VIA PRESS RELEASE | Jazz Dispensary marks a major milestone in 2026, celebrating ten years of crate-digging, deep listening, and spotlighting overlooked gems from across the jazz canon.

Launching the imprint’s anniversary year is a freshly handpicked rarity from Craft Recordings’ vaults: Joe Henderson’s post-bop triumph, Tetragon. The 1968 album marks the celebrated saxophonist’s sophomore effort for Milestone Records and boasts a world-class lineup of collaborators, including Ron Carter, Jack DeJohnette, Kenny Barron, Louis Hayes, and Don Friedman. Out-of-print for more than 50 years, Tetragon will return to vinyl as part of the acclaimed Top Shelf series and make its hi-res streaming debut on March 13th.

Available to pre-order and pre-save, Tetragon features all-analog mastering by Kevin Gray at Cohearent Audio and is pressed on 180-gram vinyl at Fidelity Record Pressing. A stylish Tip-on gatefold jacket, replicating the album’s original design, rounds out the package. Tetragon is the first release in a year-long slate of anniversary programming from the curators at Jazz Dispensary, with more out-of-print cult classics, groove-forward compilations, special releases, global listening events, and additional surprises set to roll out throughout 2026.

One of the most talented tenor saxophonists of his era, Joe Henderson (1937–2001) was both a prolific band leader and a sought-after sideman who played alongside the biggest names in jazz, including Herbie Hancock, Kenny Dorham, Chick Corea, and Alice Coltrane. The virtuosic Ohio-born musician launched his four-decade-long career in Detroit while attending college, before relocating to New York. Soon, he built a name for himself performing on dozens of sessions for Blue Note Records, including those for Hancock, Horace Silver, Andrew Hill, and Lee Morgan.

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Blackwater Holylight was formed in Portland, OR, but after the release of their third album, they pulled up stakes and moved down the coast to Los Angeles. The current lineup is vocalist-guitarist-bassist Sunny Faris, bassist-guitarist Mikayla Mayhew, and drummer Eliese Dorsay. On their new full-length Not Here Not Gone, out January 30 on vinyl, compact disc and digital via Suicide Squeeze, Sarah McKenna contributes synths and Camille Getz violin. The sound is heavy as it possesses an ethereal quality, hovering and roaring in a zone between shoegaze and stoner rock.

The three prior LPs by Blackwater Holylight, their eponymous debut (2018), Veils of Winter (2019) and Silence/Motion (2021), were all released by RidingEasy Records, the label responsible for the extensive Brown Acid series of compilations dedicated to ultra obscure hard rock bands, mostly domestic, a few from foreign shores, who existed and recorded from the late ’60s through to the early ’80s.

Blackwater Holylight’s sound wouldn’t fit on a Brown Acid volume, but they do lay down the sinewy scorch on their own records. In 2025, they added a four-song EP, “If You Only Knew,” to their discography through Suicide Squeeze, a new label as the band adjusted to life in a new city.

Not Here Not Gone’s opener “How Will You Feel” is appropriately echoey and thick with distortion as a synth glistens and glides atop the instrumental breaks. Faris’ vocals are urgent but atmospheric, and the track blends expansiveness and crunch with the confidence one would expect from a band with four albums under their belts.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Multi-GRAMMY® Award-winning Rock and Roll Hall of Fame® inductees Aerosmith have announced the release of their forthcoming Aerosmith (Legendary Edition) on March 20, 2026.

For the first time, the Boston rock legends (Steven Tyler, Joe Perry, Tom Hamilton, Brad Whitford, and Joey Kramer) have assembled the definitive version of their multiplatinum self-titled debut, Aerosmith, originally released in 1973. In an effort to finally present their unfiltered vision now, Aerosmith Co-Founders Steven Tyler and Joe Perry have newly mixed the original recordings and tapes alongside GRAMMY® Award-nominated producer and mixer Zakk Cervini (blink-182, Halsey) and GRAMMY® Award-winning producer Steve Berkowitz. As such, this fresh 2024 Album Mix of the record is the crown jewel of the robust Legendary Edition collection.

Aerosmith (Legendary Edition) will be available via Capitol Records / UMe in multiple configurations, outlined in detail below, including a 5LP Box, 4LP Slipcase, 1LP Black / 1LP Color, 3CD, 1CD, and Digital. Exclusive merchandise will also be available. Pre-order/pre-save HERE on the group’s official store. To celebrate its arrival, Aerosmith just shared “Mama Kin (2024 Mix)” as an instant grat track, kicking the energy of the original into high gear and giving fans a taste of what to expect from the newly-mixed version of the record.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Third Man Records is honored to announce its very special expanded edition of How Sad, How Lovely, the landmark first compilation of previously lost recordings from groundbreaking cult singer-songwriter Connie Converse.

