Celebrating Kathy Valentine, born on this day in 1959. —Ed.

Rising from the same sleazy Los Angeles punk scene that spawned the shock antics of the Germs and Black Randy and the Metrosquad, the Go-Go’s did the most shocking thing imaginable–they waved farewell to the infamous Plunger Pit and set out to become stars.

The Go-Go’s began life as a traditional punk band. Scene maker Elissa Bello’s take on vocalist Belinda Carlisle was “she couldn’t sing,” while fellow scenester Pleasant Gehman declared, “Charlotte [Caffey, the band’s lead guitarist] was the only one who really knew how to play.” But despite such limitations, by 1981 the Go-Go’s were looking at a chart-topping success with their chipper and polished to a sheen debut LP, Beauty and the Beat. One can only wonder what Darby Crash would have made of the unfailingly chipper quintet, but the New Wave kids thought they were just swell.

“We Got the Beat” is, of course, the song the Go-Go’s will best be remembered for; it’s happy-go-lucky pop froth in the great tradition of Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” The Bangles’ “Manic Monday,” and Katrina and the Waves’ “Walking on Sunshine.” The band’s other timeless tune is the perky who-cares-what-they think “Our Lips Are Sealed,” which evokes early Madonna and is every bit as dance party friendly.

And the great tunes kept coming. The appropriately titled “Get Up and Go” brings Bow Wow Wow to mind, while “Head Over Heels” is tuff girl ear candy. On the jaded “This Town” the Go-Go’s strike a rare dark note–the City of Angels may be the destination of the fame hungry, but the song strikes a cautionary note–”We’re all dreamers, we’re all whores/Discarded stars/Like worn out cars.” The Go-Go’s may—as they boast in the song—own L.A., but you have to wonder if they want to.

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The latest entry in Craft Recordings’ Small Batch series is Explorations, the 1961 album by the Bill Evans Trio featuring bassist Scott LaFaro and drummer Paul Motion. It is a masterpiece deserving of the highest quality standards, which it receives in this limited edition, its 2,500 copies mastered from the original analog tapes by Bernie Grundman and pressed onto 180 gram vinyl using Neotech’s VR900-D2 “super vinyl” compound in a one-step lacquer process. Exquisitely packaged as always, the set is available now.

Explorations is the second of only two studio records made by Bill Evans’ finest and most celebrated trio, and yet the record has at times been undervalued in the concise discography of the group that made it. It’s a scenario that extends to the pianist’s far more expansive body of work. There are two reasons Explorations is occasionally not given its full due; the first is related to a lack of original compositions, and secondly, the album was followed by a pair of live albums, Sunday at the Village Vanguard and Waltz for Debby, that are generally considered the creative pinnacle of Evans’ career.

When Evans’ creative longevity is taken into consideration, and when Explorations’ lack of a “Waltz for Debby” (the pianist’s most famous composition) or anything penned by LaFaro gets figured into the equation (the bassist’s tunes “Gloria’s Step” and “Jade Visions” a big part of Sunday at the Village Vanguard’s appeal), one can begin to comprehend how the trio’s second studio album occasionally takes a back seat in the grand scheme of things (their debut Portrait in Jazz offers two well-known works composed by Evans, “Peri’s Scope” and “Blue and Green”).

However, the title Explorations fits the album’s contents perfectly, as the group’s collective interactions imbue some well-worn chestnuts with vitality that persists right into the present moment. The record opens with the crisply grooving “Israel,” the superb playing of both LaFaro and Motion, peaking with their solos, helping to set the tone for what follows. On the other side, Explorations ends with a miraculous version of “Sweet and Lovely” that roves restlessly across the tune’s melodic spectrum until it settles into a high swinging intensity, and then the three just ride it out.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | To the uninitiated Cracker might seem to be just another ’90s alternative rock band. However, fans recognize that the band is much more than that, having skillfully explored a wide array of styles over nearly 35 years. Regrettably, when newcomers hear a Cracker song and wish to learn more about the band, they often start with algorithmic streaming playlists.

These playlists are typically limited to the dozen or so tracks with the most streams. As a result, these playlists are dominated by a few albums from the early 1990s, the heyday of alternative rock radio. There are also a few “greatest hits” compilations for Cracker available, but these, at best, cover only the first third of the band’s 35-year career. Both of these sources overlook some of the band’s most critically acclaimed and fan-favorite work.

