Staff Picks for June 2025
June 28, 2025
Showing off Head East's intriguing and quite effective blend of hard melodic rock with progressive rock tendencies and awesome vocal arrangements, this disc, released 50 years ago this month, is a classic. Opening with the band's trademark "Never Been Any Reason," the CD includes several other exceptionally strong numbers.
June 27, 2025
Original Soundtrack
George Lucas scored his 1973 comedy/drama about one night in the life of some high school kids in 1962 with a superb playlist of first-era rock & roll tunes, adding an evocative undertow of joy and poignance to his meditation on teenage life. The music played a big role in what made the film memorable, and separated from the movie, it's a superb collection of late 1950s/early 1960s classics.
June 26, 2025
For all the apparent antecedents, this album (officially released 50 years ago today) is truly Dylan's show, as he majestically evokes old myths and creates new ones, resulting in a crazy quilt of blues, humor, folk, tall tales, inside jokes, and rock. The Band pretty much pick up where Dylan left off, even singing a couple of his tunes, but they play it a little straight, on both their rockers and ballads.
June 25, 2025
One Size Fits All, released 50 years ago today, contained more of the material premiered during the 1973-1974 tour, but this time largely re-recorded in the studio. The previous album focused on complex music suites. This one is more song-oriented, alternating goofy rock songs with more challenging numbers in an attempt to find a juste milieu between Over-Nite Sensation and Roxy & Elsewhere. Together with Zoot Allures, One Size Fits All can be considered as one of the easiest points of entry into Zappa's discography.
June 24, 2025
A complex and nuanced mini-album from the synthpop duo of Leanne Macomber and Joel Ford, The Planet is more vulnerable and sophisticated than their full-length debut, improving on their best attributes.
June 23, 2025
With their 2023 album Everything Harmony, power-pop brothers Brian and Michael D'Addario's sound expanded. The nostalgic Rundgren-esque soft rock hooks and stardusted production still remained, but instead of full charge theatrical rock, the songs took different routes. Everything Harmony explores restrained folk rock, chamber pop orchestration, and songwriting quirks that make it stand out in the already impressive Lemon Twigs discography.
June 22, 2025
One of the finest debut albums of the 1990s, It's Heavy in Here brings forth to the public a new artist fully grown, refined, and with an undeniable attitude of exploration. Indeed, a heady combination, but Eric Matthews delivers in grand style with 14 gems that sparkle like rare tiaras. Mixing elements of classical, pop, jazz, and a bit of folk, the songs are well-crafted mosaics, and grab the listener with a slightly narcotic tug of the sleeve. Influences ranging from Colin Blunstone (the vocals) to Bernard Herrmann (string arrangements) give the entire affair a stately grace.
June 21, 2025
Listening to the Naked and Famous' guttingly good 2011 full-length debut, Passive Me Aggressive You, one thing is clear: this band loves a hot chorus. More often than not on the New Zealand indie electronic ensemble's album, songs like the immediately addictive leadoff cut, "All of This," seem to be building to their catchy and cathartic pinnacle as soon as they start. Every fuzzed-out synth, distorted drumbeat, and slow-zipper guitar line seems to foretell of an impending dance-rock orgy of melody. This, all before you even get to the vocalists, with Alisa Xayalith's yearning and Thom Powers' exuberant croons.
June 20, 2025
Believe it or not, but the (arguably) best Deftones album turns 25 on June 20. A pivotal turning point in their discography, White Pony marks the moment when the band shifted from the hip-hop-influenced nu-metal sound of their first two records toward the expansive, critically-acclaimed, genre-bending alternative metal that would shape the rest of their catalog to date. If you've never listened to Deftones, this is a great place to start. If you have, then you already know this is a perfect album, back-to-front, no skips.
June 19, 2025
Following extensive touring for 2015's Labor Against Waste, the folk-spirited guitar shredder released this album informed by both the travel and some of the sociopolitical turmoil he witnessed both at home and abroad. Steeped in protest and folklore, it puts the focus on message and song over showmanship. It was also his first album to feature a steady backing band (bass, drums, and violin), resulting in a complementary slight broadening of the spotlight.
June 18, 2025
Original English punks made a surfeit of really good, interesting records in the early '80s that failed to garner the wider attention their former bands enjoyed. A few carried on selling just as many great records in their new bands as they had before, but there were many more examples of the unfairly unwanted. Of all these stories, the most galling one was watching Billy Idol become an international star while no one heard the really ambitious music made by his more talented ex-Generation X mates, guitarist Derwood Andrews and drummer Mark Laff, for one album in 1981 as Empire.
June 17, 2025
Switching over to Blue Note, which was then reaping a fortune with Donald Byrd's R&B outfit, Eddie Henderson pursued a harder, earthier, more structured, funk-driven sound on his first album (released 50 years ago this month), while maintaining some of his marvelously spacier instincts for spice.
June 16, 2025
Cut from the same cloth as the band's 1973 Deliver the Word LP, War's 1975 Why Can't We Be Friends?, released 50 years ago today, is a masterpiece in its scope and breadth. And, emerging as the last work the band would do for its longtime label, United Artists, it became a fitting swansong, powering up the charts and giving War its fourth and final number one hit.
June 15, 2025
The English occult rock group's third long-player achieves a moody grandeur that feels more suited to a stone circle than a stadium. This Heathen Land retains its predecessors' penchant for pairing grainy Hammer Films-style gothic horror with stoner-psych muscle. Still, it does so with the golden patina of major-label money.
