According to record-collector lore, this six-song 7-inch EP from Detroit novelty punx the Underwear Heads had long existed only as a sleeve passed around with no record inside — mastering fuck-ups and warped vinyl meant the whole pressing went to the dump. Since no one actually heard the band, they were rumored to be fake. But professional snipe hunter and snake-oil salesman Jack White claims to have unearthed an early master, and delivers this Ween-predicting 12-minute snot-rocket. Over broken drum-machine beats, the Heads' punk-pop songs exist as drunken experiments for muffled tape music with an 8th-grader's sex rhymes (see "Tangin'"). There's a "Louie Louie" cover, of course, as if being sung by the protagonist in David Seville's "Witch Doctor," and "Fly Die," which is like if the Fugs wrote dance music. Bonus juvenilia: The 47-second "Sex With Fish" ("Bammin' on a salmon / Hit a bass in the ass"), which predates Gwar's 105-second "Fishfuck" by almost 20 years. CHRISTOPHER R. WEINGARTEN
As much a figment of guitarist Billy Gibbons' pop-art conceptualism as a blues-rock band — and MTV-driven brand — the Top blends monster riffs, immaculately mannered blues appropriations, manly choreography, guitar-tone grad-school chops, and iconic fashion sense with perfectly pitched self-parody. After hitting it big with 1983's Eliminator, Gibbons remastered the Top's first four studio albums with shitty gated drums and muffled guitars. The original mixes heard here, though, sound ace. Take the opportunity to catch up with sleepers such as 1972's thematic Rio Grande Mud and, especially, the sinister undercurrents of Tejas (1976), which capped the band's heyday before its two-year, beard-cultivating hiatus and subsequent signing to Warner Bros. for Degüellos and the high-budget hijinks that followed. RICHARD GEHR
A limited-vinyl succès d'Ebay following its 2008 release, Kyle Thomas' bedroom-pop triumph stands on the adenoids of Buddy Holly, Jonathan Richman, and Joey Ramone. Was Dead is a hook-drenched tapestry of brilliant imperfections cobbled together with utter sincerity and the slightest of winks. Authentically derivative to the max, Thomas' late-night teenage reveries make much that is old sound fresh again, from the T. Rex boogie of "Just Strut" to the death-tripping road saga "Sun Medallion." Revenge fantasies ("Dancing on You") and raging adolescent hormones ("Animal") are never far from the surface, but the Vermontan dresses them up in such jangly melodies, economically searing guitar spurts, and nifty keyboard riffs that the darkness-to-light ratio achieves slippery perfection. At the end of the day, he just wants to be buried in "everything with patches and everything with holes" and "freak when I'm dead." R.G.
Recorded at the onset of the Great Depression by a handful of obscure Cajun fiddlers and accordionists, the 78s heard on Let Me Play This for You contain plaintive and yearning qualities in keeping with the national mood. "In spite of having been a poor man all my life, I have had a great life," said tenant farmer Angelas LeJeune — the great-uncle and teacher of famed accordionist Iry LeJeune — whose loud, raw voice and steadfast accordion dominate half the tracks here. The even more obscure Bixy Guidry (accordion, field-cry vocals) and Percy Babineaux (fiddle), who plied their waltzes, one steps, and two steps in halls like Lafayette's Tit Frere Bourque's Country Club, are represented here by their complete discography: eight lovably tough sides recorded for the Victor Talking Machine Company in New Orleans on November 6, 1929. And Alcide "Blind Uncle" Gaspard's ghostly vocal on "Marksville Blues" is Cajun hauntology at its most eerily insinuating. R.G.
The third album in Numero Group's exploration of small-run gospel and spiritual funk is a grab-bag, featuring everything from Zeppelin fan Dwain Vinyard's mellow-yet-rockin' "Searching for the Truth" to Detroit's Otis G. Johnson playing drum-machine dirges on a Hammond M3. There's no shortage of great falsettos — California's Gospel Clouds, Colorado's Religious Souls, North Carolina's Fantastic Goldenaires — and none more skybound than Bland Childress of the Spiritual Harmonizers, whose voice pierces through a glorious haze of Funkadelic-style guitars. C.W.
French Casio cuddlewave duo X-Ray Pop bubbled quietly in the mid-'80s with all the blurpy textures and limited edition no-fi action of the darkest minimal cassettes — though their cheery spirit and bubblegum hooks swung far more quirkly on the Sparks axis. Released in an edition of 100 one-sided cassettes, the very long-lost "pocket punk" album Pirate! The Dark Side of the X basically sounds like Suicide covering the Vaselines. There's a disorienting blargle of angry blips and bloops (closer "Cobaye" is damn near power electronics in its corrosive grinding), but it all plays against some of the sweetest dead-eyed melodies this side of the Flying Lizards. Warped tape noise remains intact. C.W.