In response to this, the band started a discussion with Cooking Vinyl to see if they could rectify the situation by producing a retrospective that would encompass the band’s entire career. Unfortunately, it became apparent that the cost of licensing tracks from the Virgin and Concord catalogs would be prohibitive. Undeterred, the band began to catalog the recordings they controlled, and a more promising idea emerged.

They realized they had a collection of re-recordings, demos, outtakes, collaborations, and live tracks that told an alternate history of the band. And this collection would not only serve as an introduction to the band for new fans, but also provide long-time, hardcore fans with access to some rare and unreleased recordings. Thus, Alternative History was born.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | The final puzzle piece for the John Lennon Mind Games campaign is a “Through The Looking Glass Onion” immersive interactive fiction adventure called Escape To Nutopia, where you are John Lennon, awakening in the master bedroom of The Dakota, trying to figure out what to do with your day.

Partly inspired by text-based computer games like Infocom’s The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and the pioneering Colossal Cave Adventure, the experience digs deeply and authentically into John & Yoko’s home life, based on thousands of hours of archival research and multimedia evidence. It plays with the nature of perceived realities, memory, time, dreams, and illusions whilst remaining deeply grounded in their art, music, and history.

The game is a conceptual realization of people “playing those Mind Games together” as written by Lennon on the title track of his 1973 masterpiece album, recently remixed and released in a new GRAMMY-nominated Ultimate Collection.

The game, like wishtreeforyokoono.com, is a collaboration between the John Lennon Estate and Loud Beings. Log on to Escape To Nutopia.

Remembering Sandy Denny, born on this date in 1947. —Ed.

If folk music scares me–and it does–English folk music really scares me; I’m still trying to recover from the traumatic consequences of inadvertently viewing a YouTube video of Pentangle performing the pro-virginity dirge “Let No Man Steal Your Thyme.”

That said, I’ve always made an exception for Fairport Convention in general, and their LP 1969’s Unhalfbricking in particular. Unhalfbricking was the work of a band moving away from American influences towards the Ye Olde English-style minstrelsy, and the music they performed during said transition is some of their best.

Fairport Convention’s take on folk rock is decidedly English–as English as eel pie. And how couldn’t it be–listening to Sandy Denny, who remains arguably the best English folk singer in the history of recorded music, is like walking the Cornish cliffs of Tintagel on a lovely May morn. But–and the caveat is critical–you never get the awful sense you’ve wandered into the bucolic pagan setting of the 1973 film The Wicker Man, where you’ll be shoved into a wicker totem and burned alive, a sacrifice to a bountiful harvest, as the happy villagers sing “Sumer Is Icumen In.” (A tune I’m sure Pentangle performed all the time.)

While “lovely” best describes the songs on Unhalfbricking, you get plenty of variety: a trio of exceptional Dylan covers; one instant classic; a pair of slower numbers that creep up on you, and one Cajun-flavored rock’n’roller that sticks out, if you’ll bear the obscure allusion, like Beau Brummell at a stevedores’ convention. Oh, and there’s one simply incredible song that somehow manages to bridge the gap between the English traditional folk form and the Velvet Underground.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | “This may be the most entertaining rock ‘n’ roll book currently out there. With clever, compelling writing, ranging from poignant to laugh-out-loud in places…”

Electric Light Odyssey is an award-winning musician’s rollicking rock ‘n’ roll journey from fringe to front man starring Electric Light Orchestra Part II with appearances by Brian Wilson, Paul McCartney, Stephen Stills, Iggy Pop, Rick Wakeman, Linda Ronstadt, Roger McGuinn, Don Dixon, Cheap Trick, Duff McKagan, KISS, and many more.

“(Parthenon’s) talent for raucous storytelling is on full, shining display throughout Electric Light Odyssey.” —Duff McKagan, New York Times bestselling author and founder of Guns N’ Roses

“(Parthenon) has captured what it’s like to wade waist-deep in the crazy world of rock while never going under, illuminating that indescribable yearning for more.” —Don Dixon, producer Marshall Crenshaw, Smithereens, R.E.M.

Cheery bunch, Chat Pile. They make me want to kill myself. And there’s a reason for that—the Oklahoma City noise rock quartet’s basic theme is the depraved and homicidal things we do to one another, and they really rub our noses in it.

I don’t know what to make of the fact that both of their full-length releases have received nearly universal critical acclaim. Slow-down-to-look-at-the-multiple-fatality-car-crash syndrome, perhaps. But it doesn’t hurt that their loud and clamorous music is good for the ears of people who love music that is hard on the ears. This is anti-shiny happy people music, and they play it with pigfuck ferocity.

