing his faith in a Neiman Marcus/Feeding his loss in Central time zone"), then strips things back further for the melancholy, intriguingly titled "A Lover, a Balcony Fire, an Empty Orchestra," which finds Jurado backed by a mid-century-style vocal group alongside spacy synths and acoustic guitar. Resurrecting faded ghosts of Lawrence Welk or Ed Sullivan, the vocal group reappears on other tracks, including the more-dedicated retro entry "In a Way Probably Never." To end the album, intimate solo track and album highlight "A Buildings Kind of Building" re-establishes his ability to conjure poignancy and poeticism without bells or whistles before arriving at brighter closer "I Was a Line," which is nevertheless dripping in musical and lyrical nostalgia. At 22 minutes in length, Sometimes You Hurt the Ones You Hate definitely feels like a minor release for Jurado, but it's no less accomplished. ~ Marcy Donelson (syndetics)
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The Birth of Bop: The Savoy 10-inch LP Collection
Craft Recordings' The Birth of Bop: The Savoy 10" LP Collection offers a version of Savoy's initial involvement with bebop and its artists. These 30 tracks cover selections from 1944 to 1949 on five 10" LPs or a pair of CDs. It opens with "Romance Without Finance." Credited in the booklet to Charlie Parker, who plays on it, the session was rightfully credited to guitarist/vocalist Tiny Grimes. The reason for excluding a proper Parker side was to avoid redundancy. In 2020, The Savoy Ten-Inch LP Collection assembled the alto saxophonist's leader sides. The trajectory of the music included here follows a large number of artists across their early releases for the label. They include Dexter Gordon, Fats Navarro, Allen Eager, Bunk Johnson, J.J. Johnson, Milt Jackson, Leo Parker, Kai Winding, and Stan Getz, who are all represented by multiple entries. Highlights include Gordon's "Dexter's Minor Mad" from his first leader session in 1945 when he was just 22, Fats Navarro's read of Eddie Lockjaw Davis's "Hollerin' and Screamin" (1946) just smokes. Eager's "Church Mouse" (1947) offers a bluesy take on hard swing, while Don Byas' "Byas a Drink" (1945) reveals he'd made the transition and could balance both sides of the fence effortlessly. From December 1944, tenorist Budd Johnson's "Little Benny (King Kong)" was an early bop session by a veteran who'd worked with Louis Armstrong and Coleman Hawkins; his killer septet for this side includes bassist Oscar Pettiford, drummer Denzil Best, trumpeter Benny Harris, and fellow saxophonist Herbie Fields. J.J. Johnson's "Mad Be Bop" from 1946 features pianist Bud Powell, drummer Max Roach, and alto saxophonist Cecil Payne. Legendary vibraphonist Milt Jackson is represented beautifully by the inclusion of "Hearing Bells," "Junior," and "Bubu" from 1949. His band on these sides includes pianist Walter Bishop, Jr., Roy Haynes, Julius Watkins, and Billy Mitchell. Stan Getz's "Don't Worry About Me" (1946) offers a soulful, swinging dimension amid the harmonic exploration. The set's final four tracks are welcome outliers. Davis leads the same band Navarro did on "Stealin' Trash." Drummer Roy Porter delivers the classic obscurity "Pete's Beat," from Los Angeles' Central Avenue scene in 1948. Baritone saxophonist Serge Chaloff's amazing "Pumpernickel" is delivered by a burning sextet including trumpeter Red Rodney, criminally underrated pianist George Wallington, and bassist Curly Russell. Finally, tenor saxophonist Morris Lane delivers the scorcher "Blowin; For Kicks," an intense 12-bar workout from 1947 that features inventive guitarist George Baker, who almost steals the show. Packaged in a handsome slipcase, the Nick Phillips-produced Birth of Bop includes a fully illustrated 28-page booklet containing rare photos, a liner essay, and complete track annotation by Grammy-winning writer Neil Tesser. Interestingly, as one reads through the track info, typos readily appear. This is not an oversight but a conscious decision by the compilers to leave label representations and info exactly as they found them. ~ Thom Jurek (syndetics)
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Retrospective: The '90s
The best songs recorded in the 1990s. (syndetics)
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Pieces of Treasure
(syndetics)
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Praise A Lord Who Chews but Which Does Not Consume (or Simply, Hot Between Worlds)
