It was a lost weekend, Los Angeles, 1973-74.
Tonight Jimmy Olson, drummer for Saint Small, texted me a photo of the album he just picked up over at Barely Brothers (another reason to live in Saint Paul, that store run by my neighbor and shopkeeper Mike Elias!), Nilsson’s Pussy Cats, famously recorded with his pal John Lennon while the later was spending too much time at (and under) the bars of Los Angeles, circa 1973-4. At the exact same time, a few Saint Small blocks away, I was listening to the new live release from Neil Young, recorded at the Roxy in LA in the September 1973.
Pussy Cats is a shambolic misstep during which Nilsson ruptured his vocal cords (and kept it from Lennon, nearly destroying his beautiful voice). It’s also one of the most fascinating records of Nilsson’s utterly fascinating career. Lennon and rock star buddies like drummers Keith Moon and Jim Keltner and Ringo (at one point all three on the same track!), Jesse Ed Davis, Klaus Voorman, and Bobby Keys were among those who chipped in for a “Toot and a Snore in ’74” (as one bootleg session that also included Macca and Stevie Wonder was later titled), while Nilsson and Lennon tackled oldies like “Rock Around the Clock” or the more recent “Many Rivers to Cross” and even Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues” with Nilsson’s voice becoming unhinged from too many nights with too many “milkshakes” (Lennon’s name for Brandy Alexanders). In short, it could only have been made at this exact moment in rock history, LA circa early ’74.
The sixties were over, hung over, but the energy and infusion that punk and disco and hiphop had not yet arrived, so the ruling rock class were indulged like never before or since. And while the results are mixed, the many flaws of this album are precisely what makes it so fascinating.
Meanwhile, across town, at nearly the same time (summer of ’73), Neil Young is numbing himself with a lot of tequila. He wants to disappear from his world, because although he loved the fame (and money) and adulation brought about by being part of the biggest post-’60s hippie rockers / first corporate rock band CSNY, and having the biggest success of his solo career with Harvest and “Heart of Gold,” he was quickly learning that, as Lennon once sang, money can’t buy you love, nor can it save a life overtaken by drugs. With the 1972/3 deaths of Crazy Horse guitarist Danny Whitten and CSNY roadie Bruce Berry, Neil was looking at the dark side of the rock and roll lifestyle, and he didn’t like what he saw. Coming off the success of Harvest, it took a bold artist to make an album as raw and intense as Tonight, with its songs about scoring drugs, losing inspiration and perspective, and being bummed out in LA, despite the fame. The stories behind the sessions are pretty legendary, with Young assembling a great band that included Nils Lofgren, Ben Keith, and Crazy Horse’s Billy Talbot and Ralph Molina, then playing the same 9 songs over and over at SIR Rehearsal studios in LA, where producer David Briggs ran a 16-track tape machine night after night, culling the album from raw performances and no overdubs. The vocals careen from whisper to anger, and the effect is as far from “Heart of Gold” as imaginable. The music was weird and unsettling, and after a 3-night run of shows at the Roxy Theatre, the project was shelved while Neil released On the Beach before doubling back for Tonight’s the Night. Last week Neil released the live shows from 1973 at the Roxy. It’s an even more unsettling experience live, with the audience hearing unreleased songs while a dark, leering Young leads the band with power and cynicism. He’s down in the abyss, with Tonight’s the Night eventually becoming the crown jewel of what’s termed the Ditch Trilogy (named because he once said he found life after Harvest boring “in the middle of the road” so he promptly headed his music towards the ditch). but it’s no easy listen, and no smiley face ’70s have a nice day.
The reason I thought to write about this now was my sudden realization that these records were created in LA within weeks of each other – something I’d never considered, mostly because Tonight wouldn’t come out until late 1975, despite being recorded in the fall of ’73. Lennon, Nilsson, and Young were all at low points in their careers in some ways, crashing down after the highs of the ’60s, drunk in LA, and searching for meaning in the one city where funhouse mirrors distort what’s real more than probably any place on earth. What each wound find wasn’t pretty, but it made for captivating art.
And from there I thought (as I sometimes do) about Father John Misty, and how Josh Tillman discovered his voice when he abandoned being Josh, moved to LA, and embraced a surreality as FJM that included overt references to this period in Neil Young’s career (“I rode to Malibu on a dune buggy with Neil / He said “you’re gonna have to drown me down on the beach If you ever want to write the real”
And I said “I’m sorry, Young man what was your name again?”). I don’t know what any of it means, but it’s all the fascinating cosmic connections we draw for each other around place, history, art, and music. I’m glad I’m not living in LA in 1974, yet I also kinda wish I coulda.
