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3. The Pretenders: “Message of Love”
From 1981, “Pretenders II” — which I gladly added to my haul — is the ultimate Pretenders album that includes the band’s authentic lineup; the guitarist James Honeyman-Scott and the bassist Pete Farndon would each die of drug-related causes inside the subsequent two years. Given these tragedies on the horizon, “Pretenders II” is an enduring doc of the unique group’s explicit chemistry and spirit, which comes by on this wry single that finds the entire band shifting along with the lurching rhythm of an previous practice.
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4. Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers: “Jesus Wash Away My Troubles”
Here’s a blind purchase that turned out to be effectively definitely worth the sticker value: a set of highlights from the Soul Stirrers, the gospel group {that a} younger Sam Cooke fronted within the early Fifties earlier than he launched into his pop profession in 1956. This LP consists of some requirements like “Peace within the Valley,” however it additionally options a number of originals written by Cooke, together with this placing, deeply shifting observe. That voice, with all its pearly pathos and hard-won hope, is totally fashioned and instantly recognizable, even when Cooke sings of religious moderately than secular love: “I do know there’s comfort,” he sings, “so long as you’re there.”
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5. Split Enz: “Six Months in a Leaky Boat”
OK, this one is a little bit of a cheat. I used to be thrilled to discover a pristine copy of the unique soundtrack to the 1982 Australian new wave musical “Starstruck” — a completely bonkers cult film I like and can’t suggest extremely sufficient — and equally dismayed to search out out later that none of its songs can be found on streaming companies within the U.S., so I can not share them with you right here. (You can discover a few of them in case you dig round on YouTube, although.) Much of the music in “Starstruck” was written by Tim Finn, the New Zealand singer-songwriter who was then in Split Enz and would later be a part of Crowded House along with his brother Neil. Here, as an alternative of a “Starstruck” tune, is certainly one of Finn’s biggest songs with Split Enz — launched, coincidentally, the identical yr because the movie.
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6. The Pretenders: “Pack It Up”
I needed to embody yet one more tune from “Pretenders II” — if solely so you would hear Chrissie Hynde yell like she means it, “You guys are the pits of the world!”
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7. Bryan Ferry: “Walk a Mile in My Shoes”
Finally, a confession: When I returned to New York and commenced submitting my new information away of their alphabetically ordered properties, I noticed I already owned a replica of Bryan Ferry’s “Another Place, Another Time.” Oops! An album so good I purchased it twice? Well, if any of my buddies would really like a free copy of this very pleasurable and inimitably dapper file, you realize the place to search out me.
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