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Keith John Adams - Pip CD (HHBTM) Happy Happy Birthday to Me Records continues to distribute top-notch fare, as the latest example, from Englishman Keith John Adams shows. These are well executed, smartly produced pop songs that could give XTC or Robin Hitchcock a run for their British Pound. The opening cut, Inconsequential Thought rocks the toy piano hard enough to erase the cuteness of using such an instrument. Just to show that it isn t a gimmick, the tiny piano makes another appearance on Breathe. It s not all nursery fun, however. This record contains enough fuzzed-out bass and affected backing vocals to be given the sixties britpop influenced tag, but KJA is British, so you know it s no act (but so are Oasis, so I am going to have to rethink that theory ). Anyway, yes there is nothing new on Pip, but KJA writes a good tune, and you can t find fault in that. (Craig Ceravolo)

Angels of Light & Akron/Family - Akron/Family & Angels of Light CD (Young God) The last thing I'd ever expect to write about a Michael Gira record is "imagine a great Beatles record" and yet: imagine a great Beatles record! Okay, so the aforementioned Merseydelia might be heavier on the Akron/Family side of the split, but even taking that out, Gira is still left with the same backing band. (The first seven songs are theirs; the last five are A/F with Gira.) The Liverpudlians aren t the only classic rockers to make an appearance. The Stones, Beach Boys, Amon D l II, Japan and Lou Reed stumble through--there's even a Dylan cover--a collage of world, folk and skronk sounds presented in an acid-washed, often hillbilly groove. The lessons of the last forty years of rock have been learned, but don't make the mistake of believing this is easily-accessible radio fodder or a platter bereft of noisier elements. It's a mature offering with engaging soundscapes and lyrics that merit deeper investigation. Perhaps, Akron/Family are to blame or laud for what at first might seem incongruous to fans of the heavier Swans or lighter Angels of Light releases, but this unrelated foursome of noodly multi-instrumentalists provide an exquisite soapbox from which Gira can quietly scream his dreams. Imagine Gira as Dorothy reaching Oz to discover kooky chums wrapped in infinite colors, then realizing that Oz is home. The clean production does wonders, adding an immediacy and intimacy that previous albums never quite got. It ll be interesting to see where the yellow brick road takes them from here. Wonderful! (Margaret Griffis)

Appaloosa - S/T CD (Collectors Choice) Of all the albums celebrated in the Lost in the Grooves anthology, this is the one that drove our central thesis your favorite album is in this book, and you ve never even heard of it! home to me. MVP essayist Brian Doherty picked this exquisite 1969 LP, and wrote so eloquently on its sophisticated charms that I knew I had to hear it. Happily, Edwin Letcher had bought it new, and sure enough, I fell in love. It s neat to replace my poppy CDR with this official reissue (though the mix sounds a little sweeter and I suspect there were some uncredited shenanigans at the mixing board). John Parker Compton might just have been the most effortlessly upper crust songwriter of the sixties. His band sounds like the Left Banke filtered through the Social Register and smeared on a blini. These charming, arch, irresistible melodies, baroque, loping and very clever, will blow the mind of anyone who digs the Kinks and Zombies, and who longs for something that good that they ve never heard. This is it, lost in the grooves and found anew. (Kim Cooper)

Eddy Arnold - Cattle Call CD (Collectors Choice) Arnold s was the easy-listening version of the country sound, the kind that everybody s parents who couldn t commit to the more twangy and raw stuff could embrace. That s why this collection of cowboy standards (a reissue of the 1963 release) is perfectly suited to his velvety crooning style. Invading the territory staked out by such immortals as Tex Ritter and Roy Rodgers, Arnold hit #1 in 1955 with the yodeling Cattle Call. Most of the ballads here are better known from recordings by others, like Cool Water, Tumbling Tumbleweeds and Carry Me Back to the Lone Prairie. The oddball here is (Jim) I Wore a Tie Today, a song Cindy Walker wrote from a story by Arnold (the same collaboration that had produced You Don t Know Me ). Cool and easy renditions to enjoy around the campfire. (Julia Devine)

