Shopping List: The New and the Notable
Flower Power: The Music of the Love Generation (Time Life); Love Is the Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-1970 (Rhino)
Time Life's ten-CD box celebrates 175 late-sixties hits; Rhino's four-disk set focuses on the quirkier and lesser-known "misses" generated by the cultural earthquake's West Coast epicenter. The former packages tracks you've heard countless times into one convenient VW bus-decorated box; the latter features essays and track-by-track commentary on such lesser-known acts as the Vejtables, the Mourning Reign, the Harbinger Complex, and the Savage Resurrection. One box is pretty good; the other box is simply great.
Mekons, Natural (Quarterstick)
Thirty years after forming as a clamorous, politically volatile punk group in Leeds, England, and five years since their country-rock album OOOH!, the Mekons return with a despairing and mostly acoustic album recorded in the English countryside. While plenty of wit and wisdom remains in their maturing voices and creaky instruments, an undeniable pessimism colors the Mekons' ruminations on what mankind hath wrought. It's still pretty wonderful, though, and history teaches us that one should never write off a Mekon.
Bobby Osborne & the Rocky Top X-Press, Bluegrass Melodies (Rounder)
With the voice and mandolin licks of a man half his seventy-five years, bluegrass veteran Bobby Osborne continues the solo career he began in 2004 after parting musical ways with his banjo-playing brother, Sonny, with whom he performed as the Osborne Brothers. Bobby's new album sounds as straightforward as its title, with Osborne's high, lonesome voice soaring above a nimble quintet. Osborne mixes secular with sacred melodies, and I'm particularly digging his version of Vince Gill's "Go Rest High on That Mountain," a duet with Rhonda Vincent.
Toots & the Maytals, Light It Up (Fantasy)
Toots Hibbert is arguably reggae's most stylistically diverse eminence. On Light It Up he delivers a bluesy version of "Johnny Coolman" with Allman Brothers Band slide guitarist Derek Trucks, duets with blues singer Bonnie Raitt on "Premature," channels Ray Charles on "I Gotta Woman," toasts a legendary reggae producer in "Tribute to Coxson/Guns of Navarone," and returns to his rock-steady roots with "Celia."