Staff Picks for March 2025

The band's frothy reimagining of new wave, punk, and dance-pop -- which follow in the spike-heeled footsteps of Blondie, Cyndi Lauper, and the B-52's -- remain as vivid as neon and sweetly retro as a bubblegum Lip Smacker.
- Heather Phares

Freshly reissued along with several of Dub Syndicate's other albums from the '80s and '90s, Echomania is one of the U.K. dub collective's brightest and most accessible albums, striking a winning balance between consciousness, mysticism, roots, and space. The two songs with Lee "Scratch" Perry are highlights, especially "Dubbing Psycho Thriller," one of his all-time wackiest performances.
- Paul Simpson

Blow by Blow, released 50 years ago today, typifies Jeff Beck's wonderfully unpredictable career. Released in 1975, Beck's fifth effort as a leader and first instrumental album was a marked departure from its more rock-based predecessors. To Beck's credit, Blow by Blow features a tremendous supporting cast.
- Mark Kirschenmann

The atmosphere Three 6 Mafia conjures on their first proper studio album, 1995's Mystic Stylez, is ominous and powerful. Raw and unrefined recording emphasizes the devilish phase the group was in at this point, still writing occult-obsessed songs but with one eye on the strip club. It's a horrorcore classic, but also captures the unique essence of '90s Southern rap's d.i.y. spirit.
- Fred Thomas

For those craving sincerity, love songs, and unfiltered tenderness. Adrianne Lenker’s songwriting especially shines here, accompanied by both raw and elaborate instrumentals. From the title track’s sparkling, weightless guitar picking to the upbeat, country-folk twang of “Spud Infinity,” Big Thief’s fifth LP provides a variety of emotions and textures for the down-to-earth and hopeless romantics.
- Lane Liu

This album is an extremely funky, smooth, and natural-sounding mixture of different music styles like samba, soul, rock, jazz, forro, and baião. Considered to be a milestone within Brazilian music, the album has had enormous influence on the sound and development of Brazilian funk, soul, and jazz. Especially the famous Banda Black Rio, who would follow the lucid path that Dom Salvador laid here.
- Philip Jandovský

One of disco's most underrated, most important figures is Hamilton Bohannon. He's so much more than just the hook in "Genius of Love.” His records are percussion-heavy workouts sure to leave the listener a sweaty mess after shaking their groove thing to the point of exhaustion. This is one of his best, offering a bright and sunny take on nightclub music with quite a few under-the-radar classics like "Me and the Gang," and "Let's Start the Dance."
- Tim Sendra

In 1975, when proto-punk and heavy metal were two opposing camps who barely acknowledged each other's existence, The Dictators' first album, Go Girl Crazy! (released 50 years ago this month), found New York's finest trying to bring both sides together in a brave, prescient, and (at least at the time) futile gesture.
- Mark Deming

New Constellations: Live in Vienna, which features the vibrant ensemble of old and new friends called the Constellations, brings the half-Jamaican musician closer to home, exploring the intensely rhythmic legacy of one of his heroes, trombonist Don Drummond, credited as one of the founding fathers of ska. Curiously, while paying homage to "Don D.," Roseman only creates fresh interpretations of two of the legend's actual compositions: the hard-driving and booming hypno-funky "Thoroughfare" and the throbbing, thumping club-friendly "Confucious," which features as much crazy honking sax as 'bone. Primarily, Roseman creates his own heavy-groove jazz-meets-house-meets-ska and industrial-funk compositions in Drummond's image.
- Jonathan Widran

Twenty years after its release, the noisy art-punks' third album still passes the test: the later at night and the louder you play it, the better it sounds.
- Heather Phares

Rubycon, released 50 years ago today, has aged gracefully for the most part, making it a solid companion (and follow-up) to their 1974 album, Phaedra. The somewhat dated palette of sounds here never overshadow the mood: eerie psychedelia without the paisleys -- Pink Floyd without the rock.
- Glenn Swan