Baby Mongoose - Enter the Baby Mongoose CD (Dionysus) They are Japanese. They wear fetching military uniforms. They make their own instruments with names like action guitar. They sound like well let s see if Prince wrote the sound track to all the Nintendo video games in the nineties. Baby Mongoose are a band with a love of all things electronic and musical they are five Jeff Lynnes rolled into a karaoke machine on Neptune. If you aren t dancing after the first thirty seconds of Human Emotions, then you need to go stand in the corner. There is no parking on this dance floor. Actually, they remind me of Robert Schneider s newest Marbles project, Expo, which is equally brimming with enough funky 1s and 0s to make you want to wear something shiny and have everyday conversations through a space echo and Vocoder. You can t deny a bass-slammin cover of Fifty Ninth Street Bridge Song (Feelin Groovy) that closes out this fantastic record. Go ahead, try to deny it. I dare you. Did I mention they wear military uniforms? (Craig Ceravolo)

Lori Burton - Breakout CD (Rev-Ola) Yeahhhhh, no boy s worth the trouble that I m in. That s the perfect first line of the Whyte Boots classic death rock anthem, a sexy, shocking, deliriously catchy girl-fight-gone-wrong raver that takes the Shangri-Las template, pushes every musical and emotional meter into the red, and leaves you feeling like you re the one face down on the hall linoleum. Well, forget about those sexy Whyte Boots gals, because they were a fraud hired to play at being a girl group, and their oft-comped Nightmare just one of the fantastic tunes penned and sung by Miss Lori Burton and her British writing partner Pam Sawyer. This release compiles Lori s sole album (Mercury, 1967), the mono single version of Nightmare and a non-LP single, and it s essential. For while the Burton-Sawyer team were highly skilled soul-pop craftswomen providing hits to the Young Rascals, Lulu and others, Lori Burton had the vocal chops to sell songs that would have tried the best singers of the day. Raunchy, breathy, emotional-yet-controlled, eating stupid boyfriends like hors d'oeuvres, hers is one of the great forgotten voices, and the big Spectoresque production serves it beautifully. Nightmare s isn t even the best first line on the disk. If you dig distaff sixties pop, you want to hear this.(Kim Cooper)

Barracudas - S/T CD (NDN) Joy! The cudas were the cream atop the eighties garage revival, and their Drop Out With disc scratches my every rock and roll itch. This new album, their first in a decade plus, shows that they re still masters of pop precision, tough, melodic, distinctive and a little twisted (the first song is a Killer Inside Me riff sung in the voice of South Carolina serial killer Pee Wee Gaskins). The addition of Flamin Groovie Chris Wilson to the lineup ratchets the sweetness and jangle up to rare levels. Please let em tour.(Kim Cooper)

Black Time - Black Out CD (In The Red) Noisepunk from some London kids obsessed with every ugly and obnoxious element of America. Just thank Christ they re not angry, which got old a long time ago. No, the guys and gals of Black Time love analog and not sleeping and probably smoking too much and likely nice cups of Earl Grey, but most of all the making of impossibly loud slop rock ditties like Mass Production of Corpses and Cold Lips Taste Better. (Nathan Marsak)

Chubby Checker - The Best of Chubby Checker: Cameo Parkway 59 63 CD (Abkco) The king of the dance floor had a lot more to offer than just the most definitive version of The Twist. There was a while there when he was behind more crazy body gyration inspiring rhythms than you could shake a stick at. This collection contains 24 of Ernest Evans (his given name) most chubby hits from his rather checkered past. Actually, aside from the pun value, checkered past is a very flawed assessment of his days in show business. Chubby Checker had a fairly even career and produced a whole slew of recordings that had a rather homogenous sound. If you like his hits, such as Let s Twist Again, The Fly and Slow Twistin, you ll probably like the obscure material even more. It s all in the same general vein, the songwriting and performances are superb throughout and the tunes will sound fresh to you. Who else can you dance The Hucklebuck to these days? (Edwin Letcher)

