Shopping List: The New and the Notable
Anjani, Blue Alert (Columbia); Leonard Cohen, The Songs of Leonard Cohen, Songs From a Room, Songs of Love and Hate (Sony Legacy)
Columbia/Sony marks forty years of Leonard Cohen releases (there's a lot of that going on these days) with some great-sounding reissues of his three earliest albums. Even better, they're using the anniversary as an excuse to re-release one of the very best records you didn't hear last year. Anjani Thomas scavenged the material on her remarkable Blue Alert from Cohen's notebooks. Produced by Cohen, these mostly new songs are as wistful, sexy, and spiritually resonant as anything he's written, and Anjani sings them with immense reservoirs of feeling. Album closer "Thanks for the Dance" turns out to be the best song Stephen Sondheim never composed.
A Tribute to Joni Mitchell (Nonesuch)
Annie Lennox praises "The Ladies of the Canyon," Prince unpacks a soulful, sultry "Case of You," and James Taylor revisits the "River" on this colorful portrait of a reclusive genius that also includes tracks by Elvis Costello, k. d. lang, and Bjork.
Joshua Redman, Back East (Nonesuch)
Saxophone-led trio albums are a high-wire act, and Joshua Redman's first crack at the format is a world-class beauty. The title reverses Sonny Rollins's 1957 cowboy-inspired classic, Way Out West, from which Redman reinterprets "I'm an Old Cowhand" and "Wagon Wheels." The rest of the album is more "Eastern." Joshua's father, the late, great saxophonist Dewey Redman, joins him on John Coltrane's "India," and other tracks include Wayne Shorter's "Indian Song," Brooks Bowman's "East of the Sun (and West of the Moon)," and Redman's own "Mantra #5."