MUSIC: JUNE

CDS WE LOVE...in which we cozy up to and share music that has struck our eardrums.

(The streams below will be available here for 30 days, until July 8, when a new batch will appear.)

CHRIS ISAAK: Mr. Lucky (Warner Bros., 2009)

Because there are so many compelling songs and performances on Chris Isaak's Mr. Lucky, we were hard-pressed to decide which track to stream for you. We very tempted to share "Best I Ever Had," which is another in a long run of ridiculously catchy Chris Isaak songs. And we love "Big Wide Wonderful World," a colorful but moody ballad (which features our favorite lines on the record: "Look at the sky / sky just got bluer / Look at those eyes / they're calling me to her"). In the end, we chose "Breaking Apart," his duet with Trisha Yearwood, to spring on you. It's a tune he's recorded before, but not as a duet.

Chris Isaak can break your heart with the sheer melancholic beauty of his songs.

There are worse ways for such damage to occur.

Hear this! "Breaking Apart" by CHRIS ISAAK (with TRISHA YEARWOOD):

(To order Mr. Lucky, please visit Warner Bros.)

VARIOUS: Stax: The Soul of Hip-Hop (Stax, 2009)

The way we answer life's biggest questions defines us: John or Paul? Kris or Adam? Sweet or unsweet? Another biggie, surely, is: Stax or Motown? Nothing wrong with Motown, of course, but we hope you know by now that we are Stax'ers for life. What we dig about Stax: How they don't aspire to corporate perfection—opting, instead, for a sort of cosmic greasiness. This collection features Stax songs that have been sampled by big-league hip-hoppers. But it's really just a happy party record—and a convenient intro to the enduring delights of Stax. Highlights include: Wendy Rene (giving it her all); Isaac Hayes (with two cruisin' tracks that were too long for radio); an underplayed Booker T. & the MGs vamp; a funkified Rufus Thomas cut—and others. Our choice for you to sample is a 1973 performance from a band we'd not heard of before: 24-Carat Black (from Cincinnati).

Hear this! "Ghetto: Misfortune's Wealth" by 24-CARAT BLACK:

(For more info about this record, please visit: Concord Music Group)

JIM MIZE: Release It to the Sky (Fat Possum, 2007)

Before Kris Allen of Conway, Arkansas, there was Jim Mize of Conway, Arkansas. We'd bet the farm that Mize is the first white musician from Faulkner County to come out with a solo record on the legendary Fat Possum of Mississippi. That said, it is easy to understand the label's interest: Mize (a claims agent, by day, for an insurance company) is the real deal and creates a gritty, honest, blues-based bar-band sound that will stick to your ribs and elevate your notion of what a bar band can sound like.

Hear this! "Release It to the Sky" (title track) by JIM MIZE:

(For more info about this record, please visit: Fat Possum Records / MySpace)

BELA FLECK: Throw Down Your Heart (Rounder, 2009)

To some, the concept of a white American banjoist descending to various African countries to record with indigenous musicians might sound gimmicky at best—or exploitative at worst. In this case, it's neither. The High Lord of the Banjo, also known as Béla Fleck, takes great care to meld his playing to the efforts of his collaborators: Rather than showboating, he plays off, and with, not for. (It's worth remembering, by the way, that the banjo comes from Africa.) The result is a heartfelt mix of irresistible freshness.

Hear this! "Pakugyenda Balebauo" by BELA FLECK and WAREMA MASIAGA CHA CHA:

(For more info about this record, please visit: Throw Down Your Heart

ANGELA EASTERLING: Blacktop Road (De L'est Music, 2009)

Angela Easterling, we now know, is a quietly plaintive singer who rewards attentive listening. Her Blacktop Road, with its mandolins, dobros, lap steels, peddle steels, fiddles, etc., is out-and-out "alt. country," a genre no longer in vogue but still kicking. A lot of the songs here sound like they've been around for years—that's a compliment—including the sweetly yearning cover of a certain Wannabe Southern Man's "Helpless." Produced by the agile and sensitive Will Kimbrough.

Hear this! "Big Wide World" by ANGELA EASTERLING:

(For more info about this record, please visit: Angela Easterling)

THE MONKS: The Early Years: 1964–1965 (Light in the Attic Records, 2009)

In the mid-1960s, every band had a gimmick, even those on U.S. Army bases in Germany (where the lads who made up the Monks were stationed). So the Monks donned black outfits and "rope" ties (in homage to the rope belts worn by monks) and, in a punkish coup de grâce, tonsures (you know, the bald-circle-on-the-top-of-the-head hairstyle favored by real-life monks). Oh and one other gimmick: The Monks came up with savage sonics that didn't sound like nobody else. (Even the song titles touch on this: "Shut Up," "I Hate You," "Drunken Maria," "Blast Off!," etc.) Thanks to the rabid, squirrelly vocals of lead guitarist Garry Burger, the harrowing organ of Larry Clark, and the martial-beat hammer-pounding of drummer Roger Johnston, the 1966 Black Monk Time is a seminal recording and delivers a post-punk vibe years before the invention of punk. Along with Black Monk Time, the oracles at Light in the Attic Records have also seen fit to release a new Monks compilation called The Early Years: 1964–1965, from which the below version of "Love Came Tumblin' Down" emanates.

