Staff Picks for January 2025

Upon release, Steve Ashley's debut album was rated The Sunday Telegraph's folk album of the year, and even landed its maker a U.S. deal with Motown, which released it to wild acclaim in America in 1975. After that, Ashley more or less vanished, condemning Stroll On to a "lost treasure" status that wholly undervalues its importance in the UK folk-rock genre.
- Dave Thompson

Building Nothing Out of Something, released 25 years ago today, collects Modest Mouse singles and rare tracks from the group's indie-label years, including the studio tracks from the Interstate 8 EP and their contributions to the Sub Pop Singles Club.
- Heather Phares

Saxophonist Dale Fielder lost his house in the Eaton Canyon fire that ravaged Los Angeles in 2025. A Pittsburgh-native, Fielder moved to L.A. in the '90s, diligently establishing himself as a gifted musical journeyman who often works just out of sight of wider public view. His 1995 tribute to Wayne Shorter underscores his influences, while illuminating his own soulful, hard swinging post-bop. Listening to his sun-soaked "Afternoon in L.A." is both a bittersweet snapshot of happier times and a reminder of how a culture of a city is defined by the creative, hardworking people who call it home.
- Matt Collar

Michael Jackson's fourth and final new studio album for Motown (released 50 years ago today) came nearly two years after its predecessor, Music and Me. The album did spawn two minor chart singles, "We're Almost There" and "Just a Little Bit of You" (both produced by Brian Holland of the Holland-Dozier-Holland production team), and a third track, "One Day in Your Life," would chart as a reissue six years later.
- William Ruhlmann

This incredibly obscure album was recorded in 1976 by a group of friends in Indianapolis but sounds like the best of San Francisco's psychedelic summer of love. Brilliant songwriting, drifty vocal harmonies ala Jefferson Airplane's best and enough experimental tendencies to make this a must-hear acid folk classic.
- Fred Thomas

Showing that black metal doesn't always have to be so dark, Deafheaven's brilliant Sunbather takes the genre to soaring new height, mixing in elements of shoegaze and post-rock to create an album that's powerful, beautiful, and a little bit terrifying.
- Gregory Heaney

Trumpeter Roy Hargrove made his name playing swinging '50s and '60s influenced hard bop. However, he has also scored for D'Angelo, and Common and toured with his own funk-influenced project RH Factor. While many of his contemporaries have delved into jazz-fusion and hip-hop, few have done it with as much believability and originality as Hargrove did on his 2006 album, Distractions. Mixing electric and acoustic instruments, here Hargrove builds upon '90s new jack swing and '70s soul-jazz in a wholly innovative way.
- Matt Collar

The music of pianist (and harmonium player) Melford is bluesy, earthy, lyrical, and spiritual, and she has found inspiration among artists from the Americas to Northern India, leading or collaborating in a wide variety of ensemble configurations. After nearly a quarter century of recordings, this 2013 outing is -- astonishingly -- her first solo piano album. Inspired by the late painter Don Reich, the album is pure Melford at her most beautifully expressive. It was worth the wait.
- Dave Lynch

This was the first of Sergio Mendes' legendary run of '60s recordings to hit hard in the USA. Jorge Ben's bossa nova "Mas Que Nada," was delivered with a tight, hard-grooving, arrangement—it was a smash in America despite having Portuguese lyrics. The set also contains a discotheque-ready treatment of the Beatles "Day Tripper," a sensual read of Burt Bacharach's Goin' Out Of My Head," and the killer Brazilian jam "Tim Dom Dom," João Mello.
- Thom Jurek

EPMD's blueprint for East Coast rap wasn't startlingly different from many others in rap's golden age, but the results were simply amazing, a killer blend of good groove and laid-back flow. Erick Sermon and Parrish Smith really turned rapping on its head; instead of simple lyrics delivered with a hyped, theatrical tone, they dropped the dopest rhymes as though they spoke them all the time.
- John Bush

Their tenth album in ten years was a bittersweet swan song for Felt, one that showed the group was capable of crafting excellent and accessible music even as they were calling it quits.
- Tim Sendra

Promised Land, released 50 years ago today, came from the last studio recordings that Elvis Presley ever made in Memphis, the city where his fame and his legend started. It's not as distinctive or as involved a personal document as Elvis Country or the concentrated soul workout of From Elvis in Memphis, but it does feature some fine, passionate singing throughout.
- Bruce Eder

If astronauts drank the purple stuff instead of Tang they'd probably listen to this space case all day long. Future is a limited rapper but this official debut packages his auto-tuned mumble so well, it's a trip worth taking. Start with the massive hit "Tony Montana".
- David Jeffries

Francesco De Gregori's first three records, as brilliant as they often were, went largely unnoticed. Everything changed with Rimmel (released 50 years ago today), the 1975 release that made him into a pop superstar, and second only to Fabrizio De André as the greatest of Italian cantautori. With a little help from friends such as Lucio Dalla, De Gregori expanded his singer/songwriter compositions into full-blown pop songs.
- Mariano Prunes

Cold winter evenings were invented for this Julie London compilation. Julie...At Home is a warm and relaxed evening, while Around Midnight gets cooler and darker. Pour a highball and settle in for the night!
- Zac Johnson

Yellow Ostrich's 2012 Strange Land is a muscular and tightly wound follow-up to 2011's Mistress. Tracks like "Daughter" and "Marathon Runner" are biting, and self-critical electric guitar mini-epics that burn with a forward momentum merely hinted at in lead singer/songwriter Alex Schaaf's previous endeavours.
- Matt Collar

This was jazz and session guitarist Howard Roberts on a psychedelic highway, merging everything into a Firesign Theatre-like montage of street noise, acoustic improvisations, stoner jokes, intermittent vocals, and electric guitar workouts that simply defies categorization. These are easily two of the strangest and most enigmatic albums Impulse ever released.
- Steve Leggett

Tower of Power was very much in its prime in 1974, when the Bay Area outfit tore up the soul charts with the outstanding Urban Renewal, released 50 years ago this month. Tower (an influence on everyone from L.T.D. to the Average White Band) recorded a number of essential albums in the '70s, and Urban Renewal is at the top of the list.
- Alex Henderson

Knocked into shape in three days in anticipation of his 1974 return to touring, Planet Waves reunited Bob Dylan with the Band, and playing with familiar friends gave this music a loosely tight vibe that's warm and satisfying. From the playfully rollicking "On a Night Like This" and "You Angel You" to the edgy "Going Going Gone" and the purposefully chaotic "Tough Mama," this is an under-appreciated gem in Dylan's catalog that's casually inspired.
- Mark Deming