Walter Wolfman Washington is a soulful musician of rare talent, as well as a deep thinker and hip philosopher, and his hometown is New Orleans. Walter has cut his teeth for the last 50 years playing everywhere from European festivals to bars that Google Maps will never find. New Orleans is notorious for its wildness, parades, and celebrations. New Orleans is Mardi Gras, but it’s also the uptown class of Allen Toussaint and hip style and language of Dr. John. Walter has always embodied both, but finally we have a set of songs that reflects the yin to Walter’s bring-the-party yang. This is the record that we all have known he has in him. This is the night after that party, or maybe just the after party. He’s been given free rein to express himself, and that’s special. Producer Ben Ellman has assembled a sympathetic group of musicians from keyboardists Jon Cleary and Ivan Neville to a versatile rhythm section of bassist James Singleton and drummer Stanton Moore. Soul Queen of New Orleans Irma Thomas lends her voice to a cut and matches Wolfman note for note. Those two go back a long way. Walter played guitar in Irma’s band in the late 1960s. Can you picture how much fun that might have been? And this is their first recording together. His future is his past indeed. — DAVID KUNIAN, WWOZ New Orleans/ Curator, New Orleans Jazz Museum
Limited 180gm vinyl LP pressing including digital download. 2018 release. Years solidifies the point: Sarah Shook & The Disarmers have moved from getting people’s attention to commanding it. The bands’ new album-with it’s sharpened songwriting, unique perspective, deepened sound and roll-up-your-sleeves attitude-will grab you by the collar and put a defiant finger to your chest. It is resolute, blunt, and unflinching.
Anna & Elizabeth’s The Invisible Comes to Us taps into their imagination-fueled arsenal to present an extraordinary work of unique, genre-bending storytelling and sonic exploration. Lauded by many well-known musicians and widely loved for their moving minimalist arrangements, Anna & Elizabeth’s partnership pioneers new ways of presenting old songs and stories to modern audiences. Co-producer Benjamin Lazar Davis (Cuddle Magic) and legendary avant-rock drummer Jim White (The Dirty Three, Xylouris White) assist in the duo’s vision of breathing life and new perspective into the crackling and disintegrating recordings and artifacts of the past. Rarely does an album based on traditional folk music resonate so strongly in modern times.
The 20th volume of our flagship Eccentric Soul series has all the boxes checked: Gun-toting, skip-tracing record producers, child stars, rip-offs, the “World’s Greatest Bail Bondsman,” swindles, soaring falsettos, and a dwindling rust-belt cityscape offering mere glimpses of hope before the record industry escaped for the coasts. Helmed by the O’Jays Bobby Massey, Saru was a creative vortex that pulled Cuyahoga County’s greatest talent in, making a strong case for Cleveland to contend with Detroit, Philly, and Memphis as America’s soul music’s capital. Includes obscure and unknown sides from the Out of Sights, the Elements, Pandella Kelly, David Peoples, Sir Stanley, the Ponderosa Twins + 1, Ba-Roz, Bobby Dukes, and of course, the O’Jays.
There’s a riot going on. You don’t need me, or Yo La Tengo, to tell you that. These are dark times, in our heads as much as in the streets. It’s easy to lose contact with the ground. Confusion and anxiety intrude into daily life and cause you to lose your compass. There are times that call for anthems, something to lift you out of your slump and put fire in your feet. And sometimes what is needed is a balm, a sound that will wrap around you and work out the knots in your neck. For Yo La Tengo, this is a slow-motion action painting. Ira Kaplan, Georgia Hubley, and James McNew did it all themselves, in their rehearsal studio, with no engineer and no complicated equipment (John McEntire later assisted in mixing). They did not rehearse together beforehand; they turned on the recorder and let things coalesce. Songs came together over long stretches, sometimes as much as a year going by between parts. You’d never guess this, since the layers are joined with such a liquid brush. You’d imagine most of the songs had sprung forth whole, since they will enter your head that way. Within two listens you will be powerless to resist the magnetic draw of “Shades of Blue,” will involuntarily hear “She May, She Might” on your internal jukebox first thing in the morning and “Let’s Do It Wrong” late at night. While there’s a riot going on, Yo La Tengo will remind you what it’s like to dream. The sound burbles and washes and flows and billows. If records were dedicated to the cardinal elements, this one would be water. There are shimmery hazes, spectral rumbles, a flash of backward masking. You are there. And even if your mind is not unclouded–shaken, misdirected, out of words and out of time–you can still float, ride the waves of an ocean deeper than your worries, above the sound and above the Sound.
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Will Toledo always knew he would return to Twin Fantasy. He never did complete the work. Not really. Never could square his grand ambitions against his mechanical limitations. Listen to his first attempt, recorded at nineteen on a cheap laptop, and you’ll hear what Brian Eno fondly calls “the sound of failure” – thrilling, extraordinary, and singularly compelling failure. Will’s first love, rendered in the vivid teenage viscera of stolen gin, bruised shins, and weird sex, was an event too momentous for the medium assigned to record it. Early next year, on the heels of the smashing success of Teens of Denial, Car Seat Headrest will release a new version of Twin Fantasy. “It was never a finished work,” Will says, “and it wasn’t until last year that I figured out how to finish it.” He has, now, the benefit of a bigger budget, a full band in fine form, and endless time to tinker. According to him, it took eight months of mixing just to get the drums right. But this is no shallow second take, sanitized in studio and scrubbed of feeling. This is the album he always wanted to make. It sounds the way he always wanted it to sound. It’s been hard, stepping into the shoes of his teenage self, walking back to painful places. There are lyrics he wouldn’t write again, an especially sad song he regards as an albatross. But even as he carries the weight of that younger, wounded Will, he moves forward. He grows. He revises, gently, the songs we love so much. In the album’s final moments, in those apologies to future me’s and you’s, there is more forgiveness than fury. This, Will says, is the most vital difference between the old and the new: he no longer sees his own story as a tragedy. 
