Author Archives: Joseph Neff

Celebrating Arvo Pärt on his 91st birthday. —Ed.

Estonian composer Arvo Pärt is considered to be one of the greats in the broad spectrum of 20th-century classical music, and he’s further distinguished as a trailblazer of “holy minimalism.” Befitting a composer of his stature, the discography of Pärt’s recorded works is vast, but from inside that number there resides a smaller group of releases holding particular import. Silentium joins the list of essential Pärt recordings. 

Arvo Pärt came to prominence in his home country in the 1960s with a handful of recordings spanning the decade, but these are formative works that precede a long period of woodshedding after which Pärt reemerged with his tintinnabuli style of composing, a method where he utilizes two distinct voices (i.e. instruments), a tintinnabular voice restricted to the notes of the tonic triad and a melodic voice that can roam around freely.

Für Alina, first performed in 1976, introduced Pärt’s tintinnabuli style. It was eventually documented on one of the numerous recordings made for the ECM label, a label whose releases comprise a significant chunk of his essential discography. The first recording of Pärt’s compositions released by ECM was Tabula Rasa in 1984, the title piece dating from 1977, scored for two solo violins, prepared piano, and string chamber orchestra (consisting of two violins, viola, cello, and contrabass).

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Celebrating Bill Stevenson, born on this day in 1963. —Ed.

Though it seems they perennially garner fewer accolades than their Cali cohorts, Black Flag and the Minutemen, coffee-fueled Los Angeles band the Descendents’ full-length debut, Milo Goes to College, stands as one of the ’80s’ indispensable punk documents. Its grooves are teeming with furious catchiness, and what it lacks in good manners it more than makes up for in sheer gusto.

I’ve fond memories of and considerable goodwill for the Descendents, namely the incarnations of the group that recorded up to and including the Enjoy! LP, but must say that from my viewpoint, they can be easily underrated. Or, more appropriately, they often slip through the cracks, largely due to the non-flash nature of their music and image. First and foremost, about focused energy, they wrote tunes that joined musical and lyrical concerns triumphantly seeking to shirk the concept of the punk as a metal-studded casualty with a tube of Testors stuck up his/her nostril.

Occasionally described as “nerd-core,” their songs tackled topics like fishing, hanging out in nature, the joys of junk food, loyalty to friends, bodily gases, the desire not to be a fuck-up, coffee, friction between cliques, and, quite frequently, late-adolescent struggles with the opposite sex. Many of these concerns have been addressed by other bands. Still, frankly, a few haven’t, and certainly not with the appealingly direct (again, focused) musicality and no-frills sincerity that basically stands as their enduring legacy.

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Remembering Otis Redding, born on this day in 1941. —Ed.

As one of the undisputed titans in the annals of Soul Music, Otis Redding seemingly needs no introduction. Any serious discussion of the genre he so thrillingly mastered will reflect upon the rewards to be found in his work, and that it’s never fallen out of favor is a tribute to his talents. But in truth, scads of younger listeners do require some enlightenment about the man’s massive achievements. Lonely & Blue: The Deepest Soul of Otis Redding will serve as an exemplary primer for the uninitiated, and the thoughtful focus on the artist’s aching love balladry might lead many longtime fans to hear Mr. Pitiful with fresh ears.

With Sam and James and Wilson and Al and Marvin all making such singular contributions to the style, there will never be an undisputed King of Soul. But upon reflection, Otis Redding can perhaps be accurately described as the form’s Total Package, for the fabric of his music contains so many substantial fibers; a Southern “country” grit combining with the newfound sophistication of R&B, the powerhouse qualities of a consummate front-man coexisting with a distinctive desire to interact with his backing band, and the ability to knock ‘em stone cold dead on stage thriving alongside an uncommon level of success in the studio setting.

Furthermore, Redding’s considerable talents as a songwriter coincided with his equally impressive skills at interpreting others’ material, a substantial crossover into the pop market sacrificed none of his creative verve, and Stax’s significant spirit of racial harmony served as a beautiful example of brotherhood in an era that very much needed it. So Otis clearly lacked nothing in his ascension to the very top ranks of Soul expression.