With Praise a Lord Who Chews But Which Does Not Consume; (Or Simply, Hot Between Worlds), Yves Tumor continues their tradition of never doing exactly the same thing twice. Their third release for Warp channels the careening energy of Heaven to a Tortured Mind into concise -- but not confined -- songs that examine sensuality and spirituality and confidently subvert pop, rock, noise, electronic, and R&B. Just how impatient Tumor's creativity is makes itself apparent on "God Is a Circle," which fashions screams and gasps into a heaving rhythm topped by clawing synths and a grungy, descending bass. As Tumor explores self-doubt, the song tears itself apart, skewing their music's psychedelic leanings into a hallucinatory hall of mirrors. Here and throughout the album, they use abrasive and lush textures as vivid emblems of their searching. The surging riffs on "Meteora Blues" (which build on the Deftones-like intensity of The Asymptotical World EP) further brand the imagery of "lips just like red flower petals" into listeners' minds, while "Parody"'s choral vocals and heroic guitar solo simultaneously elevate and deflate the artificiality of celebrity that Tumor challenges ("What makes you so important? Can you spell it out for us?"). However, Tumor's flair for melody and hooks is just as important to the album's success as their fearless questioning. Frequently, they make it seem easy to explore faith and love within tightly written songs that don't sacrifice complexity for immediacy. With its cheerleader chants and profound thoughts on belief, "Operator"'s post-punk-pop-hop rivals OutKast's "Hey Ya!" as an earworm of a song with deeper layers waiting to be unpeeled. Similarly, standouts like the gospel-tinged "In Spite of War" and rippling "Echolalia" manage to distill Tumor's music down to its catchiest incarnation while holding on to its essential mystery. Though the poppy compactness of these songs gives Praise a Lord a more consistent flow than Heaven to a Tortured Mind, Tumor revisits that record's maximalism at key points with striking results. "I love the color blue because it's in the sky and that's where God is," a child says on "Heaven Surrounds Us Like a Hood" while tumultuous noise, guitar, and Tumor's quicksilver harmonies evoke a battle between demons and angels; on "Ebony Eye," majestic strings and brass usher the album to its triumphant close. At once challenging and inviting, Praise a Lord Who Chews But Which Does Not Consume; (Or Simply, Hot Between Worlds) is another dazzling work from a creative whirlwind. Tumor may never find the answers they're seeking, but hearing their search is exhilarating and inspiring in its own right. ~ Heather Phares (syndetics)
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The Complete Scepter Singles, 1962-1973
The Complete Scepter Singles 1962-1973 falls into place beside The Complete Warner Bros. Singles (1972-1977) with a thorough supply of Dionne Warwick's earliest A-sides and B-sides. (As of 2023, the singer's post-Warner 1979-1994 singles for Arista, the third label for which she recorded, had yet to be similarly compiled.) This three-disc anthology was previously issued in 2018 under another title, The Complete 1960s Singles Plus, as part of a PBS pledge drive that coincided with a Warwick special. It's without doubt a necessary and long-overdue wider release -- if limited to 3,000 CD copies -- as it offers an exploration of Warwick's early solo work more satisfying than a straightforward hits anthology. Further, all of the material originally issued in mono mixes are presented as such. Almost all of the A-sides here entered the Hot 100. While none topped the chart, many of them are everlasting pop classics -- "Anyone Who Had a Heart," "Walk On By," "I Say a Little Prayer," and "This Girl's in Love with You" account for some of the Top Ten hits among a total of 20 that went Top 40. Like no other team before or after them, Warwick and primary collaborators Burt Bacharach and Hal David combined masterful pop songcraft with impeccably expressive and understated vocal performances. The trio's advanced creativity spilled over to the B-sides, many of which are well-chosen album cuts such as the eyelash-batting "Any Old Time of Day," the exquisitely crushing "Walk Little Dolly," and the powerful title theme to the Warwick-starring film Slaves (written by Bobby Scott and Bob Kessler, and produced by Bacharach/David). For good measure, this also includes "Only Love Can Break a Heart" and "If I Ruled the World," Scepter-era recordings the Musicor label paired on a 7" in 1977. ~ Andy Kellman (syndetics)
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