To commemorate the 10th anniversary of Tegan and Sara’s classic 2007 album, The Con, Warner Bros. Records will release The Con X: Covers. The new album features 14 of Tegan and Sara’s favorite artists, each interpreting a song from the original album.
Seven-LP collection features original mono mixes for all of the singer’s studio albums, but not the post-humously released LPs, The Immortal Otis Redding or Love Man. All of the LPs replicate the original packaging, from the sleeve artwork down to small details like the original record labels (Volt and Stax) and catalog numbers, all housed together in a side-loading slipcase. Several of these albums are long out-of-print and back on vinyl in mono for the first time in years.
The new DELUXE EDITION offers up eight unreleased bonus tracks that feature an early version of “Outtasite (Outta Mind)” and “When You Find Trouble,” which is the last studio recording made by Uncle Tupelo. In the album’s liner note, Stirratt writes “Listening back to records 15 to 20 years later, I’m always taken with the confident but guileless quality of bands in their 20s, that strange mixture of innocence and conviction, and this is one of those records—we were barely a band at that point, just trying to make some noise.”
skillfully remastered from original board tapes, demos, and session masters, this collection is an authoritative chronicling of the wellspring and maturation of Grant Hart, Greg Norton and Bob Mould – three Minneapolis teenagers who’d go on to become the most heralded trio of the American punk underground. Follow the Hüskers to their earliest gigs in 1979, through extensive road dog touring, and to the start of their partnership with West Coast tastemaker SST in 1983. This primitive stage in the fabled career of Hüsker Dü is presented as a deluxe box set and packaged with a hardbound book crammed full of never before seen photos, flyers, and a sprawling essay with participation from the band. Spread across four LPs or three CDs, 47 of the 69 songs compiled here are previously unissued. Also included are Statues/Amusement, In A Free Land, Everything Falls Apart, and an alternate recording of the Land Speed Record set.
Considered one of the best Rock N Roll Christmas albums and ranked #9 on Rolling Stone’s 25 Greatest Christmas Albums of All Time list, Soul Christmas was originally released as a compilation on Atlantic’s sub label, Atco Records back in 1968. It is a terrific collection of holiday songs featuring R&B legends Otis Redding, Carla Thomas, Solomon Burke, Joe Tex, Clarence Carter, William Bell, King Curtis, and Booker T. & The MGs. This title will get the high-class ROG treatment with the album coming in a tip-on single pocket sleeve from Stoughton, mastered from the best possible source and lacquers cut at Sam Phillips Recording Service in Memphis. For this title, fans will get the opportunity to vote between several different color-way options for the vinyl: solid red, solid green, solid white or clear with a mix of red, white, and green.
Widely considered to be both The Smiths’ finest work and one of the greatest albums ever made, ‘The Queen Is Dead’ has cast a significant influence over subsequent generations since it was first released in the summer of 1986. Now Warner Bros. Records can confirm details of a newly mastered and expanded 5LP box – featuring the 2017 master of the album, additional recordings and the ‘Live In Boston’ recording.
As the hippie movement hurdled towards its emanate demise, bad vibes infiltrated the rock world. Tainted LSD, loud motorcycles, and a series of brutal deaths spawned inspiration for guitar-wielding teenagers across the globe. Implementing deafening fuzz and satanic screams to create their proto-metal monstrosities, short-lived stoner bands pressed their lysergic experiments in microscopic quantities before blacking out entirely. Lifted from the ashes of the acid rock hell fire are 18 distorted tales of dope fiends, pill poppers, and the baddest of trips. Deluxe 2LP comes housed in a blacklight poster-style jacket, replete with flocking and lysergic neon. 24 pages documenting the creeping existential dread of the hard rock underground are tucked into the gatefold pocket alongside two dead dinosaur-heavy LPs.
record ever. To make a gigantic rock record but with Greg Kurstin’s sense of melody and arrangement… Motorhead’s version of Sgt. Pepper… or something like that.” So speaks Grohl of the mission statement made manifest in Foo Fighters’ ninth epic, the aptly-titled Concrete and Gold. The album was written and performed by Foo Fighters, produced by Greg Kurstin and Foo Fighters, and mixed by Darrell Thorp. Initial writing sessions only involved Grohl, who continued being in seclusion from the band, although he initially struggled, feeling “out of practice” and “creatively atrophied” due to his longer than usual break from music. After twelve or thirteen rough ideas were mapped out, he ran them by the band, who shared Grohl’s belief that he was on the right track with the material.