June 14, 2025
Dreaming My Dreams, released 50 years ago this month, was Waylon Jennings' first number one record, and deservedly so. He had created outlaw country with Honky Tonk Heroes, and then delivered two further albums that subtly developed its themes, even if they weren't quite as consistent. Dreaming My Dreams maintains the consistency, increasing the country quotient while subtly making it more sentimental than before.
June 13, 2025
Quasimoto's The Unseen is one of the most imaginative albums of the new West Coast underground, a puzzling, psychedelic jazz-rap gem riddled with warped humor and fractured musical genius. Producer Madlib actually outdoes his inventive work on the Lootpack's debut album, Soundpieces: Da Antidote!, crafting deep, dreamy jazz loops littered with found sounds and wiggy vocal samples.
June 12, 2025
After playing a significant role in five classic heavy metal albums of the late '70s and early '80s, Ronnie James Dio could truly do no wrong. So it wasn't all that surprising when he struck gold yet again when launching his solo vehicle. Holy Diver is the undisputed highlight of Dio's career, and, indeed, one of the finest pure heavy metal albums of the decade.
June 11, 2025
The pianist and composer and his international cast intricate rhythms, folk, pop, and jazz melodies and intricate harmonies and rhythms welded to the leader's love affair with the groove.
June 10, 2025
One of These Nights, released 50 years ago today, was the culmination of the blend of rock, country, and folk styles the Eagles had been making since their start; there wasn't much that was new, just the same sorts of things done better than they had been before. In particular, a lyrical stance -- knowing and disillusioned, but desperately hopeful -- had evolved, and the musical arrangements were tighter and more purposeful. The result was the Eagles' best-realized and most popular album so far.
June 9, 2025
The pianist's trio delivers a relaxing, harmonically nuanced album informed by classical music, Latin rhythms, and acoustically rendered impressionistic soundscapes across nine breezy originals.
June 8, 2025
While just as upbeat as their first two albums, the songs from this, their third, were clearer and more musically sophisticated, trading in the daydreamy punk fuzziness of their earliest days for dashes of mod-pop peppiness and toothy song structures that winkingly downplayed the impact of their bite with sugary hooks. Delicate and overpowering at once, echoes of the album would be heard in future waves of indie pop for decades to come, in particular Belle & Sebastian's post-'90s output, the disaffected beauty of Alvvays, jumpy pop-song perfecters like the Pains of Being Pure at Heart, and many, many others.
June 7, 2025
To the benefit of kids and adults alike, this set of children’s songs by the Innocence Mission co-leader speaks to listeners of all ages, as it rarely if ever condescends while delving into relatable topics like personal heroes, outings, and basking in the natural world. The album’s gentle, bittersweet temperament feels restorative and may even leave some misty-eyed, acting almost like an antidote to programmed, singalong kidz pop.
June 6, 2025
These days, one might find it hard to believe Coldplay once made darker, more tortured, and guitar-driven songs. The last album to really sound like the Coldplay of old, X&Y – turning 20 today – is the Be Here Now of their catalog: it's bloated, in desperate need of editing, and sounds like a weary band rehashing more of the same for a third go-round. However, there's plenty of gold buried in the jumbled sequencing: in addition to timeless singles like "Fix You," the pummeling "White Shadows" and mind-bending "Twisted Logic" are reminders that, at the core, they are (and remain) a rock band.
June 5, 2025
The otherworldly guitar sounds that kicked off the Electric Prunes' 1966 smash "I Had Too Much To Dream Last Night" were the clarion call of a band that brilliantly merged psychedelic exploration with the sneer of garage rock. While later albums diluted their individuality, this collection of their first two LPs, non-LP singles, and relevant odds and ends is a superb summary of their strengths. R.I.P. vocalist James Lowe.
June 4, 2025
Off Broadway fused taut new wave arrangements with punchy power pop melodies not unlike their Illinois contemporaries Cheap Trick who ultimately had better songs and more staying power. Still, the band's catchy 1979 debut is worth revisiting for standouts like "Stay in Time" and "Full Moon Turn My Head Around."
June 3, 2025
Produced by Al Kooper, this debut (released 50 years ago this month) by the notorious San Francisco group is best known for the blazing anthem "White Punks on Dope." Although the Tubes' raison d'être was their shock-rock stage dynamic, Bill Spooner, Fee Waybill, and company could, on occasion, deliver some offbeat pop splendor.
June 2, 2025
Trumpeter/flügelhornist Charles Tolliver often straddled the line between the lyricism of hard bop and the adventurous nature of the avant-garde. Released in 1976, Impact contained a stimulating progressive edge within an energetic large band (14 horns, eight strings, and rhythm section) format. Tolliver's arrangements are consistently bright and build momentum, while the soloists are given sufficient room to maneuver through the multiple textures. Featured soloists in the remarkable reed section include Charles McPherson, James Spaulding, George Coleman, and Harold Vick.
June 1, 2025
As the Who go about the business of firing and hiring drummers while planning yet another farewell tour in 2025, let us savor one of their finest celebrations of youth culture in the 1960s and the siren song of AM radio. 1967's The Who Sell Out was the band's first great concept album, full of witty pop numbers, barbed radio spots, would-be commercials, and the vengeful ferocity of "I Can See For Miles."