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The Elegance of Longing: Prefab Sprout’s Steve McQueen and Jordan: The Comeback

Prefab SproutPosted on

There are albums that shimmer with impossible ambition, records that sound like they were beamed in from some parallel dimension where pop music never surrendered its claim to sophistication. In the mid-to-late 1980s, while synthesizers ruled the airwaves and production grew increasingly bombastic, Paddy McAloon was writing songs of such disarming tenderness and linguistic agility that they seemed to exist outside time entirely. With Thomas Dolby’s production expertise, Prefab Sprout created two albums – Steve McQueen in 1985 and Jordan: The Comeback in 1990 – that stand as monuments to what pop music can achieve when intelligence and emotion . . .

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Tommy Hendrix :: Out Of The Mist (1958)

Jazz Midnite Jazz Tommy HendrixPosted on

Out Of The Mist (1958) is the lone trace of Tommy Hendrix, a cool-jazz crooner whose biography begins and ends with a solitary release. It’s an obscure album lost to time by an artist who seemingly never existed. Tommy Hendrix is a midcentury ghost, and Out Of The Mist is the sound of his specter briefly passing through our dimension, like a puff of cigarette smoke lingering in a cocktail lounge that nobody has ever set foot in . . .

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Posted on Jazz Midnite Jazz Tommy Hendrix

Apparat :: A Hum of Maybe

ApparatPosted on

For the last two and a half decades, Apparat’s Sascha Ring has been moving from austere, minimalist techno towards a lusher, though still beat-driven sound. A Hum of Maybe continues this trend, its pulse softened with pensive piano, trombone and fluttering voices . . .

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Momoko :: Momoko Gill

MomokoPosted on

“No Others” lurches and glides, its stuttering rhythm anchored by acoustic bass and skittering snare, its vocal melody light and fluid. The London-based Gill taps into bossa nova, tropicalia and fusion jazz on this and other tracks, blowing out phrases as iridescent as soap bubbles over hip-grinding, body-moving cadences. This first single from the multi-instrumentalist and composer is layered but unencumbered . . .

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Posted on Momoko

The Aquarium Drunkard Show: SIRIUS/XMU (7pm PST, Channel 35)

SIRIUSPosted on

Via satellite, transmitting from northeast Los Angeles — the Aquarium Drunkard Show on SIRIUS/XMU, channel 35. 7pm California time, Wednesdays.

34.1090° N, 118.2334° W . . .

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Posted on SIRIUS

Wet Tuna :: Vast

Wet TunaPosted on

The musical and psychic evolution of Matt “MV” Valentine traces a wide-ranging and gloriously unwieldy trajectory through sound and space for those intrepid enough to follow it. Spanning the earliest days of Tower Recordings, a bevy of solo albums, one of the most exhaustive and rewarding live recording archives you can dig into, and twenty-five years copiloting the fantastic voyage of MV&EE, Valentine has never stopped pushing the music outward and onward. And it doesn’t get any farther out than the freewheeling funkified flights of Wet Tuna . . .

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Posted on Wet Tuna

The Beach Boys :: We Gotta Groove – The Brother Studio Years

The Beach BoysPosted on

There is something undeniably miraculous about We Gotta Groove: The Brother Studio Years. Here, after nearly half a century, is not just a presentation of some of the strongest, strangest music Brian Wilson would ever record, but a celebration of it. In the late 1970s, many of these songs were dismissed out of hand as the work of a diminished artist, a man irrevocably changed by years of milkshakes and mental anguish. This reading was not entirely incorrect: the Brian of 1977 was indeed a different person. But as an artist, he was in full flower—more truly himself than . . .

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Posted on The Beach Boys

Tony Joe White :: The Real Thang (Deluxe Edition)

Tony Joe WhitePosted on

“She had disco sucks on the front of her t-shirt, a longneck bud in her hand…” So sings Tony Joe White on “Redneck Women,” courtesy of his eighth long-player, 1980’s The Real Thang. Core purveyor of the swamp rock amalgam alongside Bobby Charles, Lonnie Mack, Dale Hawkins, and Link Wray, White dropped this eight track album on Casablanca Records at the dawn of a new decade. Disco may have been in the ether, but this is swamp music mutating in real time . . .