I’m a fan—if, like me, you pledge allegiance to the likes of Killdozer, Cows, Pissed Jeans, Big Black, and the Jesus Lizard, you don’t really have much of a choice, and they had me the first time I saw the video for “I Am Dog Now” from their latest, 2024’s Cool World. But I have a huge reservation about Chat Pile—unlike Killdozer in particular, they’re not funny. They don’t leaven the horror with black humor, and the results are bleaker than an Oklahoma winter.

Killdozer went in for the Wisconsin Gothic, but compare a song like Killdozer’s hilariously horrifying “Hamburger Martyr” with Chat Pile’s chilling “The Mask” and you’ll know what I’m talking about—Killdozer’s Michael Gerald is not a callous or uncaring person, but he had the good sense to inject his tales of human cruelty and depravity with mordant wit and the irony of Flannery O’Connor.

On their debut full length, 2022’s God’s Country, Chat Pile explored real-life atrocities, tales of fictional serial killers, the ravages of drug addiction and the like, and the results are ultimately numbing. The world’s a horrible place—nobody has to convince me of that—but theirs is a full-body immersion into the darkest recesses of the human psyche, with vocalist Raygun Busch speaking, singing, and frequently screaming like a ventriloquist through the psychotics who rampage through their songs.

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We’ve closed TVD’s HQ for the holidays. While we’re away, why not fire up our Record Store Locator app and visit one of your local indie record stores?

Perhaps there’s an interview, review, or feature you might have missed? Catch up and we’ll see you back here on January 6, 2025.

We’re entering the home stretch with the first half of the year’s Best New Releases. A common theme is the pursuit of fresh possibilities.

20. BASIC – This is BASIC (No Quarter) Doing it sans vocals, Chris Forsythe (guitar), Nick Millevoi (baritone guitar, drum machine), and Mikel Patrick Avery (percussion, electronics) aren’t exactly venturing into well-trod territory with a sound that can perhaps be a bit oversimplified as art-rock/prog-rock meets new wave. Suffice it to say that if you dig the early ’80s records of Robert Fripp, King Crimson from the same era, and pointedly, Fred Maher and Robert Quine’s Basic, then This is BASIC will likely hit you right in the pleasure zone. Math rock lovers take note.

19. Steph Richards – Power Vibe (Northern Spy) It’s unsurprising given the decidedly retro cover design, but there are a few moments on the fifth full length by trumpeter-flugelhornist-composer-improvisor-bandleader Richards that spring forth from the same era that has so impacted BASIC, if not necessarily the same influences. Because Richard’s work is more jazz rooted and can inspire comparisons to assorted ’70s happenings, including flashes of Creed Taylor’s CTI aesthetic. But Power Vibe is far from any kind of straightforward throwback. Richards playing is the predominant driver of the album’s goodness.

18. claire rousay – sentiment & sentiment remixed (Thrill Jockey) Often, when a steadfast experimentalist makes a move toward the pop sphere, a feeling of disappointment can arise and linger. That’s happily not the case with sentiment, as rousay hasn’t drifted into bland conventionality, but is instead still navigating the fringes; her recent stuff has been described as emo ambient (with ties to her earlier experimental work still strong) and there has been comparisons to slowcore, and that’s astute, but also indie-folk, and that’s sweet. Also nifty is the remix album, which is really worth the effort.

17. Telepathic Band – Telepathic Mysteries Vol. 2 (577) The Telepathic Band is Daniel Carter on saxophones, clarinet, and flute, Patrick Holmes on clarinet, Matthew Putman on piano and keyboard, Hilliard Greene on bass, and Federico Ughi on drums. This set is the second half a session that took place at Sear Sound in NYC in 2019. Although clearly launching from the avant-garde (with decades-long relationships as the bonding agent), there’s an occasional sense of tranquility in this material that’s reinforced by the album’s cover photo. But of course, they do build up the intensity very nicely, and it’s great to hear so much top-notch clarinet. A favorite amongst many fine records released by 577 in 2024.

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And here are the best of the Best New Releases of 2024. Part one is here.

10. Rob Mazurek Exploding Star Orchestra – Live at the Adler Planetarium (International Anthem) The Exploding Star Orchestra is the long-running large scale band of cornetist-trumpeter-composer-bandleader-visual artist Mazurek, who was once a fixture on the Chicago scene. Currently living in Marfa, TX, he returned to his old stomping grounds for this delightful set of expansive jazz, the performance accompanied by abstractions derived from Mazurek’s paintings and animations that were digitally projected above the heads of the audience and band in the planetarium’s Grainger Sky Theater. Sun Ra and Fire Music are the roots, but this is very much music of the future.

