David Bowie Blackstar 2016

David Bowie left us this swansong just days before he passed away in 2016. It is a brilliant record, with Bowie presenting us with something truly new. There's a million reviews, and they are generally quite positive. I find it extremely difficult to write about, as it really is like nothing before it. Many writers have compared it to Low, or the more recent The Next Day, and while I can hear some similarities, Blackstar sounds different to me from everything else Bowie. 

It took me four years to getting around to hearing it. I always liked Bowie's work in the seventies, but I was less thrilled with what came after, and 1983's Let's Dance was my last purchase, and that one got purged from the stacks a long time ago. I recently read The Age of Bowie by Paul Morley (I can't recommend the book), and that got me into going back to the music I was less familiar with from the 90s and 2000s, and brought me to Blackstar. I was pleasantly surprised by some of his more recent music, but Blackstar just blew me away.

It is not jazz, but it is played by a talented jazz band. It doesn't rock very much, but there are some rock moments. The band deserve extra credit. The songs are unusually strong. It has a unified sound, more so to my ears than anything he'd done in 20 years. If you have any interest in Bowie, you really should hear it. And maybe especially if, like me, you wouldn't be expecting anything great from David Bowie. I would put this in my list of the top 5 best David Bowie records. It's that good.

It is no surprise that David Bowie had one more trick up his sleeve, but one so magnificent is just remarkable.

Bob Dylan Rough And Rowdy Ways 2020

After almost eight years, we get a new Dylan album with all original songs. After three releases covering the American songbook, I was ready. Would we get another Tempest? Modern Times? Well, no. But there is some fine music to be heard.

I love Bob Dylan's music, and he's made some truly great records. I don't know that this is the classic that other reviewers have raved up, but it has some great moments, and has an overall tone that is quietly powerful. Dylan's voice is the same ragged mess it has been for 20 some years, and he sings with it beautifully. If singing is notes, well, you know, Bob's in trouble. But if singing is getting feeling across to the listener, that ragged voice works as well as any. And the lyrics are clear above a frequently soft, delicate instrumental backing. Bob still has stuff to say, and you don't need to analyze and parse the lyrics to get his meaning. He's quite direct on this one.

The writing is sly, funny, dramatic and dark. I Contain Multitudes opens as a tongue-in-cheek boast. The stomping blues of False Prophet accommodates Dylan's dark rasp as well as one of the few instances of hot guitars. The other, Goodbye Jimmy Reed, rocks steady. But much of this record is very laid back, slow, quiet music with Dylan's voice and words. I could go for a few more up-tempo songs. There's a love song (I've Made Up My Mind To Give Myself To You), an ode to poetry (Mother Of Muses), cautionary tales (Black Rider, Key West), and slow blues (Crossing The Rubicon). The writing is direct and understandable, and the phrasing that is embedded in Dylan's lyrical skill is as evident as ever.

Then there's the 17 minutes of Murder Most Foul. It's good. It follows from JFK's assassination to stories and visions and snapshots of a world mostly in decline. It is a moving song, and a fine display from a songwriter that keeps in forward motion despite the odds. 

If you gave up on Dylan during the eighties or nineties, you really should check out 2001's Love and Theft and 2006's Modern Times. If you've been following Dylan's recent work, you'll probably find this one to your liking also.

Robin McKelle 2006-2019

Robin McKelle has an interesting story, and has recorded in a variety of styles that makes her difficult to pin down. She is a fine singer of jazz, soul, blues and pop. She writes some great songs, and has had some excellent writing partners. Although she hails from upstate New York, her first success came singing big band jazz in Europe. Her first release, Introducing 2006, is an excellent big band jazz record that swings. Confident, assured vocals, fine arrangements, and a stellar big band led by producer/trumpeter Willie Murillo featuring many great soloists. Highlights include Something's Gotta Give, For All We Know, Deep In A Dream, I've Got The World On A String, and a slow, sultry Come Rain Or Come Shine.

Next up, Modern Antique 2008, is another big band outing, and McKelle's vocals are just a bit more confident sounding, and a bit stronger. Willie Murillo produces again, this time with McKelle's assistance. Song selection is great, and includes Steve Miller's Abracadabra done big band style. Other highlights include Comes Love, Cheek To Cheek, Save Your Love For Me, Make Someone happy, and McKelle's first songwriting credit, the lovely closer Remember.

