Matthew Restall Blue Moves

Singer Jeanine Mackie has been working the Toronto club scene for many years. In fact, she fronts her own R&B band. But there's more to Ms Mackie than meets the eye, or the ear as it were. Because she's also a marvelous, cool-toned jazz singer - and that's the talent on display on "The Night We Called It a Day," Blue Martini Jazz's debut album.

Blue Öyster Cult marks time with a second live album on which they turn out good, if redundant, concert versions of recent favorites like "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" and "Godzilla" and add to their repertoire of live covers such oldies as the MC5's "Kick out the Jams" and the Animals' "We Gotta Get out of This Place." A perfectly acceptable, completely unnecessary souvenir record from a hard-touring band of the '70s. (It should perhaps be noted that the mid- to late '70s was a period when more live albums than usual were being released, especially in the wake of Peter Frampton's massively successful 1976 album Frampton Comes Alive!.)

While the speed-freak adrenaline heaviness and shrouded occult mystery of Tyranny and Mutation is the watermark for Blue Öyster Cult's creative invention, it is Secret Treaties that is widely and critically regarded as the band's classic. Issued in 1974, Secret Treaties is the purest distillation of all of BÖC's strengths. Here the songs are expansive, and lush in their textures. The flamboyance is all here, and so are the overdriven guitar riffs provided by Buck Dharma and Eric Bloom. But there is something else, texturally, that moves these songs out from the blackness and into the shadows.

This second volume of Trombone Travels (Volume 1 is on 8574093) continues with Matthew Gee’s exploration of three great cycles of early 20th-century British song. Elgar’s Sea Pictures evoke lullaby and turbulence alike, Vaughan Williams’s Songs of Travel chart a wanderer’s lonely journey through the landscape, and in Songs of the Sea Stanford’s music embraces both the sombre and the exhilarating, with Gee joined by a trombone chorus to emulate the male voice choir. Throughout the recital Gee lavishes colouristic effects, the use of mutes, and subtle inflections that reinforce the trombone’s unique ability to mimic vocal techniques.

This fabulous recording featuring Matthew Best and the Corydon Singers was first released in 1989 at a time when they were recording the standard repertoire for small choirs for Hyperion, and this disc of Brahms' motets and shorter sacred choral pieces was, and is, one of their finest. From the smooth and lovely Ave Maria for women's choir and organ through their hard and harsh "Warum is das Licht gegeben?" to their craggy yet consoling "Wenn wir in höchsten Nöten sein," Best and his choir deliver technically impeccable and deeply moving performances. The Corydon Singers tend toward a big, lush, and slightly fruity sound, as is common with English choirs. But one cannot fault their diction, articulation, pronunciation or their tone, blend, and balance. Best's interpretations are soulful but not sentimental and expressive but not excessive. Recorded in full-bodied digital sound, these performances will likely please fans of Brahms' sacred choral music.

Matthew Sweet's essential 1991 power-pop tour-de-force gets its high-res due on Intervention's Expanded Edition release. In addition to including the original CD release's 15 tracks, this hybrid CD/SACD includes three demo tracks not included on the original release- "Good Friend," "Superdeformed" and "Teenage Female."