VIA PRESS RELEASE | For seven decades, Verve Records has been home to some of the most important artists and recordings in jazz. Always Hip: Verve at 70 brings the label’s year-long 70th anniversary celebration to a close with a new collection that looks back at that extraordinary musical heritage while carrying it forward through a multigenerational cast of musicians. Set for release digitally as well as LP and CD on November 20th, pre-order the album here.

The first single, “Always,” features Jeremy Pelt, Monty Alexander, Ron Carter, and Steve Jordan performing the Irving Berlin composition. Produced by acclaimed drummer and producer Steve Jordan, who also performs throughout the album, Always Hip: Verve at 70 features jazz mainstays including Buster Williams, Jabali Billy Hart, Ron Carter, Monty Alexander, Rufus Reid, and Lenny White. A Grammy Award-winning producer and musician, Jordan’s extensive career has included collaborations with artists including Keith Richards, John Mayer, B.B. King, Bob Dylan, Stevie Nicks, Sheryl Crow, and Neil Young.

Across the album, the musicians revisit compositions originally recorded on Verve by giants including Dizzy Gillespie, Bill Evans, Jimmy Smith, Wes Montgomery, Willie Bobo, and Cal Tjader. Rather than simply looking back, Always Hip: Verve at 70 reimagines this music through the voices of the artists assembled for the project, underscoring a musical heritage that remains adventurous, sophisticated and alive.

“Sometimes you want to hear a certain sound,” says Steve about the project. “One that makes you feel good. One that makes you reflect. One that makes you move. Always Hip does all of that.” Recorded at the legendary Van Gelder Studio, the album is both tribute and continuation. A celebration of the artists, songs and spirit that made Verve the historic label that it is today, while marking the culmination of its year-long 70th anniversary celebration.

VIA PRESS RELEASE | From Greenwich Village in the mid-1960s to Haight-Ashbury at the end of the decade; from the new wave-inflected Nu-Models to the dance-heavy Mystery Tramps, all highlights in a career full of producing and writing for a slew of other acts, Bill Cutler’s career had already hit any number of magnificent peaks long before he released his first solo album. But he’d been recording it for years!
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Bill recalls, “Making [this album] was the most difficult undertaking of my entire professional life.” Work on what would become Ridin’ High began in 1975, with Jerry Garcia (Grateful Dead)​ front and foremost on the sessions. Scheduling conflicts, however, saw work come to a halt, and the tapes were mothballed until 1993, when “Jerry asked me what had happened to the tapes from my album. I told him they had been sitting in my house for the last 18 years. He said, ‘Let’s restore those tapes, cut the other half, and finish your album’.”

Tragically, Garcia passed away before work could recommence, and those tapes went back in the closet again. But a few years later, since these were some of Jerry’s only studio tracks outside of the Grateful Dead that were still unreleased, people wanted to hear them, and I decided to go back to work on my album.” Fresh sessions followed, but so did legal issues surrounding Garcia’s involvement, “a firestorm that lasted almost a decade.”

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Remembering Dan McCafferty, born on this day in 1946. —Ed.

The Scottish clods o’ peat in this hard-working, hard-rocking man’s man band never won any originality awards, and weren’t exactly well-versed in the songwriting arts either, and given their high scunge factor, I doubt they’d even be allowed into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as paying customers, much less as inductees.

They’re not going to be inducted into baseball’s Hall of Fame anytime soon, either. Hell, they only hit two homers over the course of their long career, and their lifetime batting average is in the .233 range. Forget about Cooperstown; these guys would be lucky to earn a spot on the bench of the 1962 New York Mets.

But I’ll say this for ‘em–way back in 1975 every badass or wannabe badass in my home town was blaring Nazareth’s Hair of the Dog out of their car 8-track speakers, whether that car be a GTO or a rusted-out Ford Pinto. The title track—with its “Now you’re messin’ with a son of a bitch”—was a blast of pure unbridled belligerence and without a doubt the orneriest cut of the summer, hell, the whole year probably. Alice Cooper may have put out “No More Mr. Nice Guy,” but that was playacting; Nazareth’s Dan McCafferty came on like the Real McCoy.