Mess Around 2010 finds McKelle fronting a smaller jazz combo of keyboards, bass and drums (and occasional guitar) augmented by three or four horns on all but two songs. McKelle produces herself, and wrote four of the songs. The rest are written by a wide array of songsmiths including Bee Gees, Leonard Cohen, Doc Pompus, Lennon/McCartney, and Willie Dixon. Her own Mess Around kicks things off in fine soul-jazz style. Several of the best songs are blues, including Never Make A Move Too Soon, Lonely Avenue, and I Just Want To Make Love To You. The record closes with another fine McKelle original, Since I Looked In Your Eyes.

So 2012 rolls around and Robin takes another musical turn, this time to soul music, with her Soul Flower release. There is a completely revamped band, The Flytones, featuring bassist/co-producer/songwriting partner Derek Nievergelt, Ben Stivers on keys, Adrian Harpham on drums, Al Street on guitar, and a three-man horn section. Robin writes or co-writes eight of the twelve songs. If you liked seventies soul music, it is hard to believe this came out in 2012. Highlights include her own Tell You One Thing, a sexy come-on, Fairytale Ending, a classic Philly/Memphis soul hybrid that has hit single written all over it, and the funky Don't Give Up. Two excellent duets, the Bee Gees' To Love Somebody with Lee Fields and Love's Work with Gregory Porter, and an unusually fast take on Bacharach's Walk On By are all great.

For 2014's Heart Of Memphis, McKelle stays with soul, this time emulating those fine Hi Records Memphis soul gems from the seventies. The Flytones return with a new two-man horn section, McKelle writes or co-writes 10 of the 12 songs, and everything works. The rocking soul of Good Time, the slow longing loss of Forgetting You, the walking blues of the title track. A very fine, quick-tempo Please Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood shines bright. Good & Plenty and Down With The Ship are great songs. Played to perfection by the Flytones, sung with panache by McKelle, it is a killer old soul outing. Produced in Memphis by Scott Bomar, the sound is excellent.

On The Looking Glass 2014, McKelle makes another musical style change, and creates a mature pop record not far removed from Adele, but with lingering soul overtones. McKelle wrote or cowrote all the songs. Steve Greenwell recorded and produced the record, and there is a new band in place on piano, bass, and drums, with Al Street back on guitar, and Greenwell adding keyboard touches throughout. It's her first record without any horns. The record kicks off with the funky modern soul of Gravity, the great hooks of Stand Up (a call to action), and the Adele-like slow build of I'm The One, with its killer chorus of Robins. Forgive Me's soul-pop harmonies follows, then Stay sounds like a good track from a Lauren Hill album, and the jazzy cautionary tale that is Brave Love keeps the quality high. The last three songs tread mid-tempo water, but it is overall a very strong outing.

After two soul albums and a pop one, Robin turns again and returns to jazz on Melodic Canvas 2018. A small combo with Shedrick Mitchell on piano and organ, Vincente Archer on bass, Daniel Sadownick on drums, and Al Street on guitar. McKelle produces, and makes another good one. Do You Believe has a gospel-like sound, Come To Me is sexy smooth jazz, You're No Good sounds like a jazz version of a Dusty Springfield song. Swing Low Sweet Chariot has a jazzy syncopated gospel feel, and Allen Toussaint's Yes We Can Can receives a slow build that takes the song to a new place, and a good place. There's a few moody jazz pieces that slow things down, but the singing is always fine. It might be less consistent than her best, but she's stretching out on this one, and you have to admire her moxie even if not everything works.

Which brings us to Alterations 2019. Shedrick Mitchell returns on keys and produced with McKelle. Richie Goods plays bass, Charles Haynes plays drums, and Nir Felder plays guitar. Guest horns appear on two tracks. This time (because she does like to change things up) it is a covers record with one McKelle original. The covers are all over the map, but feature mostly pop songs from Amy Winehouse, Joni Mitchell, Adele, Dolly Parton, Sade, Ella Fitzgerald, and Janis Joplin. The jazz version of Back In Black is super, and Adele's Rolling In The Deep is an interesting arrangement. Mercedes Benz is taken as a blues-rock, and Don't Explain gets a remarkable vocal from Robin. Her own Head High is another highlight, and features a smoking sax solo. Like most covers records, there are some questionable choices, including Sade's No Ordinary Love (it's ordinary), Joni Mitchell's River (not an easy song to interpret), and Parton's Jolene (hard to turn into jazz). Similarly to The Looking Glass, the first half is the strong half. But the good stuff is good enough you don't want to miss it.

