1. Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan - Hawk
I’ve always liked Mark Lanegan’s voice and have been procrastinating about getting into the Screaming Trees for going on two decades now, enjoyed his solo album Bubblegum and his appearance on the UNKLE album a few months, but hadn’t heard his previous albums with Campbell, so this new one seemed like a good occasion to give their ongoing collaboration a shot. This has a great mood, great sound, especially stuff like the strings on “Come Undone,” it’s weird to think someone from Belle & Sebastian wrote these songs and knows what to do with a voice like his.

2. JP, Chrissie & The Fairground Boys - Fidelity!
Chrissie Hynde’s first album without the Pretenders ever is kind of a low key rootsy soul collaboration with some younger singer-songwriter guy she may or may not be in a relationship with. And while it’s not that different from the last Pretenders album Break Up The Concrete and this JP guy doesn’t add a whole lot of appeal, there is something really enjoyable and comfortable about the dynamic they have, kind of works similar to the Lanegan/Campbell record in terms of the male/female vocal interplay, except in this case it’s the woman’s voice that has all the gravity and gravitas. "If You Let Me" has a really classic Chrissie Hynde pre-chorus.

3. The Toadies - Feeler
Their debut Rubberneck was an underrated gem of mid-’90s major label alt-rock, and the Toadies have always been one of the sadder casualties of the point when the bottom dropped out of that market; their 2nd album was rejected by Interscope, and the banded ended up taking 7 years to get out an official follow-up to Rubberneck. So Feeler is their re-recorded new version of the album that was shelved over a decade ago, since the label actually still I guess owns and won’t release the old master recordings. In a way I’m not surprised the label shitcanned this, because there sure weren’t any potential hits on the level of “Possum Kingdom” on here (although “City Of Hate” and “Joey Let’s Go” are really catchy and would’ve made pretty good singles), but I hate the idea of any halfway worthwhile album just sitting on the shelf for so long, good on them for finally taking control of these songs again.

4. Squeeze - Spot The Difference
In a way, Squeeze are doing the same thing with Spot The Difference that the Toadies did with Feeler, re-recording old songs for an indie label because a major owns the masters to the original recordings. Except in Squeeze’s case, their old songs are all still in print, and they just want to own versions of their old hits, most likely for lucrative licensing deals next time an ad agency or a romantic comedy wants to use “Pulling Mussels (From A Shell)” or “Tempted” or something (in fact, I’m wondering if that recent eHarmony commercial with “If It’s Love” in it sparked this whole project). And while it’s easy to be cynical behind the motives for Spot The Difference, the fact that they went ahead and made these new recordings of their hits into an album makes it kind of an interesting intellectual exercise in and of itself, and I have to say they did a pretty impressive job of closely replicating tracks originally cut with different backing players and studios and instruments around 30 years ago. I saw them live a couple years ago, so I knew they can still pull off these songs onstage, but getting them down this well in the studio is a different question entirely. If they were really committed to recreating the old tracks, though, they should’ve dragged Elvis Costello over to redo those backup vocals I love on “Black Coffee In Bed.” But of course most of these songs are always a total blast to hear -- they do all but 2 songs from Singles - 45’s And Under, plus some later stuff like the great “Hourglass.”

5. Gucci Mane - Jewelry Selection
As 2010 goes on it’s quickly starting to feel like Gucci Mane is having about as productive a year as 2009 in terms of the quantity of his output, but overall it’s not quite as exciting. The mixtapes have been good, but not as good as The Burrprint 3 and the official album is on the way and not looking like it’ll be nearly as enjoyable as the last one. I think David Drake’s review of Jewelry Selection was onto something with the idea that this reclaims some of the goofy playfulness of his ‘09 stuff that Mr. Zone 6 was missing, although I don’t know if it’s necessarily better overall. But stuff like “Poltergeist” and “Vampires” is pretty entertaining.

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