Random A-List

Here are 12 A- (or better) graded albums, selected at random. Use your Reload button to get more.

The Butthole Surfers: Independent Worm Salon [1993, Capitol]
With closet M.B.A. Gibby Haynes t.c.b., their freak show has always had more P.T. Barnum than Salvador Dali in it, and more Salvador Dali than Swamp Dogg. All John Paul Jones does is improve their entertainment value. Channeling horrible noise into runaway power riffs, they maintain a style of momentum reminiscent of Gibby's sometime collaborators in Ministry--messier, which is their calling card, but not that much messier. With nuttier jokes, too. A fun-loving guy, Gibby. A-

George Clinton: You Shouldn't-Nuf Bit Fish [1983, Capitol]
This isn't as smart as Computer Games, or as soulful either--success will always go to George's head. So be thankful the head is a capacious one, and connected to his rump. Side one leads off with his version of The African King and quickly proves his most irresistible since Motor-Booty Affair, with "Quickie" a riff/groove that gleams like "Flash Light" and "Last Dance" a big fat fart in David Bowie's face. Even the talkover filler on the title track is worth listening to, and Philippe Wynne's lowdown oinks make "Stingy" a worthy heir to none other than the Coasters' "I'm a Hog for You." A

El Michels Affair & Black Thought: Glorious Game [2023, Big Crown]
It's been well over a decade since How I Got Over established the Roots' canonical place in the hip-hop pantheon, and hey, 2011's Undun and 2014's . . . And Then You Shoot You Cousin are proudly thematic as well. But then some version of Jimmy Fallon Syndrome, which may merely mean fame or even overwork, got in the way of their thematic ambitions, so frontman Black Thought turned out two excellent concept EPs well before undertaking this collab with keyboardist Leon Michels's New York-based soul quintet. Unlike Undun, say, it isn't plotted—from "The protocol is overhaul/I am not a know-it-all" to "haters'll shoot their shot at you out of a moving car," it's more memoiristic, and it has its limitations as such. But not so's it doesn't fit just fine into the Roots' canon. A-

Elmore James: Let's Cut It: The Very Best of Elmore James [1991, Flair/Virgin]
Already leading what must have been a pretty damn raucous Mississippi horn band by 1939, James is the missing link between Robert Johnson and Hound Dog Taylor. Johnson taught him, or couldn't stop him from stealing, the "Dust My Broom" lick he lived off of; Taylor converted his slashing simplification of Johnson's slide into something even simpler--boogie. These are the Bihari brothers-produced originals of tunes he recorded as often as he could get paid before drinking himself to cardiac arrest at 45 in 1963--not subtle, you could even say monochromatic, and they rock like nobody's business. I miss the endless despair of "1839 Blues" and the post-Bihari classic "It Hurts Me Too." But if you're so culturally deprived you can't hum "Dust My Broom," here's your chance to become an addict. A-

R. Kelly: R. Kelly [1995, Jive]
"He's grown up a little," an intelligent young member of his target audience was gratified to report, and that's a reasonable explanation for his surprise abandonment of bump-and-mack banality. But as a sage old outsider, I wonder whether he hasn't also sold out a little--and whether pop music and the world aren't better off for his market-driven pursuit of the love-man demographic. Luther's ladies buy as many tapes and CDs as B-girls do, and in real stores, too. So as said B-girls evolve into jobholding consumers who won't get played, a fella with his eye on the main chance learns to improve the quality of his dubious promises: "Trade in my life for you," that's strong, and no harm in a little "goin' down on you by the fireplace." Add a dollop of Dre, a cup of Isleys, and more church than he sees the inside of in a year, and you have the smartest and sexiest new jack swing since Teddy Riley fell off the edge of the biz. A-

Miguel: Wildheart [2015, RCA]
It's sloppy to slot this as the latest in r&b's endless succession of sin-versus-salvation struggles. This Angeleno is more secular than that, and also less desperate. So ". . . goingtohell" is about romantic love and human mortality, not eternal damnation, and "gonna die young" addresses not the brutalities of the thug life but the perils of the fast lane like Frank Ocean and the Eagles before it. Nor is the chiseled Afro-Hispanic the pure sex symbol some assume--that's why the porn-inspired "the valley" is followed by the domestic morning-after of "coffee" before it's trumped by some dickish fuckery he hands off to Kurupt. You could even say this recalls one of rock's endless succession of coming-of-age struggles. The straightforwardly confused "what's normal anyway" sums it up nicely. He is normal--because he ain't. A-