The real heartbreak is that she has gone mostly unnoticed in her homeland. She is a much better known artist in France and Germany than here in the U.S., and that's just a shame. If you like big band vocals, get Modern Antique. For small combo jazz, I still like Mess Around, which is a great set of songs, and features three blues that Robin sings beautifully, but the newer ones are solid too. Both of her soul records are great, and I can't really choose between Heart Of Memphis and Soul Flower. The pop-soul of The Looking Glass is better than most new music. You may have never heard of her, but that has nothing to do with her prodigious talent.

Norah Jones Pick Me Up Off The Floor 2020

Norah Jones is a beguiling artist at her best. A lovely singer, a talented piano and guitar player, and a skilled songwriter, she has crafted some of the best jazz, jazz-pop and pop of the last twenty years. But not everything is equal to her best work, and her records have vacillated from greatness to downright disappointing. Her best records, like the debut Come Away With Me, have been followed by lesser product. Both Feels Like Home and Not Too Late, while certainly not bad records, couldn't touch the debut. Then The Fall was a revelation, with her moving to guitar on some songs and with a production that took some of the sleepy out of her songs. That was followed by the mismatch with Danger Mouse on Little Broken Hearts, which showed that there was a way to make a less than great Norah Jones record without making it boring. Then 2016's "return" to jazz, Day Breaks, was a monumental work, proving she had the goods still, and that maybe the pool of her talents was deeper than we knew. Last year's Begin Again was a collection of writing collaborations that sounded less cohesive than her better efforts. Which brings us to Pick Me Up Off The Floor.

Jones has always specialized in soft, gentle compositions. Some of her work is a bit too sleepy sometimes, but there are generally a few songs that pick things up a bit. Not so much this time around. This one starts off slow, never speeds up, and then peters out all together. Not that tempos ruin the record, but don't come looking for much in the energy category.

How I Weep, softly, minimally played on piano and strings, sets the tone. Flame Twin has a nice organ part and interesting lyric. Background singers and Pete Remm's Hammond B3 keep Hurts To Be Alone interesting. Heartbroken, Day After is a slow sad breakup song. It is a good one, but four songs in and barely a rhythm in sight. Say No More has a nice rhythm and some melody, and you might think it's the beginning of getting this work moving. But not so much really. The chorus of Norah's vocals shines on This Life, with its appropriate lyric for the pandemic we are living through.

Side Two has to pick things up, right? To Live is a beautiful song, urging the singer to live in the now, again with lovely harmonies she sings herself. A collaboration with Jeff Tweedy, I'm Alive, is next, and it is good. The lyrics seem to focus on pandemic-me too-politics, and the tempo is at least moving forward. Tweedy's guitars are a nice change of pace. Then it's over. Were You Watching? (a too long, too sad dirge), Stumble On My Way (just slow), and Heaven Above (beautiful, and oh yeah, slow) try to out-slow each other, and they all win.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised. Jones' work has never been exactly upbeat, but this is just too far down the lack of tempo road. It is a beautiful record, full of sad, melancholy songs perhaps best described as art songs. It is well-written and performed. The musicians (usually just piano, bass and drums with one or two helpers along for the ride) do a fine job. As theme music for our current state of pandemic depression, it might be perfect. 

Maybe I'm being too critical. Several of these songs are strikingly beautiful. Jones' voice is lovely. Lyrics are mostly strong. There isn't a note out of place. Shouldn't that be enough?

The Rubinoos 1970 - 2019

There is a new Rubinoos LP out, From Home 2019. Produced by Chuck Prophet, with new songs by Tommy Dunbar and Prophet, it is chock full of classic Rubinoos delights. The straight-ahead power-pop Rubinoos sound, like the Archies or The 1910 Fruitgum Company, delivered without a trace of irony. Prophet wisely leaves their sound alone, letting all we love about the Rubinoos come shining through. The nostalgia of Do You Remember, the mid-tempo magic of January, the pristine vocals and syncopation of Do I Love You?, and the ancient Greek goddess Phaedra done up all Beach Boys/Raspberries style. Honey From The Honeycombs idolizes the great female drummer. Masochist Davey takes a different look at not-quite-sweet love. The record closes with Watching The Sun Go Down, a lovely ballad that Jon Rubin sings beautifully, and the band adds great harmony. It is another fine outing from this band that has been doing this sweetly perfect pop for fifty years.

