Album: Dreamin’ Wild
Label: Light in the Attic
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Donnie & Joe Emerson
Dreamin’ Wild
Donnie and Joe Emerson were 17 and 19 years old, respectively, when they holed up in a remote, family-built and financed home studio to record their debut album, 1979’s Dreamin’ Wild. And dreaming wild they were indeed with their impossibly naïve, endearingly sincere composite of white-boy funk, plasticine soul, lite-psych, and coke-frayed yacht rock, unintentionally striking upon a sound at once reverent and forward-thinking, in the process anticipating an entire generation of future DIY artists, few of which have been able to even remotely replicate the Emerson brothers’ wide-eyed experimentation and genuinely intoxicating tranquility. Rescued by the sonic archeologists at Light in the Attic after a self-released vinyl run that never traveled much outside the Emerson’s Pacific Northwest farming community, Dreamin’ Wild and, in particular, it’s suave lounge ballad highlight “Baby”, is now experiencing an unexpected renaissance via soundtrack spots and covers by indie stalwarts such as Ariel Pink and Hype Williams, somehow emerging as the year’s most modern, bracing pop artifact. Jordan Cronk
Album: Baby the Stars Shine Bright… Plus / Eden… Plus / Idlewild… Plus / Love Not Money… Plus
Label: Edsel
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Everything But the Girl
Baby the Stars Shine Bright… Plus / Eden… Plus / Idlewild… Plus / Love Not Money… Plus
Long before they hit it big with “Missing”, Everything but the Girl were one of the most consistently winning yet underappreciated bands in Britain. These reissues of the first four albums from Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt were a timely reminder of just how unique and diverse the duo’s talents were. Debut Eden (1984) was a classic that took in both folk and jazz. Love Not Money (1985) was a Smiths-influenced examination of cynical Thatcher-era England. Baby, the Stars Shine Bright (1986), the dark horse of the bunch, was a lush immersion in Spectorian orchestral pop, while Idlewild (1988) remains one of the duo’s most intimate works. With fine songcraft all around and plenty of worthy bonus tracks, these reissues present the great start of a grand career. John Bergstrom
Album: The Wall (Immersion Edition)
Label: EMI
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Pink Floyd
The Wall (Immersion Edition)
It’s easy to be cynical about super deluxe editions of albums that have already been re-released several times. After all, insofar as labels do have to make profits, the scheme of selling the same album to a customers four different times (the CD, the deluxe CD, the vinyl, the box set, etc) is undeniably lucrative. But there’s something about The Wall, one of the greatest rock operas of all time, that mandates it have presentation as extravagant as EMI’s Immersion series allows. After several swanky new editions of the Pink Floyd catalogue (including a similarly excellent box set of career peak Wish You Were Here), the Immersion series culminated in the seven-disc edition of The Wall, which came with novelty items ranging from faux backstage passes, art books, and a Wall-themed scarf. The element of gimmickry is present, yes, but the theatricality inherent to The Wall‘s elaborate stage production—documented in one of the bonus DVDs here—is reflected in the many components of this thorough edition. And this isn’t the case of showy packaging outstaging lazily rehashed CD mixes; this is as good as The Wall has ever sounded. For anyone looking to experience this dystopian rock opera in its purest form—short of seeing it onstage, that is—look no further than total Immersion. Brice Ezell
Album: …I Care Because You Do / Richard D. James Album
Label: Warp
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Aphex Twin
…I Care Because You Do / Richard D. James Album (vinyl)
These seminal albums by producer wunderkind Richard D. James under his Aphex Twin moniker had been out of print for years leading up to now. This oversight left fans to either face an eBay bilking or simply deal with their more ubiquitous, less sonically desirable ’90s CD pressings for almost 20 years. Then, licensed from London-Sire in North America, a label called 1972 released a vinyl reissue of 1994’s Selected Ambient Works Volume II in May of 2012, and announced it was also going to press his gnarliest full-lengths to wax. For some reason, perhaps having previously forgotten that they had two of the greatest electronic albums ever made sitting in their vault, this spurred Warp to release official represses of their own. Was there anything particularly remarkable about these specific editions of …I Care Because You Do and the Richard D. James Album? Not really. There are no bonus tracks, unique packaging, numbered editions, or anything extra to speak of. The only thing that made these vinyl reissues special is that they gave those who never had a chance to affordably own these classic albums on vinyl their long overdue opportunity to do so, albums that still sound groundbreaking almost two decades later, and sound that much better in their natural analog environment. Alan Ranta