Chesapeake Juke Box Band - S/T CD (Rev-Ola) In 1971, NY songwriters Steve Sawyer and Freddie McFinn sequestered themselves in the Record Plant with Archies keyboard whiz Ron Frangipane and engaged in arcane alchemical rituals focusing on the letter B. The Beach Boys, the Beatles, the sensibilities of Broadway and the British are just the most blatant elements blended into the sole release by the CJBB, a lush and schizoid demonstration of studio wizardry featuring a scattering of Wings sidemen. From the name-dropping opening track, it s obvious that we re in meta-territory, where pop eats it own tail. There aren t many records that leap about so frenetically (or comfortably), a little Doo Wop here, five seconds in Nashville, or is that the Hollies Manchester, and whoops! now we re in a radio drama. It s pop as Disney ride, speedy as reading Burroughs on a train, also glib and ridiculous and elegant and finely-honed. Of course it sank like a juke box, but thanks to this reish, new generations of tail-tasters can unpeel its layers. (Kim Cooper)

Ray Charles - Friendship CD (Columbia/Legacy) This reissue of Charles 1984 duets album with both old-time and then-contemporary country artists is slick and enjoyable, the sound reflective of the country hits of that time period. Highlights include We Didn t See a Thing with George Jones (and Chet Atkins on guitar), Friendship with Ricky Skaggs, Little Hotel Room with Merle Haggard and Crazy Old Soldier with Johnny Cash. The first-class backing band includes such veterans as Pete Drake on steel guitar and Henry Strzelecki on bass. Also featured are non-country bonus tracks recorded just after this album was originally released, with Tony Bennett and Billy Joel. Not classic Charles, but an interesting side-note to his multi-faceted career. (Julia Devine)

Cluster & Eno - S/T CD (Water) Attention all Enophiles: if you do not currently own a copy of the first Cluster & Eno collaboration you must immediately 1) burn your vinyl copy of Another Green World and 2) destroy your set of Oblique Strategies cards. This is an enormously important work in the development of he who is Eno. Much more than his collaborative work with Robert Fripp, the Eno/Cluster axis led the way for Eno s subsequent foray into the realm of ambient music, which led to several crucial recordings, probably culminating in his work with Harold Budd (Plateaux of Mirrors being my personal favorite). For their part, Cluster is still probably the most overlooked electronic band of the Tangerine Dream-era of German rock. Never afraid to infuse melody and melancholia into their music, Cluster uses these aspects of their craft to give a kind of gentleness or perhaps playfulness so sorely lacking in Eno s earlier collaborations with Fripp. Again, if you don t own a copy of this recording, don t let me catch you wearing that pink feather boa again, buster (Jackson Del Rey)

Cobra Verde - Copycat Killers CD (Scat/ Scam City) These raucous Clevelanders flip through their ever-so-eclectic record collections in a witty and unpredictable covers party. Careening from Iggyish crooning to swirling disco/metal before coming to rest in that sloppy Stonesy groove where they seem most at home, CV visits Pink, the Troggs, Fall, Undertones, Leonard Cohen and even Donna Summer.(Kim Cooper)

Comet Gain - City Fallen Leaves CD (Kill Rock Stars) So much of contemporary indie rock has the sound, but there s no heart or thought inside. But Comet Gain always come across like smart, cool, complicated friends you can t wait to meet again. Their marzipan harmonies feed lovely washes of organic chaos building off of fine melodies, and really, you d have to be pretty greedy to ask for more.

