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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Stoned Cold Country: A 60th Anniversary Tribute to the Rolling Stones
(syndetics)
Format: Music CD
Availability: All copies in use
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Broken Hearts & Dirty Windows: Songs of John Prine
What's instantly noticeable and commendable about this tribute to the songwriting of John Prine is that none of the artists chosen to do the honors are contemporaries of the author. Prine, in his early sixties at the time of the album's release, had been a fixture on the singer/songwriter scene since the early '70s, long before most (any?) of the participants were even born. That's a smart move by the compilers: by removing the context in which these songs were first written and recorded, the younger artists were free to reinterpret them on their own merits. Issued simultaneously with Prine's own In Person & on Stage live album, Broken Hearts & Dirty Windows completes a retrospective picture of Prine's accomplishments to the date of this release. Some of the performers choose from among Prine's better-known material, while others dig deeper into the catalog. Old Crow Medicine Show's take on "Angel from Montgomery" is reminiscent of the early music of the Band, old-timey yet contemporary too. The album opens with Justin Vernon of Bon Iver, who brings a faraway gospel feel to "Bruised Orange (Chain of Sorrow)," the title track of a 1978 Prine album, and it closes with Those Darlins' surfy take on one of Prine's more humorous efforts, "Let's Talk Dirty in Hawaiian." Some of the most impressive interpretations veer from Prine's arrangements: Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band turn up the indie rock volume on "Wedding Day in Funeralville" and Drive-By Truckers give a bar band rawness to "Daddy's Little Pumpkin." Justin Townes Earle's "Far from Me" is low-key and imbued with an easygoing rural quality, My Morning Jacket turn "All the Best" into an alt-country singalong, and Deer Tick (featuring Liz Isenberg) are reminiscent of Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris' duets with their front-porch "Unwed Fathers." ~ Jeff Tamarkin (syndetics)
Format: Music CD
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With A Hammer
Yaeji's 2020 mixtape What We Drew was a much more introspective, detailed work than the artist's clubby early EPs, trading hedonistic hip-house tracks for sophisticated left-field pop tunes celebrating friends, family, and everyday life. With a Hammer, her first proper album, is both a protest record and a self-therapy session, as well as a work of nostalgic fantasy. Composed during the early 2020s amidst constant political unrest and waves of resistance against police brutality and hate crimes, the album channels anger over the unjust state of the world as well as decades of repressed personal feelings. She continues to switch between English and Korean lyrics, reflecting her time split between the United States and South Korea throughout her life, and her music embraces formative influences from anime to Korean alternative rock. First single "For Granted" reflects on her journey so far ("I don't even know how it got to be this way, how it got to be so good"), building up to a frenetic drum'n'bass head rush, and she urges herself to remember her previous selves during the nervous trip-hop tune "Passed Me By." The album's title track is one of several songs about destroying everything and starting over again, but she finds ways to vent her aggression that don't involve screaming and making noise. "1 Thing to Smash" is a contemplative, flute-driven ambient piece that ends with guest collaborator Loraine James repeating "One thing I like to do is smash it up in two." Yaeji mentions feeling suffocated near the beginning of "Ready or Not," which sets glitchy vocals and sophisticated beats to a more smoothly flowing synth bed. The closest the album comes to Yaeji's more house-influenced early sound is the percolating "Happy," a duet with Nourished by Time that circles back to the line "You fall in love with yourself when no one's around you." Even though With a Hammer is Yaeji's most cathartic work to date, it's still playful and optimistic, preferring joy, comfort, and creativity over rage as a form of release. ~ Paul Simpson (syndetics)
Format: Music CD
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Gettin' Old
Luke Combs kind of half-smirks on the cover of Growin' Up, but on Gettin' Old, its rush-released companion, he looks deadly serious. The shift in presentation is superficial because, by any other measure, Gettin' Old simply offers more of what Growin' Up delivered -- a whole lot more, really. Boasting 18 songs, Gettin' Old is nearly a half-hour longer than Growin' Up, a substantial increase in size that is impossible to ignore because Gettin' Old has no narrative flow; it merely has one song pile up after another. The lack of a narrative thrust isn't necessarily a hindrance as it's clear that Combs' intent is to give the people what they want -- namely, a record that stays in a particularly smooth, reflective mood for over an hour. Occasionally, he pumps up a hook or melody, sometimes he emphasizes a bit of twang or fingerpicking, yet these are ultimately accents to burnished, mellow grooves distinguished by his soulful guttural growl. His cover of Tracy Chapman's modern folk standard "Fast Car" is less a testament to his interpretive prowess than it is to how the rest of the album is handsome, polished craft, songs that hit their marks with the same precision Combs gives to his singing. The sharp, skillful execution turns Gettin' Old into an appealingly professional record, one that's almost slick enough to quash nagging suspicions that this is nothing more than an alluringly polished piece of product. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine (syndetics)