Austrian guitarist and composer Wolfgang Muthspiel's history with ECM dates to 2013's Travel Guide with the MGT collective that featured himself, Slava Grigoryan, and Ralph Towner. Driftwood, his wonderful 2014 leader debut was also a trio, a proper guitar/bass/drums setting with Larry Grenadier and Brian Blade. Rising Grace expands that lineup to a quintet to include pianist Brad Mehldau and trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire. This larger group recorded all in one room and the proceedings reflect a relaxed, easy openness and communicative intimacy.
- Thom Jurek

By the release of their third album, 1975's Dressed to Kill, released 50 years ago today, Kiss were fast becoming America's top rock concert attraction, yet their record sales up to this point did not reflect their ticket sales. Casablanca label head Neil Bogart decided to take matters into his own hands, and produced the new record along with the band. The result is more vibrant sounding than its predecessor, 1974's sludgefest Hotter Than Hell, and the songs have more of an obvious pop edge to them.
- Greg Prato

This is the most hip-hop and most out-there release from Badu thus far, with beats bumping, knocking, and booming in roughly equal measure, sometimes switching tacks or vanishing midstream, dropping down dark corridors, gradually levitating into direct sunlight. In the ghostly-mystical "The Healer," Badu proclaims hip-hop to be bigger than religion and government; "That Hump" and "The Cell" are vivid depictions of drug dependency; "Soldier" gives a shout to the Nation of Islam, addresses Katrina and Black-on-Black crime, and sends out a warning: "Now to folks that think they livin' sweet/They gone f*ck around and push 'delete.'"
- Andy Kellman

British combo the Godfathers brilliantly channeled their working class rage into a taut two-chord anthem on the title track from their major label debut. Fortunately, the rest of the album was just as powerful. This is an underrated '80s rock classic.
- Timothy Monger

Simply put, this work is, along with some of Philip Glass' Einstein on the Beach, one of the most fascinating pieces of first-generation minimalism, and this version, recorded for Elektra/Nonesuch in 1987, ranks among the composer's masterpieces. Throughout four segued movements, its one basic rhythm pattern is multiplied, played in canon on various percussion instruments. By the end, it is a perfect example of the paradox of the simple and the complex, the easy and the challenging underlying minimalist music.
- François Couture

Earth, Wind & Fire has delivered more than its share of excellent albums, but if a person could own only one EWF release, the logical choice would be That's the Way of the World (released 50 years ago today), which was the band's best album as well as its best-selling. There are no dull moments on World, one of the strongest albums of the '70s and EWF's crowning achievement.
- Alex Henderson

Where The Great Southern Trendkill experimented with slower, moodier pieces, Reinventing the Steel (released 25 years ago today) finds Pantera sticking to the pulverizing basics of their sound, with the first down-tempo, nondistorted guitar part appearing on the next-to-last track, "It Makes Them Disappear," and vanishing about 15 seconds into the song.
- Steve Huey

This debut of a collaboration between the Jayhawks' Gary Louris and the Old Ceremony's Django Haskins carries the torch for Big Star-style power pop -- which is fitting not only because of their respective bands but because the two of them met while playing a Big Star's Third concert in Chicago. A pronounced classic rock vibe is achieved, no doubt, by its Beatlesque songwriting, and likely also by the pair performing most of the album together into a single microphone. The tracks are marked by warm guitar tones and falsettoed vocals, whose imperfections only add to the album's earthy charm.
- Marcy Donelson

Pennsylvania-based artist Nondi_ acknowledges footwork, Detroit techno, and breakcore as genres that have influenced her music from a distance, but most of her work sounds as if it was created in its own isolated bubble, following its own sense of logic. Mostly releasing music on netlabels like Eat Dis and her own HRR, Nondi_ surfaced on Planet Mu with Flood City Trax, an album of lush and radiant yet smeared and obscured melodies, with heavy beats vibrating under a foggy haze.
- Paul Simpson

With the 1974 disintegration of the original Alice Cooper group, Alice was free to launch a solo career. He wisely decided to re-enlist the services of Bob Ezrin for his solo debut, Welcome to My Nightmare (released 50 years ago today), which was a concept album tied into the story line of the highly theatrical concert tour he launched soon after the album's release. While the music lost most of the gritty edge of the original AC lineup, Welcome to My Nightmare remains Alice's best solo effort.
- Greg Prato