Diana Darby - The Magdalene Laundries CD (Delmore Recording Society) Diana Darby s album is inspired by the Irish social institution of the same name, which is in the long tradition of the Medicant movement founded by Francis of Assisi. In the Laundries women are sentenced to a life of slavery under the supervision of nuns; forced to work six days a week in the laundry of the Church, in an attempt to wash away their sins. The album was recorded and mixed on a 4-track device in Darby s home--its malfunctioning was the impetus to end the album. Diana sings in hushed tones, lost among the strings and strums of a muted electric guitar. The opening ballad, "The Magdalene Laundries," sets the stage. It is a voice we all recognize, the plaintive tones of someone whose soul is naked before god. "Pretty Flowers" is a lullaby to the women, with their cracked and bleeding hands, calloused elbows dripping soapy water, to give them succor through their long, bitter meditation on the nature of virtue. A black swan appears in the fourth track, lovely, lonely and terrified that someone will come to her small pool and see just that. "Kierkegaard" is a track where nothing is what it should be, cat in the trees, birds on the porch a dead girl resting in bed with her book, bringing us to the edge of reason and the leap of faith. This is Kierkegaard s Choice, which once you realize exists, are left with none but to continue to pound on the doors to the monastery in the pouring rain, already three days at your task. It was this image which Francis choose for his mediation on the true nature of happiness, which brings us to track ten, there s no leaving now, and Ms. Darby s own words on her composition, it was me slamming the door on me. Telling myself that I couldn t escape/run from the feelings and sadness I live with. There comes a point where you have to just sit down and feel what you re feeling. I wanted to take my audience with me. I wanted them to know that they can t run away either. They re on this ride with me. And there s no leaving now. (Richard Schave)

Mark de Cerbo & the Four Eyes - Sweet on the Vine CD (Zip) Okay, I m going to get this out of the way: they sound like Squeeze. From what I read about Mark de Cerbo, he gets it all the time. But, hey, it s a compliment. Apparently it is not really fair to make that comparison, anymore than it is fair to call Emit Rhodes out on the McCartney likeness. Each is contemporary to the better-known artist, but for whatever reason didn t get the spotlight, only the accusation of imitation. Four Eyes have been on the scene in San Diego since 1979, and on their new CD make the smart choice of staying true to the power pop genre that they helped cultivate. If you didn t know better, you d think this record was released around the same time as Nick Lowe s Labour of Love. Bands like the New Pornographers and the Shins should be sending Mark de Cerbo a check, or at least nodding in his direction when they hear a song like Little Cloud. (Craig Ceravolo)

Creepy Clyde The Country Vampire - Spooky Town CD (creepyclyde.com)... Those of us who cotton to horror schlock and Hallowe'en hack are routinely subjected to the endless parade of dreadful vintage "Frankenstein at the Hop" do-wop or some ubiquitous surf track with its addition of "creaky door sound effect #11." Oh yeah, and a hatful of grindcore. But slip on the title song of CC's Spooky Town and you'll be bobbing your head along with what's a surprising baritone over some pretty sophisticated arrangements. Nothing challenging, but it's the most finger-snapping fun I've had with the genre in a good spell. Sea monsters suggestively grab girls by the hips, there's champagne glasses filled with blood, oh, and blood drops from the ceiling onto the blouses of young ladies, and did I mention Clyde's admonition to take up weaponry against the impending zombie attack? There's no end of the fun when Creepy Clyde ("The Country Vampire," though there's a distinct lack of steel guitars in favor of swingin' saxophones) belts out these and other tales that are intended for the good children of Dearborn. Bless their hearts. They probably think they're cooler listening to Exhumed, sure, but they'll never be haunted by that as they will by Clyde's rather strange Jethro Tull-meets-Stanard Ridgway tale of the "Twisted Man." (Nathan Marsak)

The Creepy Clyde Show Presents - House on Haunted Hill DVD (Burke Video) We may never return to the days when Ghoulardi blew shit up to the roulades of the Rivingtons, and so from where the Crampseses and Pere Ubi of our future will get their terrible souls, I don't know. But God willing, the odd history of TV horror hosts has maintained its importance to American young'ns. Creepy Clyde's gags are self-consciously terrible, the sets worse, and while Clyde's acting-class-reject vampirettes lack Elvira's giant breasts, there're three (sadly underused!) of these Brides of Clyde. No great surprises: Clyde sings along to his own cartoons and has puppet pals, so yeah, the great head scratcher here is, again, he's a frickin' poetry-writing Country Vampire. In Michigan. And if that isn't your bag, then go back to watching Robert Osborne, ya pansy. (Nathan Marsak)