Format: Music CD
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Miracle-level
Nineteen albums into their career, Deerhoof still find new ways to express themselves. Somewhat surprisingly, Miracle-Level marks the first time they have completed an album in a professional studio and their first album sung entirely in Japanese, aspects that subtly but significantly contribute to its imaginatively direct approach. Deerhoof have never made a bad-sounding album, but working from start to finish with producer Mike Bridavsky -- whose adorable, Internet-famous, late cat Lil BUB provided the inspiration for "My Lovely Cat!," a quintessential example of the band's spiky-sweet noise pop -- at Winnipeg, Manitoba's No Fun Club highlights the finer points of their playing and how it all comes together. Miracle-Level's unadorned sound stands out even more from Deerhoof's two previous albums, Future Teenage Cave Artists and Actually, You Can. Though the latter was often bleak and the former was festive, they shared a densely layered production style reflecting their remotely recorded sessions and painstaking production tweaks. This time, Deerhoof spent more time practicing than recording, and Bridavsky does their performances justice by letting them ring out. Hearing the band play together in the same room electrifies songs like the turbulent instrumental "Jet-Black Double-Shield," where it feels like listeners are nestled in the kick drum and the guitars are wrapping around them. Miracle-Level is also a reminder that Deerhoof don't need loops or extra effects to create magic. In fact, stripping things down makes the most of the songs' quicksilver changes. Sung by Greg Saunier, "Everybody, Marvel" combines shoegazey chords, a low-slung rhythm, and a guitar lick that gets a little longer each time it's repeated into an improbable, endearing collage that's unmistakably Deerhoof. Gently jazzy moments such as "The Little Maker" and "The Poignant Melody" use the band's communal energy just as creatively as the spitfire waltz of "Sit Down, Let Me Tell You a Story" or "And the Moon Laughs," another fine example of how they reassemble stadium-sized riffs and drums to suit their own restlessness. Presiding over all these contrasts and surprises is Satomi Matsuzaki. She's rarely sounded finer, and the title track's evolution from pensive piano ballad to funky organ and guitar workout (and back again) underscores her commanding presence no matter what the music sounds like. Miracle-Level is also an inspired continuation of Future Teenage Cave Artists and Actually, You Can's theme of fighting seemingly insurmountable forces with optimism. "Phase-Out All Remaining Non-Miracles by 2028" would be a policy worth endorsing even if it wasn't backed by strutting guitars and cowbell. One of many songs dedicated to music's ability to unite and empower people, "Momentary Art of Soul!" eventually locks into a hypnotic, relentless groove that feels like it could level anything in its way. On moments like these, Deerhoof aren't just hoping for or expecting miracles, but making them happen. Miracle-Level is about seizing the opportunity to come together to create music and change -- a message that, like their other 2020s work, is just as eternal as it is timely. ~ Heather Phares (syndetics)
Format: Music CD
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False Lankum
Even the cruelest ballads can be blunted into mere bittersweetness to better suit the palates of listener and interpreter alike. Not so for Lankum, Ireland's uncompromising purveyors of doom folk. The Dublin quartet has been around since the early 2000s, though it was their 2017 signing to Rough Trade that eventually thrust them into the critical spotlight. Albums like Between the Earth and Sky and The Livelong Day revealed a band of singular intensity, able to translate ancient songs in ways that were innovative, yet primal. Uniquely, for all of their experimental droning and psychedelic edginess, they also seem utterly devoted to their source material. False Lankum, the band's third outing for the label, is a nihilistic, almost comically bleak trek into the dark heart of folk music. A wounded backwash of dissonance plays throughout most of the set, creating a sense of unease as songs spill into one another in a gapless sequence. The magnetic Radie Peat opens the album with her reading of "Go Dig My Grave," a suicide ballad that moves from mournful austerity into a full-on horror show during its eight-minute run. The fiddle reel, "Master Crowley's," played here by a phalanx of concertinas, devolves into a coughing death march and is one of the most thrilling tracks on the album. Not even Gordon Bok's wistful maritime classic "Clear Away in the Morning" is safe from Lankum's black cloud which transforms it into a desolate sea burial. Heartbroken as it is, the gorgeous "Newcastle" offers something of a mid-album reprieve, as does "Lord Abore and Mary Flynn," two tracks that bring a welcome touch of sweetness to the proceedings. Augmenting the traditional songs are two well-placed Lankum originals, the swirling "Netta Perseus" and the 12-minute closer "The Turn," the final quarter of which is a squalling disaster sequence that will challenge even the hardiest listener. False Lankum sounds like industrial music from the 19th century and provides all the comfort of a late period Scott Walker album. And yet, the road of Lankum's career has resolutely led them to create this: a difficult but defining statement made at the height of their powers. ~ Timothy Monger (syndetics)
Format: Music CD
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Babylon: Music From the Motion Picture