First released in 2009 and previously only existing in extremely limited quantities, the new edition will be available on CD, cassette, and single LP vinyl, the latter joined by a bonus 7” featuring an unreleased track and exclusive remix. Production of this long-awaited reissue was overseen by Dan Dzula, co-producer of the original album and founder of The Musick Group, Connie’s other label home. How Sad, How Lovely arrives via Third Man Records on Friday, March 27. Pre-orders are available now.

Connie Converse was among the first modern singer-songwriters, a truly unique artist whose unconventional, hypnotically intimate songs were far ahead of their time. Born in Laconia, New Hampshire, in 1924 to strict, religious parents, she excelled academically and briefly attended Mount Holyoke College before moving to New York City in the late 1940s. There, she lived a quiet, bohemian life, and, by 1949, began writing a remarkable body of original songs.

Those songs were committed to tape over the next decade, as Converse began recording herself at home on a Crestwood 404 reel-to-reel tape recorder. Starting in 1954, legendary comic artist and animator Gene Deitch also began recording Converse at his Hastings-on-Hudson home, where she was a guest at salons and dinner parties hosted by the Deitch family. Converse’s haunting music blended folk, jazz, and art-song influences, with sophisticated, deeply introspective lyrics that explored themes of longing, independence, and self-knowledge, later becoming hallmarks of the 1960s singer-songwriter movement.

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Celebrating Seth Justman on his 75th birthday. —Ed.

A few words on the evolution of this review: I originally intended to write about 1977’s Foghat Live because I consider it the best live album this side of Jerry Lee Lewis’ 1964 Live at the Star Club, Hamburg, which I love even more than Roxy Music’s 1976 Viva! Roxy Music, which is guaranteed to make your ears clasp their tiny little hands and say, “Glam bam thank you ma’am!”

But then my friend Hank Dittmar who has forgotten more about music than I’ll ever know recommended this 1972 live album by the J. Geils Band, whom I saw at Shippensburg College in the late seventies but can’t really remember seeing at Shippensburg College in the late seventies because I was totally blotto on a combination of Wild Turkey and Placidyl, the latter of which I can only describe as an industrial strength memory dissolvent.

So I decided to review “Live Full House and let me tell you I’m glad I did. It ain’t Jerry Lee Lewis and it ain’t Roxy Music but man do the J. Geils Band cook. They mainly stick to the rock and R&B basics but they infuse what are of course a couple of formulas as old as the hills with so much passion you’ll find yourself jumping up and down and screaming along with Peter Wolf who can really shout ‘em out for a white boy. And when he’s not busy emoting, Magic Dick who is my second favorite Dick in rock’n’roll behind Handsome Dick Manitoba, is busy honkadonkin’ up a storm on the old harpoon. Just check out his set piece “Whammer Jammer” if you don’t believe me.

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October the last was the kickoff for Zev Feldman’s Time Traveler Recordings, which began by putting back into print albums by Roy Brooks, Kenny Barron, and Carlos Garnett on 180-gram analog-mastered vinyl as part of the Muse Master Edition series. On January 30, this program really hits its stride by reissuing Love Dance by trumpeter Woody Shaw and Double Exposure by drummer-pianist Joe Chambers. These two underrated sets are connected in interesting ways, as we detail below.

Woody Shaw should’ve been huge. For many who’ve spent much rewarding time soaking up his discography as a leader and sideman, Shaw is huge, indeed one of the defining trumpeters in post-bop jazz. But as alluded to by Bob Blumenthal in his notes for this edition of Love Dance, Shaw just didn’t get the deserved accolades when he was up and coming.

Eric Dolphy’s Iron Man was Shaw’s recording debut, after which he played in Europe for a spell before returning to the USA to join Horace Silver’s band just in time for Cape Verdean Blues, cut in October 1965 for Blue Note. European touring partner Larry Young’s Unity followed in November, and then Shaw cut material for his own set as a leader in December with Young (on piano) and such august names as Joe Henderson (who played on Cape Verdean Blues), Herbie Hancock, Paul Chambers, Ron Carter, and Joe Chambers.

Those sessions stayed in the can until Muse released them in 1983, titled first In the Beginning and for one 1989 CD edition Cassandranite, the opening cut on the album. Track two is the Young composition “Obsequious,” which gets a reprise as the second selection on Love Dance.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | UMe celebrates the 40th anniversary of Pretty in Pink, the beloved 1986 film from Writer/Executive Producer John Hughes, with a limited-edition reissue of its iconic soundtrack, available March 13.

