Record Time is Paste’s monthly column that takes a glimpse into the wide array of new vinyl releases currently flooding record stores around the world, and all the gear that is part of the ongoing surge in vinyl culture. 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 high fidelity reissue of a rock classic, a few choice jazz titles and some sweet new music from an up-and-coming singer-songwriter.
N.B. As much as it pains me to tell you, this will be the final edition of this column. I’m moving on from my role at Paste and putting this monthly feature to rest with it. I can’t tell you how much I’ve enjoyed writing this every month and digging into the minutiae of vinyl production and sound quality, and watching my IKEA shelves groan under the weight of all the wax I’ve been sent over the years. Thank you so much to Paste for letting me indulge in my obsession and to all the wonderful artists, publicists and labels that have shared their wares with me.
Ray Barretto: Indestructible (Craft Latino)
There’s something about the look on Ray Barretto’s face on the cover of his 1973 album Indestructible. It can be read as determined and fierce as he opens his dress shirt to reveal a Superman costume. Or it’s absolute annoyance at having to resort to a silly concept like this. What isn’t in question is the brilliance of the music on this LP. Re-released this month for its 50th anniversary, the record was Barretto’s return to salsa music after having lost his backing band a few years prior and zagging back to his days as a jazz artist. The sessions sound like a hero’s welcome. The arrangements by pianist Eddie Martinez and Louie Cruz have a rubbery sensuality like slow dancing with your beloved while buzzed on dark rum. The passion and heat moves from a softly lit simmer (“Yo Tengo Un Amor”) to a sweaty boil (“La Familia,” the stirring title track).
Tony Bennett & Bill Evans: The Tony Bennett / Bill Evans Album (Craft Recordings / Original Jazz Classics)
One of my favorite pictures on an album is on the back cover of this 1975 masterpiece. It’s a simple photo of pianist Bill Evans and vocalist Tony Bennett ostensibly listening to the playback of a take at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley. In the center stands Bennett, tie loosened, collar open and hair mussed. It looks less like the musical god that he was than a deposed senator who had just faced a grilling by an oversight committee. Such was the effort he put into this recording. Accompanied by nothing but Evans’ gracious, balletic piano playing, the singer had nowhere to hide and no orchestral blasts to duck behind. He left nothing to chance and put forth some of his most impassioned performances, leaning into his hearty vibrato and the thick center of his sturdy tenor. All Evans needed to do was flitter around Bennett’s singing and toss in his own splashy solos for color. Back in print on wax as part of Craft Recordings ongoing Original Jazz Classics reissue series and given a wonderful pressing under the watchful ears of Kevin Gray, this is a must-have for any serious or budding jazz collector.
Brainiac: Smack Bunny Baby (Craft Recordings / Grass)
I adore the fact that, for all the expense that Craft Recordings undertook to re-release the 1993 debut album by Ohio indie-glam / new wave quartet Brainiac, the liner notes have been laser printed on a simple 8 1/2″ x 11” piece of paper. It’s very much in keeping with the spirit in which Smack Bunny Baby was released some 30 years ago on a tiny indie label. Back then, the group was a hungry group mining a bleeping, furious sound similar to groups like Girls Against Boys (that band’s Eli Janney produced this LP) and Man or Astroman. What Brainiac had above the rest was front man Timmy Taylor, a compelling dynamo who knew his way around a Moog and exercised a willingness to tear open the stitches of his tortured psyche for the sake of a song. SBB is a blistering listen of sharp-angled rhythms and corrosive guitar / keyboard entanglements. Who dared to let this fall out of print?
Collective Soul: 7even Year Itch: Greatest Hits, 1994-2001 (Craft Recordings)
As the cultural conversation swirled around grunge and alternative culture, Southern rockers Collective Soul threw itself into the fray, daring to wear their modern pop and AOR influences on their sleeves. Reviled in some circles, the group was an instant success and have sustained a healthy career for the better part of three decades. Back in 2001, they capped off an impressive commercial run with this compilation that surrounded their three Top 20 singles with other material from their first five albums and two new cuts to boot. It’s a lot to pack onto a single LP, as the running time clocks in at just over 50 minutes. Add to it the digital means by which these songs were originally recorded and there is an inescapable dullness to the audio quality of this first-ever vinyl pressing, released earlier this month. I don’t foresee that stopping fans of the group from adding this to their collection. It’s a tidy little collection that saves the wear and tear on recent vinyl reissues of the band’s first few LPs.