Album: White Trash Heroes / All the Nation’s Airports / Vee Vee
Label: Merge
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Archers of Loaf
White Trash Heroes / All the Nation’s Airports / Vee Vee
Following last year’s deluxe edition repressing of Icky Mettle, Merge Records has since given the same treatment to the three remaining albums by Archers of Loaf, ‘90s indie rock also-rans that deserved to be anything but. As these records show, what made their output worth resurrecting from the ‘90s indie-label landfill was the fitful passion that ran through their music — while they could be as sloppy and fractured as Pavement or Sebadoh, the way their thick guitars and Eric Bachman’s desperate vocals relentlessly pushed the songs forward earns it a place as fitting background noise to any grunge moshpit. Vee Vee (1995) is more in the vein of the cult fave Icky Mettle, while All the Nations Airports (1996) and White Trash Heroes (1998) had the Archers mixing it up by slowing down and crafting less direct compositions, as well as adding tape loops and new instrumentation to their tool box. All three newly-remastered releases come packaged with extra discs that contain non-album singles, previously unreleased cuts, and a heaping of 4-track demos. AJ Ramirez
15 – 11
Album: The Fame Studios Story: 1961-1973
Label: Kent
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Various Artists
The Fame Studios Story: 1961-1973
During some of the most contentious uprisings in the modern Civil Rights movement, a group of music-loving geeks decided to open a recording studio above a drugstore in Florence, Alabama. In a state that gave us both Fred Shuttlesworth and Bull Connor, Fame Studios was engaging in a social experiment of its own: white “house band” musicians serving as backup for some of the hottest new talent in soul and R&B. Soon, Nashville and Memphis were having to compete with Muscle Shoals. Kent Records’ expansive three-disc collection masterfully captures that almost unclassifiable Muscle Shoals sound. With 75 tracks by Etta James, Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding, and Wilson Pickett for starters, The Fame Studios Story gives listeners an intimate look into a sound that deserves to be placed up with Motown and Stax in terms of cultural importance. Listening to the beautiful, sparse piano accompanying Aretha Franklin’s voice in “I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You)”, you can see why musicians made the road trip to this little spot in Alabama. Sean McCarthy
Album: The Return of the Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of
Label: Yazoo
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Various Artists
The Return of the Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of
Chances are you’ve already got some of these singles from the 1920s sitting around the house. Charlie Patton’s roaring “High Water Everywhere — Part 1”, Bukka White’s chugging proto-rap “The Panama Limited”, and J.P. Nester’s amazing “Train on the Island”, where fiddle and banjo meld into what resembles an electro-minimalist maelstrom — these are oft-compiled elsewhere. But unless you’re one of the demented dedicated collectors depicted in this compilation’s 50-page booklet, you don’t have them all in one place, and you probably don’t have some of the other Stuff. Maybe you need Joe Evans & Arthur McClain’s deadpan “Two White Horses” (a.k.a. “See That My Grave is Kept Clean”), complete with church bell and coffin sound effects. Or “Old Molly Hair” — which, according to Fiddling Powers himself, was “lost in the building of King Solomon’s temple,” and concerns the shooting of a bear and cuckleberries caught in hair. Smattered with Irish and Polish rarities, these 46 exuberant oldies invite you to dance away your death obsessions. Josh Langhoff
Album: The Studio Albums 1968-1979
Label: Rhino
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Joni Mitchell
The Studio Albums 1968-1979
Most music fans might be looking for bells and whistles in their reissues — songs that spelunkers found buried deep somewhere — but there’s something to be said for presenting the original music cleanly, in the original context. Collected here in a box are the 10 studio albums Joni Mitchell released between 1968 and 1979; no more, no less. We shouldn’t need anything more. To listen to them straight through is a remarkable journey, as we follow her rise to commercial success and her artistically fruitful efforts to shake it, letting her muse carry her through increasingly strange jazzy passages. If it seems like Mitchell is in the air again in 2012 — talks of a Hollywood biopic, the release of Katherine Monk’s attractive if disappointing book Joni: The Creative Odyssey of Joni Mitchell — we still seldom are getting a true picture of her as the artist she is. It seems the perfect time to revisit the music itself, and here’s a good starting place for doing it. Dave Heaton
Album: Going Blank Again: 20th Anniversary Edition