Los Lobos explored a wealth of new musical ideas on their 1992 masterpiece Kiko, and David Hidalgo and Louie Pérez took those ideas and ran free with them on 1994's Latin Playboys, a side project with Kiko producers Mitchell Froom and Tchad Blake. Filtering various strains of roots music through the tape-loop production trickery of Kiko, Latin Playboys offers Hidalgo's guitar work and sonic imagination at its least compromised, and it's filled with glorious surprises.
- Mark Deming

Lodged firmly in the post-NIN '90s pop-industrial boom, this St. Louis outfit churned out one or two era hits ("Guilty" and "Enough") before fading into obscurity and the dreaded dollar bin. Derivative, for sure, but if you're looking for a nostalgic hit of tunes that is very much of the era – think crunchy guitars, mechanized chaos, and faux-menacing vocals – this'll scratch an itch you didn't know you even had.
- Neil Z. Yeung

Positive-minded alternative rap came back into vogue by the new millennium, and Common managed to land with major label MCA for 2000's Like Water for Chocolate, released 25 years ago today. The album established him as a leading figure of alternative rap's second generation, not just because of the best promotion he'd ever had, but also because it was his great musical leap forward, building on the strides of One Day It'll All Make Sense.
- Steve Huey

David Bowie had dropped hints during the Diamond Dogs tour that he was moving toward R&B, but the full-blown blue-eyed soul of Young Americans, released 50 years ago today, came as a shock. Surrounding himself with first-rate sessionmen, Bowie comes up with a set of songs that approximate the sound of Philly soul and disco, yet remain detached from their inspirations.
- Stephen Thomas Erlewine

Alex Giannascoli crafts a world of warped, warbling weirdness on his 9th studio album. Playfully mixing raw, folk-minded instrumentals with blasts of crushing synths and chilling, distorted vocals, God Save the Animals offers a singular, striking taste of Alex G’s cryptic yet tender songwriting.
- Lane Liu

Keith Moon's 1975 solo album Two Sides of the Moon (released 50 years ago this month) has been described as "the most expensive karaoke album in history," and even as that, it was a colossal failure, the perfect expression of drunken self-indulgence, and it was so fascinatingly bad that it has assumed a certain cult status. But make no mistake, it was a horrible album on all counts made by a brilliant drummer who chose barely to play drums on it, but instead chose to sing, even though he was tone deaf by his own admission.
- Steve Leggett

Martinis & Bikinis is a high point in Sam Phillips' catalog. A brilliant turn towards tightly-arranged, loosely psychedelic pop, it recalled the Beatles, but filtered through her own smart-pop sensibilities, not-unlike her contemporary, Michael Penn. Chock a block with wonderful songwriting, it also features arrangements by Van Dyke Parks, some bass from Colin Moulding, and production by then-husband T-Bone Burnett.
- Timothy Monger

 Stepping into Tomorrow, released 50 years ago this month, contains almost all of the Mizell trademarks within its title track's first 30 seconds: a soft and easy (yet still funky) electric-bass-and-drums foundation, silken rhythm guitar, organ and piano gently bouncing off one another, light synthesizer shading, and coed group vocals to ensure true liftoff.
- Andy Kellman

Recorded quickly in an eight-track studio, 1981's Strict Tempo! was Richard Thompson's first instrumental release, dominated by British and Celtic folk numbers, with a Duke Ellington tune and one new original for variety's sake. It often sounds like Thompson recorded it on a lark, and that's one of its virtues; he plays all the instruments besides percussion, and he's clearly having a ball putting his own stamp on a great batch of traditional selections.
- Mark Deming

Building from the jazz fusion foundation of Pretzel Logic, Steely Dan created an alluringly sophisticated album of jazzy pop with Katy Lied, released 50 years ago today. With this record, Walter Becker and Donald Fagen began relying solely on studio musicians, which is evident from the immaculate sound of the album. Usually, such a studied recording method would drain the life out of each song, but that's not the case with Katy Lied, which actually benefits from the duo's perfectionist tendencies.
- Stephen Thomas Erlewine