Although the band formed as early as 1970, their recorded debut was on the Beserkly Chartbusters compilation in 1975. They performed a cover of Gorilla by the DeFranco Family. Then, in 1977, came their debut, The Rubinoos. A more perfect pop record is hard to imagine. While the cover of I Think We're Alone Now was a modest hit as a single, the record is rife with gems. Leave My Heart Alone, Rock And Roll Is Dead, Nothing A Little Love Won't Cure, Make It Easy, and I Never Thought It Would Happen are all chart-worthy. Catchy melodies, great hook-filled choruses, remarkable harmonies, and the crystal clear pipes of Jon Rubin, along with fine ensemble playing and singing throughout, it would almost be legacy enough. 

If it is hard to imagine a better record than the debut, Back To The Drawing Board 1979 comes mighty close. More great songs from Tommy Dunbar, and more of everything on offer on the debut. Fallin' In Love, I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend, Drivin' Music, Operator, Arcade Queen, Lightning Love Affair, and 1, 2, 3 Forever maintain the quality, and a tour opening for Elvis Costello should have made them famous. But Beserkley Records was never able to support them as well as a larger label, and let's face it, although this music is charmingly perfect, in the late 1970s, it is decidedly not contemporary. It is an interesting exercise to contemplate what might have been if this music had been released in the mid-sixties. Because it is certainly of that time, but also better than most of the competition even then.

Party Of Two 1983, produced by Todd Rundgren with instrumental support from Utopia, yielded If I Had You Back, the video for which got some MTV air time. It was a decent EP, but didn't capture their sound (or their best songs) as well as the first two. Around the same time they recorded the theme song for The Revenge Of The Nerds movie. And that would have seemed to be the end of the Rubinoos.

They recorded another record in the mid 80s that never got released at the time, but in 1993 and 1994 those recordings were released as The Basement Tapes and Garage Sale. Rather than sound like demos, the material on Basement Tapes just sounded like the next Rubinoos release. The interest in those recordings confirmed that the band still had fans, and successful tours in Japan and Europe led to new recordings in the new century.

Paleophonic 2000 picked up where they had left off, and had a fuller sound, with great production from Kevin Gilbert. Amnesia, Early Winter, Pursuit Of Happiness, and the Raspberries' Beach Boys tribute Cruisin' Music jump with pop thrills and harmonies galore. Perfect Stranger is a glorious ballad, and a surf instrumental version of the Star Trek theme complete the mix.

2003's Crimes Against Music is their covers record. It is a wild mix of songs and styles, and it all comes out Rubinoos. Pop greats by The America Breed (Bend Me, Shape Me), Looking Glass (Brandy), Lou Christie (If Only My Car Could Talk), and the Beach Boys (Heroes And Villains) are mixed with less likely choices like Eurythmics, Todd Rundgren, Elvis Costello, and Yardbirds. It works really well, but it is a covers record, and that means that we miss out on Tommy Dunbar's unique songcraft. The thing that is so consistently fun about Rubinoos is their original songs that sound like you heard them 30 years ago but can't remember where.

Twist Pop Sin 2005 continued their more recent successes. You Hit The Nerve is classic Rubinoos pop, and there's plenty to go around with The Other Side Of The Rain, In The Worst Way, She Won't Let Me, Nobody Said Life Was Fair, and the sweet ballad Someday. Maybe not their strongest effort, but not a disappointment by any measure.

2010 saw Biff-Boff-Boing. A children's record, I haven't heard it. I listened to the samples, and there is no reason not to like their sound as a vehicle to entertain children. Their sound has always been for kids. In 2011, no one expected Automatic Toaster. Released to coincide with a European tour, the record appeared on the scene without fanfare. And it is a pretty darn good Rubinoos record. Great songs keep coming with Two Guitars, Bass And Drums, I Pity The Fool, Mak Schau, Black Is Black (Los Bravos cover), and Past, Present And Future.

They just won't go away. And we are all the better for it. 2015 saw 45. As in 45 rpm of course, but also marking 45 years since the band formed in 1970. And guess what? It is their best effort since the first two, hands down. Donn Spindt is back on drums (missing since Paleophonic), and Dunbar managed to write his best set of songs in a long while. Run Mascara Run, Graveyard Shift, I Love Louie Louie, Countdown To Love, You Are Here, That Thing You Do, All It Takes, She Drives Me Crazy, and This Is Good all rock like crazy, and the ballad What More Could You Ask Of A Friend is as good a sweet ballad as they have ever done.

