What We're Listening to This Week

Jeffrey St. Clair

Various Artists, I Heard the Angels Singing: Electrifying Black Gospel from the Nashboro Label 1951-1983 (Tompkins Square)

Xiu Xiu: Nina: a Tribute to Nina Simone (Graveface Records)

The Lonely Forest: Adding Up the Wasted Hours (Republic)

 

Joshua Frank

Townes Van Zandt – Sunshine Boy (Omnivore Recordings)

Earl Sweatshirt – Doris (Tan Cressida)

Neil Young – Live at the Cellar Door, 1970 (Reprise)

 

Kristin Kolb

Mike Cooley:  The Fool on Every Corner (Cooley Records) 

Wooden Shjips:  Back to Land (Thrill Jockey)

 

David Yearsley

Hank Mobley: The Complete Blue Note Fifties Sessions (Mosaic). The grainy optimism of Mobley has been keeping me going this week, from Hank’s Prank recorded by Rudy Van Gelder in 1955 to Stretchin’ Out, three years and nine LPs later (presented here on six CDs). This Blue Note banquet is made even more sumptuous  thanks to plenty of alternate takes allowing a fuller measure of the underrated tenor saxophonist’s gentle genius—with Lee Morgan, Horace Silver, Wynton Kelly, Art Blakey, Paul Chambers and many other luminaries joining the feast.

 

Becky Grant

Fanny Hill by John Cleland, first published 1748. unabridged. (Audio book). Narrated by Veronika Hyks.

Zen of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff, first published 1982. unabridged. (Audio book.) Narrated by Simon Vance.

(with Oliver Grant) Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros  (Universal) and Lindsey Stirling by Lindsey Stirling (10 Spot)

and, of course, lots of Pete Seeger.

 

Ron Jacobs

Todd Snider: Agnostic Hymns and Stoner Fables (Aimless)

Wadada Leo Smith: Ten Freedom Summers (Cunieform)

Warren Haynes, Gregg Allman and Keb ‘Mo:  Set from the Xmas Jam December 13, 2013, Asheville, NC. (Bootleg)

Ron Jacobs is the author of several books, including Daydream Sunset: Sixties Counterculture in the Seventies published by CounterPunch Books. His latest book, titled Nowhere Land: Journeys Through a Broken Nation, is now available. He lives in Vermont. He can be reached at: ronj1955@gmail.com