As essential as the film itself, the music captures the story’s emotional truth—freezing moments in time with the vivid clarity of memories that linger for decades. Film soundtracks hold a rare power to shape identity, influencing who we are, where we belong, and the social experiences that define youth. Few filmmakers understood the coming-of-age experience quite like John Hughes, and Pretty in Pink stands as one of his most enduring cultural touchstones.Anchored by era-defining songs including The Psychedelic Furs’ Top 5 title track “Pretty in Pink,” OMD’s iconic “If You Leave,” The Smiths’ “Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want,” and Echo & The Bunnymen’s sweeping anthem “Bring on the Dancing Horses,” and INXS fan-favorite deep-cut, “Do Wot You Do,” the Pretty in Pink soundtrack became a defining voice of its time—shaping mood, identity, and belonging in ways few films ever achieve. More than four decades after its theatrical release, Pretty in Pink continues to resonate across generations, its music and themes echoing with each new audience as they navigate the universal challenges of growing up.

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Celebrating Corky Laing on his 78th birthday. —Ed.

Leslie West is a heavy guy. He weighs like 1,000 lbs and plays heavy music and called his band Mountain because mountains are very heavy, and his song “Mississippi Queen” is so heavy it has to be carried from gig to gig in a specially made truck of the sort the U.S. Army uses to transport intercontinental ballistic missiles. And forget about vinyl. Mountain was so heavy they released their 1970 debut on concrete. It weighed 42 pounds and crushed a whole lot of record players.

Lots of folks dismissed Mountain (West on guitar and vocals, Felix Pappalardi on bass and vocals, Corky Laing on drums, and Steve Knight on keyboards) as Long Island’s answer to Cream, and on songs like “Theme for an Imaginary Western,” “For Yasgur’s Farm,” “The Laird,” and “Boys in the Band” the resemblance is striking. But on Climbing! Mountain escapes their Cream fetish to produce songs as humongous as the whale you keep expecting to show up in “Nantucket Sleighride,” except he never does.

Given Mountain’s reputation as the heaviest beast to ever slouch out of Long Island, Climbing! is far more diverse than you’d expect. Sure, you get some nifty Godzilla stomp along the lines of “Mississippi Queen.” But the band also flirts with acid-prog of the sort that won’t wreak havoc on your tweeters, and tosses in a couple of genre-benders that defy all known ethnomusicological definition. In short, Mountain was no one-trick mastodon.

The band’s division of vocal duties further lent diversity to Mountain’s sound. West’s rhino snort contrasts nicely with Pappalardi’s Jack Bruce, and the duo delegates lead vocal chores accordingly–West sings the speaker-busters, Pappalardi the more Cream-influenced tracks.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Following the reissues of Crime Of The Century and Crisis? What Crisis?, Supertramp continues the 50th anniversary celebrations in their half-speed remaster reissue series with Even In The Quietest Moments…, Breakfast In America, and …Famous Last Words….

As per the first two releases in the series, all three records have been remastered at half-speed by Miles Showell at Abbey Road Studios. They are available to pre-order now from HERE and will be released on March 20, 2026. Crime Of The Century and Crisis? What Crisis? are available now from HERE.

Even in the Quietest Moments… was originally released in April 1977 and is the band’s fifth album. It was an instant hit, charting at number 16 in the Billboard Album Charts, and the album’s opening track, “Give A Little Bit,” also broke into the Billboard Hot 100. To this day, the track has been streamed over almost 800 million times. Just a year after its original release, the album was ranked 63rd in The World Critic Lists, which recognized the 200 greatest albums of all time as voted for by notable rock critics and DJs.

Their sixth album, Breakfast In America, is their biggest commercial success. Released in March 1979, it has sold over 22 million worldwide, generated 2 billion global streams, and spent 88 consecutive weeks in the Billboard 200. It spawned hit singles “The Logical Song,” “Goodbye Stranger,” and “Take The Long Way Home,” all of which broke into the Billboard Hot 100, with “The Logical Song” becoming their most prolific streamed track (over 900 million to date), spending 17 weeks on the chart.

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Before we get around to talking about the stupid band New Order’s dumb 1982 EP “1981-Factus 8-1982,” please allow me to say that one of the things I force myself to do as a responsible music critic is what I call Prejudice Testing. This entails my listening to the music of a contemptible band or musical artist I’ve loathed for decades without going to the unnecessary effort of actually listening to them.

The completely lame English band New Order is such a band. My reasons for not listening to New Order were two-fold. One, they were, as we all know, just Joy Division without Ian Curtis, and seeing as how Ian Curtis is the only reason I liked Joy Division, why bother listening to the riff-raff behind him?

They were bound to suck, and in my mind, the best thing they could have done after Curtis’ death was give up music and take desk jobs at a travel agency. Two, it was my understanding that New Order specialized in a smarty-pants species of synthesizer-heavy dance music, which has never been my idea of a good time. And they didn’t sound like much fun, which is the only reason I listen to synthesizer-heavy dance music in the first place. Be brainless or go home, that’s always been my philosophy.

In most cases, my Prejudice Testing confirms my long-held and completely ignorant distaste. Nick Cave really is the pompous windbag and Lazarus-voiced poet manque of modern rock; the music of Oingo Boingo is as dumb as its name; and The The are indeed boring boring. And I could go on.

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