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Arty, glammy, mathy, poppy, theatrical: Washington DC’s Shudder to Think emerged in the late 1980s as one of the most interesting bands to get slapped with the tag of post-hardcore. Persevering through productive lineup changes before transitioning to soundtrack work, they did what bands so often do; they broke up, only to reunite for shows, and now they’re fully back on the recording front, with a new digital EP “Who Sent You?” available on September 11 that follows a vinyl single from late last year. The wax and the digital, both released by Dischord Records, get a proper consideration below.

Shudder to Think made a big splash back in 1989 with their inclusion on the Dischord Records’ benefit compilation State of the Union, a grand tour of DC post-hardcore of the era with proceeds going to the A.C.L.U. and The Community for Creative Non-Violence (note that State of the Union is still available as a digital release).

“Let It Ring” was Shudder to Think’s contribution to State of the Union, closing the record in emphatic fashion, their explosiveness both soaring and stampeding as it stood apart from anything else on the album. “Let It Ring” also closes side two of Curses, Spells, Voodoo, Mooses, the band’s 1988 debut LP for Sammich Records, in a solid but lesser version than the compilation cut. Anyone interested in the band will want to hear both.

With 1990’s Ten Spot, Shudder to Think joined Dischord Records proper as they helped to stylistically broaden the label’s strongest decade. The lineup from the start was Craig Wedren on vocals, Chris Matthews on guitar, Stuart Hill on bass, and Mike Russell on drums, and so it remained through 1991’s Funeral at the Movies (find an original copy which includes a sweet version of “Crosstown Traffic”) and the following year’s Get Your Goat.

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Celebrating Al Jardine on his 84th birthday. —Ed.

Existence is unutterably strange. It’s a fact. The world is filled with miracles and marvels and inexplicable occurrences that defy all rational explanation and that stand, in fact, as rebukes to the very conception of rationality itself. Take the 45 rpm record I hold metaphorically before me. Soon, I will place it on my metaphorical record player. It’s by a band called The Beach Boys. Perhaps you’ve heard of them. Boy, could they sing!

But I’m not here to write about the baroque vocal skills of the band that gave us “Good Vibrations,” or how the Beach Boys gradually shed their squeaky-clean image to become hirsute, coke-snorting, acid-gobbling hippies. I’m here to talk about their choice in covers, specifically in the case of the metaphorical single that is now playing on my record player.

The A-side of the 1968 single, entitled “Bluebirds Over the Mountain,” was written and recorded by rockabilly artist Ersel Hickey in 1957. The B-side is entitled “Never Learn Not to Love,” and is a blatant (as in he took everything from soup to nuts) Dennis Wilson steal of “Cease to Exist,” a song written by one Charles Milles Manson, of swastika-carved-forehead and Tate/LaBianca murder-spree fame. Both tunes ended up on The Beach Boys’ 1969 LP 20/20.

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Thorn Wych builds her own instruments from the branches of trees. On her debut album, Aesthesis, she delves deep into an organic experimentation with a folkloric edge. Utilizing grooves, drones, chants, and hazy clouds of abstraction, her sound is connected to long-established traditions while standing apart through pure distinctiveness. Recorded and edited at home, Aesthesis has been available for a couple of years but is getting a welcome North American LP release on September 4 through Tompkins Square.

Living in the UK town of Bacup in Lancashire (near Manchester), Thorn Wych makes deeply spiritual music that leans toward swirling strangeness rather than slipping into blissful placidity. Starting with tree branches, Wych crafts flutes, strings for bowing, and percussion, and then further enhances the sounds she produces with delay pedals, looping, and pitch-shifting devices.

The results, as heard on Aesthesis, strive not to produce sharp contrasts of her rustic baselines against boldly applied technological strategies. Instead, Wych is just attempting to conjure beautifully weird blends. These final results, twisted but natural, are achieved through studiously applied repetitions, edits, distortions, and sound stretching.

The initial release of Aesthesis emerged on cassette (50 copies) and vinyl in late 2024 on the Hood Faire label. Early the following year, a 6-copy run of cassettes in a very attractive wooden case added a bonus track. And at the beginning of 2026, Hood Faire brought out a vinyl repress in a 150-copy edition. Now here comes Tompkins Square with the Stateside availability. There is digital, but only through Bandcamp.

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Unearthed vault recordings of The Cramps are a cause for gleeful galivanting, particularly when the sounds are of the vintage captured on Gravest Gravy, which is out now on vinyl, compact disc, and digital through Vengeance Records. The album delivers a dozen buzzy, fuzzy, thumping belters guided by the mighty hand of Alex Chilton in Memphis, Tennessee. Anybody interested in hearing uncut American greatness at its most frenzied should step right the fuck up.

