Who would have thought that in 1981, after a pair of limp, unfocused studio offerings, and two mixed -- at best -- live outings, that the once mighty Blue Öyster Cult would come back with such a fierce, creative, and uncompromising effort as Fire of Unknown Origin. Here was their finest moment since Agents of Fortune five years earlier, and one of their finest ever. Bringing back into the fold the faithful team who helped articulate their earlier vision, producer Sandy Pearlman, Richard Meltzer, and Patti Smith all helped in the lyric department, as did science-fiction and dark-fantasy writer Michael Moorcock. The band's sound was augmented by a plethora of keyboards courtesy of Allen Lanier, but nonetheless retained a modicum of its heaviness, and the sheer songwriting craft that had helped separate the band form its peers early on was everywhere evident here -- especially the gloriously noir-ish Top 40 single "Burning for You," written by Meltzer and guitarist Buck Dharma. Other standouts on the set include the plodding, über-riff pyrotechnics of "Heavy Metal: The Black and the Silver," and the Mott the Hoople- and Queen-influenced glammed up roots rock of "Joan Crawford." The terrifying images of desecration and apocalyptic war in "Veteran of Psychic Wars," with words by Moorcock, feature huge synth lines, dual leads by Dharma and Eric Bloom -- as well as a tom-tom orgy from Albert Bouchard -- offered a new pathway through the eternal night of the Cult's best work. Fire of Unknown Origin has aged well, and deserves to be remastered in the 21st century.© Thom Jurek /TiVo

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Riding high on the back-to-back Top Five, platinum hits Damn the Torpedoes and Hard Promises, Tom Petty quickly returned to the studio to record the Heartbreakers' fifth album, Long After Dark. Truth be told, there was about as long a gap between Dark and Promises as there was between Promises and Torpedoes, but there was a difference this time around -- Petty & the Heartbreakers sounded tired. Even if there are a few new wave flourishes here and there, the band hasn't really changed its style at all -- it's still Stonesy, Byrds-ian heartland rock. As their first four albums illustrated, that isn't a problem in itself, since they've found numerous variations within their signature sound, providing they have the right songs. Unfortunately, Petty had a dry spell on Long After Dark. With its swirling, minor key guitars, "You Got Lucky" is a classic and "Change of Heart" comes close to matching those peaks, but the remaining songs rarely rise above agreeable filler. Since the Heartbreakers are a very good band, it means the record sounds pretty good as it's playing, but apart from those few highlights, nothing much is memorable once the album has finished. And coming on the heels of two excellent records, that's quite a disappointment.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

"I got to beat these leeches to the punch." That's one of the reasons put forth by Joni Mitchell—an artist famously averse to looking backward, especially at her earliest years as a musician—as to why she compiled this massive collection of the first recordings she ever made. The "leeches," of course, are the bootleggers and other folks seeking to exploit her performances, so, in an approach similar to Neil Young's Archives series, Mitchell's audio biography cuts them off by presenting a set that is both chronological and comprehensive. And, surprisingly for broadcast tapes, demos, and live recordings from more than a half-century ago (but perhaps not so surprising for a collection overseen by the fidelity-conscious Mitchell), the audio quality is consistently superb. While many other artists have undertaken similar vault-clearing expeditions, the sheer fact that Mitchell was willing to revisit the era in which she was very explicitly a folk singer—a label she disliked and quickly pivoted away from creatively—is a real surprise. It's almost as surprising as how good of a folk singer she was! The earliest recordings here, from a Saskatoon AM radio broadcast in 1963 and a 1964 cafe concert in Toronto, are all folk standards like "Nancy Whiskey," "Maids When You're Young Never Wed an Old Man," and "House of the Rising Sun." Mitchell's voice molds itself to the warbly pitch favored by female folk singers of the era (and she even plays a ukulele), but it's clear she's merely trying on a costume, using a pre-built form to copy so she can develop her technical skills. By the time the first Mitchell originals appear on the set—on a tape she made for her mother's birthday in 1965—both her music and her voice have begun to transform, and by the 1967 recordings, the more resonant singing voice associated with her—as well as her affinity for unique guitar tunings—s on full display. In fact, when one radio show host comments "Are you ever in straight tuning?" Mitchell kind of laughs and says "just in one song" like it's the most normal thing in the world. (Mitchell's infamous stage banter—honed so she could tune her guitar between songs without completely losing the audience—is in abundant evidence on this set. There is literally an album's worth of her talking and tuning here, and it's all pretty wonderful.) The early demos and concert performances of songs like "Morning Morgantown," "Night in the City," and, of course, "The Circle Game" and "Both Sides, Now" are revelatory in their own way, and one can hear on these recordings why so many of her contemporaries in the folk scene gravitated toward them and why Mitchell included them on her first three, pre-Blue albums. However, the Mitchell originals that never appeared again are even more interesting. Tracks like "Urge for Going" (which Mitchell calls her "first well-written song") and "Born to Take the Highway" are exceptionally strong pieces of work that show just how high her standards were for her own work. To be sure, this era is the least interesting period in Joni Mitchell's musical career, at least from a creative standpoint, but this installment of Archives is nonetheless a substantial, intriguing, and revelatory set, which bodes quite well for the future of the series. © Jason Ferguson/Qobuz

