In the year of his 90th birthday (which he would have celebrated on the 23rd of September 2020 had he not died in 2004), Ray Charles is honoured with a new 90-track compilation box set. Just another compilation like all the rest? Yes and no. Ray Charles is undoubtedly one of the most-compiled artists in the history of music. Published by Tangerine, the label that the musician set up at the end of the 50s to keep the rights to his songs, this box set starts out like all the others: with the post-Atlantic hits, Georgia On My Mind, Hit The Road Jack, One Mint Julep, Busted... These are timeless treasures of proto-soul, but there doesn't seem to be much novelty here. The rest is much more interesting, and much rarer: tracks recorded between the second half of the 1960s and the 2000s, many of which were only released on vinyl, never reissued on CD and until now unavailable on digital. This is the first time that Ray Charles' lesser-known years have been given the compilation treatment in this way, and it is a revelation. In the 90s and 2000s, the production of his songs had a synthetic feel, and they did not age too well. These rarer songs are often hidden gems of southern soul, flavoured with country and wrapped in sumptuous symphonic orchestrations. Whether he is singing the Muppets (It's Ain't Easy Being Green) or Gershwin (Summertime, a duet with Cleo Laine), Ray Charles is always deeply moving. Now, the dream is to hear reissues of all these albums in their entirety. © Stéphane Deschamps/Qobuz

As far as the argument over whether Death Grips are indie rap's great, destructive Dada Art crew or whether they are just the genre's Spinal Tap, the excellent No Love Deep Web suggests they're the sophisticated former, even when the album's title is written on an erect penis for all the world to see. Slip the official physical release out of its porno-concealing black slipcover and that phallic photograph stands loud, proud, and unavoidable; plus the album's back story is just as big, seeing as how it was originally recorded for Epic but then released by the band in a last minute, free-to-download format, earning the group their major-label walking papers and whole bunch of legal threats. The album-as-revolutionary-object indeed, and yet the opening, "Come Up and Get Me," is a laser-focused song with a surprising subject: paranoia. The track puts the listener in that zone with a minimal drum machine, an eye-level view of a room with "no daylight, or midnight," and questions like "Who's my enemy?/Them or me?" It's a meatier moment than the shocking cover art, and it is followed by the most accessible Death Grips song to date, "Lil Boy," a hooky bit of cut-up of electro and house music that still maintains the group's love of all things skittish. "Hunger Games" walks past the marquee of a blockbuster movie while suffering "a mental health glitch," while "Pop" chucks the band's previous Bad Brains-influenced style for production informed by golden-age Sega games along with Giorgio Moroder's future disco. All of them offer new flavors of Death Grips cool that willfully attract rather than repel. The hiccuping "Whammy" curses devils in a scattershot Lee "Scratch" Perry style, and yet it's of this earth enough to mention Prada, and as the closing "Artificial Death in the West" glides over a computer-generated landscape that's begun to malfunction, vocalist Stefan Burnett's strange incantations are multi-tracked, manipulated, and echoed -- production moves that will be quite comfortable for anyone who has experienced some Radiohead, Rihanna, or Rush. None of this explains the penis on the cover, but there's the Death Grips you talk about and the Death Grips you listen to, so focus on the latter and the well-crafted release becomes vital.© David Jeffries /TiVo

It might have come out in 2007, but S.O.S.: Save Our Soul is a record very much grounded in the soul music of the 1960s and 1970s, both in material and sound. To begin with, all but one of the songs is a cover of a '60s or '70s soul tune. The arrangements have a very vintage sound as well, singer Marc Broussard and multi-instrumentalist/background singer Calvin Turner being the only constant factors in a rotating cast of players. Give Broussard credit for not opting, for the most part, for overdone standards; there are covers of a few big hits here (Marvin Gaye's "Inner City Blues [Make Me Wanna Holler]," the Staple Singers' "Respect Yourself," the Pointer Sisters' "Yes We Can, Can"), but also interpretations of lesser-known songs associated with Stevie Wonder, Bobby Womack, Rance Allen, Al Green, and Blood, Sweat & Tears. On its own terms, it's an OK record; Broussard's a good (if not too distinctive) singer, and the musical grooves are solid. If you made a mixtape of the originals, though, it would blow this out of the water, making this an inessential tribute to vintage soul that's rather pointless except as a showcase of Broussard's skill in carrying on the tradition.© Richie Unterberger /TiVo

Released in 1975, Come and Get Yourself Some boasts one of Leon Haywood's biggest hits: the sexy, alluring "I Want'a Do Something Freaky to You," which L.A. gangsta rappers Dr. Dre and Snoop Doggy Dogg sampled on their 1993 smash "Nuthin' but a G Thang." A teen-age hip-hopper of 1993 might not have known the name Leon Haywood -- who is someone the hip-hopper's Baby Boomer parents were more likely to be familiar with -- but he/she no doubt knew Haywood's unforgettable melody from the Dre/Snoop single. Back in 1975, "Freaky" made Come and Get Yourself Some one of Haywood's best selling albums. "Freaky" and the title track were the album's biggest hits, although the rest of the material is also well worth hearing. Smooth, laid-back northern soul items like "Consider the Source" and "This Feeling's Rated Extra" appealed to Haywood's diehard fans, many of whom he had won over with his 1967 hit "It's Got to Be Mellow." But a tougher, less sleek approach prevails on "Who You Been Giving It up To," which recalls the Isley Brothers' "It's Your Thing."© Alex Henderson /TiVo