Label: Ride
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Ride
Going Blank Again: 20th Anniversary Edition
We’re at peak anti-shoegaze now. It became chillwave then it became seapunk, maybe? Kind of? Then it became alt-J, which is to say it became nothing. A weird time for Ride reissues, for the slow-motion car explosion that is “Leave Them All Behind”. On top of that, Going Blank Again was a particularly weird Ride album, one that would start them down the long road of renouncing heavy, hazy, shoegaze kingdom. They’d later overshoot and try to become a dance rock band, of all things, which might be part of the reason they’ve influenced as many bands as ’80s U2 has. But Going Blank Again has a newly triumphant Ride curious about their the scope of their abilities, letting harmonious vocal soar into the Great Beyond (“Mouse Trap”) and a lighter, more accessible touch mark their second album. I can’t think of a band today that’s interested in the defiant coolness wrapped up inside a track like “Cool Your Boots”. Of all the ’90s reissues lately, Going Blank Again is among those that feel the freshest. Davd Grossman
Album: Generation Terrorists: 20th Anniversary Edition
Label: Sony
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Manic Street Preachers
Generation Terrorists: 20th Anniversary Edition
“This one is for all the bands backstage you fuckin’ c*nts!!” — James Dean Bradfield, Headline Stage, Reading Festival ’92. Listening to their furious, wildly ambitious debut in 2012 it’s perhaps difficult for Manic virgins to fully appreciate quite how brilliantly odd the Manics once were. Or how insanely divisive. There was simply nothing like them on Planet Earth. They could have been aliens. Four scrawny punks (WELSH punks at that!) in the era of “Baggy”. “Feminized males” resplendent in eyeliner and white Levi’s. Working class valley boys freshly empowered by the molotov vitriol of Debord, Rimbaud and Burroughs. Like Rotten Johnny, anger was their energy not Madchester’s “Es and Whizz”. Generation Terrorists is the sound of the last gang in town, all guns a blazin’, frozen forever in sepia Butch & Sundance style. They never did “Destroy Rock n’ Roll” but they still blew a lot of impressionable young minds. This writer included. One Generation on it’s sweet victory to see Terrorists still kicking against the pricks. Matt James
10 – 6
Album: Liquid Swords: Chess Box Edition
Label: Get on Down
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GZA
Liquid Swords: Chess Box Edition
Part of the first wave of Wu-Tang Clan solo records released on the back of the group’s debut Enter the 36 Chambers, Liquid Swords stands out even from that quality-studded clutch of albums as the finest example of the Wu’s sonic superpowers. The albums is built on some of The RZA’s most vicious knuckler-duster beats, and the GZA wastes not one bar, coaxing a brutal side of his cousin’s musicianship and draining any hint of melody from the Wu-Tang sound. Most tracks feature a fellow clan member or two, but there’s no doubt that GZA is in control here, tying the record together with his dissonantly calm, ice cold drawl. Seventeen years on from its release, The Chess Box includes a bonus disc of instrumentals, new linear notes and, curiously, a mini chess set (one of The GZA’s most beloved pastimes, apparently). Dean Van Nguyen
Album: Dopesmoker
Label: Southern Lord
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Sleep
Dopesmoker
Southern Lord can do no wrong when it comes to high-quality vinyl, and the long-overdue reissue of Sleep’s hesher metal masterpiece Dopesmoker is no exception. The woefully underpressed album, released in 2003, was Sleep’s final document, and despite the strength of bassist/vocalist Al Cisneros’ hypnotic doom project Om, the doom and stoner scenes are a little lacking in the duo’s absence. Everyone involved in this reissue clearly feel this way, since no expense was spared in this luxurious package: the vinyl master captures the sound perfectly, and the Star Wars-inspired sleeve art is a clever way to pay homage to the plumes of marijuana smoke that were undoubtedly involved in the production of this epic. But, of course, the real reason to pick this up is for the music within: comprised of a single song clocking in at just over an hour, Dopesmoker is not for the faint of heart, nor those lacking time to spare. Rather, it’s for those willing to sit down for a good hour and take in a weighty, lofty piece of music that’s also a contemporary metal classic. Ten years may be too short a time for the majority records to get reissued, but Dopesmoker couldn’t have come soon enough. Brice Ezell
Album: The Lost Tapes
Label: Mute
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Can
The Lost Tapes
