Best New Reissues

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  Miles Davis

  Miles Davis

  Miles at the Fillmore - Miles Davis 1970: The Bootleg Series Vol. 3

  By Mark Richardson; March 31, 2014

  8.8

  Miles at the Fillmore, the latest entry in Columbia’s revelatory bootleg series collecting unreleased Miles Davis live material, finds the trumpeter departing one musical world entering a new one. Compared to where his music would take in the ensuing four years, Miles’ sound in mid-1970 was still loosely tethered to jazz tradition. There are distinct compositions that unfold with a set arc, there are recognizable themes, there’s still a standard in regular rotation. Excerpts from these four nights were released on the 1970 Miles Davis at the Fillmore 2xLP.

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  Lavender Country

  Lavender Country

  Lavender Country

  By Jayson Greene; March 25, 2014

  8.6

  Patrick Haggerty was raised on a dairy farm outside Seattle before the twin shocks of the Stonewall riots and his ejection from the Peace Corps radicalized him. In 1973 he released Lavender Country, widely regarded as the first record by an openly gay person, in an edition of 1,000. Like any good culture-clash project, Lavender Country stops to have fun with sly subtext, but it's not a really a "funny" album. The songs address life inside the gay-rights struggle, and the specifics hurt. Haggerty's songs  are resonant and wonderful, folding pain into jokes and vice versa and exuding heartbreak and anger and wry good humor. Now that the label Paradise of Bachelors is reissuing the collection, the richness of his achievement can be appreciated again.

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  Unwound

  Unwound

  Rat Conspiracy

  By Jason Heller; March 13, 2014

  9.1

  The new Unwound box set Rat Conspiracy collects the Seattle punks' 1993 LP Fake Train and 1994's New Plastic Ideas along with a third album of 7” singles, radio sessions, compilation appearances, and unreleased tracks from the raw, formative years of the band. Fake Train and New Plastic Ideas hold important places in the history of 90s music, not to mention those of punk and indie as a whole.

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  Various Artists

  Various Artists

  Hardcore Traxx: Dance Mania Records 1986-1997

  By Andrew Gaerig; February 11, 2014

  8.5

  Hardcore Traxx: Dance Mania Records 1986-1997 is the first-ever compilation to honor Chicago house music's coarse, brilliant, and suddenly trendy prodigal son. Best known for lewd, raw, high-tempo tracks—a style known then and now as ghetto house—the Dance Mania label churned out dozens of classic singles that rarely escaped the Midwest. Like garage rock or blues or any art that's trying to accomplish a lot with very little, a surprising amount of weirdness ensued. There's lots of grunting and wheezing on Hardcore Traxx; rappers sound like cartoons and MCs like carnal preachers. Whether you find dance music far too repetitive or you live for old Traxx 12"s, you will remember Dance Mania's tracks, as they are among the catchiest and most brazen of their kind, alternately hypnotic and disruptive.

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  Uncle Tupelo

  Uncle Tupelo

  No Depression: Legacy Edition

  By Amanda Petrusich; January 30, 2014

  8.4

  Uncle Tupelo is typically evoked in discussions of the two outfits it birthed (Wilco and Son Volt), but the band's 1990 debut is a significant record independent of its fallout. Jeff Tweedy and drummer Mike Heidorn were 22 and Jay Farrar was 23 when they arrived at Fort Apache to record No Depression, and the tangling of sensibilities yielded something remarkable: a raw, lonesome clatter, the singular sound of Midwestern kids getting loud and desperate. This reissue—which differentiates itself from a 2003 version by collecting 22 previously unavailable demos and live tracks—proffers a good sense of the band’s trajectory. It’s also a reminder of how strange and turbulent an act Uncle Tupelo was.