Ken Richardson

Sam Phillips: Push Any Button

New release (Littlebox)

You make modern accommodations from audience reaction
Stereo realist
Disconnected exposure meter

Start counting everybody
It's gonna blow
Pretty Time Bomb
You're a mirror of your times

Not the average opening lyrics of your average chanteuse. But then, Sam Phillips has never been anyone's average singer/songwriter, as she herself acknowledges: "I never could go with the crowd / Even though they seemed to know where they were going."

Bob Dylan: The Bootleg Series, Vol. 10 —
Another Self Portrait (1969–1971)

Archival release (Columbia)
Photos by John Cohen

Music publicity is kinda like medical ethics, in these four words: “First, do no harm.” Which makes Columbia’s campaign for the latest Bob Dylan official-bootleg extravaganza all the more remarkable. Self Portrait, you see, was almost universally derided by critics when it appeared in 1970. You might think Columbia would want to avoid that negative history in the press release for The Bootleg Series, Vol. 10 — Another Self Portrait (1969–1971). Instead, the headline brandishes these four words:

Court Yard Hounds: Amelita

New release (Columbia; tour dates)
Photo by James Minchin

It’s instructive to remember that Emily Robison and Martie Maguire helped co-found the Dixie Chicks in 1989, a full 6 years before Natalie Maines was invited to join. Oh, and of course, Emily and Martie are sisters. Clearly, they have a bond that won’t break, and they use it to their musical advantage on Amelita, the engaging follow-up to their 2000 self-titled debut as Court Yard Hounds.

Van Dyke Parks: Songs Cycled

New release (Bella Union)
Photo by Roman Cho

This is the first new album credited to Van Dyke Parks alone since 1989’s Tokyo Rose, but the dozen tracks are actually the A- and B-sides of six singles he released on his own label, Bananastan, in 2011 and ’12. Furthermore, whereas four of the A-sides are indeed new-since-1989 original songs (and another track is a co-write), five selections are arrangements of traditional, folk, or classical material, and the remaining two are re-recordings of earlier Parks compositions.

On paper, then, Songs Cycled is a hodgepodge. But when did we ever listen to Van Dyke Parks on paper? Fact is, the 12 numbers miraculously form a coherent whole — an album that, true to its creator’s longtime ambition, celebrates the glorious sound of music.