New York Shakespeare Festival: Threepenny Opera [1976, Columbia]
No matter how little use you have for musical theatre--I have very little myself--this score must be the exception. Even in translation (the only way I know them) Brecht's fifty-year-old lyrics retain an ironic fervor that makes tough-minded moderns like Randy Newman or Fagen-Becker sound attenuated and cerebral, and Weill's discordant music carries its own charge. Without attempting to compare the accuracy of the Blitzstein and Manheim-Willett versions, I'd give Blitzstein's Theatre de Lys recording (on MGM) an edge over this one: of the current cast, only Raul Julia's Mack the Knife is clearly preferable to his predecessor, and Ellen Greene's egotistical "stylizations"--in Lotte Lenya's part!--are barely tolerable. But the new sound is better, and while Manheim and Willett don't approach Blitzstein's poetry (or prosody), their sexual and political explicitness is an attraction--when's the last time you heard the verb "to oppress" used appropriately in a song? I'm glad to own both: you should sample at least one. Docked a notch for Ellen Greene. A-

Frank Ocean: Nostalgia, Ultra [2011, free download]
A high point many admirers never mention sets the tone--the lead "Strawberry Swing," where the alienated young r&b pro rewrites the sappy Coldplay single without underplaying its lyricism or, as promised, its nostalgia. "I've loved the good times here" is a sendoff worthy of the "dying world" Ocean calls home. His romantic laments are models of texture, respect, and profound loss, their beats subtle, seductive, weird, and seized like time whether he's deploying "songs for women" that are soon trumped by Drake's, not feeling a porn-moonlighting dental student and her "novacaine," or annulling a courthouse wedding solemnized just before his bride turned in her term paper on hijab. Swagga his Odd Future crew: "It's Smooth Ass Music About Bitches, Relationships And Being A Rich Young Nigga . . . But In A Swagged Out Way." Lord he's so over their heads. A

The Offspring: Americana [1998, Columbia]
Four or five years late, they make selling out seem both easy! (unlike the major-label labor Ixnay on the Hombre) and fun! (unlike the fluke smash Smash). A dozen or two bpm faster than when they caught Green Day's punk wave, they sound like a Bad Religion whose catchy drone is at long last unencumbered by any message deeper than "The truth about the world is that crime does pay"--which, to their credit, makes them indignant--or, more generally, that "The Kids Aren't Alright." This truth they explore as fully as--but, as is only fitting given their relatively privileged upbringing, less solemnly than--any gangsta. Only on the title track do they get grandiose. And while keeping it light keeps them on the right side of their frat-boy base, it also makes the fuckups they mock and mourn seem all the more hurtful. A-

Bonnie Raitt: Green Light [1982, Warner Bros.]
On The Glow the present-day female interpreter refused to die, and now she does even better by the suspect notion of good ol' you-know-what. The strength of this album runs too deep to rise up and grab you all at once, so you might begin with "Me and the Boys," arch as usual from NRBQ but formally advanced pull-out-the-stops (with all postfeminist peculiarities accounted for) when Bonnie and the boys get down on it. Other starting points: "I Can't Help Myself," in which she takes more helpings than she can count, and "River of Tears," in which Eric Kaz rocks one more once. A-

Mavis Staples: We'll Never Turn Back [2007, Anti-]
One of the rare entertainers to actively support the civil rights movement, gospel-pop-soul matron Mavis Staples honors the music of that movement with these re-created freedom songs. Of documentary value throughout, they're most moving when Staples embellishes them with personal memories, such as her one-young-woman integration of a washateria in Forrest, Mississippi. On her own new "With My Own Eyes," the updated "99 1/2," and producer Ry Cooder's "I'll Be Rested," she doesn't merely revive rousing old songs--she brings their moral passion into the present. As usual, Cooder's refab authenticity can get annoying--he distresses the arrangements with anachronistic guitar stabs like he's antiquing a bureau. But because African-American rhythms come easier to him than Cuban clave, his timing is spot on. More proof that God loves this project: He or She even grants Ry's klutzy son Joachim some tasty loops. A-

Becky Warren: Undesirable [2018, self-released]
On 2016's War Surplus, Warren wrote and then sang both the husband and the wife songs on an autobiographical concept album about a marriage wrecked by Iraq PTSD. Here the psychological calisthenics aren't so tricky. She does sing "Carmen" as a longtime loser who's found a Neil Diamond fan who'll inspire him to make ends meet so he can move her into the house painted blue she deserves, and the chin-up narrator of the undeplorable West Virginia opener could be a coal miner. But mostly Warren just works her own changes on the fed-up love-getting-by songs that are a well-earned staple for so many Nashville feminists. It's a theme and mood she seems to have become quite familiar with. A-