Jesse Denatale

Limited Edition, career spanning 6CD box set from the American musician, songwriter and singer who has spent a lifetime writing and recording songs as well as playing live with some of rock's biggest names. Featuring vocals from Sammy Hagar, Kevin Cronin, Robin McAuley, Patty Smyth, Adrian Gurvitz, John Waite, Richard Black and many more. Jesse Harms is an American musician and songwriter. He has worked with Sammy Hagar, David Lee Roth, Eddie Money, REO Speedwagon, Bad English, Guitar Shorty, Patty Smyth, and McAuley Schenker Group. Born in Massachusetts and raised in Berkeley, California, Jesse began playing the piano at 8 years old and studied classical music until he was 15. His first band Rags featured a young Pat Thrall and Kelly Keagy (Night Ranger)…

Oh, My Girl, the second album by singer/songwriter Jesse Sykes and her band the Sweet Hereafter – led by Phil Wandscher – picks up where her debut, Reckless Burning, left off. Songs are played at cough-syrup tempo, production is sparse, instrumentation equally so, offering just enough of a frame for the melody and lyrics to hang themselves on, and everything, absolutely everything, is underplayed. There is plenty of dynamic tension, but little to no dynamic range. Yes, this is a good thing. Sykes' ghostly voice, which hovers about her words more than inhabits them, has enough old-world folkiness, raw – if intentionally muted – willingness, and lonesome country pain in it to carry off these tunes with authority. Produced, mixed and engineered by multi-instrumentalist Tucker Martine, Oh, My Girl is full of slow, dipping passion, moody expressionism and poetic smarts to make it stand out in a sensual, narcotic way from the rest of the gothic alterna-twang pack. And one more thing: Sykes has more emotion in the grain of her halting, cracking voice than a whole army of Margo Timmins'es – so let the comparisons stop now, please.

Singer Petra Haden excels in this beautiful and unique program of songs penned by the songwriting team of John Zorn and Jesse Harris. Friends for many years, they began working together on The Song Project in 2012, and eight years later this LP presents the full fruits of their collaboration: thirteen Zorn compositions with original lyrics by Jesse Harris. The melodies are catchy, the lyrics heartfelt, the grooves deep and the solos profound and exhilarating. Backed by the amazing Julian Lage, Jorge Roeder and Kenny Wollesen and produced by Jesse Harris, this is a LP that you will listen to again and again.

Songs from the Bardo begins with a bell ringing out once, twice, three times, as a ritualistic chant emerges from the dense silence. The collaborative composition by avant-garde icon Laurie Anderson, Tibetan multi-instrumentalist Tenzin Choegyal, and composer and activist Jesse Paris Smith is a guided journey through the visionary text of the Tibetan Book of the Dead, unfolding in an 80-minute ebb and flow of sound and words. Songs from the Bardo is a transporting experience, meant to draw the listener into the present moment and provide a framework for inner exploration. Anderson, Choegyal, and Smith fuse modern compositional techniques with the mystique of Tibetan Buddhist philosophy to make these visionary traditions more accessible to a new generation of listeners and to reveal the ancient wisdoms contained within.

The first-ever collaborative album from Samantha Fish and Jesse Dayton, Death Wish Blues is a body of work born from a shared passion for pushing the limits of blues music. Produced by the legendary Jon Spencer of Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Death Wish Blues melds their eclectic sensibilities into a batch of songs both emotionally potent and wildly combustible and helps fulfill their shared longtime mission of opening the blues genre to entirely new audiences.

Team one of the criminally overlooked blues vocalists inhabiting Chicago's West side with a tight young combo sporting a decidedly retro approach and you get this fine album, veteran singer Jesse Fortune's debut set. Guitarist Dave Specter & the Bluebirds admirably back the big-voiced Fortune as he recuts his Willie Dixon-penned USA label classic "Too Many Cooks," and shouts some lesser-known B.B. King gems and a few new items. Definitely a case of better late than never!