New music

One of my resolutions for 2010 was to get my obsessive music collecting under a little bit tighter control. The universe, in response, has decided to taunt me with a multitude of goodies, and it's only January.

Rhino Handmade will release Funky Midnight Mover: The Studio Recordings (1962-1978) next week, a limited edition, six-disc, 154-track collection containing all of Wilson Pickett's sides for Atlantic, some of his early pre-Atlantic sides, the 1978 album Pickett recorded for Big Tree, and an entire disc of unreleased songs and rarities.

Music archaeologists The Numero Group moved into new media with their 33rd release at the end of last year, Light: On The South SidePepper's Jukebox, a two-lp collection of Chicago blues from the 1970s paired for the first time for Numero with a book of over 100 of Michael Abramson's photos taken on the south side of Chicago in the same period. Oliver Wang's review of the set can be found on NPR's website here. It makes so much sense for Numero to release a photography collection, and I hope this will be just the first one they do. (Sadly, I don't have a working table, and as a laptop dj, can only hope that Numero will release an edition of the book paired with CDs, or release CDs and book separately. As much as I'm looking forward to the music, however, I really, really would like the book - I'm a sucker for good period photos of music scenes.)

Next up is local newgrass musician Sarah Jarosz, who recorded Song Up In Her Head, her debut album, last year at the tender age of 17. I picked this up today, and it's really a lovely album, very much in the vein of the much-missed Nickel Creek. You can look for tracks from it (particularly her reading of Tom Waits' "Come Up to the House") to start showing up on sets here in the Shack very soon.

Patty Griffin's new gospel album, Downtown Church, is slated to hit stores next week, as is Corinne Bailey Rae's new disc, The Sea. I've heard clips from a couple of the songs on Downtown Church (they're up on Amazon) and I'm really excited about the album.

Meanwhile, Hip-O Select has added a Verve Select imprint to go with their Motown and Chess ones. Among the first set of releases is Twelve Nights In Hollywood, a four-disc Ella Fitzgerald box of entirely unreleased live material from 1961.

T-Bird & The Breaks have begun releasing digital singles on their website, which can be found on the sidebar of links on this page.

And then there's that whole thing with eMusic inking a deal with Warner Music Group and adding over 10,000 albums to their library...

So. Getting my music collecting under control. Probably not going to happen.