When German avant-garde band Can sold its famed Weilerswist studio in its entirety to Germany’s Rock N Pop Museum, over 30 hours of long-forgotten recordings were discovered during the studio’s dismantling. Distilled into a three-CD box set by Can’s Irmin Schmidt (with assistance from Jono Podmore), the The Lost Tapes included studio, soundtrack and live recordings touted as ‘unreleased’ rather than outtakes. Covering the years 1968 to 1977, it was a treasure trove for devotees of the ceaselessly experimental band. The box set reaffirmed Can’s eccentric brilliance, not that it was in doubt, with lengthy jams and shorter exploratory pieces running the gauntlet from throbbing cosmic jaunts to disorderly punked-up and funked-up Krautrock. Riches aplenty were scattered among the three discs — with a few tracks containing alternate snippets of well-known songs reworked on previously released albums. There’s no denying the continuing influence of Can, and The Lost Tapes showed exactly why the band is still hugely inspirational. Craig Hayes
Album: Graceland (The 25th Anniversary Edition)
Label: Sony/Legacy
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Paul Simon
Graceland (The 25th Anniversary Edition)
Paul Simon’s Graceland is timeless and knowing that it was released 25 years ago doesn’t date its effect or, more importantly, its music in the least. Simon’s songwriting on Graceland, a worldly mix of wartime reflections and utter appreciation for our home planet, is cradled by African rhythms and sophisticated guitar work. Critics accused it of watering down World music and Simon himself was taken to task for ignoring the cultural boycott against the Apartheid regime in South Africa, a subject detailed in the documentary, Under African Skies, included with the reissue. But the entire context clutters up the sheer perfection of songs like “Graceland”, “Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes”, and “The Myth of Fingerprints”. Graceland is an album to be shared with future generations as an important and relevant document of what music can be when someone as intuitive and observant as Paul Simon shares his vision. Scott Elingburg
Album: Blue Lines (2012 Remix/Remaster)
Label: Virgin
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Massive Attack
Blue Lines (2012 Remix/Remaster)
A true game-changer Blue Lines is simply one of the greatest British albums of all time. This remixed and remastered issue, released to celebrate, gulp, the 21st anniversary of the original release date, reconfirms what most of us who heard this first time around thought: here is a stunningly brilliant album. Formed out of the club and underground music scene of Bristol, it melded reggae, soul, hip-hop beats and vocals, dub and rock and slowed it down a touch (a result of the amounts of weed being smoked?). Coming together in the Dugout Club, the Wild Bunch would experiment with these sounds testing out the audience, fine honing their skills and becoming the incredibly tight unit of Massive Attack fame. Added to this was the genius of bringing Shara Nelson and Horace Andy in on vocals, a trick they repeated throughout their career with other singers.
Tracks like “Unfinished Symphony”, “Safe from Harm”, “Be Thankful for What You’ve Got” and “Daydreaming” still sound as fresh and vital now as they did then, although to single out just these tracks fails to recognize the album as a whole coherent piece. It is one of those rare occasions that the re-issue, with the extras that are added, aren’t really needed. The original album stands the test of time. Vital! Jez Collins
5 – 1
Album: The Expanding Universe
Label: Unseen Worlds / Philo
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Laurie Spiegel
The Expanding Universe
Working on an early analogue-digital hybrid system called GROOVE (“Generating Real-Time Operations on Voltage-Controlled Equipment”)in New York’s Bell Labs, Laurie Spiegel forged her own path throughout the 1970s. Her music was lighter than the stuffier academics with their wall-sized motherboards and far more intricate than kosmische and ambient contemporaries experimenting with similar sounds in Europe. The Expanding Universe, recorded in the ’70s and released on the folk-oriented Philo label in 1980, was initially her most visible output, but the slow growth a minor cult and the unexpected use of a piece of hers in The Hunger Games soundtrack allowed for a fantastic expansion of the original album’s four pieces into a full two disc set of material. Unlike many of her contemporaries, Spiegel did not seek to abandon traditional music altogether, but to expand on it, merging the atonal and the melodic and satiating the pre-existing tension between the folk of her idol John Fahey with the avant-garde futurism of folks like Morton Subotnick. Ultimately, Spiegel’s role as early synth pioneer may drive away listeners not apt to absorb the technics and theory behind it, but even with dense drones and unusual sequences this is a very accessible release in the milieu of 20th century classical music, and a delectable contemporary-sounding one to boot. Timothy Gabriele
Album: The 50th Anniversary Collection
Label: Sony/Legacy
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The Preservation Hall Jazz Band
The 50th Anniversary Collection