In part through sheer commitment to an ideal of crazed trash-worshipping flamboyance, The Cramps have endured as one of the most beloved of all punk bands. Punk? Yes, it’s easy (and for some, preferable) to come up with a hyphen-laden genre descriptor to differentiate from standard, straightforward punk rock what singer Lux Interior, guitarist Poison Ivy Rorschach, and whoever spun through the revolving door to occupy the roles of third and occasionally fourth member, were up to.

The reality is that The Cramps date back to the days before punk became a largely codified stylistic experience. All a band needed during this initial burst of punkish activity was a loose handle on either inspired mayhem or savvy simplicity. Across the decades since then, a handful of the more unorthodox early punk bands have been awarded foundational post-punk status, but that doesn’t work for the scuzzy and sweaty roots junk of The Cramps.

Instead, Lux and Ivy and crew luxuriate in the same neighborhood as X, The Gun Club, The Blasters, The Flesh Eaters, Girl Trouble, Flat Duo Jets, Jon Spencer and the assorted bands of Ohioans Don Howland and Jeffrey Evans. It’s difficult to imagine labels like Norton, Crypt, and Estrus existing without The Cramps pointing backward with one hand and forward with the other.

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Remembering Tim Bogert, born on this day in 1944. —Ed.

To soak up Vanilla Fudge’s talent as song interpreters, the best route is their eponymous ’67 debut. A further understanding of them as a singles act is best gleaned from the Rhino compilation Psychedelic Sundae. If an immersion into the multifaceted positives and negatives of these trailblazing late-‘60s hard rockers’ everyday reality is what one wants, however, then one should look into the contents of Near the Beginning.

There’s no question that Vanilla Fudge is an important band. “You Keep Me Hangin’ On,” the group’s reading of a Holland-Dozier-Holland tune originally by The Supremes, is a vital evolutionary brick in the hard rock megastructure, and it stands as a one-song distillation of nearly everything good and potentially less than stellar about this hard-touring quartet.

There are two versions of the Fudge’s recording, a just shy of three-minute single edit and the take found on their debut; that one’s over twice as long, and this duality is to an extent indicative of the group’s creative problems. It’s far from that simple, though, and their somewhat brief and highly eventful initial existence provides a consistently interesting story, if one that’s only sporadically fruitful in musical terms.

Vanilla Fudge’s beginnings are in The Electric Pigeons, the soul cover unit featuring organist/lead vocalist Mark Stein and bassist Tim Bogert. They soon acquired guitarist Vince Martell and drummer Carmine Appice, and after hooking up with Shangri La’s producer, Shadow Morton, they changed their name and focused their attention on the studio.

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Those who are diligently on the lookout for a bountiful heap of beautifully bent sounds should saunter, swagger, or sashay (your preference) right up to the latest offering from White Gourd, the wild and woozy project of Mainer Suzanne Belle Stone, she of Million Brazilians and a major thread in the weave of the Psychic Sounds Collective.

(To Walk in) Justice (Calls for) Strength is the new White Gourd album, and it’s loaded with saxophone wiggles, hearty vocal ululations, hovering soundscapes, thumps, squeals, steamy hisses, and a striking swinging back and forth between coming together and falling apart. The limited vinyl is out now through Feeding Tube Records.

Belfast, Maine, is known as the subject of a film by the late and very great documentarian Frederick Wiseman. It’s also where herbalist, teacher, and musician Suzanne Belle Stone resides. A native of Maine, she departed west for a while to live in Portland, Oregon, a storied enclave if ever one was, and where White Gourd and Million Brazilians both put down roots. But, as humans often do, Stone eventually migrated back home.

Recordings of Stone’s work as White Gourd span back to 2009, beginning with the cassette Unprotected Sax for the Karamazov Tapes label. Million Brazilians, an outfit often described as avant-jazz (but with a whole lot of sweet snaky groove-thing in their high-stepping), predates White Gourd by a few years.

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Across two EPs, Londoner Elanor Moss established herself as a solid tunesmith with a strong voice that allowed her to put those songs across. Her debut full-length, freshly out via Merge Records, delivers a considerable jump in quality with a vivid dive into a folk zone that’s classically Brit, and in a manner that’s utterly unaffected. Moss brings it naturally. The Knife, The Needle is out now on vinyl (clear purple wave), compact disc, and digital.