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I recently spoke with Jah Wobble, bassist, composer, and tireless pursuer of all things true. Born John Wardle in Stepney, East London, he got his name from a drunk Sid Vicious who couldn’t quite say it.

In 1978, he wrote the bassline that became “Public Image,” and his dub-heavy playing anchored PiL’s first two albums, including Metal Box. He left in 1980 and never stopped moving. He went on to work with Holger Czukay and Jaki Liebezeit of Can, The Edge, Brian Eno, and Bill Laswell, and with his band Invaders of the Heart, he had a top 40 hit with Sinéad O’Connor on “Visions of You,” from the Mercury-nominated Rising Above Bedlam.

We talk about all these things as they relate to his world and life views. Jah is a deeply grounded and spiritual human and approaches all he does from a perspective of music as art and gateway to higher realms. This is a long listen grounded in this point of view.

His newest record is Mystic Liverpool: The Beatles’ Psychedelic Songbook with Tian Qiyi, out now. On November 13, Dimple Discs reissues The Usual Suspects, the long unavailable 2CD set first released in 2017. It has 23 tracks cut live in the studio at The Smokehouse in East London, revisiting PiL, Invaders of the Heart, and his solo catalogue.

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Claire Cronin is a Berkeley, CA-based singer-songwriter whose music can be characterized as folk, though her latest album, The Bruise, offers lyrical heft combined with instrumental edge and intensity that transcend mere categorization. Cronin is also a scholar and writer of poetry and non-fiction; published in 2020, Blue Light of the Screen: On Horror, Ghosts, and God, brought her considerable acclaim.

Strengthening the thematic connections that distinguish Cronin’s work, The Bruise is a pleasure to absorb through repeated listens. It’s out now on vinyl through Orindal Records and on cassette through A Moth Object. An accompanying lyrics and art zine featuring illustrations by Cronin is also available through Bandcamp.

As a musician, Claire Cronin’s work spans back to 2009, though the earliest release that’s readily available is the “Proof of Names” digital EP from 2011. That set and two more digital EPs, “Football” from 2012 and “Blacklegs” from 2014, are the basis for the “Best of” cassette Over and Through, which came out via Ba Da Bing in 2015, arriving ahead of Came Down a Storm, her proper full-length debut from the following year.

A cohesive and assured collection of songs, Came Down a Storm was produced by John Dieterich of Deerhoof, who contributed instrumentally and collaborated on the arrangements for the album. Next came Big Dread Moon, Cronin’s first for Orindal, which appears to have been self-produced, though Shahzad Ismaily, along with playing numerous instruments, recorded and mixed the set. It’s easily as fulfilling a listen as its predecessor. Just as solid is Bloodless, released in 2021, with Dieterich returning to mix, master, and play on that record.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Loretta Lynn’s critically acclaimed album Van Lear Rose is available for pre-order today, bringing it back to fans for the first time in seven years.

The Grammy®-winning Best Country Album of 2004, produced by Jack White, rose to #2 on the Billboard Country charts and #24 on the Billboard Hot 100, and was the most successful crossover album of Lynn’s 60-year career at that point. This reissue of the album will include the unreleased song “Just to Have You Back,” which was previously only available on Third Man’s Vault version of Van Lear Rose. The album, remastered from the original analog tapes, will be available on CD, black vinyl, limited-edition vinyl, and digital.

The collaboration between Loretta and Jack White created one of music’s greatest pairings. The album garnered rave reviews, including Rolling Stone saying, “Anybody who worships Loretta Lynn dreams about being able to thank her for all the music, but Jack White has pulled off the ultimate fan fantasy—he’s helped her make the album we all dreamed she would make…a classic Loretta Lynn album.”

The album won the Grammy® for Best Country Album and “Portland Oregon” won Best Country Collaboration with Vocals. In 2004, the Americana Music Awards named Van Lear Rose Album of the Year and Loretta as Artist of the Year.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | BMG and the Montreux Jazz Festival today releases B.B. King’s live performance of “You Know I Love You”, recorded at Casino Montreux during the 1989 Montreux Jazz Festival. Taken from the forthcoming album B.B. King: The Montreux Years, the previously unreleased recording is available to stream now across all major platforms.

