Perhaps only D’Angelo and Erykah Badu have incarnated R&B with such effortless magnetism.
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aaliyah – aaliyah (2001)
Category: 28/30
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exuma – exuma (1970)
This is a spiritual odyssey steeped in Bahamian tradition.
It’s tempting to draw on some familiar names to help convey this record, but I’ll resist. That might validate the fact that Parallelograms went practically unheard until its 2003 reissue. It is a unique album, from a unique composer. The wistfulness is in tune with a woodland Aesop fable, but Perhacs’ folk isn’t a sun-glazed frolic […]
Dez Anos Depois contains Brazilian standards, several of which are some of the most covered songs of all time. Leão doesn’t look towards something new—her music sits meditating in the present to better appreciate the light play, the beauty, and the love it offers. Even the more obscure songs are precisely as dazzling as Jobin’s […]
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sylvester – step II (1978)
Sometimes all the brain needs is great disco. It’s like a party and a detoxifying spa in one. For Sylvester, making disco and soul was exactly that; few records showcase the genres’ sense of rapturous relief as well as Step II. It is the antithesis of denial, and, having passed through the choppy valley of […]
The Sundays weren’t doing too much differently. In the previous decade, The Replacements had their edgy jaunt, Rickie Lee Jones had their unashamed sentimentalism, The Smiths had their riffs. At the start of a new age, and a refreshal of the consumer market, Reading, Writing and Arithmetic was equal parts mournful and joyous. Its effect […]
TW: this record contains material on suicide and abuse ‘Riderless Horse’ is a lonely album about two people. Like Mount Eerie’s ‘A Crow Looked At Me,’ Nastasia’s first record in twelve years isn’t even an echo: it’s the initial reverberation of real life despair. The jagged candor of her writing is entrusted to expertly patched […]
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black midi – hellfire
I was on a flight when I listened to ‘Hellfire’. I like flying, but I don’t care for turbulence that moves sideways. It started when I played track one, which evidently perturbed the vehicle. The 4-D experience threatened my objective judgement: I wanted to be present, while half-expecting to fly into the side of a […]
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babs gonzales – voila (1958)
Almost every song from Babs Gonzales is a duet with New York. Though ultimately a behind-the-scenes influence, ‘Voila!’ displays Gonzales wielding the squalor and excess of the scene and the city. Most notable is his be-bop style, which helped catapult the theatrics of vocal jazz towards bravado and melodic improvisation. The record reaches further than […]
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