Best Of 2023: Out Of The Past
Reissues and other older sounds that shouldered their way into my listening
After putting a bow on 2023’s new releases with coverage of over 150 albums, it’s no wonder this category, focusing on reissues and other older recordings, is the smallest of all the Best Of 2023 posts. I’m also somewhat militant in keeping my ears facing forward (sounds uncomfortable, LOL) and focused on the music of today. Several articles about the strength of “catalog” music have made me feel only more present and future-oriented. And that’s not to mention the anecdotal evidence provided by the social media stickiness of constantly re-litigating the “greatest” albums and songs of a particular year, decade, or all time. I participate in some of that myself - it’s fun - but won’t let it get in the way of listening to as many new things as is humanly possible.
All that said, there were 12 reissues that absolutely should not be missed, from big box sets to single albums being returned to the catalog for the first time in decades. Click play on the playlist here or below to listen along while you read.
Classic Albums Revisited
Bob Dylan - The Bootleg Series Vol. 17: Fragments – Time Out of Mind Sessions (1996–1997) I’ve heard rumors that the writing is on the wall for Dylan’s Bootleg series in the streaming era, at least as massive physical products. That could be why the whole five-disc set is on Spotify instead of only highlights. Whatever the reason, and however you get to it, this is all essential listening. The first disc gives us a new remix of the original album, with Michael H. Brauer pulling a more naturalistic sound out of Daniel Lanois’s sessions. Everything sounds more present, with Dylan’s voice chiseling the air and every interaction between the extraordinary players fully felt. While it doesn’t obviate the original, it’s a stunning new way to hear this classic album.
Discs two and three give us a wealth of alternate takes, each musically valid in its own right, though Dylan’s search for the best vocal approach usually found its object on the master takes. Then you get a disc of a dozen live gems from one of the master’s most fruitful eras on stage. While bootlegs are rife and I still hold out hope for a whole “Never-Ending Nineties” box, the choices made here are exemplary. One highlight is a reflective performance of Trying To Get To Heaven from Birmingham, England in 2000, that seems to slot it right into the Great American Songbook. Shades of things to come…
Disc five collects all the TOOM-related songs from Tell Tale Signs, including five that were only available on the rare Deluxe Edition. If this devastatingly good set is any indication, there’s no sign of running out of material for the Bootleg Series; let’s hope the vagaries of the marketplace don’t bring it to an untimely end.
The Who - Who’s Next: Lifehouse What more is there to be said about this most classic of “classic rock” albums? While version that came out in 1971 was perfect in nearly every way, it’s difficult birth out of Pete Townshend’s ambitious Lifehouse project is nearly as legendary as the album itself. This massive nine-disc 10-hour mega box tells that story, from multiple demos of songs that ended up on the album - and a few that didn’t - to Lifehouse-adjacent singles like The Seeker, all the way through to two previously unreleased concerts. All of this is absolutely fascinating even if only some of it will demand repeat listening. But the ultimate impression - and it is a thrilling one - is of what a goddamned genius Townshend was in those days, where the real problem wasn’t a lack of inspiration but maybe too much. Getting the chance to ride that bucking bronco of artistic impulses with him, nearly in real time, is a true gift to all fans of The Who.
The Replacements - Tim (Let It Bleed Edition) While grown men and women wept at the Ed Stasium remix, color me less impressed - and even critical of how body was added to Paul Westerberg’s voice at the expense of the original rawness. The best thing I can say about it is that it’s kind of cool to hear a little more detail and muscle from the instruments and if it helps more people appreciate a knockout batch of songs, all the better. But Westerberg and his unmistakable voice, cracked and desperate even at its most tender, was the heart of the band. Mess with that at your peril. But even for those who agree with me (and have the original vinyl, which I always thought was perfectly fine.), this four-disc set offers unmissable material. Disc three, entitled Sons of No One: Rare & Unreleased, is filled with mind-blowing outtakes and alternates, including two versions of Nowhere Is My Home and a few illuminating approaches to Can’t Hardly Wait, including the heartbreaking Cello Version. Not Ready For Prime Time, the fourth disc, presents the band in raw, raging form at Chicago’s Cabaret Metro in January 1986. Any addition to the canon of live Replacements featuring Bob Stinson is worth the price of admission. I always thought The Replacements would be big, but never expected they would be competing with Bob Dylan and The Who for box set supremacy!