The Adam Deitch Quartet: Roll The Tape (Golden Wolf)
On the back cover of his second album as a bandleader, Adam Deitch thanks “all the drummers who have albums under their own names. Drummers are composers, too.” It’s a fair point even as the modern jazz community continues to move past the perception of the drummer as an interchangeable cog in the music making machine. In the case of Roll The Tape, another player could have stepped in to record these songs, but they wouldn’t do it nearly as well as Deitch does throughout. It’s a difficult thing to make the deep pocket grooves he plays sound as effortless as they do here. Deitch imbues them with little bits of flair and surprising fills that don’t distract from the rest of the musicians. The album is an organ-led soul jazz joy in the vein of late ’60s Grant Green and late ’90s Medeski Martin & Wood, complete with a delightful guest appearance by guitarist John Scofield.
Wes Montgomery: The Complete Full House Recordings (Craft Recordings)
Guitarist Wes Montgomery only recorded one live session for the great jazz label Riverside, but one was all he needed to make a serious statement of intent. Performing at the Berkeley, CA coffeehouse Tsubo with a rhythm section borrowed from Miles Davis (bassist Paul Chambers, pianist Wynton Kelly and drummer Jimmy Cobb), the 39-year-old guitarist tapped into every aspect of his music personality for this recording. On “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face,” Montgomery is the gentle balladeer, strumming slowly and firmly through this familiar melody. On his original compositions, “Full House” and “S.O.S.,” he’s a post-bop cyclone plucking spiritedly in tandem with saxophonist Johnny Griffin and peeling off for solos that send the caffeinated crowd reeling. Reissued many times since its initial release, this new triple-LP set feels definitive. In addition to the original album, the producers have included previously unreleased alternate versions and outtakes from the Berkeley date that provide listeners with the opportunity to hear how solos evolved over the course of a single evening.
Van Halen: Van Halen (Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs / Warner)
The folks at Mobile Fidelity are set to release new, high quality pressings of the Van Halen catalog — the David Lee Roth years, at least — over the next year or so, and karate kicked it into motion earlier this month with an Ultradisc One-Step edition of the Southern California quartet’s 1978 self-titled debut. At the time, this album was the great leap forward for a group that cut its teeth in the backyard party circuit and nightclubs of L.A. What elevated them beyond the rabble was the dual presences of Roth, the consummate frontman, and the god of the electric guitar, Eddie Van Halen. Produced by Ted Templeman, Van Halen remains one of the greatest debut albums of all time — a cocksure ode to backseat lovin’, runnin’ with the devil and, well, ice cream. As expected, the MoFi team have breathed new life into these 45 year old rockers, with a welcome boost to Michael Anthony’s underappreciated bass work (listen to him rip it up on album closer “I’m On Fire”) and ample room for EVH’s solos to tear through the speakers like swipes of a katana.
Raia Was: Captain Obvious (Switch Hit)
Most artists spend their professional lives building to different magical moments or important milestones. For singer-songwriter Raia Was, it began as a weekly residency at a New York piano bar, which led her to work as a touring musician, collaborations with Autre Ne Veut and, most significantly, landing a song on the hit HBO drama Euphoria. It seems as though Was waited for the next door to open to her, but when it didn’t, she opted instead to take the reins her own damn self. She started a record label and self-produced her second album Captain Obvious. The resulting collection is a future pop wonder, an expression of personal and psychological defiance that finds Was working through the conflicting emotions of her place in the music industry and in her romantic life as the music behind her swirls and pixelates in multi-colored bursts anchored by her piano playing and her breathy vocals.