Who would have thought that the Rubinoos would still be with us in 2020? It is amazing really that they have managed to keep doing their uniquely Rubinoos thing all this time. You can't go wrong with the first two records. Get them on vinyl if you have that capability. None of their records suck. The new one, From Home is excellent, as is 45, and Paleophonic. Do you miss the Raspberries? Tommy James? Simple pop for grown-ups? Rubinoos are the answer to your dilemma.

Elephant's Memory 1972

Elephant's Memory are one of those many strange stories in rock history. A New York City band that featured horns, eclectic songwriting, multiple line-up changes, and several record labels, they are best known for being the backing band on Some Time In New York City by John Lennon, easily arguable as Lennon's worst release, although that isn't due to Elephant's Memory as the backing band. John and Yoko produced this 1971 Apple records outing, which has never been released on CD.

Side one opens with Liberation Special, a fast-driving, hard rocking song with a solid riff, vague lyrics about freedom, and good drive. Baddest Of The Mean follows, and it is a big plodding boogie with Stan Bronstein's gravely baritone delivery that verges on the Wolfman Jack sound, and not in a good way. The Johnny B Goode riff of Cryin' Blacksheep Blues follows, with similarly bad vocals, but a nice sax solo. Chuck 'N' Bo is a hard driving boogie that tells the story of John and Yoko attending a Chuck Berry and Bo Diddly concert.

Side two is a bit more varied. We get a few sung by members other than Bronstein, which helps, but the lyrical content is consistently weak, and they play off their celebrity producers again with the closing Local Plastic Ono Band. The country-ish Wind Ridge, the big loud Power Boogie (with more Wolfman vocals), and the hard rock of Madness and Gypsy Wolf keep things moving.

The band is tight. The lead guitar is generally interesting. The horn solos are highlights when they appear. The recording has a thick sound that could be tightened up a bit, but that doesn't wreck it.

I've said it before- All you really need is a singer, a songwriter, and a solid drummer. I can't say anything bad about the drumming. Songwriting is musically simple but effective, but lyrically banal. And vocals are a big problem for the band. They had other singers in their earlier iterations, but Bronstein just isn't up to the job, vacillating between his gravelly baritone and a high scream, it is a hard voice to see as an effective instrument. Maybe in a metal band, but not here.

Better lyrics and vocals would have made this a better record. But not better enough to make it great. There are millions of lesser artists that managed to put out a few records. Some of them made famous friends, but that doesn't mean they made memorable music.

Great Sounding Recordings

I don't really think of myself as an audiophile, but by some definition I must be one. I think of myself these days as a guy that loves music and has a much better than average stereo system. But how I got that system was by being an audiophile. Maybe I should define what I mean by an audiophile. To me, an audiophile is someone who is expressly interested in the sound that an audio system produces, and who more than likely wants that system to achieve something important to them. Using that definition, I was an audiophile back some twenty years ago when I started to put the system together that I now own. The system I have now was assembled between 2002 and 2009 for the most part, with vinyl playback gear upgraded in 2015 (although what I had in 2009 played vinyl just fine, but not as just fine as now). You can check out the kit at this post and you can read all of my equipment-related posts by using the Stereo Equipment label.

When I went shopping for speakers, which I contend is the most important buying choice when it comes to your stereo system, I recorded (on my Marantz CD recorder- which I miss dearly, but it died) a disc of songs that I felt would help me evaluate speaker systems. Naturally, I choose material I was familiar with, but also material that I thought would help me evaluate a speaker system by challenging that system to make the songs sound great. An exceptional recording was usually involved, but not really all the time. Some of the material challenged systems to provide what the late great Art Dudley would call rhythm and pacing. This is a highly underrated quality, and it is nebulous to some degree, but there are systems that can make big loud beautiful sound and yet they do not swing or rock.

I recorded the Instrumental Introduction To Don't Look Down, a track from Lindsey Buckingham's Out Of The Cradle at eight different dB levels so that I could be assured of listening to the music at similar volumes. This is important, because louder music will inevitably sound more impressive than less loud presentations. These tracks allowed me to get the overall volume of the system similar from audition to audition of speakers. Other than that technical issue, the tracks on my original "Audition Disc" included the following, with the reason for their being included:

Boats To Build by Guy Clark from Boats To Build- beautiful acoustic guitar, open space in the presentation, excellent vocals with a chesty vocal presentation that some speakers will overemphasize.