Inspired by the morning prayers of the Nomanji Temple monks heard on Folkways' Japanese Buddhist Ritual, Joakim Skogsberg's shamanistic 1972 album consists largely of the Swedish nature worshipper chanting Tom Bombadil-like nonsense syllables into a Nagra reel-to-reel recorder in the middle of the woods. Skogsberg and others subsequently layered droning cello, acoustic bass, wah-wah violin, tribal drumming, and electric guitars over his meditations. These range from the relatively unadorned "diddly-day-da doodly-do" of "Fridens Lijor" (Freedom Lily) to the wobbly bass and distorted vocals of "Besvärjelser Rota" (Spells Root) — which Skogsberg's cover notes illuminate as "Give us power against evil" — and "Offer Rota" (Victims Root), an electric tribal freakout with sacrificial overtones. Skogsberg originally sold only 400 copies of this vinyl rarity championed in recent years by the likes of Swedish doom-droners Svetlana. R.G.
We've made no secret about our excitement for the return of Last Splash-era Breeders, which you can read about in our 5,000-word oral history. It's a platinum record currently inspiring bands like Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Deerhunter, and Savages, so not much else needs to be said (or heard) regarding the Alternative Nation landmark — a sui generis mix of '70s Saturday-morning cartoon harmonies, surf-rock twang, and mutated Sabbath riffs. So the real draw of this 20th anniversary edition is the solid second disc (or five separate pieces of vinyl) compiling four period EPs, alongside one-offs and demos. These leftover tracks are as much a series of experiments as anything on an album that's pretty much all experiments: Beach-blanket Cramps ("Don't Call Home") with a ridic feedback solo; some New Pornographers-foreshadowing cool-kid sunshine ("So Sad About Us"), some tripping cowpunk ("Head to Toe"), broken beats ("Hoverin'"), and what might be drummer Jim MacPherson's most heroic drum performance ever on record ("Cro-Aloha"). Even the covers seem to tell a story — in order: the Who, Aerosmith, Hank Williams, Guided by Voices, Sebadoh, and the Beatles on disc three. C.W.
Although he's received the widest exposure outside the region, Northeast Syria's Omar Souleyman ain't necessarily the Bob Marley of Middle Eastern dabke (literally "stamping of the feet") dance music. Focusing on southern Syria, compiler Mark Gergis has collected a small sampling of equally emotive electric dabke specialists with varying blends of strident male vocals, female ululations, piercing mazelike synthesizer patterns, cantankerous percussion, and the sampled sound of the droning, double-reeded mijwiz (a short acoustic track suggests its unadorned splendor). It comes together best in Abu Sultan's "Your Love Made My Head Hurt," which suggests gnawa trance music taken to a painfully romantic extreme. Dabke was one of Syria's diminishing opportunities for public expression during the Assad dictatorship, and proceeds from these sides recorded between 1990 and 2010 will be donated to a humanitarian aid organization. R.G.
Certainly not the first anthology attempting to whittle down the massive discography of dancehall pioneer Yellowman, but easily the most comprehensive, the two-disc Young, Gifted & Yellow is 40 tracks of his off-center but silky-smooth style that changed roots, rap, rock, and reggae. Vaguely chronological, the focus of disc one emphasizes his role as a sex-obsessed crooner and delirious weirdo — making love in the bushes, odes to Grace Hot Tomato Ketchup, the birds in the trees going "tweet tweet tweet," sugaring his beau's coffee, laser-gun noises, "Leaving on a Jet Plane," "Old MacDonald, "or crooning Brook Benton's "Endlessly" until it sounds like "LSD."The second disc is the Yellowman we're a little more familiar with, thanks to the synchronicity of being the first dancehall artist signed to a major label one year after Kurtis Blow was the first rap artist signed to a major. Post-1983 Yellowman is one step away from the minimalism and repetition of '80s rap itself, so you hear the bedrock for songs by Eazy-E ("Nobody Move, Nobody Get Hurt") and Boogie Down Productions ("Zungguzungguguguzungguzeng"). C.W.
