CD Action This Week
BROKEN BELLS
BLACK REBEL MOTORCYCLE CLUB
GORILLAZ
BEN HARPER Live From Montreal
LIARS – Sisterworld
SERJ TANKIAN
PAUL MOTIAN/Chris Potter/Jason Moran
BESNARD LADIES
JIMI HENDRIX – Valleys of Neptune
TED LEO & the Pharmacists
PAVEMENT – Quarantine
JOSH ROUSE – El Turista
PATTY LARKIN
JASON COLLETT
CHIEFTAINS & RY COODER
VINYL RECORDS NEW STUFF
BROKEN BELLS
JIMI HENRIX 5 titles!
PAVEMENT a bunch
BESNARD LAKES
FRIGHTENED RABBIT
WHITE HINTERLAND
The BUNDLES
ROGUE WAVE
JOHNNY CASH
PLIMSOULS
BEACH HOUSE
SHOUT OUT LOUDS
SHEARWATER
BALMORHEA
YEASAYER
MONDO DRAG
SOULS OF MISCHIEF

GENE PICK : PAUL MOTIAN – Lost In a Dream
Once in a while, a jazz recording seems to announce itself as a “classic” from the first moment. Lost In A Dream is one such album. It documents the birth of a great new project, captured live at New York’s celebrated Village Vanguard, with repertoire emphasizing Paul Motian’s wonderful ballad writing. New Motian tunes are juxtaposed with older ones, and a free exploration of Irving Berlin’s “Be Careful It’s My Heart” completes a program distinguished by gloriously supple playing from all three participants who are in tune at a high level. Master drummer Motian (born 1931) is heard here with two much younger musicians: saxophonist Potter (born 1971, and with whom he shares already a long playing history), and pianist Moran (born 1975, with whom he had worked only once previously). There is a cragginess in Jason Moran’s piano playing that testifies to deep roots in Thelonious Monk, a quality that Motian – who played with Monk in the 1950s – was bound to identify with. Motian has a Monkish sense of stubborn independence: he remains the most unpredictable of drummers. In the flowing ballads of Lost In A Dream, Motian is as much a sound painter as a time-keeper. There is a lot of space in the music, used brilliantly by all three players. Chris Potter, long recognized as the one of the most outstanding saxophonists of his generation, delivers an extraordinarily inspired performance in the trio, playing with great emotional conviction. —Linda, imwan.com

RECENT STUFF PICK 1 BROKEN BELLS
Who: The Shins’ singer-guitarist James Mercer and producer extraordinaire Danger Mouse (a.k.a. Brian Burton), who’ve taken time off from their usual gigs to team for a new self-titled disc of left-field psych-pop. Sounds Like: Spooky psychedelia with a British Invasion flavor. Burton outfits Mercer’s beautiful melodies and with analog-synth swooshes, slo-mo kick drums and horn breaks. The mellow punch of “Vaporize” features zippy organ and rolling snare, and Mercer goes for a T-Pained falsetto on the catchy, electro-kicky “The Ghost Inside.” read more: —WILL HERMES rollingstone.com

RECENT STUFF PICK 2 PAVEMENT – Quarantine The Past
2010 is the year of the long-awaited PAVEMENT reunion tour, already including 4 sold-out shows in Central Park, headlining major festivals all over the world, and in general underlining the frenzy that awaits the first performances of one of the most important band of the 1990s in a decade. A whole generation of kids who never saw the band now have their chance. This re-mastered mid-priced, 23-track Greatest Hits collection, chosen by the band, ranges from their Top 10 Modern Rock hit “Cut Your Hair” to nearly all their singles, some underrated album tracks, 3 choice pre- Matador cuts and one obscure compilation track singing the praises of REM (?!). Plus new cheap vinyl on all 5 catalogue LPs .”Pavement were one of the most influential and distinctive bands to emerge from the American underground in the ’90s.” —All Music Guide

RECENT STUFF PICK 3 JIMI HENDRIX – VALLEYS OF NEPTUNE
Jimi Hendrix combined a jazz musician’s fluidity and inventiveness on his instrument with unparalleled rock flair. That he left behind only three studio albums before he died in 1970 made him even more intriguing to subsequent generations, as if his fans were trying to figure out what might have been had he lived. For four decades, they consumed every musical leftover from his short career, no matter how poorly conceived, recorded or packaged it might’ve been. Indeed, hundreds of posthumous Hendrix recordings have been issued, most of them exploitive scraps.

But “Valleys of Neptune” (Sony Legacy) is legit – not quite a lost album, but darn near close in that it compiles 12 previously unreleased studio recordings, most from a key 1969 phase in the guitarist’s career. If it doesn’t tell us anything new about Hendrix, it is a sharp snapshot of a musical genius in the studio during a period of transition. Hendrix revisited older material (”Stone Free,” “Fire,” “Red House”), covered favorite artists (Cream’s “Sunshine of Your Love,” Elmore James’ “Bleeding Heart”) and finessed newer material (the title song, “Lullaby for the Summer”). With three exceptions, the tracks are blissfully free of the overdubs and other studio manipulations that mar many of his posthumous recordings. Instead, we get a you-are-there document of Hendrix in the last volatile days of his great power trio with bassist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell, the Experience.

This combo is represented on the majority of the tracks, and its vitality still vibrates the speakers – never more so than on a definitive live-in-the-studio version of “Here My Train A Comin’,” with Hendrix bending vocal and guitar notes with shamanistic verve. He veers off into his own private galaxy as a guitarist during an instrumental version of “Sunshine of Your Love,” and conjures a new world as a lyricist on the title track. On the latter, Hendrix’s fluid rhythm-guitar work underpins images brimming with Apocalyptic foreboding: “See visions of sleeping peaks erupting/Releasing all hell that/Will shake the Earth from end to end.” Not unlike Hendrix’s music itself. —Greg Kot chicagotribune.com