on Earth We're Gorgeous

ELO songs were always coming on the radio when I was growing up. They were a reliable source of pleasure and fascination (except for “Fire On High” which scared the heck out of me). With this album of covers I wanted to get my hands deep into some of the massive ‘70’s hits but I am also shining a light on some of the later work (“Ordinary Dream” from 2001’s “Zoom” album, “Secret Messages” and “’From The End Of The World”, both from the ‘80’s).

This classic 1972 album on Elektra by John Kongos has Queen/Cars director Roy Thomas Baker remixing superb production by Gus Dudgeon, the man who created many an Elton John hit. Elton sidemen Ray Cooper, Caleb Quaye, Dave Glover, Roger Pope, Sue (Glover) and Sunny (Leslie) – pretty much the crew from John's 1971 epic Madman Across the Water – are all excellent here. But this album has more to offer than the solo records by Kiki Dee and Bernie Taupin, which also proliferated around the same time. Though he never made it to Joel Whitburn's Billboard Book of Top 40 Hits in the U.S.A., there were three minor splashes on this disc: "Tokoloshe Man," "Jubilee Cloud," and "He's Gonna Step on You Again." The totally original sound – producer Dudgeon on "asses jawbone," bicycle bell, maracas, and Mike Noble playing the "clapper board" – build a texture one didn't hear on Elton John records.

Say the name Dandy Livingstone to most American reggae fans and they'll draw a blank, but in the U.K. he remains a revered figure, and one of the most influential. Born in Jamaica, but relocating to the U.K. in the late '50s at age 15, Livingstone cut his first single in 1963 while still at college, and over the next decade defined the U.K.'s reggae sound both as a singer and producer. On some levels he was Britain's answer to Prince Buster; both were fine singers and an even more gifted producers with their own distinctive sounds. While Buster famously melded the military tattoos that entranced him as a child to the music he loved, Livingstone blended the myriad styles of music he adored – Jamaican, American, and British – then decanted them over the grooves.

A characteristically humongous (8-CD) box set from the wonderful obsessive-compulsives at Bear Family, documenting the Killer's '60s tenure at Smash Records. Lewis made consistently good music during this period, but the combination of his personal scandals and the British Invasion made him a pariah to radio programmers until mid-decade, when he returned to his country roots. Highlights of the set include the entirety of a Texas live show, with Lewis and his crack band rendering various early rock standards at dangerously high (i.e., proto punk) speed, some excellent duets with his (then) wife Linda Gail, and gorgeous renditions of standards like Willie Nelson's "Funny How Time Slips Away" and Merle Haggard's "Lonesome Fugitive." Lewis fans with deep pockets should grab this one immediately…

For the project's second release, Floating In Space set out to create an album that gives wings to every butterfly in your stomach. And from the opening note of the sophomore effort Dreamland to the very last tone of the spectacular closing track Earth, each song is filled with so many astoundingly gorgeous frames of optimistic grace that your heart is fit to burst. In 2016, we were introduced to just a small portion of what songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Ruben Caballero was capable of. If his band's debut The Edge of the Light was to showcase the potential of the project, Dreamland is the stunning realization of that potential…

Recording in the duo’s respective hometowns yields Wye Oak’s brightest, most straightforward effort yet, in which the limits of human understanding are a source of fascination, not frustration.