New favorite VINYL Album?

Ditto The List

Other good recent issues:

Alice in Chains: Black Gives Way to Blue
Pearl Jam: Back Spacer
Califone: All My Friends Are Funeral Singers

Petty's Mojo is audiophile candy, though as with much of his prior output there is the feeling of empty calories.

Koegz sure got it right with "The Suburbs". Best of the year so far. I don't hear the gross compression that some have criticised. More like a slight softness from the vintage tube multitracking. Rich, dense, detailed mix with warm bottom end. Debts paid to Joy Division/New Order, Sonic Youth, Radiohead, Kinks, Pretenders.

I missed the release in 2008 of the Sundazed 3-LP set of Dennis Wilson's 1977 Pacific Ocean Blue project. What an artifact of the classic rock era, drawn from the whole cloth of life and art, a no-BS vision down in the middle of his vocal range from the ultimate surfer-bum that the Beach Boys construct could neither express nor contain. Both stripped and over-produced, an RnR nursery rhyme that starts at the top and ends like a dog by the side of the road. Through the whole course an incredible group of top musicians sensitively follow Dennis through every step of a beautiful and harrowing trip from transcendental highs into some very serious blues. Always interesting, even when falling apart. I'd give a thousand Tom Pettys for this guy. Excellent SQ on blue vinyl.

Thurston Moore's Demolished Thoughts has great synergy with Beck as producer. Sounds like unplugged Sonic Youth with Beck in Mutations/Sea Change mode, channeling Nick Drake.

MTV Unplugged is seminal Alice-- a perfect companion to Nirvana Unplugged & acoustic Pearl Jam Benaroya Hall. Good to have it on vinyl. After showing early promise Ray L evolved into a pretentious bore, but maybe worth another chance.

My Morning Jacket Circuital. A big step forward for MMJ. A kaleidescope that starts out echoing Savoy Brown, Tommy-era Who and darker 90's bands like Morphine and Acetone and one wild White Stripes femalisation in Horehound mode, then gradually softens toward Neil Young electric melodicism and even a few bubblegum & doo-wop inflections. There are some great brass arrangements in spots. It shouldn't cohere, but it does and creatively so. IMO the year's most interesting rock, with exceptional SQ on 2x 45 rpm.

Mab33, Unfortunately the first disk of the Thurston Moore double LP has a hard-to-track bump on the lead-in track on both sides of the pressing. Was this your problem as well? In other respects the pressing and SQ are fine.

Jesse Sykes & The Sweet Hereafter, Marble Son. The double LP comes with a CD, but without the vinyl you'll never know how wwll she does like a young Marianne Faithful backing wicked psychedelic R&R. Among the year's best.

John Hiatt, Dirty Jeans and Mudslide Hymns. He's been on a roll with his last few albums, but this one is closest in importance to the seminal period that produced Bring the Family, Stolen Moments, and Slow Turning. "When New York Had Her Heart Broke" is a perfect hymn to 9-11, straight-forward, wonderfully crafted, and unexploitative. Like every bit of this album, it's free of the bluesman affectations that occasionally weaken Hiatt albums. He's on his third wind as an artist-- one of the precious few bridges to the '70s who remains seriously relevant. Excellent New West production on three sides of a double LP.