Hear this! "Love Came Tumblin' Down" by THE MONKS:

(For more info about this record, please visit: Light In The Attic Records and The Monks)

CARLENE CARTER: Stronger (Yep Roc Records, 2008)

For those of us who did not follow the country-music scene of the 1970s and '80s, we had to Google to learn that Carlene Carter—of the Tennessee Carters—was considered unruly by Nashville straights because her music reflected—horrors!—pop, rock & roll, and even New Wave influences. (Apparently, it did not take much to scandalize Nashville back then...but to be fair, shouldn't Conway Twitty's hairdo have been more disturbing than Carlene Carter's youthfulness?) She even married a New Wave icon, Nick Lowe, who produced a very good record of hers from 1980 called Musical Shapes (which features the still-infectious "I'm So Cool," a song she records anew on Stronger). Ms. C does not wield the most wide-ranging of voices, but she puts so much personality into her songs that Stronger emerges as a consistently pleasing release.

Hear this! "The Bitter End" by CARLENE CARTER:

(For more info about this record, please visit: Yep Roc Records)

SCOTT H. BIRAM: Something's Wrong/Lost Forever (Bloodshot Records, 2009)

Here is the tortured soul/unhappy camper we first witnessed on Seven Signs, J.D. Wilkes's doc about the South ("a troubling place where so much has gone horribly, horribly right"). On this CD, there seems to be some kind of old-timey effect on Biram's voice that is perhaps overused...but that's a quibble. Mostly, the bleakness of this album comes across as high-octane hi-jinks, as on the abundantly energized "Judgement Day" below. [WARNING: Scott H. Biram's "Judgement Day" contains cussing and might be unsuitable for children and some adults.]

Hear this! "Judgement Day" by SCOTT H. BIRAM:

 (For more info about this record, please visit: Bloodshot Records  and Scott Biram)

JIMMY PITTS: We're Young (unsigned)

Mr. J.E. "Jimmy" Pitts has been this magazine's poetry editor since 2000; in addition to that gig, he has sported many other caps: writer, medical wonder, journal editor, designer, poet, athlete, painter, philosopher, inventor, philanthropist, amateur detective, race-car mechanic, and, now, prolific recording artist. As a painter, Mr. Pitts successfully experimented (often out of financial necessity) with a vast array of media besides paint: crayons, felt-tip pens, #2 pencils, office-pen ink, shingles, rusty nails, the blood of night demons and jackalopes, etc. A similar nothing-will-stop-the-artist/technique-be-damned attitude permeates his often unforgettable music. (We remember his early days on a battered two-string guitar and, even before that, his percussion work on empty cereal boxes.) For the nonce, we call him our in-house Jandek.

Hear this! "We're Young" by JIMMY PITTS:

(For more info about this music, please visit: MySpace)

TINARIWEN: Aman Iman: Water Is Life (World Village, 2007).

BREAKING NEWS: Critics have value! A short but enticing review in an Australian rock magazine turned us onto Tinariwen, a collective "rock" band from the desert regions of Mali, that was brand-spanking new to us. The leader of this group is a tall, bushy-haired fellow named Ibrahim Ag Alhabib, whose laidback vocals and bluesy trance-guitar mystically suggests the late Junior Kimbrough of Holly Springs, Miss. At times, this record is joyous, at other times, melancholy, but it is always funky and searing, and there's not a lame track on Aman Iman: Water Is Life. We thank our lucky stars for Aussie rock critics!

Don't hear this! The big company that owns some of the rights to TINARIWEN doesn't want us to share a stream. But here's a way around the corporate mindset: Go directly to the band's website and partake of the pleasures therein: http://www.myspace.com/tinariwen. You won't regret it.

(For more info about this record, please visit: World Village)

RODRIGUEZ: Cold Fact (Originally: Sussex Records, 1970; reissued by Light in the Attic Records, 2008)

The most richly imagined and lyrically audacious American CD to be introduced to us recently is...almost forty years old. For a while, astute critics of the underground like Richie Unterberger have been hinting at the musical truths to be found in 1970's Cold Fact but until 2008 (the record was a marketplace flop), the average listener simply couldn't find it. But now it's here and...YOU MUST LISTEN TO THIS RECORD. It is facile, and a tad offensive, to call Rodriguez, a Detroit native of Mexican-immigrant parents, the Latino Dylan—but fair. For one thing, Rodriguez has clearly been schooled in Professor Zimmerman's Beat-based, apocalyptic classroom of fever dreams and urban despair. For another, there's the nasal-tinged vocals. That said, Rodriguez uses his influences, not as quicksand but as a springboard (another similarity between him and the good professor). One Rodriguez creation, "Inner City Blues," needs to be in any Top-50-Songs-of-All-Time list. (First lines: "Going down the dirty inner-city side of the road, I plotted / Madness passed me by, she smiled 'hi,' I nodded.") He has other contenders, among them, "Sugar Man" and "I Wonder," but the grandeur of "Inner City Blues" is almost palpable. There's no reason on earth why Cold Fact shouldn't be considered alongside other must-have-nearby records like Desire, Let It Bleed, The White Album, Bradley's Barn, and Muswell Hillbillies. We kid you not. BREAKING NEWS: Our next "Featured Artist of the Month" will be...Rodriguez! That means we will have a fresh interview with him and a selection from his one other album, 1971's breathtaking Coming from Reality. Tune in July 1!

Hear this! "Sugar Man" by RODRIGUEZ:

(For more info about this record label, please visit: Light In The Attic Records.
For more on the artist, visit: Light In The Attic Records - Rodriguez)

End Note: It has come to our attention that some music magazines and sites give space to artists and labels in exchange for financial compensation. Every artist included for coverage in THE OXFORD AMERICAN, both in the magazine and on this website, are chosen by the editors of THE OXFORD AMERICAN solely for reasons of excitement, love, and awe. Money is not involved.