Vintage

You know Jason Jagel’s work, even if you don’t know the name. The Cali-based artist has down a gang covers for a bunch of Stones Throw artists like Madlib, Dudley Perkins, and Egon (Evil Badger Breaks), but is probably best known for the painted covers of MF Doom’s MMM FOOD album and 12”s (you know - the cartoony ones that make Doom look all cuddly). If you were fortune, you may have glimpsed his art at the Cartoon Art Museum in SF. His paintings have a loose-yet-tight quality about them with tons of stuff going on all in one panel (you can re-visit drawings you’ve seen a lot and find new things in them). Tons of musical and personal references are placed in a colorful, cartoony world that doesn’t seem to take itself too seriously seemed to be a perfect match for Stones Throw’s releases. This beautiful, oversized (14” x 12” x 1”) book features 200 images from Jagel’s career, all in super crisp full color detail. In addition, Madlib: The Beat Konducta himself has contributed an exclusive 10” record (designed by Jagel of course) featuring 3 unreleased tracks by Yesterday’s Universe. Dopeness. 208 pages total, hardcover. Highly Recommended.

Charlie Louvin - Sings Murder Ballads & Disaster Songs CD (Tompkins Square)
Charlie performs songs from the very first Louvin Brothers album along with his choice of tracks from the People Take Warning box set (in stock and highly recommended) to create a moving and sometimes raucous new take on traditional songs of tragedy. Guest musicians include Andrew Bird and Chris Scruggs.

Mark Kozelek - The Finally CD (Caldo Verde)
Many of the covers assembled here were recorded for tribute albums that are now unavailable. Highlights include a country-tinged version of "Lazy" by Low, and an intimate, acoustic version of Stephen Sondheim's "Send In The Clowns" recorded for the Minneapolis Bridge Disaster Benefit CD. The album also includes radio show rarities, a previously unreleased version of Husker Du's "Celebrated Summer" and two original instrumentals.

Soy Un Caballo - Heures De Raison CD/LP (Minty Fresh)
The duo Soy Un Caballo (Spanish for "I am a horse") features Bonnie Prince Billy (Will Oldham) and Sean O'Hagan (High Llamas). Color vinyl is limited to 400 units worldwide. "Delicate, wispy melodies vie with choral refrains... smooth as silk, cool as a cucumber and light as a feather." - Subba-Cultcha

Common - Universal Mind Control CD (Geffen)
Common's eighth album features knob-twiddling from multi-platinum producers The Neptunes and Kanye West. Guests include Cee-Lo, Pharrell, Martina Topley-Bird and more.

Justice - A Cross The Universe CD+DVD (Atlantic)
Live CD+DVD release includes recordings of Justice's headbanging electro-metal sets along with various hi-jinks captured as the band toured the U.S. in March 2008.

Alice Russell - Pot Of Gold CD (Six Degrees)
Mixes elements of soul, jazz, funk, rock and blues into an irresistible and soulful concoction that will appeal to her many existing fans while reaching out to new audiences looking for the next distinctive voice on the music scene. If you're looking for the "next" Amy Winehouse or Duffy, check out the "real" Alice Russell, long considered the soul sister of the UK, having contributed to many recordings by Quantic Soul Orchestra and The Bamboos as well as releasing several fine import-only solo joints. This is her US debut.

The Damned - So, Who's Paranoid? CD (02. Records)
32 years on, the heart of The Damned -- David Vanian and Captain Sensible -- beat stronger than ever, proving that their trademark dark, melodic beauty, tinged with jagged satire, is truly timeless.

The Welcome Wagon - Welcome To The Welcome Wagon CD (Asthmatic Kitty)
Recorded, produced, and arranged by Sufjan Stevens. A ramshackle sing-along enterprise of a Presbyterian pastor and his wife who wrestle out the influences of folk music, religion, pop culture, and church tradition in a collection of soulful and good-humored songs. It consolidates "sacred" song traditions, iconoclastic '60s pop innovators (The Velvet Underground), '70s charismatic Catholics (Lenny Smith), and '80s melancholy lovelorn pop (The Smiths).

DM Stith - Curtain Speech CDEP (Asthmatic Kitty)
The music on this debut EP calls to mind Antony And The Johnsons, Grizzly Bear and sometimes the explosiveness of Animal Collective, along with the dissonance of Sonic Youth and Henryk Gorecki, the expressive vocal techniques of Caetano Veloso and Mary Margaret O'Hara, and the romance and textures of Benjamin Britten and Edward Elgar. Vocals sit amongst lush arrangements of piano, guitar, strings, electronics, choir, and percussion. The song structures feel like mini soundtracks. A transfixing and imaginative statement.

Arrington De Dionyso - I See Beyond The Black Sun CD/LP (K)
This record is less the apocalyptic doom of his ramshackle post-punk group Old Time Relijun, and more of a raga influenced anthropological meditation. "This music winds like an infinite snake around the vine of a central note, probing hypnotically as De Dionyso inexhaustibly exhales mandalas, spirals, unknowable cuneiforms, and other beguiling shapes, while simultaneously driving the pulse and drone to advance, like a slow motion tsunami, towards a shocking climax of release." -- Michael Gira (Angels Of Light/Swans)

Musiq Soulchild - On My Radio CD (Atlantic)
Crafting ear-caressing tracks that blend old-school soul fervor with new-school hip-hop rhythms, Musiq Soulchild has evolved with his new album On My Radio.

Odetta, the singer whose resonant voice wove together the strongest songs of American folk music and the civil rights movement, died on Tuesday in Manhattan. She was 77. The cause was heart disease, her manager, Doug Yeager, said. Oddetta, who lived in Manhattan, had been admitted to Lenox Hill Hospital three weeks ago with several ailments, including kidney trouble, Mr. Yeager said. In her last days, he said, she had been hoping to sing at President-elect Barack Obama’s inauguration.

In a career of almost 60 years, Odetta sang at coffeehouses and at Carnegie Hall. She became one of the best-known folk-music artists of the 1950s and ’60s. Her recordings of blues and ballads on dozens of albums influenced Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Janis Joplin and many others. Odetta’s voice was an accompaniment to the black-and-white images of the freedom marchers who walked the roads of Alabama and Mississippi and the boulevards of Washington in the quest to end racial discrimination. Rosa Parks, whose refusal to give up her seat to a white led to the boycott of segregated buses in Montgomery, Ala., was once asked which songs meant the most to her. “All of the songs Odetta sings,” she replied.

One of those songs was “I’m on My Way,” sung during the pivotal civil-rights march on Washington on Aug. 28, 1963. In a videotaped interview with The New York Times in 2007 for its online feature “The Last Word,” Odetta recalled lines from another song she sang that day, “O Freedom,” which was rooted in slavery days: “O freedom, O freedom, O freedom over me, And before I’d be a slave, I’d be buried in my grave, And go home to my Lord and be free.”

Odetta Holmes was born in Birmingham, Ala., on Dec. 31, 1930, in the depths of the Depression. The music of that time and place — particularly prison songs and work songs recorded in the fields of the Deep South — shaped her life. “They were liberation songs,” she said in the Times interview. She added: “You’re walking down life’s road, society’s foot is on your throat, every which way you turn you can’t get from under that foot. And you reach a fork in the road and you can either lie down and die, or insist upon your life.”

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