Career Overviews
DeYarmond Edison - Epoch For many people, including me, hearing Bon Iver’s Skinny Love on KCRW or WFUV was their first experience of the genius of Justin Vernon. But he had a long road to that cabin in the Wisconsin woods where he recorded much of For Emma, Forever Ago - and he did not walk it alone. This lavishly appointed box of five LPs and four CDs tells the story of the early days, starting with Mount Vernon, his terribly named - and fairly awful - college band. Only completists need to listen to those songs even once. But there’s only two of them and once Vernon connects with Brad and Phil Cook and Joe Westerlund to form DeYarmond Edison (Vernon’s two middle names) in 2002, things land on much firmer ground.
While there are still one or two self-indulgent moments familiar to anyone who’s listened such Vernon-verse projects as Gayngs or Shouting Matches, most of this is pure gold. Warm, embracing folk and folk-rock that applies innovative textures from electronics or (occasionally) brass to heighten the emotions. A perfect example is Songs For A Lover - Of Long Ago, one of the later tracks, which begins with a hushed vocal over some fingerpicked guitar, soon enhanced by a glassy sound that could be a synth or an overdriven harmonica (Phil can play!) that invites in a brief squall of electric guitar that threatens to derail the song entirely. It recovers quickly - but the listener may take longer! This truly epochal collection is full of marvels like that, including cathartic live material and early rumblings of Megafaun, the band the Cooks formed with Westerlund after DeYarmond Edison broke up. Though they couldn’t have known it, in the fits and starts of their early careers, these prodigiously talented artists were setting a stage for a wondrous musical future, and one in which we still live.
Nev Cottee - The Best Of Nev Cottee 2013-2023 “Time will say nothing/But I told you so,” Cottee sings in If I Could Tell You from his 2015 album, Strange News From The Sun. And I would hate to join “time” in that imprecation, but if you’ve waited until now to check out this remarkable artist…well, I have been telling you since 2017, when his third album, Broken Flowers, hit my Top 25. His fifth, Madrid, repeated that accomplishment in 2022. But this is your lucky day. Not only are the selected songs among his best but the new remasters bring out detail and add weight, giving the IMAX imprimatur to his cinematic folk-adelic fantasies. Get involved now and you just might be prepared for what he does next.
Various Artists - Miami Soul: Soul Gems From Henry Stone Records I’ve been known to take a deep dive into the world of Henry Stone, but there are only a few familiar tracks on this compilation, most notably Gwen McRae’s Rockin’ Chair and Timmy Thomas’s Why Can’t We Live Together. And even if Stone’s greatest workhorse, KC & The Sunshine Band, is absent, the two dozen tracks here prove the durability of his formula for funky soul. Perhaps my favorite discovery from the album is the alternate take of Lew Kirton’s 1978 barn-burner, Let Me Up Off My Knees, with a detailed arrangement that seems cut from the same cloth as Toto’s Hold The Line, full of electric piano, wah-wah guitar, and tart strings. The Barbadian-born singer begs and pleads to memorable effect throughout, even going so far as to sing, “I’m going to stand right here in the rain/Even if it kills me/I’m going to stand right here/Till you say that you’re fucking me!” Not the smoothest line, but a rough and ready moment from a great overview of the work of Stone, one of the most legendary of record-men.
Jimi’s On Sale Again
Jimi Hendrix Experience - Live At The Hollywood Bowl, August 18th, 1967 Captured a month after the JHE’s earth-shattering appearance at the Monterey Pop Festival - and five days before Are You Experienced came out in the U.S. - this occasionally chaotic show finds the band eager to impress an audience that still included many new listeners. Hendrix himself is at his most charmingly self-deprecating (“It’s ok if you laugh, as long as you laugh on key”) and then conjuring sounds out of his guitar that still startle today. The first solo on Catfish Blues, for example, sounds almost like he’s playing backwards, with each note stretched like taffy. The sound is quite good and it seems a more than minor miracle that an interesting gap in the Hendrix story can finally be heard.
Reggae Unearthed
Vivian Weathers - Bad Weathers Several years ago, Mojo magazine put this 1979 one-off at the top of its list of 10 Best Lovers Rock albums, which set me on the hunt for an album that was barely released in the U.S. and not much more common in the U.K. Before I gave in and ordered a copy from Japan (with exorbitant shipping to match), Universal reissued it on vinyl and digital, giving it a chance to be heard anew.