Pete Dello and Friends - Into Your Ears CD (Hanky Panky) Diehard Honeybus fans will not want to miss out on this lovely platter. Pete Dello was joined by Ray Cane, Colin Hare, Pete Kircher, Bobby Henrit, Mick Green, Jim Kelly and others for these wistful, early 70s toe-tapping ditties. Mr. Dello had come too close to stardom for his liking when Do I Figure In Your Life and "I Can`t Let Maggie Go" caught the fancy of British radio fans, so he dropped out of sight for a few years and dropped the Honeybus name. After a while, though, he had amassed a bunch of new songs, so he got back together with his old mates and recorded an album of material in the same general vein. The album is augmented on this release by ten bonus tracks featuring the same basic musicians using a variety of pseudonyms: Lace, Magic Valley, Magenta and Red Herring. (Edwin Letcher)

Dolenz Jones Boyce & Hart - S/T CD (El)... So it s 1976, you used to be a Monkee, and you re bored and broke. A promoter offers to finance a reunion, but Mike says feh and Peter has fallen asleep in a cupboard. Enter the ringers, Kirshner-annointed songwriters Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart, who flank Micky and Davy while touring amusement parks and release this peculiar album that suggests no one involved really understood what it meant to be a Bicentennial Monkee. The studio cats are a stellar crew among them Jerry Yester, Keith Allison, Ron Hicklin and Chip Douglas but the disk is completely disjointed, with some disco, fifties remakes, soft pop and one great, punky Stepping Stone rewrite called You Didn t Feel That Way Last Night (Don t You Remember). In my alternate reality, this record was entirely comprised of Boyce-Hart compositions about hating girls, and DJB&H toured with the Sex Pistols and blew em off the stage. In the real world, this one s for the die-hards. (Kim Cooper)

Shari Elf et al. - The Shari Elf Tribute Album CD (sharielf.com)... When not singing with her seamstress band, Miss Elf makes art from trash (quite successfully), so it s hardly a surprise that when so resourceful a gal had the inkling that she deserved a tribute album, she promptly sent out a call to musicians to make it happen. The results are a two-disc set, cleverly packaged in a folded piece of cardboard pierced with wire, in which artists from all over the US (and England) offer their affectionate reinterpretations of Elf s clever, catchy outsider pop tunes. You know how most tribute CDs have one song each by twelve bands, and they all do a different song? Well, who says that s how it has to be? On this 45-track comp, there are four versions of Jerk-A-Lator, Doug Newman does three songs, and Shari pays multiple tributes to herself (including a duet with R. Stevie Moore, on the self-effacing and charming Kansas City Star ). By the end, you have a sense of the deep affection which the players feel for their subject, and will definitely have Jerk-A-Lator stuck in your head!(Kim Cooper)

Espers - The Weed Tree CD (Locust)... Oh, what a Pentangled web they weave, and that s a good thing, the way I see it. This band of folkadelics from Philadelphia does a lovely job on the traditional fair-maid-knocked-up ballad Rosemary Lane as well as a Vashti Bunyan-style take on Nico s Afraid . The vocals on Black Is The Color are evocative, but for some reason there were chimes throughout, like an insensitive neighbor s house in a stiff breeze. It might have been a nice accent, but between that and the relentless shuffling chink of a jinglestick it felt haunted, not in a good way. Their cover of Michael Hurley s Blue Mountain contains instrumentals that sound like the theme from Doctor Who I would like to have heard more--the CD contains only seven tracks. (Brooke Alberts)