By the time the Pointer Sisters unleashed their 1983 Break Out LP, they had racked up six Top Ten singles spread between the pop and R&B charts. Break Out would prove to be their new wave breakthrough, peppering both charts with five further songs -- half the album -- while the LP itself spent over a year on the charts. Astute performers, the Pointer Sisters had embraced the 1980s' penchant for synthesized sonics wholeheartedly and used them to fine effect across songs that were upbeat and slick, space-age dance grooves that brought a new dimension to the trio's sound. Both "Jump (For My Love)" and "Automatic" were massive hits during early 1984, as both injected the sisters' trademark harmonies with fresh grooves that culminated in an appealing blend of old and new. "Neutron Dance," meanwhile, with Ruth Pointer's rich lead vocal laying over an extraordinarily snappy and nearly frenetic melody, did double duty, also featuring in the film Beverly Hills Cop. Using those three songs as a springboard, Break Out powers on through one groover after another with few surprises, although "Dance Electric" combines a synthesizer straight out Human League territory with a blistering guitar solo and "Easy Persuasion" emerges as a smoky ballad of sorts. Although Break Out is a far cry from the Pointer Sisters' earliest intentions, it still charms and pleases. It's a vital part of the early-'80s tapestry, a sonic signpost for the ultimate feel-good generation.© Amy Hanson /TiVo

It's an album that ushered in an era of a thousand suburbanites drinking malt liquor, wearing U.S. Postal Service caps, and reawakening their Irish (or in some cases pseudo-Irish) heritage. And it's also the debut album that ushered House of Pain into the forefront of rap culture for a brief period of time. While it's unfair to expect a whole album's worth of quality material like the dynamite classic "Jump Around," there are some strong points on their eponymous debut that emulate the single's strength. Admittedly, there is a significant amount of filler and the topics du jour aren't exactly the most original in hip-hop, but the impact of such songs as "Jump Around," "Shamrocks and Shenanigans," and "Put on Your Shit Kickers" more than makes up for the filler. A debut for a group that showed immense promise that sadly wasn't fully realized. © Rob Theakston /TiVo

By the time the Pointer Sisters unleashed their 1983 Break Out LP, they had racked up six Top Ten singles spread between the pop and R&B charts. Break Out would prove to be their new wave breakthrough, peppering both charts with five further songs -- half the album -- while the LP itself spent over a year on the charts. Astute performers, the Pointer Sisters had embraced the 1980s' penchant for synthesized sonics wholeheartedly and used them to fine effect across songs that were upbeat and slick, space-age dance grooves that brought a new dimension to the trio's sound. Both "Jump (For My Love)" and "Automatic" were massive hits during early 1984, as both injected the sisters' trademark harmonies with fresh grooves that culminated in an appealing blend of old and new. "Neutron Dance," meanwhile, with Ruth Pointer's rich lead vocal laying over an extraordinarily snappy and nearly frenetic melody, did double duty, also featuring in the film Beverly Hills Cop. Using those three songs as a springboard, Break Out powers on through one groover after another with few surprises, although "Dance Electric" combines a synthesizer straight out Human League territory with a blistering guitar solo and "Easy Persuasion" emerges as a smoky ballad of sorts. Although Break Out is a far cry from the Pointer Sisters' earliest intentions, it still charms and pleases. It's a vital part of the early-'80s tapestry, a sonic signpost for the ultimate feel-good generation.© Amy Hanson /TiVo

Redbone may have been the first Native American rock band to score a Top Ten hit with 1974's "Come and Get Your Love," but there is nothing particularly "essential" about that track. It's a pop single like so many others on the radio at the time, with a great hook, a charming melody that got swiped for countless other singles by other bands, and lightweight lyrics. Some of the other material here, such as "The Witch Queen of New Orleans," is just plain dumb and should never have been included, while the various elements that made up Redbone, such as a love of easy funk, Santana, War, the earlier Doobie Brothers sound, and the swampy blues-funk of Tony Joe White, are far more interesting and play themselves out on pop-soul numbers like "One Monkey," "Maggie," "One More Time," "Jerico," and "Fais-Do." But it's the Native American chants, rhythms, and melodies that form the architecture of tunes like "Niji Trace," "Message from a Drum," and "Chant: 13th Hour" and they are far more compelling -- and not just for musicological interest but for how well they hold up over time as examples of cultural miscegenation. There are "songs" here, but there are far better moments, and those moments make for an interesting listen or two.© Thom Jurek /TiVo