AUDIO TREASURES

How many times have you found yourself scrolling through Spotify or Apple Music, wondering what’s even worth checking out? It happens to us all the time—so we decided to offer a few recommendations. They’re not necessarily weird or obscure…just good.

THE ZOMBIES Odessey and Oracle (1968), Psychedelic pop
Review: “One of the most enduring long-players to come out of the entire British psychedelic boom, mixing tripping melodies, ornate choruses, and lush Mellotron sounds with a solid hard rock base. The results are consistently pleasing, surprising, and challenging, some of the most powerful psychedelic pop/rock ever heard.” (All Music Guide Required Listening: Classic Rock)

TEENAGE FANCLUB Bandwagonesque (1991), Rock
Review: “Equal parts Neil Young, Big Star, Rolling Stones, Lindsay Buckingham, and Eddie Money, plus a bunch of bands you never heard of, Bandwagonesque pulls the kinds of moves you’d expect from a much smarter, more ambitious group of guys. The lyrics are, for the most part, complex and intriguing, in that half-cynical manner that only really innocent twentysomething kids can convincingly pull off. Bandwagonesque is a moveable feast.” (Spin)

A TRIBE CALLED QUEST The Low End Theory (1991), Hip-hop
Review: “If ever an album understood the direction in which music was heading, it is this classic work. Short, eloquent, and mature, The Low End Theory was a consummate link between generations, taking the essence of jazz and the essence of hip-hop and showing they originated from the same black center. Tribe incorporated jazz’s spirit into their being and came up with gems.” (Classic Material: The Hip-Hop Album Guide)

NICK DRAKE Pink Moon (1972), Folk
Review: “Drake accompanies himself only on acoustic guitar, except for the title track, on which he overdubs a brief, lovely piano part. His lyrics are so compressed as to be kind of folkloric haikus, simple in their structure and elemental in their imagery. His voice conveys, in its moans and breathy whispers, an alluring sensuality, but he sings as if he were viewing his life from a great, unbridgeable distance. That element of detachment is chilling.” (Rolling Stone)

What’s a nurdle? The lump of wavy toothpaste in dental hygiene commercials.

KATE BUSH Hounds of Love (1985), Art rock
Review: “Hounds of Love is actually a two-part album, consisting of the suites ‘Hounds of Love’ and ‘The Ninth Wave.’ The former is steeped in lyrical and sonic sensuality that tends to wash over the listener, while the latter is about the experiences of birth and rebirth. If this sounds like heady stuff, it could be, but Bush never lets the material get too far from its pop trappings and purpose. That vastly divergent grasp, from the minutiae of each song to the broad sweeping arc of the two suites, all heavily ornamented with layered instrumentation, makes this record wonderfully overpowering as a piece of pop music.” (All Music Guide)

LCD SOUNDSYSTEM LCD Soundsystem (2005), Rock/Electronic
Review: “James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem specializes in fusing dance groove and punk attack. Several of the best tunes are inspired by Murphy’s love-hate relationship with music: his struggle between wanting to be cool and feeling the impulse is loathsome, between his attachment to rock’s heritage and his urge to rip it up and start again. Murphy weaves together sounds from the last 25 years of dance music, with a slant towards early-’80s mutant disco and recent house and hip-hop. He pushes the near-immaculate music into the realm of genius with witty lyrics and wonderfully tetchy vocals.” (Blender)

LINDI ORTEGA Little Red Boots (2011), Country
Review: “Ortega, from Toronto, is as trad-country as they come, a rootin’, tootin’ chorus-slinger in the Dolly mold (musically at least). Like prime Parton, the 12 songs here remain unfailingly upbeat while Lindi warbles about often woefully downbeat subjects, usually involving her love-life. There’s even a touch of the trademark vocal Dolly-wobble ‘Black Fly,’ which is all about a woman who just can’t give up her no-good liar of a fellah. Then there’s ‘Dying of Another Broken Heart.’ The tone? Still fairly cheery.” (BBC Music)

A TIP FROM UNCLE JOHN

Another way to find new music: watch TV shows, which often feature great songs by up-and-coming artists. When you hear a song you like, use an app like Shazam to find out what it is.

LEON BRIDGES Coming Home (2015), R&B
Review: “Bridges sounds like the 21st-century reincarnation of Sam Cooke, with his smooth, soulful croon directly out the turbulent times of the early 1960s. And so with the obvious time-stamping and subtle musical odes to decades long past, it’s easy to feel transported back to that bygone era. Bridges pays homage to an era so judiciously and so personally that it’s hard to fault him as derivative. The horns throughout Coming Home augment the bass and the swing of the record.” (Paste Magazine)

Number of Americans who still use an iron lung in 2019: three.