Composer Justin Hurwitz's fifth collaboration with director Damien Chazelle was an epic one, with the over-three-hour Babylon focused on the transition between silent and sound film in the late 1920s and early '30s -- a technological advancement with devastating consequences for many in Hollywood. Coinciding with the height of the jazz age, Babylon's 97-minute score finds Hurwitz creating a stylized sound rooted in big-band swing but not quite authentic to the period. In addition to the occasional use of a 100-piece orchestra, the score features elements of rock, carnival music, classical music, cabaret, and overseas adventure conspicuously worked into cues with such descriptive titles as "Kinescope Ragtime Piano," "Waikele Tango," and "Damascus Thump." With a trumpet player among the film's main cast of characters, soloists credited with score contributions include noted trumpeters Sean Jones and Dontae Winslow. The film's hedonist opening -- set at an estate party replete with crowd-surfing, overdoses, and an elephant -- is accompanied by the boisterous "Welcome," a four-minute big-band romp in the vicinity of "Sing, Sing, Sing." Hurwitz soon introduces the poignant "Manny and Nellie's Theme" on what sounds like an out-of-tune bar piano before diving headlong into a diverse set of cues, most of which maintain a distinctly playful, freewheeling tone. A small combo eventually introduces the more sophisticated, recurring "Gold Coast Rhythm" theme, and by the arrival of the track-48 "Finale," the score has done its job, assuming the task at hand was to reflect the film's myriad excesses. Already a two-time Oscar and Grammy winner coming into Babylon (all for La La Land), Hurwitz -- a scriptwriter and TV producer as well as composer -- still had yet to compose for any other filmmaker. ~ Marcy Donelson (syndetics)
Format: Music CD
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Cookin' with Jaws and the Queen: the legendary Prestige Cookbook albums
Released to celebrate tenor jazz saxophonist Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis' centennial, it showcases the influential soul-jazz partnership of Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis and organist Shirley Scott. (syndetics)
Format: Music CD
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Gloria
Sam Smith unconvincingly touted Love Goes as experimental, so when the same adjective was used to promote 2023 follow-up Gloria, there was reason for skepticism -- even in the wake of the second pre-album single, the undulating hit Kim Petras collaboration "Unholy." A voyeuristic tale of a family man leaving his unsuspecting wife behind for exploration at a gay club, "Unholy" is without doubt anomalous in Smith's songbook. It's also the singer's most distinctive dance-pop song since "Latch," if only on a personal level, its sinuous Arabic scale incorporated by established producers ILYA and Omar Fedi. The gamble of sorts paid off when Smith and Petras made history as the first publicly non-binary and transgender artists to top the Billboard Hot 100. Gloria otherwise presents a challenge only to those who expect piano ballads -- there are none -- and are averse to dance music with flashes of disco, reggaeton, and mid-'90s deep house. It's largely unobtrusive and serviceable, distinguished mostly by Smith's elastic voice and increased specificity and complexity to the reflective and romantic songs. Additionally, interludes with historic sound bites from trans activist Sylvia Rivera and the Lilli Vincenz documentary Gay and Proud speak directly to liberation. The more individual touches are to be found in the ballads, as the songs for the dancefloor, and a trap-tinged downtempo number with Jessie Reyez, are generalized in their evocations of heartache, flirtation, and sexual impulsiveness. "Love Me More" starts the album boldly with Smith open about their struggle with self-esteem. In "How to Cry," they're sliding out from under the thumb of a cold, controlling lover, isolated from family and friends. The choral "Gloria" is the album's most powerful moment, the sound of Smith shedding their burdens. Not to be missed is "Six Shots," a pure R&B slow jam that sounds both classic and contemporary. Although it sticks out here almost as much as "Unholy" and the title song, it's unfortunately destined to be classified as a deep cut. ~ Andy Kellman (syndetics)
Format: Music CD
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Gasms
Bearing a title not even Leon Ware would have likely considered, this album is Smokey Robinson's first project based on original material since 2009's Time Flies When You're Having Fun. Eager to make it known that he still has warm thoughts to spare, Robinson titles seven of these nine songs using "you," "me," or "I" -- in stating what he does, wants to do, or has done for him -- and the other two are "Roll Around" and "Gasms." The coasting title song and more blues-tinged groove "I Fit in There," the opening and closing numbers, are humorously raunchy enough to function as surrogate Marvin Sease jams. Robinson takes it to another level by not holding back with his warbling vibrato, adding a lilt to each of his many assurances that his lady pleases him and that he belongs. For the most part, however, Gasms is a collection of clean and pleasant love songs Robinson tailors (with occasional co-writers) for his soft, sweet vocals. Like Time Flies, it's an organic session that uses many of the same musicians, including keyboardist David Garfield, bassist Freddie Washington, drummer Ricky Lawson, and guitarists Paul Jackson, Jr. and Ray Parker, Jr. The players keep it low-key enough to frame Robinson's voice without drowning it out, and the material generally sounds current without concessions to mainstream R&B. Apart from the deliberately brow-raising content, it's truly jarring only when Robinson briefly gets negative with the description "totally wack" -- rhymed with "sugar shack," most certainly not in reference to Jimmy Gilmer & the Fireballs. ~ Andy Kellman (syndetics)
Format: Music CD
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