In 2022, Elanor Moss released her first EP, “Citrus,” a 5-song effort that’s still available on 10-inch vinyl. It’s a gentle, thoroughly likable affair that fits into the indie-folk scheme, but with a few production touches (e.g., low-key electronic atmospheres and accents) that place the set pretty firmly in the 21st century. Also, a few of the songs travel to the border of singer-songwriter territory, and that’s alright.

In 2023, Moss followed up “Citrus” with a 4-song effort, “Cosmic,” which is still available on 10-inch vinyl, as well. The tracks broaden her sonic palette as the indie-folk focus is maintained. Horns have a more prominent role, and drums enter the frame for the first time. “Catholic” is an outright melodic rocker that throws back (at least) to the ’90s. It would’ve blown them away at the Lilith Fair and likely grabbed some slots in mainstream radio rotation.

As Moss has intensified the emotional weight of her songs, an increase that’s partly lyrical but also (and essential to The Knife, The Needle’s success) expressed through a blossoming vocal expressiveness that’s sweet and tender but with subtle heft, she has additionally tightened the stylistic iris onto a warmly appealing and note-perfect (yet gloriously not overworked) rendering of gal-voiced Brit folk.

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17-string bassist Zach Layton, drummer Hamir Atwal, and pianist Phyllis Chen are Enneads, a Hudson Valley-based outfit that is honing a dark and roiling slow dive into tense, occasionally abstract atmospheres that Layton has described as “doom jazz.” Their eponymous debut captures this black-clad experimentalism quite well. It’s out on vinyl, compact disc, and digital August 28 through the Birdwatcher label.

First off, this debut set was crafted by Enneads over a two-year period, a span that’s reflected in the finished work. A fair amount of experimental music leans toward inspired instantaneousness in execution, but the seven pieces that shape this album were clearly built over time.

Heaviness is a major component in the scheme, both auditory and thematically. The trio (the album) is named after the writings of Plotinus, the Greek philosopher credited with founding Neoplatonism, and a guiding improvisational principle for Enneads is the Pythagorean concept, credited to philosopher Boethius, that harmony is “number made audible.”

If the above leaves an impression of dryness, or possibly just a challenging or forbidding experience, that’s not accurate. While heavy, the pieces here aren’t designed to put the listener’s nerves through the wringer. Of course, everybody’s built differently, but the doomy quality Layton and his mates conjure isn’t stressful. To the contrary, the vibe is almost seductive.

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Remembering Joe Strummer, born on this date in 1952. —Ed.

Vocalist, guitarist, and songwriter John Graham Mellor, better known by his recording and performance handle Joe Strummer, was a co-founder of one of the most important, and in the view of some, the very finest band in UK punk rock’s original wave. That would be The Clash, but the man’s activities preceded and extended far beyond that group. The Ignition label spotlighted the results with Joe Strummer 001, totaling 35 tracks, including a dozen unreleased.

It can feel (and will surely be read as) contrarian to say it, but I’ve never been greatly enthusiastic over The Clash. Sure, the first two albums, ’77’s The Clash and the following year’s Give ‘Em Enough Rope, are essential, and the third, ’79’s London Calling arguably so, but when they took a nosedive in quality after that they did so with gusto, following up a double album with triple album Sandinista!, a display of excess that no matter how well-intentioned sent them into a tailspin from which they never recovered, though folks who discovered them through the rather tepid pop move Combat Rock might disagree.

The bigger problem, at least for me, was how the band came to represent what I’ll call the Springsteenization of punk rock. That is, The Clash were often championed, well into the 1980s after their breakup, as the exception to the rule that punk rock sucked. By extension, certain folks frequently openly professed Clash-fandom as a way to prove they weren’t complete moldy figs.

Now, most of my punk-loving friends adored The Clash, and I could surely listen to them (the good stuff, anyway) without trouble; merely appreciating the group wasn’t a problem. It’s just that loving their output while deriding The Damned and Buzzcocks and The Lurkers, and yes indeed the Sex Pistols (to limit myself to a short list of UK outfits) was and remains downright suspect.

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Remembering Isaac Hayes, born on this day in 1942. —Ed.

