Record Time is Paste’s monthly column that takes a glimpse into the wide array of new vinyl releases that are currently flooding record stores around the world. Rather than run down every fresh bit of wax in the marketplace, we’ll home in on special editions, reissues and unusual titles that come across our desk with an interest in discussing both the music and how it is pressed and presented. This month that includes a batch of Stax reissues, two power pop classics, and the first ever release from a landmark jazz label.
Big Star: #1 Record/Radio City (Craft Recordings/Argent)
Craft Recordings has begun an extensive vinyl reissue campaign of some of the gems from the discography of Stax Records and its subsidiaries. (For more on that, see below.) What comes with that vast archive are the first two albums by foundational power pop group Big Star. The band’s initial output—1972’s #1 Record and 1974’s Radio City—were both released on the Stax-associated Ardent Records, the label run by the folks behind Ardent Studios, the famed Memphis recording house. But because the Big Star records were handled at the time by independent distributors who didn’t know what to do with a group made up of shaggy white dudes playing melodic rock, both albums were doomed to cult success. Since they were first released, both the band and their records are now viewed as crucial blueprints for the many generations of shaggy white folk playing guitar-based pop music. Reissues of Big Star’s work are abundant, including multiple repressings of these albums, but unless you’re willing to take out a second mortgage to afford OG copies of #1 Record and Radio City, this is truly your best bet. Both Craft pressings were taken from the original analog master tapes and sound exactly as you’d hope. The rockers explode, the ballads melt, and everything in between feels as cushy and warm as ever. If you have some Christmas cash still burning a hole in your pocket, use it to get these into your collection.
Robert Ashley: Automatic Writing (Lovely Music)
When contemporary classical composer Robert Ashley began work on Automatic Writing, he said he “had come to recognize that I might have a mild form of Tourette’s” as characterized by his involuntary uttering of the same phrases over and over. And, at the same time, he was struggling with depression and viewed his work on this as a way to pull himself out of the darkness. What Ashley emerged with is a haunted, creaking, and oddly beautiful piece of music that slowly weaves together a latticework of repeated phrases (spoken by the composer and his wife Mimi Johnson) and the light flutter of electronic noise and Moog melodies. Though this came out contemporaneously with Brian Eno’s Music For Airports, Automatic Writing felt like ambient’s precursor, capturing the same mood of being either lovely background sound or music that revealed layers and layers of depth and meaning upon close listening. What is underneath the surface delights are Ashley’s very real and relatable self-doubt about his work (“Who are you doing this for anyway?… My mind is censoring my own mind”), self-referential moments (“Things are really poppin’ on the second side”), and repeated phrases that perfectly reflect the cyclical thought processes of people with Tourette’s and autism.
Stax Reissues (Craft Recordings)
Memphis, Tennessee is in a constant tug-of-war with itself. The city is proud of its storied musical and cultural legacy and highlights in with placards placed near important locations and meticulously maintaining its landmarks like Sun Studios and Stax, the recording studio and record label that gave the world Booker T & the M.G.’s, Isaac Hayes, and Carla Thomas. This reissue campaign of albums released on Stax and its subsidiaries, overseen by Craft Recordings, is of a piece with that mindset. The back catalog is being cleaned up by modern technology and then pressed back on to vinyl, complete with reproductions of the original artwork and album labels. As other reissue labels like Vinyl Me, Please are getting in on the fun, and Craft has already re-released some masterpieces by Hayes, this new batch is an I Ching toss of five LPs that reflect back with crystalline clarity on the label’s admittedly unsteady legacy. Stax may have given the world “Sittin’ On The Dock of the Bay,” but it’s also responsible for Ma! He’s Making Eyes At Me.
These five LPs aren’t quite that motley. The farthest out they run is into a strange post-Sgt. Pepper’s territory where David Porter found space to build his version of concept album Victim of the Joke? An Opera, which slides cut-and-paste soundscapes and spoken word interludes between an otherwise straightforward collection of psych-soul (complete with a Beatles cover, in case you forgot who was providing the inspiration here). There’s also room for the anomalous debut by Delaney & Bonnie. The husband and wife duo from L.A. recorded their sole Stax record with the help of Leon Russell and members of the M.G.’s and came away with some strong tunes and a fine starting point to build a career off of. The other three of this batch are much stronger and more representative of Stax’s strengths, like Melting Pot, the last album recorded by the classic lineup of Booker T. & the M.G.’s; Gotta Groove, the first album by a rebuilt Bar-Kays, the instrumental group that lost the majority of its original members in the plane crash that also killed Otis Redding; and singer/songwriter Johnnie Taylor’s breakthrough full-length Who’s Making Love…, which peaks early with the indelibly funky title track and somehow sustains that groove and heat over two sides of vinyl.
