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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Burnin'
John Lee Hooker's 1962 album Burnin' is one of the most revered titles in his discography. While his earliest sides featured only his guitar and a stomp board, he also cut sides with a second guitarist or harmonicist. During the late 1950s, he usually played in Detroit with his Boogie Ramblers. Burnin' was recorded in a single day in a Chicago; it paired Hooker for the first time with a full, live electric band in the studio. The musicians were brought in from Detroit, all session aces familiar with Hooker from his years of playing clubs on Hastings Street: keyboardist Joe Hunter (not Ivy Joe Hunter), bassist James Jamerson, guitarist Larry Veeder, and drummer Benny "Papa Zita" Benjamin, with saxophonists Hank Cosby and Andrew "Mike" Terry -- the very first incarnation of Motown's globally renowned house band, the Funk Brothers. The set opener is single "Boom Boom." It growls to life with saxes, piano, and shuffling drums offering a rowdy vamp. At the midway point, Hooker, playing in an uncharacteristically tight fashion, delivers a shout worthy of Ray Charles, then delivers a stop-time guitar hook, signaling the band to rise up and drive the boogie. (The single charted at R&B and in the Hot 100.) It's followed by "Process," a slow walking blues offering steamy piano and sax work. Hooker's leads thread the verses, his shambolic shuffle working just behind the drum kit shuffle. "Lost a Good Girl" was one of the guitarist's club staples, a real crowd-pleaser for dancers thanks to its laconic, Chicago-meets-New Orleans groove. His reading of Leroy Carr's classic "Blues Before Sunrise" is rendered as an elegant piano and horn-driven walking blues with killer solo guitar work from Hooker, cutting jagged lines between verses. He answers with the house-rocking "Let's Make It," another of his live nuggets. The dialogue between horns, piano, snare, and Hooker's sung cadences are lusty, strident, boastful, and fun. His guitar shuffle is loose, almost buzzy, but swings like mad. While there isn't a weak moment here, there are other highlights, too, such as the low-down, sexy "Drug Store Woman" and the woolly "Keep Your Hands to Yourself (She Belongs to Me)," which makes full use of the propulsive vamp in "Tequila." He hits the seam exactly where jump blues meet rock & roll on the raucous closer "What Do You Say?" ~ Thom Jurek (syndetics)
Format: Music CD
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The Sun
It is the fourth studio record from Joseph (sisters Natalie, Meegan, and Allison Closner) and the follow-up to Good Luck, Kid (2019). It builds on its predecessor's cinematic pop, bringing thrilling new energy into each of the album's 10 elegantly sculpted tracks. (syndetics)
Format: Music CD
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Wattstax '72: The Complete Concert
(syndetics)
Format: Music CD
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Bebe
The album is about love, not just loving others, but loving yourself too. Each song is a representation of different seasons in Bebe's life and letting go of perfection. (syndetics)
Format: Music CD
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Moving on Skiffle
After two albums where Van Morrison spent a great deal of time griping about the modern world, it's hard not to interpret the title of Moving On Skiffle as "moving on from the political unpleasantness of the last few years to skiffle, the music of my childhood." Morrison has returned to skiffle before, cutting a dynamite live album with Chris Barber and Lonnie Donegan at the tail-end of the 2000s, but Moving On Skiffle is a different beast. Where The Skiffle Sessions: Live in Belfast 1998 benefitted from its live setting, Moving On Skiffle is clearly a studio album, a record so relaxed and unhurried it takes over 90 minutes to reach its conclusion. That's not to say it doesn't have its share of sprightly tempos: the band often kick up dust to a train-track rhythm, yet they never seem on the verge of descending into a frenzied rave-up or hoedown. The music's easy touch allows Morrison to be a bit playful, juxtaposing familiar melodies and lyrics in a surprising fashion; for instance, "Worried Man Blues" has him riffing upon words from "Mystery Train." This same attitude leads Morrison to reworking "Mama Don't Allow" into "Gov Don't Allow," giving him a place to grouse about how the government is shutting down free speech and skiffle. It's the one time on Moving On Skiffle where Van Morrison allows his inner curmudgeon to take the reins; otherwise, Moving On Skiffle is light and lively, an easy record to enjoy. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine (syndetics)
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Studio One Funk
Clement Dodd's Studio One is absolute ground zero for modern Jamaican music, and there's no denying that the sturdy rhythm tracks that were created at Studio One during its 1960s and 1970s peak were funky. Jamaican funky, that is, which isn't quite the same thing as funk. It's an important distinction, because listeners drawn to this collection because of its title and expecting to hear some monster funk grooves done up island style are going to be a bit surprised by what's actually here. Soulful Reggae might be a better title, since these tracks, if they're funk at all, are only funk in the broadest application of the term. That doesn't mean this is a bad collection. It isn't. It's really quite interesting. Compiled by Dodd himself shortly before his death, Studio One Funk boasts some killer sides, including Alton Ellis' wonderful "African Descendents," Jackie Mittoo's soulful organ take on "Hang 'Em High," Cedric Brooks' reconfiguration of the "Skylarking" rhythm as "Idleberg," and the Underground Vegetables' sax-led cover of Booker T. & the MG's' "Melting Pot." None of this sounds remotely like American funk, or even a Jamaican approximation of it, but it is, well, very funky and cool roots reggae (with a ska track or two thrown in), which isn't a bad tradeoff at all. ~ Steve Leggett (syndetics)
Format: Music CD
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Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge
Originally released in 1991 (Sub Pop SP105b); disc 2 contains previously unreleased demos, alternate takes, collected singles and B-sides.