Continuing the spooked-out and raging snarls of their Gravest Hits EP, the Cramps once again worked with Alex Chilton on the group's full-album debut, Songs the Lord Taught Us. The jacket reads "file under: sacred music," but only if one's definition includes the holy love of rockabilly sex-stomp, something which the Cramps fulfill in spades. Having spent Gravest Hits mostly doing revamps of older material, the foursome tackled a slew of originals like "The Mad Daddy" and "TV Set" this time around, creating one of the few neo-rockabilly records worthy of the name. Years later Songs still drips with threat and desire both, testament to both the band's worth and Chilton's just-right production. "Garbageman" surfaced as a single in some areas, a wise choice given the at-once catchy roll of the song and downright frightening guitar snarls, especially on the solo. The covers of the Sonics' "Strychnine" and Billy Burnette's "Tear It Up" -- not to mention the concluding riff on "Fever" -- all challenge the originals. Interior has the wailing, hiccuping, and more down pat, but transformed into his own breathless howl, while Ivy and Gregory keep up the electric fuzz through more layers of echo than legality should allow. Knox helms the drums relentlessly; instead of punching through arena rock style, Chilton keeps the rushed rhythm running along in the back, increasing the sheer psychosis of it all.© Ned Raggett /TiVo

Rock & roll rebels have been declaring rock & roll dead for a long time -- Lenny Kravitz sang a song about it in 1995, about two years after Elastica said something similar on a B-side -- so, in a sense, calling their full-length 2016 debut ROCKISDEAD is merely another sign that the L.A. quartet DOROTHY pride themselves on being traditionalists whose intent is keeping the fire burning. ROCKISDEAD carries some modern production flare -- all the fuzz guitars are compressed into thin gruel, the rhythms follow a tight sequence, the vocals of Dorothy Martin are tastefully pushed into the red -- but the aesthetic is vintage Sunset Strip sleaze channeled through the blues bluster of the White Stripes and Black Keys. Because Dorothy Martin, a self-styled rock & roll badass, fronts the group, DOROTHY can also recall the Kills or, perhaps more accurately, the canny commercialism of Elle King, who blended Jack White's retro-rock with Amy Winehouse's retro-soul. Apart from the bare-bones closer "Shelter," DOROTHY don't even flirt with soul, but their eager hooks and bad girl pastiche are certainly designed to please crowds in a fashion similar to King's and, as a whole, ROCKISDEAD satisfies precisely because it is so shameless in how it strives to embody everything junky in rock & roll. Despite DOROTHY's desire for authenticity, what's good about the band is how they never feel real: they're a studio band backing a self-styled star, a group creating aspirational rock that delivers cheap thrills because their ambition is so low and their execution so high. This isn't a garage band, this is a group of pros writing songs about raising hell, drinking whiskey, living after midnight, seeking shelter and guns -- cliches one and all, but it works because it's transparent trash so desperate to be dirty, it'll often get silly. Advertent or not, that silliness gives Rockisdead some lightness, helping it to become the riotous good time it so desperately wants to be.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

  

Well into his golden years, Ahmad Jamal continues to tour and record with the vigor of a man half his age. What is also evident is that his artistic sense is as high as it has ever been, as he consistently doles out fresh new melodies charged by his extraordinary talent, which is hardly reined in. A Quiet Time might be a bit deceiving in that there's plenty of Jamal's energy to go around on this set of originals and two standards, sans ballads except for the finale "I Hear a Rhapsody." With longtime partners in bassist James Cammack and drummer Kenny Washington, Jamal breeds the utmost confidence that his music succeeds on the upper end of modern mainstream jazz. Percussionist Manolo Badrena (ex-Weather Report) spices up the music without overt Latin overtures, and balances the swing inherent in Jamal's style. When you hear Jamal's fast and loose but controlled "Paris After Dark" in swinging or heavy modal context, you know your are listening to an undisputed master craftsman at work. The bouncy track "Flight to Russia" has Cammack's bass locked in tight with the others, while Jamal's bright dancing lines across the keyboard during "Tranquility," and his heavy-to-lighter traipsing of notes for the title track indicate that this pianist has plenty in the tank in terms of sheer artistry. While he does a rather polite version of Randy Weston's "Hi-Fly," the contemporary beat of "The Blooming Flower" suggests it is an updated version of his all-time favorite "Poinciana." More of his originals include the cascading freedom exuded in "Poetry" as notes tumble from waterfalls, while the lilting to free to tick-tock pace of "After JALC" proves Jamal can shift gears at will effortlessly. There's nothing even remotely mediocre or rote about this effort, as Ahmad Jamal proves once again his viability to play jazz piano music is still on the rise, and inspired beyond most mortals.© Michael G. Nastos /TiVo

Larry Carlton and Lee Ritenour have had parallel careers, but this CD is their first joint meeting on record. The two guitarists complement each other well and there are hints of Wes Montgomery along with a tribute to Joe Pass ("Remembering J.P."), but the songs (all of them their originals) are little more than rhythmic grooves most of the time with the usual fadeouts. The consistently lightweight music is reasonably pleasing but never too stimulating.© Scott Yanow /TiVo