The Boys In The Band

As the first album the band recorded after guitarist Henry Garza suffered a serious spinal injury when he fell off-stage during a concert, 2014's Revelation finds Los Lonely Boys revitalized. The Texan trio has never been constrained by genre, but here they let their imagination wild, dabbling in every sound or style that's ever tickled their fancy, easing into proceedings with a teasing bit of traditional Tex-Mex – "Blame It on Love" opens with little more than guitar, accordion, and voice – before diving into every roots or rock style they've ever hinted at in the past.

This is the 40th Anniversary Edition of The Pop Group's highly influential and innovative debut album ‘Y’ released in 1979, remastered from the original tapes.

Maybe it was youthful exuberance or perhaps it was the fact that the band itself was not pulling all the strings, Three Imaginary Boys is not only a very strong debut, but a near oddity (it's an admittedly "catchy" record) in the Cure catalog. More poppy and representative of the times than any other album during their long career, Three Imaginary Boys is a semi-detached bit of late-'70s English pop-punk. Angular and lyrically abstract, it's strong points are in its utter simplicity. There are no dirges here, no long suites, just short bursts of energy and a rather strange cover of Hendrix's "Foxy Lady." For some, this is the last good Cure record, many fans of this album being in no way prepared for the sparse emptiness and gloom that would be the cornerstone of future releases…

Beastie Boys fans should prepare for a feast with this two-DVD collection from the Criterion collection (Capitol Records had planned a regular collection, but seem to have abandoned it along the way.) The collection is not by any means completely comprehensive (there are 18 videos included), but it does manage to be exhaustive in terms of what it does cover (and offer.) Each disc includes nine videos, with each group presented twice – the first is a sequential presentation that offers a choice of Dolby 2.0, Dolby 5.1, band commentary track, or directors commentary track.

Edge of Twilight is a thorough overview of Gentle Giant's years at Vertigo Records, containing nearly every highlight from each of their early records. As a result, it's not only a perfect introduction to the strange, provocative world of Gentle Giant, it could be all the Gentle Giant most prog-rock fans need.

This is a St Matthew Passion which should please many readers. Bruggen’s interpretation is eloquent, thoughtful in matters of style and expressive content, and it benefits from a textural clarity which few competitors can rival. All aspects of Bach’s miraculous score are taken into account.

Mellow Records' Gentle Giant tribute album, Giant for a Life, is something of a mixed bag. Containing everything from attempts at note-perfect copies (most of them) to imaginative rearrangements (Raymond Benson's solo piano take on Think Of Me With Kindness, for example). Some of the bands are not too well known, but all are talented. Nice tribute but the originals are still better!

It's hard to believe that the Cure could release an album even more sparse than Three Imaginary Boys, but here's the proof. The lineup change that saw funkstery bassist Michael Dempsey squeezed out in favor of the more specific playing of (eventually the longest serving member outside Robert Smith) Simon Gallup, and the addition of keyboardist Mathieu Hartley resulted in the band becoming more rigid in sound, and more disciplined in attitude. While it is not the study in loss that Faith would become, or the descent into madness of Pornography, it is a perfect precursor to those collections. In a sense, Seventeen Seconds is the beginning of a trilogy of sorts, the emptiness that leads to the questioning and eventual madness of the subsequent work…

Though this Canadian LP was issued under the Guess Who name, the group still hadn't quite completed its evolution from its prior incarnation as Chad Allan & the Expressions. Indeed Allan himself was still in the band during sessions for the recording, writing one of the tracks, "Guess I'll Find a Place." But a couple British Invasion covers and guitarist Jim Kale's "Don't Act So Bad" excepted, every song was written by Randy Bachman. Even more crucially, much of the material went in a decidedly harder-rocking direction than much of what the group had previously cut, with newcomer Burton Cummings injecting a new raunchiness into the material on which he sang lead vocals. "Believe Me," which is very much in the style of Paul Revere & the Raiders' fiercest sides, is the clear standout, but the moody Manfred Mann-ish "Seven Long Years" and the surly garage rocker "Clock on the Wall" are also highlights…