Format: Music CD
Availability: In-library use only at this time
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The Price of Progress
The Hold Steady began work on 2023's The Price of Progress only a few months after 2021's Open Door Policy was delivered to their fans, so it's no great surprise that, in many respects, it feels like a continuation of the earlier album's themes. Then again, both albums follow a blueprint the band has worked with from its inception, anthemic tunes married to dense, character-driven lyrics, and if the Hold Steady sound a lot more polished and accomplished in 2023 than on 2004's Almost Killed Me, they've gained far more than they've lost in the course of their evolution. The Price of Progress finds them writing and performing at the top of their game. The album offers ten songs about people whose lives are in flux in one way or another -- the guy who stopped going to work but hasn't told his live-in girlfriend ("Carlos Is Crying"), the casual friends who might or might not become lovers ("Sixers"), the gambler hoping a last big bet will bring him into the black ("City at Eleven"), the washed-up rock & rollers telling tall tales about past and future accomplishments ("Sideways Skull"), and the jacked-up football fan who invades the field ("Flyover Halftime"). Craig Finn has matured into the best short story writer in rock & roll, penning compact tales that are powerfully evocative as his characters wrestle with the circumstances life has dropped them in, and the band matches him brilliantly at every turn, full of nuance on numbers like "Distortions of Faith" or turning up the guitars and letting rip on "Flyover Halftime." The subtle addition of strings, horns, and additional backing vocalists never feels intrusive -- this band has always thought big, but they know how to do so without excess, and even at their most operatic, Tad Kubler and Steve Selvidge's guitars and Franz Nicolay's keyboards can reach for the grand gesture without straining, and Galen Polivka's bass and Bobby Drake's drumming keep this firmly rooted at all times. At a time when it's easy to feel alienated, the Hold Steady understand, and are smart enough to know they can't fix the world. But they're good-hearted enough to commiserate and talented enough to make the stories well worth hearing, and that's just what they do on The Price of Progress. ~ Mark Deming (syndetics)
Format: Music CD
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Playing the piano: Out of noise
In 2009, Universal International released Ryuichi Sakamoto's Playing the Piano, a collection of solo piano pieces he calls “self-covers”; that is, a newly recorded collection of his own compositons and themes performed solo. The set contains 12 selections. They are mostly themes from the films The Last Emperor, Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence, and The Sheltering Sky, with cues from others including "Bolerish," from Brian DePalma's 2002 film Femme Fatale. For the most part, it is a spare and lovely beauty of an album, with few surpises save for the elegance that Sakamoto performs these indelible pieces with. In 2010, Decca Records in the U.S. re-relased this album as a deluxe edition with a new one entitled Out of Noise, recorded during 2009. It, too, contains a dozen selections, all but one composed and recorded the year of release. This disc is the real surpise in the specially packaged and priced set. It concerns itself where music fades and enters into noise, and the no man's land where noise sorts itself out into a system recognized as music. Unlike Playing the Piano, Out of Noise is a more challenging, yet more compelling listen. While it begins with the poetic, atmospheric solo piano piece "Hibari," as a coda to Disc 1, it quickly launches into "Hwit" and "Still Life," both recorded with the U.K.-based viol ensemble Fretwork. The ambient "In the Red," with field-recorded voice samples, features guitarist Christian Fennesz. In 2008, Sakamoto participated in the Cape Farewell Disko Bay Expedition to study and observe climate change; there he visited Greenland's fastest moving glacier. Three of the pieces here -- "Disko," "Ice," and "Glacier" -- reflect the place where Sakamoto claims he left part of his soul. In them, the sounds of the glaicer and the surrounding landscape were recorded, then treated in the studio and added to by other musicians, including guitarist Keigo Oyamada, vocalist Karen H. Filskov, and Skúlli Sverrisson, who plays dobro on the final one of these. "To Standford" is a solo jazz piano piece, or rather has inside its grain, the beauty and ternderness of great jazz pianists from Bill Evans to Errol Garner to Kenny Drew. Ultimately, it's Out of Noise that makes the entire package worth buying for the first time, or purchasing Playing the Piano again. Despite revealing already known dimensions of Sakamoto's musical persona, it also uncovers new ones. ~ Thom Jurek (syndetics)
Format: Music CD
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Simply the Best
Simply the Best is surrounded by some of the best situations a compilation can hope for. Tina Turner's work for Capitol past Private Dancer was spotty, she made a bunch of appearances on soundtracks and other artists' albums, and most of the tracks on Private Dancer are good enough to own twice. Almost half of Private Dancer shows up on Simply the Best, but you don't have to endure the way the original album spiraled down into slick fizzle. Instead you have to endure a misguided, pumped-up house remix of "Nutbush City Limits," but that's it. Everything else here is either top-notch or campy, certifiable fun. A duet with Rod Stewart on "It Takes Two" supplies the fun along with the new track, "I Want You Near Me" (Turner to lover: "You're so good with your hands/To help me with a hook or zip"). The two other new tracks tacked to the end beat out most of the album cuts the collection passes on, plus you get the bombastic "We Don't Need Another Hero (Thunderdome)" without having to buy a dull soundtrack. The oldest cut by years is the monolithic "River Deep-Mountain High," which is a bona fide classic but sonically out of place here. Reprogram the disc to play it at the beginning or end, skip the new "Nutbush" completely, and you've got sparkling, nearly perfect overview of Turner's postcomeback career. ~ David Jeffries (syndetics)
Format: Music CD
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