The Everly Brothers - The New Album CD (Collectors Choice) Collectors Choice has released a whole bunch of albums that this hit-making duo released after the majority of their audience had shifted their attentions to more modern acts. It s a great thing that Don and Phil continued to record, because all of the albums I ve heard so far--six I believe--are top notch. This one is a bit of a misnomer, because the music was not new when it was released in 1977; it had just never been made available yet. The recordings span the decade the brothers were at Warner Brothers, 60 to 70, and represent a solid peek at the changes music underwent during that turbulent time as filtered through a truly great folk, rock and pop act. Whether it s Brill Building leftovers, a smattering of Everly originals or examples of songwriting by young upstarts the boys met through the years, all of the material here is first rate. (Edwin Letcher)

The Everly Brothers - Gone Gone Gone CD (Collectors Choice) It s a good thing the Everly Brothers didn t let something as petty as a few years without hits deter them from putting out album after album of high quality material. This is one of the best records they did in the mid-sixties. Gone Gone Gone was a return to rock and roll after four years trying their hands at everything from Christmas and country music to adult contemporary fluff. The songwriting is superb throughout. Don and Phil struck paydirt many times with tunes by the Bryants, so it s only natural that five of the twelve songs here are theirs. But someone should do a collection of Everly-penned tunes someday. Three of the twelve winners on this disc are theirs and they shine just as brightly. (Edwin Letcher)

The Everly Brothers - It s Everly Time CD (Collectors Choice) This is a killer diller album, the first in a whole string Don and Phil recorded for Warner Brothers. They had a somewhat better track record on the independent label Cadence, but hit the ground running for the WB. And while their audience might have quit buying the records in the same gigantic quantities, the boys never slacked up any on their end. The songwriting team of Boudleaux and Felice Bryant were responsible for half the songs on this effort and their work stacks up well against past glories like Wake Up Little Susie and Bye Bye Love. All the material is strong, with Don s So Sad (to Watch Good Love Go Bad) one of my faves on this set. (Edwin Letcher)

The Everly Brothers - Roots CD (Collectors Choice) This was the last studio album Don and Phil did with Warner Brothers. The boys and the label heads pulled out all the stops and put together a wonderful country-rock record. Unfortunately, there just weren t very many folks clambering for such an animal, and this became yet another well-intentioned and executed project that went nowhere. The lads did a couple Merle Haggard songs, and covered Jimmie Rodgers, Glen Campbell, Ray Price and George Jones. Ron Elliott of the Beau Brummels was heading in the same neo-country direction and supplied a couple songs as well as some guitar and production work. There are some orchestral, almost psychedelic touches sprinkled throughout that add an otherworldly quality to the material and give it a nicely cohesive feel, even though the album mixed state-of-the-art 68 rock with clips of the Everly Brothers act circa 1952. (Edwin Letcher)

The Everly Brothers - Sing Great Country Hits CD (Collectors Choice) I can t think of much of a better review than the title, but you deserve a little more. If you are an Everly Brothers fan, you will get a kick out of the treatment the duo lend to a bunch of yee haw classics. If you are a country fan, you might not be as delighted. A lot of what made the originals so popular was the ragged edge and (supposedly) honest emotional feeling the dusty cowpokes brought to the songs. Hearing Don and Phil s angelic crooning on Hank Williams I m So Lonesome I could Cry and Johnny Cash I Walk the Line might seem a bit like hearing Pat Boone sweetening up urban R&B. There is a strong tradition of harmony in lots of country music, though, and if you are curious as to how smooth Oh, Lonesome Me, Born to Lose, and some other chestnuts could sound, check this baby out. As always, the musicians are second to none and the production values are high. (Edwin Letcher)

Bill Fay - S/T CD (Eclectic Disks) Tucked inside the lushly orchestral arrangements (overseen by Pete Dello of Honeybus) is a sensibility that s theatrical, fey, very British and a little seedy. Such high drama pop is an acquired taste, but Fay s confident tone and deep sympathy for his characters (including Cockney war veterans, junkies) demand attention. A compelling, offbeat voice, originally released in 1970. Don t miss the bonus 1967 45, the Dylanesque existential hate screed Screams in the Ears, which is the strongest thing on the disk.(Kim Cooper)