In this new box set, The 50th Anniversary Collection, Ben Jaffe gets to show off his family’s history with New Orleans music, as well as a few new wrinkles of his own. Authenticity is all over this four-CD collection. If you love New Orleans music, or jazz, or rhythm and blues, or funk, or rock, or music history, or fun, then your heart will thrill hearing this track and the other songs from the 1960s and 1970s scattered all over this collection. But this set isn’t just old-school nostalgia. The classic tracks from the 1960s and 1970s nestle alongside newer material from the last couple of decades, and glitzy guest artists like Tom Waits and Andrew Bird. High marks all around—as well as a renewed interest in what comes next for this hot “new” American jazz group. Matt Cibula
Album: Loveless / Isn’t Anything / EPs 1988-1991
Label: Sony
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My Bloody Valentine
Loveless / Isn’t Anything / EPs 1988-1991
At the time of writing, fans are eagerly anticipating the mythical next My Bloody Valentine album, slated for release by the end of 2012. Then again, what’s the point of putting yourself at the mercy of Kevin Shields’ very unreliable whims, since there’s no chance it’ll be better than Loveless, right? Appropriately enough, the reissue of the pantheon-level album — along with the re-release of Isn’t Anything and the EPs 1988-1991 compilation — reminds you of what’s transcendent and frustrating about Shields and co. From the shape-shifting swathes of guitar on “Only Shallow” to the immersive dream-pop of “When You Sleep” to the clubby space-rock epic “Soon”, Loveless hasn’t aged or become dated one bit — it’s still as revelatory now as the first time you heard it, the rare album where each instant feels as rich and deep as the complete whole the pieces add up to. Yet true to form, Shields seems to be testing his ever-indulgent fans with the remastered set, offering up two mixes infinitesimally different from one another with none of the bonus ephemera usually tossed in to get you to buy your favorite record again. (If the MBV reissues are even available to you, since the trio of recordings remains import-only in the U.S.) With this version of Loveless, Shields only convinces us not to hold our collective breath for him to top his best work, since he still seems to be stuck perfecting what was already perfect. Arnold Pan
Album: Blur 21: The Box
Label: Virgin
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Blur
Blur 21: The Box
Blur have been together for 21 years yet they’ve only been a working band for less than three-fourths of that time. There’s really only one other band that has successfully covered so much musical ground in such a short time and that, my friends, is the Beatles. To mark this odd-numbered anniversary (and possibly the end of the band as we know it), Blur has released the exhaustive Blur 21, a 21-disc collection that dwarfs career-spanning retrospectives by bands with far lengthier careers. Blur’s seven studio albums have been remastered and are being sold individually, each with a disc of corresponding supplemental material (b-sides, demos, BBC performances, etc.). Those 14 discs are included in Blur 21, along with four more discs of rarities as well as three full-length DVDs. Will you ever listen to all 18 hours of Blur 21 in one sitting? Hopefully not. Even the most dedicated fan would have a hard time making it through the eleven minute version of “She’s So High” or the band’s dreadful cover of Rod Stewart’s “Maggie May”. Is it worth having the entire recorded output of one of our all-time great bands on your shelf in a tidy blue box? Absolutely. Daniel Tebo
Album: Copper Blue / Beaster / File Under: Easy Listening (Deluxe Editions)
Label: Merge
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Sugar
Copper Blue / Beaster / File Under: Easy Listening (Deluxe Editions)
It was a good year for Bob Mould, considering he put out a great solo record and Merge Records reissued his catalog with his early ’90s outfit Sugar. And while Sugar wasn’t exactly ignored, they have gotten lost in the shuffle a bit in the story of rock music in the ’90s, and these reissues go a long way towards reminding us just how powerful that buzzsaw wall of distortion Mould gave us, and the sweet hooks behind it, were and are still today. We of course get crisp remasters of Copper Blue and File Under: Easy Listening, but it may be the slightly moodier but excellent EP Beaster that gets to shine new here, and deservedly so. On top of hearing what is essentially a flawless (if brief) discography from Mould’s second seminal band, we also get live shows that show just how furiously the band could deliver these tunes live (seriously, it ramps up to double-time in spots and never skips a beat). In the end, these reissues help us re-see Sugar as a more seminal band, as one that birthed a million crunching power chords that came after them. Of course, they also remind us that none of those followers ever struck as hard, or as sweetly, as Sugar did. If you haven’t gone back to these albums yet, Merge’s jam-packed reissues leave you no excuse not to. For rock music fans of any kind, this is essential listening. Matthew Fiander