Recordings
Best Classic Bands offers smart, informed and unbiased assessments of the latest rock album releases and reissues to offer readers guidance on what sounds they might enjoy.
Procol Harum Reissues Shine On Brightly
These reissues of the first four LPs are loaded with bonus material and make the case for the band’s sophisticated rock music’s significance
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Wilco Brings Back (Some of) the Fun
Rather than making an album with the implied stature of “masterpiece” etched into its grooves, Wilco keeps it short, snappy and fun on its ninth studio LP, yet without forsaking the experinentalism that has been the band’s hallmark since Yankee Foxtrot Hotel.
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Neil Young Rocks The Message
Making music the message and being a bit less polemical on The Monsanto Years might have yielded Neil Young & POTR one of his finest albums in years
Read MoreJorma Kaukonen Offers Old School Acoustic
50 years since he blazed a psychedelic trail with the Airplane + decades since he + Jack Cassidy formed Hot Tuna, he’s happy to kick back and pick + sing
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Nellie McKay Revisits 1960s Songs
Do you fondly recall the 1960s? Nellie McKay, who was yet to be born, gleans a variety of gems from that decade and renders them with imagination & panache.
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Roger Daltrey, Wilko Johnson’s ‘Riveting’ Album
The former Dr. Feelgood guitarist collaborated with the Who frontman and a scrappy band for a 2014 album that got expanded to 2-CDs
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’60s Cult Legends Sonics Return
Tacoma’s 1960s cult legends are back with their first full new album in nearly 50 years. Ken Barnes: “A powerful new boom to a classic sonic canon”
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Vanilla Fudge Returns With Songs From 1967
On Spirit of ’67, three members of the original band return with great versions of some of the biggest songs from that year like “I Heard it Through the Grapevine” and “Whiter Shade of Pale”
Read MoreKate Pierson Echoes B-52’s on Solo Debut
Guitars and Microphones is a slightly smoothed over version of the B-52’s kitschy mix of surf, girl group and dance party sounds
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John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers Live in 1967
A recording was discovered of the influential blues revivalist with future Fleetwood Mac stalwarts Peter Green, Mick Fleetwood + John McVie, and cuts loose
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