9. Ivo Perelman, Chad Fowler, Reggie Workman, Andrew Cyrille – Embracing the Unknown (Mahakala) The rhythm section here is drummer Cyrille and bassist Reggie Workman (who also adds some percussion to this set), a pair that has already made their mark in this week’s lists as part of the Mal Waldron/Steve Lacy archival set The Mighty Warriors: Live in Antwerp. Cyrille and Workman had already been on the scene for decades by that point, and here we are decades later, with neither having lost a thing. Figure in the lung stamina and deep feeling of Perelman on tenor sax and Fowler on the stritch and saxello and we’re talking another total gem from one of the best jazz labels currently operating.

8. Thumbscrew – Wingbeats (Cuneiform) The trio Thumbscrew, which is Mary Halvorson on guitar, Tomas Fujiwara on drums and vibraphone, and Michael Formanek on bass, has made TVD’s yearly best list numerous times already. They’ve (obviously) make it again with Wingbeats, their eighth album, and they’ve done it mainly through three weeks of intense compositional construction offered by the City of Asylum Pittsburgh residency program. The interweave of the playing here is amongst the finest in Thumbscrew’s entire run, in part through a creative equality that’s further reflected in the equal number of pieces each member has brought to the record. And then they cap it all off with an exquisite version of “Orange Was the Color of Her Dress, The Blue Silk.”

7. Alan Licht – Havens (Black Editions Group / Vin Du Select Qualitite) Having emerged in the 1980s to join Rudolph Grey’s Blue Humans, Love Child, and Run On, Licht has also recorded numerous solo albums since the first one in 1994. He’s an insanely versatile giant on the electric guitar, and Havens is his second for the VDSQ label after Currents in 2015. A double LP offering six tracks that’s bookended with side-long pieces, Havens is built almost entirely out of just Licht’s guitar; opener “Nonchalant,” a Guitar Soli deep dive built on precise repetitions and slight variations, is a highlight, as is the cover of The Stooges’ “1970,” but Havens offers a fascinating ride, rigorous but wholly satisfying, from start to finish.

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A certifiable slew of excellent reissues hit stores in 2024, so many in fact, that we’ve thematically doubled up them up to provide maximum exposure.

20. Afterimage – Faces to Hide (Independent Project Records) + Torn Boys – 1983 (Independent Project Records) Formed at the dawn of the 1980s, Los Angelinos Afterimage could lead a listener to think they were from merry ol’ England, or not so merry ol’ England to be accurate, as the sound was clearly impacted by the post punk happenings of the time. But there was nothing contrived about Afterimage and their sound was tough and raw, befitting their Cali punk roots. Anybody into cold wave, dark wave, minimal wave (all the waves, basically) should check out this lavishly produced set.

Per the title of their retrospective collection, Stockton, CA’s Torn Boys didn’t stick around long, but while extant they did lay down enough high quality material that IPR made the wise decision to drop it onto LP. The sound is art-punk with vocal harmonies and drum machine rhythms, an attack that hovers in the California hills somewhere between Keats Rides a Harley and The Enigma Variations.

19. Cold Sun – Dark Shadows (Guerssen) + The Artwoods – Art Gallery & I Take It All (Singles Collection) (Guerssen) Based in Catalonia, Spain, the Guerssen label is indefatigable in maintaining a frequent release schedule that ranges from psychedelia to folk-rock to proto metal to prog with visitations to the private press fringes. Every year is a pretty good one for Guerssen and its many subsidiaries, but in 2024 they hit a higher note than usual, in part due to a fine reissue of the sole release by the Austin, TX dark psych outfit Cold Sun. Lots of obscure reissues get puffed up with hype only to deflate like a goddamned souffle once the needle is dropped. Not Dark Shadows.

Those perpetually hungry for UK Beat-Mod stuff have likely already devoured Art Gallery and I Take It All. The frontman was Ronnie Wood’s younger bro Art Wood, so they did the sensible thing and named themselves the Artwoods. But Jon Lord and Keef Hartley were also members, so the band was brimming with talent if lacking in original material. But it’s no matter really, as both of these albums are about that UK Beat-Mod sound.