The track follows the first single “Early in the Mornin'” and arrives ahead of B.B. King: The Montreux Years, out 20 November. Drawn from nine of King’s 23 appearances at the Montreux Jazz Festival over four decades, between 1982 to 2000, the album is available on 2LP vinyl with printed inner sleeves, 2CD digisleeve with booklet, and HD digital. “You Know I Love You” is one of four additional recordings featured exclusively on the 2CD and HD digital editions.

Every recording has been meticulously restored and newly mastered from the original tapes by Tony Cousins at Metropolis Studios. Created in close collaboration with the B.B. King Estate and the Montreux Jazz Festival team, under licence from Montreux Sounds, the collection features striking new artwork, rare and previously unseen photography, and specially commissioned liner notes by award-winning writer, journalist and B.B. King biographer Daniel de Visé, assisted by long-time B.B.King Bassist Michael Doster.

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Remembering Art Tatum, born on this date in 1909. —Ed.

Fans of jazz piano and Art Tatum in particular have reason to rejoice, as Jewels in the Treasure Box: The 1953 Chicago Blue Note Jazz Club Recordings offers 39 previously unreleased performances from Tatum’s trio with guitarist Everett Barksdale and bassist Slam Stewart. Recorded by the Blue Note Jazz Club’s proprietor Frank Holzfeind, this set is a major discovery that deepens a persistently undervalued side of the pianist’s artistry.

Born in 1909, Art Tatum’s style evolved from stride piano as exemplified by Fats Waller, James P. Johnson, Willie “The Lion” Smith, and Luckey Roberts. Importantly, he was also impacted by the innovations of his contemporary Earl “Fatha” Hines. When assessing the key influences on Modern Jazz piano, Hines and Tatum hover at the top of the list.

The Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz includes two selections by Tatum, both featuring him solo. As a student of stride, Tatum was a technical powerhouse with great stamina who thrived without accompaniment. Lennie Tristano was once quoted as saying that Tatum and Hines were the only two pianists who could deliver jazz’s essential swing while playing alone, and solo is the mode for which Tatum remains most celebrated.

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My Daughter the Broad is the second album from indie rock’s behemoths of bad taste, the Frogs. Out of print for decades, the record has been expanded into a double set, including eight bonus tracks. Alternately funny and profoundly disturbing, this might be this demented duo’s best album. The reissue is out now on vinyl from the Foreign Leisure label.

It all started in relative normalcy. In the manner of myriad others before and since, the brothers Dennis and Jimmy Flemion formed a band. The year was 1980, and that band was the Frogs. It took most of the decade for the Milwaukee-based duo to gain traction in the era’s underground scene, and when labels and listeners began taking notice, it was not necessarily in the manner they’d planned.

A self-released eponymous album emerged in 1988 without much fanfare. It’s a perfectly fine, occasionally quite likable, and never uninteresting set of (alternately) art-tinged glam-pop or glammed-out art-pop. Still, it was cut in a studio and only hints at the home-recorded mayhem that emerged on their follow-up, It’s Only Right and Natural, which was issued by Homestead Records the next year.

That album collected what the Frogs have described as “made-up songs,” meaning they were whipped together and quickly taped at home without the intention of being released for wider public consumption. While making the rounds among those close to the Frogs, a cassette reportedly first landed in Steve Albini’s hands and then with Gerard Cosloy at Homestead.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Twenty-five years after The Be Good Tanyas introduced their singular take on folk music to the world, the celebrated Vancouver group announces a special 25th anniversary edition of their debut album, Blue Horse, arriving November 20th, 2026 via Birthday Cake Records. The album previously had a very limited vinyl run and this new edition features archival photos and a new introduction from the group.

