Paul McCartney: McCartney III, Loretta Lynn: Still Woman Enough, Little Freddie King: Going Upstairs, Irma Thomas: Love Is the Foundation, Goat Girl: On All Fours and James Yorkston: The Wide, Wide River.
Black Sabbath: Paranoid Super Deluxe
Rhino/Warner Records R1 556692 (5 LPs). 1970/2020. Rodger Bain, original prod.; Hugh Gilmour, reissue prod.; Barry Grint, LP mastering eng.
Performance *****
Sonics ***
The reviewer venturing to identify the birth bed of heavy metal music risks wrath. So be it.
The heavy metal genre has many roots. The idea of power chords and music centered on ominous, mythological, and vaguely threatening lyrics goes back centuries; consider the use of European church music in various eras to literally scare the hell out of believers. But heavy metal as we know it started 50 years ago with Black Sabbath's Paranoid.
Beabadoobee: Fake It Flowers, Adrianne Lenker: Songs and Instrumentals, Prince: Sign "o'" the Times (Super Deluxe Edition) and The Rolling Stones: Goats Head Soup 2020 (Deluxe Reissue) .
Lou Reed: New York
Rhino/Sire R2 628762/603497847556. 1988/2020. Lou Reed, Fred Maher, prods.; Jeffrey Lesser, eng.
Performance *****
Sonics **** (Because vinyl should have been sourced from analog tape.)
It's déjà vu all over again in New York City.
1988: The bankrupt Fear City NYC of the 1970s had given way to the go-go '80s, with many missing the fruits of the Wall Street boom. AIDS ravaged the city, unabated, and a rash of violence and crime fueled by the crack-cocaine epidemic made for a grim underbelly of urban blight and neglect.