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Posted on Tony Joe White

The Sha La Das :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview

The AD Interview The Sha La DasPosted on

Sometimes a photograph can transport you back in time. On the cover of Your Picture, the second album from Staten Island soul combo The Sha La Das, appears a picture of the family matriarch, Linda. It was the same case with 2018's Love in the Wind. The photos were taken by the 79-year-old Bill Schalda, who fronts The Sha La Das with his sons, Paul, Will and Carmine. Though aged by time, these images present a different world, but one that Schalda says feels as real and immediate to him as the present . . .

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Posted on The AD Interview The Sha La Das

Honey Slides VI :: Shakey Covers

Honey Slides Neil YoungPosted on

Slip into the latest edition of our annual mix of rarities and oddities from the far-out reaches of the Shakeyverse. This year, we've taken the opportunity to, er, shake things up with an hour’s worth of weird/wonderful Neil covers stretching from the early 1970s to the present day. A fun listen with plenty of highlights: Paris 1942 (with Moe Tucker on drums!) brutalizing “Revolution Blues,” Human Instinct’s Muswell Hillbillies-esque “Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere,” Winged Wheel’s instrumental flight through “Danger Bird,” Joan Shelley’s gorgeous “Little Wing” … and on and on . . .

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Posted on Honey Slides Neil Young

The Lagniappe Sessions :: The Nude Party

Lagniappe Sessions The Nude PartyPosted on

The Nude Party return this month with the release of their latest—and fourth—LP, Look Who's Back. Produced by Michael Rault in the desert at his studio in Joshua Tree, the seven-piece outfit boots up, gets loose, and locks in over the course of the record's nine tracks. Keeping with the vibe, this installment of the Lagniappe Sessions catches up with the band as they pay tribute to 3‑Track Shack era, North Carolina godhead Link Wray, the mutable, perennial gem that is Chuck Willis’s “C.C. Rider,” and the road-worn groove of “Six . . .

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Posted on Lagniappe Sessions The Nude Party

Cat Power :: What Would the Community Think at 30

Cat PowerPosted on

By 1996, Chan Marshall had already recorded two lo-fi albums—Dear Sir and Myra Lee—with Steve Shelley and Tim Foljan and moved from her native south to New York City. She had just turned 24 when she holed up at Easley Studios in Memphis to record album number three with the same team, her first time recording in a professional space. And while 1998's Mood Pix would serve as her breakout, this Matador debut captures the wild, raw, unfiltered power of Marshall’s art, an unpredictable electricity that runs through the songs, buzzing and fizzing and threatening . . .

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Posted on Cat Power

Wilder Maker :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview

The AD Interview Wilder MakerPosted on

Songwriter Gabriel Birnbaum’s latest with Wilder Maker, 2025's The Streets Like Beds Still Warm, leans into sophisto-pop shaded indie pop noir, careening from rootsy swagger into bursts of digital space jazz and ambient funk. Birnbaum narrates like a streetwise-type who’s been up way too long, finding warped and engaging hooks around every corner. He joins us to discuss . . .

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Posted on The AD Interview Wilder Maker

Videodrome :: Safe (1995)

VideodromePosted on

Safe has been called a psychological drama, a social satire, an allegory of the 1980s AIDS crisis, and a meditation on American culture in a post-industrial landscape. More than thirty years after its release, the film’s peculiar themes remain open to interpretation, continuing to invite discussion and debate . . .

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Posted on Videodrome

Silvia Tarozzi :: Lucciole

Silvia TarozziPosted on

Lucciole, the latest album from Italian violinist, composer, vocalist, and improviser Silvia Tarozzi, unfolds like a strange existential drama. A richly layered work in every sense—sonically, compositionally, thematically—it seemingly traces the arc of a life in surrealist form while blending chamber folk, classical, and avant-garde sounds. Tarozzi immerses her voice in an environment of strings, horns, guitars, keys, theremin, zither, and sound manipulation, creating something that feels breathtaking alive — the music is radiant, luminous like its namesake . . .

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Posted on Silvia Tarozzi