Originally independently released in Canada before finding an international audience in 2001 via Nettwerk Records, Blue Horse introduced The Be Good Tanyas’ intimate, unvarnished combination of traditional folk, deep country, Appalachian and blues. Across songs including “The Littlest Birds,” “Only in the Past,” “Light Enough to Travel,” “Rain and Snow” and “The Coo Coo Bird,” the record brought traditional folk music into conversation with a distinctly contemporary sensibility, anchored by the group’s loose instrumentation and unmistakable vocal harmonies.

Blue Horse emerged from remarkably modest circumstances, in fact the first few songs were recorded for free, live-off-the-floor at a local recording school as a student project with instructor Futcher. Later the band finished the record in a handful of evening and late-night sessions at Futcher’s small home studio on the edge of East Vancouver. The record’s homespun character became inseparable from its sound: warm, spacious and imperfect in all the right places, as though the listener had stumbled into a room where the songs were already being played.

The album also captured a particular moment in Vancouver’s late-’90s and early-’00s roots community. Frazey Ford, Samantha Parton, and Trish Klein, joined on the recording by Jolie Holland, approached traditional material not as museum pieces but as living songs, placing them alongside original compositions that felt capable of belonging to the same lineage.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab (MoFi), the leader in high-fidelity audio reissues, is proud to present The National’s 2007 breakthrough album, Boxer, in audiophile sound. Sourced from the original masters (16-bit / 44.1kHz digital master to analog console to lathe), mastered by engineer Krieg Wunderlich, pressed at Fidelity Record Pressing, and housed in a Stoughton gatefold jacket, MoFi’s numbered-edition 180g 45RPM 2LP set (pre-order HERE) is strictly limited to 3,000 numbered copies and available October 9.

“Another uninnocent, elegant fall into the unmagnificent lives of adults”: That lyric distills the thematic essence of Boxer, a breakthrough that transformed The National from a respected indie act into one of the 21st century’s foremost bands. Replete with literary narratives, widescreen arrangements, and mysterious beauty, the album addresses issues of domesticity, maturation, and escapism with equal parts stark honesty and clever wit. Stately, rich, and intimate, Boxer is more relevant today than it was upon release in 2007.

The wider grooves of this collectible 45RPM reissue lend to improved tracking, precise detail, and high-frequency preservation that bring the quintet’s chamber textures, rhythmic pacing, and brassy accents forward with immediacy, depth, and balance. Black backgrounds practically place The National on an intimate stage in your listening space. At long last, the airiness, directness, and atmospherics The National generates at its acclaimed live shows can be experienced on record.

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Remembering Melvin Franklin, born on this day in 1942. —Ed.

On March 21, 2025, Elemental Music concluded the impressive string of reissues that constitutes the label’s Motown Sound Collection with a 180-gram edition of The Temptations’ Psychedelic Shack, the groundbreaking Norman Whitfield-produced LP from 1970. It’s an appropriate finale for a series that has divided its focus between the classic Motown approach to pop R&B and the company’s later forays into funkier and more expansive sonic terrain.

Psychedelic Shack isn’t Motown’s first dive into the style, whose impetus for Barry Gordy’s enterprise has often been attributed to Sly and the Family Stone. However, that’s somewhat reductive, as in terms of pop sophistication, the 5th Dimension almost certainly served up some inspiration to Gordy. Just as importantly to Norman Whitfield, as from a contemporary vantage point, psychedelic soul is the innovation upon which the producer’s reputation largely rests.

Attempts to cash in on trends can frequently age like a deli tray left out in the desert sunshine, with the sounds often reeking of the retrograde at the moment of first release. Aging poorly is really not the case with most of Motown’s psych soul output, though that shouldn’t suggest that the company’s intentions weren’t mercantile in nature.

But of course, Motown’s aims were far from purely financial, and the label’s excursion into psychedelic soul set as many trends as it followed them. Often it was both at once. For one example, Psychedelic Shack features two longer numbers, “Take a Stroll Through Your Mind” and “Friendship Train,” that set a standard for Motown album tracks to follow (even as some were released as singles in shorter edits). At the same time, likely being influenced by The Chambers Brothers’ “Time Has Come Today.”

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