Staff Picks for August 2025

The 1974 debut by Bennie Maupin remains one of the best examples of spiritual jazz, a deep and flowing network of melodies, textures, and instrumentation choices that are subtle but heavenly. Maupin leads an incredible band that includes Herbie Hancock, Buster Williams, Billy Hart, and others, but focuses on leaving ample space for each player to gently breathe his themes in, and exhale them as something different. The result is an ambient jazz environment that's easy and uncluttered but impossible to ignore.
- Fred Thomas

The wall of fizzling shoegaze guitars, sparkling production, and post-punk-inspired vocals might sound like the Stills debut album is just another forgettable and derivative offering from the 2000s indie waste bin. And yet, over two decades since its release at the tail-end of the "The Band" boom, it holds up as a starry-eyed dose of nostalgia that sounds like a happier Interpol or Editors. At a swift ten tracks, it's over and ready to repeat before you know it, with highlights "Lola Stars and Stripes," "Gender Bombs," "Changes Are No Good," and "Still in Love Song" serving as the main standouts.
- Neil Z. Yeung

This album, released 50 years ago this month, will sketch a barren wasteland in the mind through the wispiness of the wind-like effects. Timewind serves as splendid mood music, and the ears are forever kept busy following Schulze's electronic wandering.
- Mike DeGagne

The bassist's guest-filled Blue Note debut reveals in a sophisticated, exceptionally ambitious manner the labyrinthine interconnectedness of earlier sounds and rhythms -- which emerged from bondage and horrific suffering -- to new ones that bring the world joy.
- Thom Jurek

The Paper Chase's debut album, released 25 years ago today, clearly sets the band apart from other Texas punk bands. The Paper Chase blends layers of grit, found sounds, samples, and guitar chunk with delicate piano swells and cello melodies to create a far artier and jarring overall work.
- Zac Johnson

Released a few years after Russell's death in 1992, Another Thought was one of the first of what would be many posthumous excavations of the multidimensional New York artist's extensive archive of unreleased tapes. It does a great job of showing just how wildly diverse Russell could be, zooming between avant-garde cello ambiance, would-be pop, and not-quite disco tracks while remaining cohesive by way of the artist's one-of-a-kind creative vision, the thread that connected it all.
- Fred Thomas