Released in 1969, Hot Buttered Soul brought Isaac Hayes widespread attention as he helped lead the charge into a new decade of soul music innovations. An impeccable album in a genre that hitherto had been largely dominated by singles, Hayes’ achievement is a perfect addition to Craft Recordings’ Small Batch series. Pressed on 180 gram vinyl at RTI with Neotech’s VR900 compound using lacquers cut from the master tapes by Bernie Grundman, the edition of 3,000 arrived in stores in 2024.

Given how Hot Buttered Soul has consistently pulled in new listeners across a span of generations since its smash hit release, it can be easy to misplace the record’s reality as a groundbreaker. Featuring two songs on each side, the LP did something almost unheard of, hitting the marketplace without any accompanying singles; radio edits of “Walk on By” and “By the Time I Get to Phoenix” were subsequently issued (and charted) after the record’s unexpected success.

That Stax (through subsidiary Enterprise) allowed Hayes such creative freedom is not only unusual but also pretty risky, as the set’s bold conception couldn’t have been inexpensive. The scoop is that Hot Buttered Soul became a reality through Stax honcho Al Bell’s directive to the label’s active roster to cut a slew of albums for release in a very tight timeframe, a decision made because Stax had lost its entire back catalog to Atlantic Records.

Presenting Isaac Hayes, the artist’s debut from 1968, proved a disappointment, and to nobody more than Hayes himself, who responded to Bell’s album initiative with a demand for complete creative control. That the resulting LP received the necessary promotional push to take root with consumers and then catch fire is a testament to Hayes’ talent but also to Bell’s stature as a record man.

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Formed in the early 1970s by rock impresario Kim Fowley in a manner similar to his more famous aggregation The Runaways, The Hollywood Stars existed in the space betwixt three big rocks, specifically glam, hard, and punk. Although positioned for success, the band’s existence was rocky, and they released a sole album in 1977 before breaking up and becoming the stuff of legend. Archival albums and a reformation followed, with Hey! L.A! emerging as the band’s second LP of new material. It’s a solid effort out now on vinyl, compact disc, and digital through Rum Bar Records.

The short description of The Hollywood Stars is that Kim Fowley assembled them as a West Coast answer to the New York Dolls. Some might be turned off by the blatant attempt to manufacture a group, but Fowley was an old-school figure who unabashedly functioned as part of the music business. That he was seeking to create a version of a band that was struggling on the fringes of glam and proto-punk reflects Fowley’s habit of chalking up his successes from the often disreputable margins.

The Hollywood Stars are also associated with two Fowley songs, “Escape” and “King of the Night Time World,” that are better known through contemporaneous recordings by Alice Cooper and Kiss, respectively. Neither song is part of the self-titled 1977 album by the Hollywood Stars, a set cut for Arista after a failed dalliance with Columbia Records and a prior breakup.

Shine Like a Radio: The Great Lost Album of 1974, released in 2013 by the Last Summer label, resurrects sessions for Columbia that included versions of “Escape” and “King of the Night Time World.” Although far from a brain-melter stylistically, the record is a fine listening experience, as it provides a glimpse into an upstart new thing transpiring on the California rock landscape of the era.

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Veteran producer-musician Bleu has a new record set for release. Tapping into the power pop mainline, the cuts that comprise Sargeant Pepper Grinder, the Los Angeles-based artist’s seventh album, are bold in conception and bright in execution. It’s radio-ready pop-rock with infusions of glam and flashes of tuneful psychedelia. It’s out on August 20 through Miracle Records with the vinyl mastered by Licorice Pizza Records.

Sargeant Pepper Grinder is coming out at the right time, as it is very much a volume-up, windows-down, acceleration-to-the-floor kind of record. As the tracks pile up, the scale broadens considerably, but the shebang starts in a mode closer to singer-songwriter pop with a baroque psych tinge.

That’s the title track, which will get a reprise in the record’s tail end, but next is the catchy stomping rocker “Start a Band,” loaded with guitar zest and anthemic dynamic shifts wild enough to turn even the most finicky power pop fan’s frown upside down. Next is “This Song Won’t Sell,” which swings from calm and contemplative to pummeling and explosive in a manner that’s maximal but engagingly non-trite.

“Where the Colors Bleed,” which features guest vocals by Los Angeles musician Carly Paige, finds Bleu hanging in the same neighborhood that housed Jeff Lynne in the second half of the 1970s. “Scooch” is just as catchy but considerably more glammed-out, with adrenaline-gush momentum, a ripping guitar solo, and a rave-up ending plus high vocal notes galore.

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