It’s well worth hearing, too, full of haunting grooves, quirky vocal touches, and a simmering tension (rage, even), the expression of which may have been aided by Weathers long collaboration with Linton Kwesi Johnson. But it’s not really lovers rock. It’s too eccentric and political, having more in common with the Gregory Isaacs of Slave Master than the one of Night Nurse. So let’s give Carroll Thompson’s Hopelessly In Love the lovers rock crown and allow Bad Weathers to reshape the musical universe of 1979 and beyond by standing on its own like the unique album it is.
Augustus Pablo & Rockers All Stars - Lightning And Thunder: Previously Unreleased Recordings And Dubplates If you know you know. And if you know, nothing beyond the title of this pithy collection, which received a narrow release in 2022, will be needed to compel you to listen. If you don’t know, Pablo is the master of the melodica, often referred to as a child’s toy, a breath-blown, handheld keyboard/wind instrument, that this genius used for several all-time classic dub reggae albums. Start with King Tubbys Meets Rockers Uptown, probably one of the 10 most essential reggae albums of all time. Or you could start here, 10 immersive tracks of clanking percussion, deep bass, complex brass voicings, and that melodica wending its mysterious way through all of it. There are occasional vocals, but the focus is on Pablo’s signature instrument. The whole thing is further evidence in my theory that there is more great reggae in the vaults than has been released by most other genres. Thanks to the Rockers International label for unearthing these classics.
Never A Footnote
The Exploding Hearts - Guitar Romantic (Expanded & Remastered) The tragic tale behind this 20-year-old near-classic was well-told in Rolling Stone and on Bandcamp around the time of this reissue. The short version is that this gritty four-piece rock band were essentially America’s answer to The Libertines, with a raw, punked up approach to songs that were carved from the same elements as the best power pop. Intensely energetic, with an all-for-one/one-for-all ethos coming through in every shouted backing vocal or guitar lick, their story was cut short when three of the four members were killed in a van accident. That horrendous event should not relegate them to a footnote, so play this album often - and loud - giving them furious life once again.
Charlotte Greig - Night Visiting Songs It would be fairly pointless of me to add background and context to this extraordinary reissue when
has already done so in perfect fashion. Suffice to say that Greig, who recorded these haunting, spare songs in her bedroom after putting the kids to bed, may just be the missing link between Nico and Elana Low, with a pitstop in the holy realms of the Young Marble Giants in between. Accompanying herself with a harmonium and a drum machine and singing in a clear, vibrato-free mezzo-soprano, each song seems a dispatch from the center of her soul. And though this was originally released in 1998, it speaks directly to my own soul right now. If you seek other sympathetic souls, check into Night Visiting Songs Revisited, an ongoing covers project, which is free to anyone who purchases Greig’s album on Bandcamp. Greig, who died tragically by suicide in 2014 after a breast cancer diagnosis, was also a journalist, novelist, and playwright. But there are more musical glories yet to come, with five further albums set for reissue.Kenyon Hopkins - The New York Sound Ever since I first encountered his music on David Garland’s Spinning On Air back in the late 90s, Kenyon Hopkins has been a touchstone artist for me. While I have nearly all of his important soundtracks and sound-tours, including this one, on vinyl, it always gives my heart a lift when more of his music hits the streaming services. I just want everyone to experience his colorful approach to arranging and expert take on “composed jazz,” which puts him in the same class as Henry Mancini, Shorty Rogers, and Jimmy Giuffre in my book. So even if this digital-only reissue has been bizarrely retitled from The Sound Of New York and seems to have been transferred from an original LP, I’m glad more people can get some Hopkins in their lives without trolling Discogs or digging in dusty crates. The album takes you from landing at LaGuardia to visiting various highlights of our fair city, using cannily arranged classic tunes (Take The A Train, Chinatown, My Chinatown, etc.) and sound effects for an immersive experience of NYC circa 1959. Nightmare! and Baby Doll are also newly available - and integral parts of his discography.
Are any of these old sounds new to you? Tell me about it!
From the archives:
Best Of 2022: Out Of The Past
Best Of 2021: Out Of The Past
Best Of 2020: Out Of The Past
Best Of 2019: Out Of The Past
Best Of 2018: Out Of The Past
Best Of 2017: Out Of The Past
Best Of 2016: Reissues
Best Of The Rest Of 12: Out Of The Past
Jammin out to this Miami Soul, cheers as always for the fun finds!