Since the British Invasion was not limited to storming American shores, here are four discs demonstrating how Mexico, Spain, and Latin America jumped into the fray, often with cheap, hastily recorded versions of iconic Brit hits: "You Really Got Me," "Paint It Black," "My Generation," "House of the Rising Sun." Raw, lo-fi, and en español, the shaggy quality gives these familiar songs new life. Peru's Los Shains practically beg for their own anthology, represented by five Dick Dale-via-Kinks sugar highs unhinged enough to approximate punk rock — versions of "Wooly Bully," "96 Tears," and an especially haunted, drained take on actual Nugget "Pushin' Too Hard."Despite the Beatles-y thread, there's a lot of variety to be had here: Unpolished Tropicália from Brazil (Os Lobos); costumed, guitarless, organ-punk from Mexico City (Los Monjes), bonkers bongo bluster from Lima (Los 007), a galloping, operatic version of "Reach Out I'll be There" from Barcelona (Los Stop); and a fuzzy, finger-snapping organ-and-harpsichord(!) take on "Mrs. Robinson" from Buenos Aires (Francis Morello). But the box set's highlight comes early, as one-time Chilean teen star Gloria Benavides runs "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'" through a blatting bass and droning beehive of sax. C.W.
Although it's the fifth John Carpenter/Alan Howarth collabo to get the deluxe vinyl reissue treatment from goosebumpy U.K. night-crawlers Death Waltz, it's certainly the biggest event in the label's short history. It's their first double-disc; their first gatefold sleeve; and their first collaboration with renowned British transgressionist Dinos Chapman, who provided the hazily disgusting album art. Most importantly, it's the Carpenter record whose bottomless synth drones, bleary grit, nailbitingly tense dissonance, explosions of noise, and mellow piano pulses are closest to popular gloom merchants like Oneohtrix Point Never and Haxan Cloak. Creepy-sexy-cool, hopelessly relevant, and gorgeously packaged. The race for the first 1,000 copies was naturally an absolute clusterfuck — copies already have been showing up on Discogs for more than $200. Death Waltz has promised to make more, so don't go to sleep. C.W.
Recent records by Animal Collective, Boards of Canada, and Broadcast all bear the clinically cool influence of '60s and '70s "library music," short-run instrumental records made by production studios, filed away for possible use in commercials or TV shows. Since the so-fake-it's-real sound of library is increasingly popular — the records, rarely commercially released, are very much in vogue among collectors and producer dudes like Madlib — Strut is reissuing their own reissue featuring 20 selections from the British funkateers at KPM Music Library. Focusing on the kitschiest and funkiest beats, any part of this can soundtrack an old cop drama or morning weather report: fake Curtis Mayfield ("Assault Course," "Second Cut"), fake Quincy Jones ("Swamp Fever"), fake Dr. John ("Cross Talk"), fake Joe Tex ("Senior Thump"), lush disco, broken reggae, Latin rhythms, whatever. Though KPM's clean, precise orchestral approximation of funk (güiro and marimba and whistles and flutes abound), the drummers rarely hold back. It's appended with a 2000 live performance where a reunion of key players brought down the house with a medley of four themes ultimately used on British sports shows. C.W.
While the 11-disc Fillmore West 1969: The Complete Recordings contains the unabridged concerts that lead to Live/Dead, and the mega-set Europe '72: The Complete Recordings contains the raw material for the Europe '72 live album, this enchantingly packaged and knowledgeably annotated 21-disc set documenting five shows during the band's almost equally monumental 1977 heyday has no distilled equivalent. The Dead emerged artistically rejuvenated every election year or so, and their spring '77 East Coast run was arguably their final finest flowering. It was marked by a newly economic improv template, stellar new compositions such as "Terrapin Station" and "Scarlet Begonias > Fire on the Mountain," an overarching Good Attitude, and more than occasional moments of both whisperingly introverted and solar-explosive transcendence. Pianist Keith and singer Donna Godchaux were still enriching harmonies, and Jerry Garcia was rockin' his bad and bulbous Mu-Tron III pedal to fine effects while singing the band's Secret American Songbook with as much passion, wisdom, and vulnerability as he ever would. R.G.
Formed in the mid-'70s, but chucked into history's dustbin a decade later, this Romanian future-pop trio led by bedroom genius Rodion Ladislau Roșca recorded, if nothing else, the most intriguing piece of gymnastics accompaniment you'll ever hear. An excitingly odd hybrid of prog rock, switched-on classical motifs, and East European boogie, "Diagonala" epitomizes the distinctly homemade harmonies Rodion Roșca jerry-rigged on Tesla tape machines, a toy Casio keyboard, an East German drum machine, and a Soviet organ. The thunderclaps of "In Linistea Noptii" and watery gargling of "Salt 83" attest to the blast he was having, without a band rather than with one. "Alpha Centauri" and "Caravane" consist of gooey, heady space warbles with a krautrock pulse. And if "Disco Mania" is dance music, it's closer to Romanian circle steps than Giorgio Moroder's hustle. Listen closely and you'll hear echoes of the socialist utopia Nicolae Ceaușescu's brutal and repressive policies were trashing as Rodion fashioned his brash bedroom electro-fantasias.R.G.