Rhythm of War

There really are more War best-of packages than the situation warrants, and while the double-CD The Very Best of War is a fine compilation if you don't already have one in your collection, it's questionable whether it was a necessary addition to the band's discography. For one thing, it doesn't differ all that much from the previous two-CD War best-of on Rhino, Anthology (1970-1994). Sure, each has a few tracks not on the other, but both are built around their lengthy string of big hits. Even Barry Alfonso's accompanying essay was adapted from the liner notes to Anthology (1970-1994). Still, this does have all of the big chart hits and a few minor ones, as well as standout album tracks from throughout the 1970s and early '80s that illustrate the band's versatility. Reading the small print on the track listings, it's revealed that half a dozen of these cuts are edits that either appear here for the first time or were only available on previous anthologies or imports.

The cover art of War in My Mind, Beth Hart's first solo album since 2016's Fire on the Floor, finds the singer/songwriter sitting at a piano with a storm cloud looming in the horizon. It's a good visual summation of the record. Working with producer Rob Cavallo, Hart plumbs deep into her soul, coming up with a collection of searching ballads and clear-eyed blues. Hart doesn't avoid good times – "Try a Little Harder" conjures a bit of funky gospel, "Sugar Shack" pulsates to a sensual electronic throb – but this is an album where a title as seemingly lascivious as "Rub Me for Luck" is a roiling bit of minor-key blues. The darkly introspective tone is there from the start.

The cover art of War in My Mind, Beth Hart's first solo album since 2016's Fire on the Floor, finds the singer/songwriter sitting at a piano with a storm cloud looming in the horizon. It's a good visual summation of the record. Working with producer Rob Cavallo, Hart plumbs deep into her soul, coming up with a collection of searching ballads and clear-eyed blues. Hart doesn't avoid good times – "Try a Little Harder" conjures a bit of funky gospel, "Sugar Shack" pulsates to a sensual electronic throb – but this is an album where a title as seemingly lascivious as "Rub Me for Luck" is a roiling bit of minor-key blues. The darkly introspective tone is there from the start.

Piano, violin, and violoncello: Trio Marvin's debut album presents to us all the energy that composers have bundled together in this instrumental combination since the Romantic period. Vita Kan, Marius Urba and Marina Grauman describe Echoes of War as their juxtaposition of works by Dmitri Shostakovich and Mieczyslaw Weinberg, two composers who were influenced by World War II and Stalinism. The three draw us into a rhythm of hope, despair, and grief, igniting a firework of bright colors. Perfection, passion and musical superiority: it's easy to understand the enthusiasm of the jurors of the ARD Music Competition 2018, the Mendelssohn Competition 2017 and other major competitions who have awarded the ensemble so many first prizes!

It's telling that Do What You Want Be What You Are, Sony/Legacy's comprehensive, career-spanning Daryl Hall and John Oates box set, takes its title from a moderately successful mid-'70s single from the duo, written and recorded just as the group was hitting their creative stride. The slow Philly groove of "Do What You Want Be Who You Are" may have hearkened back to the duo's soul roots, side-stepping some of the outré pop experiments they had done just two years earlier on War Babies, but Hall & Oates took the title's sentiment to heart, blurring boundaries between rock, pop, and soul in a way that wasn't always easy to appreciate at the peak of their popularity in the '80s…

There are a number of arguments to be made for and against Maria Muldaur's 2008 antiwar statement Yes We Can! on Telarc (before actually listening to it; remember, we live in a cynical culture). The "perceived" negatives all relate to the intent of the recording and who it's supposed to reach (no doubt an expression of the same set of beliefs rooted in Muldaur's 1960s music), and the fact that it's loaded with guests (in all fairness, these star-studded affairs seldom work). On Yes We Can!, her guests include Muldaur's old friends (Joan Baez, Bonnie Raitt, Phoebe Snow, Jane Fonda, and Holly Near) and influences (Odetta) and new pals (writers/spiritual gurus Anne Lamott and Marianne Williamson, and Indian spiritual teacher Amma). Does it read as if it is yet another exercise in self-referential backslapping? Yep. But don't believe everything you read on the back of a CD jacket. The positives are all musical.