18. John Wright Trio – South Side Soul (Craft Recordings / Original Jazz Classics) + Prince Lasha & Sonny Simmons – The Cry! (Craft Recordings / Acoustic Sounds) In terms of pure quality, these aren’t the best records Craft Recordings reissued in their Original Jazz Classics or Contemporary Records lines, but they are exactly the type of records the label should continue to make available. South Side Soul was Wright’s debut album, a trio date from the noteworthy if underrated pianist that’s infused with Windy City flavor; if Prestige hadn’t put it out, it would’ve worked nicely as one of the Delmark label’s jazz releases.

The Cry! is important for a variety of reasons, foremost for its documentation of two figures associated with the jazz avant-garde who are too often overlooked, and at an early juncture, when they were both collaborating with Eric Dolphy. By extension, this album reinforces how the New Thing was an impulse that spread out beyond the marquee names associated with the movement. Mostly though, The Cry! just sounds fantastic.

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A certifiable slew of excellent reissues hit stores in 2024, so many in fact, that we’ve thematically doubled up them up to provide maximum exposure—part two. Part one is here.

10. Billy Childish – From Fossilised Cretaceous Seams: A Short History of His Song and Dance Groups (Damaged Goods) + Thee Headcoats – I Am the Object of Your Desire (Damaged Goods) A double dose of goodness from one of history’s greatest men. From Fossilised Cretaceous Seams is exactly what its full title promises, but nicely non-chronological, and at 33 songs just the right length to leave ears new to Billy Childish thirsting for more. That makes Damaged Goods’ latest Thee Headcoats reissue a logical next step.

From Fossilised Cretaceous Seams drives home how the assorted groups with Billy Childish as the common denominator are far from interchangeable. But on occasion, someone still floats the opinion that if you’ve heard one record by Thee Headcoats (or Thee Mighty Caesars or The Buff Medways), then you’ve essentially heard them all. Balderdash. I Am the Object of Your Desire is noticeably raunch-bluesier than the more Beat frenzied Heavens to Murgatroyd, for example. So, if you picked up Damaged Goods’ Murgatroyd reissue in 2023, you’ll be sitting pretty with this one.

9. Duck Baker – Breakdown Lane: Free Solos & Duos 1976​-​1998 (ESP-Disk) + Sandy Bull – Still Valentine’s Day 1969 (No Quarter) Baker is no stranger to this site’s year’s end lists, but Breakdown Lane differs from his prior appearances in that Baker is largely focused, per the title, on the freeform side of things. Excepting two duos with Eugene Chadbourne (including an excellent “Take the ‘A’ Train” that kicks off a late disc swing into song form with a solo “Straight No Chaser” as a finale), this is all solo, with Baker’s progressions quite comforting.

Still Valentine’s Day 1969 was first released by the Water label in 2006, but it was CD only, so this very attractive and nicely mastered vinyl edition is quite welcome, particularly because the performances (from The Matrix in San Francisco on February 14th and April 5th, 1969) capture Bull in strong form on electric and acoustic guitar and oud. Fans of Bull’s 60’s albums for Vanguard who’ve never caught up with this set should find Still Valentine’s Day 1969 very much to their liking.

8. Joe McPhee – Black Magic Man & The Willisau Concert & Tenor (Superior Viaduct) + Charlie Nothing – The Psychedelic Saxophone of Charlie Nothing/In Eternity with Brother Frederic (Real Gone) Joe McPhee is a giant of free jazz saxophone whose profile was significantly raised when Swiss businessman Werner X. Uehlinger initiated a new label, Hat Hut, with a string of McPhee reissues and archival releases. First was Black Magic Man (Hat Hut A), a live record directly connected to McPhee’s outstanding Nation Time, second was The Willisau Concert (Hat Hut B), a 1975 live recording with synthesizer player John Snyder and drummer Makaya Ntshoko, and then Tenor (Hat Hut C), an impromptu solo performance given after dinner in Switzerland in 1976. Superior Viaduct deserves serious kudos for bringing these records back into circulation.

Charles Martin Simon aka Charlie Nothing was an artist, writer, instrument maker, and musician whose first album, originally released by John Fahey’s Takoma label and reissued here, is his most well-known. It features the man blowing hard and alone on saxophone and flute save for the accompaniment of a gong, a conga drum, and a banjo ukulele. Each piece takes up an entire side, and it’s safe to say the album is still pretty contentious, at least in jazz terms. But skronky? Oh yeah. And psychedelic? Most definitely. Thing is, Charlie could definitely play (just not at the level of Joe McPhee), so this is more than just undisciplined huffing and honking.

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