Bridge Over Troubled Waters by Eva Cassidy from Live At Blues Alley - amazing female vocals, great bass with definition, very dynamic recording that goes from soft to quite forceful.

Rock My Soul by Elvin Bishop, recorded from Rock My Soul vinyl - this songs rocks and swings, and not every system can make it happen. There's great bass, and there's an organ trill late in the song that can reveal irritating treble in some systems.

The Song Remembers When by Trisha Yearwood from The Song Remembers When - more female vocals (audiophiles love female vocals), and again, a dynamic presentation that swells in the crescendos. Delicate instruments in the early part of the song, and emotional content that can be "too sterile" with some systems.

Everybody's Got Something To Hide Except For Me And My Monkey by the Beatles from The Beatles - I'm not sure if this was a great choice, but the cowbell and the drive of this song revealed some systems as too dry. If the system couldn't do rhythm, it showed on this track.

Song Of The Wind by Santana, recorded from Caravanserai vinyl - maybe the most important track on the disc. The searing guitar showed some speakers as strident, or harsh, in the treble. The percussion and organ trills in the early part of the track showed just how much inner detail could be revealed by a speaker system. And it rocks.

I Don't Want To Lose You Yet by Steve Earle from Transcendental Blues - not a great choice for the audition. Too much compression in the recording. Great song though.

I Got You (I Feel Good) by James Brown from Star Time - Rhythm and pacing. If you can't do this song, you got no soul, no swing.

Don't Look Down by Lindsey Buckingham from Out Of The Cradle - nicely recorded acoustic guitar, good overall sonics.

Corner Pocket and Lara's Theme from The Harry James Big Band King James Version direct-to-disc vinyl recording - hot, dynamic, horns in your face presentation. Any speaker worth owning should make this sound alive and super-hot. An amazing recording.

Hayden Quartet in G major, first movement, by The Emerson String Quartet from Hayden String Quartets - breathtaking quartet reveals any flaws with perfect acoustic instrumental recording.

Mozart Symphony No. 40 in G minor, fourth movement, by James Levine and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (not sure of the source, maybe a Stereophile test CD?) - just a pristine classical recording, you should feel like your in the hall.

And that is the music I listened to when I decided to buy the Reference 3A MM deCapo-i speakers that I enjoy to this day.

I have amassed a long list since then of other worthy contenders that I might use to evaluate systems if I were back in the market. I listened to a revised Audition Disc when I visited Paragon back in 2014 and heard over $200,000 worth of stereo system.

Here's more exceptionally recorded music that will sound great on a good system and will test the abilities of any music reproduction. And they are also great performances.
Comes Love by The John Cocuzzi Quintet from Swingin' And Burnin'.
Paz by Tom Harrel from Wise Children.
Besame Mucho by The Frank And Joe Show featuring Jane Monheit from 331/3.
For Joy by The Sons Of Champlin from Hip Li'l Dreams.
First We Take Manhattan by Jennifer Warnes (with Stevie Ray Vaughn) from Famous Blue Raincoat - This may be the single best track to hear if you want to evaluate a system. Audiophiles have praised it forever, and for good reason. The rest of the first side is equally perfect, and Warnes' The Well from 2001 is also a magnificent recording. The Nightingale and the title track are perfect. You should get to know Jennifer Warnes' work if you haven't already.
Under The Boardwalk by Rickie Lee Jones from Girl At Her Volcano. I have the original 10-inch vinyl, and the dynamics and the vocals on this track are awe-inspiring.
Gloria's Step by Bill Evans from Sunday At The Village Vangard. The perfect piano trio.
Statesboro Blues by The Allman Brothers from At Fillmore East.
This Will Be Our Year by Bruce Robison and Kelly Willis from Our Year.
I wanted to include some of that "Eighties sheen", because some of it was good, but also, it presents a big sound from an in-your-face perspective.
Swallowed By The Cracks by David + David from Boomtown.
Every Time You Go Away by Paul Young from Secrets Of Association.

I rarely listen critically any more. I'd rather listen to music than pay attention to the recording or how well the system sounds. But I still catch myself when the music is so wonderfully recorded and presented.