Don’t Stay Up Too Late.

Keith Jarrett, Expectations

File Between: McCoy Tyner and Herbie Hancock

Comments: This is a double album from one of the brightest new lights of post-bop piano in the 70s. From the evidence of this record, anyway, Jarrett’s as comfortable with fusion as he is with modal, cool, and even gestures at times towards free. (Or rather, his horn player does.) Also from the evidence of this record, Jarrett’s strengths are as a composer rather than as an instrumental wizard, and that’s right up my alley. Cuts alternate between small combo, frequently with electric guitar, and solo piano with string section; none of it is bad, or even as embarrassingly earnest as the period seemed to require, but it’s only infrequently vital. Which is hardly a slam — jazz in the early 70s was generally stronger in a musical sense than all but the very best rock, country, and pop. This list has been light on jazz so far, but there’s plenty more coming down the pipe, and I’m not sure much is going to be as immediately attractive as this was.

A Keeper? I’d have to listen to it more to have anything more concrete to say, but on the basis of one spin, it’s great background music with enough compositional and instrumental meat that it rewards close attention too.

Vinyl Rip: The Circular Letter (For J. K.)

Mott The Hoople, All The Young Dudes

File Between: David Bowie and Free

Comments: This is, of course, one of the outstanding albums of the year and one of the canonical rock & roll albums of all time. Which is interesting because apart from the title track and perhaps the cover of “Sweet Jane,” very little of it is overfamiliar to me: it still sounds fresh and pretty undiscovered, no matter how may Rolling Stone and Spin lists it’s been on. What fascinates me most about it isn’t the glam makeover producer Bowie imposed on their crunchily literate hard rock (and which they perfected on their next album, Mott), but the state of flux the album captures the band in. A shaggy freak band born in the fag-end of the Sixties, they run through several personas in this album, most famously the Ziggyesque title track and the cool swagger of a Velvets update, but also the Sabbath/Purple workout on “Soft Ground,” the cerebral ballad “Sea Diver,” the really hard-rock “Ready For Love,” and “One Of The Boys,” an extended rave that would have fit just fine on their debut album. Ian Hunter also experiments with his singing a lot here, but it’s always satisfying when he slips back into that familiar Dylan moan: that’s the Mott the Hoople I fell in love with.

A Keeper? What are you, crazy? Of course it is.

Vinyl Rip: Sucker

Darryl Hall & John Oates, Whole Oats

File Between: The Delfonics and Cat Stevens

Comments: The least-lush Philly Soul record of the year by quite a margin. I’m kidding, of course — it doesn’t really count as a Philly Soul record, and that only has a little to do with the color of Hall & Oates’ skin. It really does split the difference between exultant blue-eyed soul and melancholy singer-songwriter contemplatives — Hall’s solo numbers in particular tend toward absurdly melodramatic narratives. Unfortunately, the sound of the record can’t match up to his callow ambitions — the instrumentation isn’t particularly gripping, thin and underproduced and even somehow tentative. It’s a first record, in other words, and while they took more time than usual to make their mark on the pop scene (I didn’t even realize they predated the 80s before starting this project), they start out with their primary strength intact: those smooth, liquid voices, and the way they build on each other and the two tones harmonize into a locked, glossy whole.  They just don’t have much to work with. “I’m Sorry,” “Goodnight And Goodmorning,” and “Southeast City Window” are the only songs I’d care to hear again, and I’m not kidding myself that they’re eternal pop or anything like that.

A Keeper? It’s never unpleasant — with those voices, how could it be? — but it’s almost stubbornly unnecessary.

Vinyl Rip: I’m Sorry

Michael Jackson, Ben

File Between: Donny Osmond and Stevie Wonder

Comments: I’d heard the title track before, and it had not made me enthusiastic, so when I found a dirt-cheap vinyl copy, I added it to my stack with more of a sigh than a feeling of having scored. And that title track must have been really popular with whoever owned the record before I did, because I can barely hear it through the worn-out crackle. The rest of the record, however, is pretty clean, and pretty okay, especially on the uptempo numbers. Nothing matches the high points of what he was doing with the Jackson 5, much less what he would do in seven years’ time, but as a splitting of the difference between late-period Motown and teen-pop, it’s okay. Michael’s yearning young voice has no idea what to do with the adult emotion of “Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool” (and I kind of doubt he’d be able to tackle it today), but he sounds great on the puppy-love “My Girl” and the joyous nonsense of “Shoo Be Doo Be Doo Da Day.” Expecting a wearisome slog through quavering ballads like “Ben,” I was pleasantly surprised.

A Keeper? It’s not the high point of either contemporary Motown or of Michael Jackson’s career, but a handful of the songs are pleasant enough.

Vinyl Rip: The Greatest Show On Earth

J. Geils Band, Full House ‘Live’

File Between: John Lee Hooker and the MC5

Comments: I’m going to have to go with Nick Hornby (boo hiss) and call this the best live rock & roll album of all time. Certainly of its year: it’s indicative of how deeply conventionalized blues, soul and rock had become by 1972 that these guys manage to sound fresh, revelatory, and deepy exciting with material that was probably in the repertoire of half the bands on this list. Blues covers, soul covers, a couple of instrumental showcases, and a handful of originals written in the juke-joint spirit of rock & roll. One thing the J. Geils Band has going for them is their charismatic, sweat-soaked frontman Peter Wolf, screaming and hollering and even gibbering, whipping the crowd up into a frenzy and then frenzying right back at them. Another is Magic Dick’s harmonica, which cuts like a knife and stings like a guitar. But their secret weapon is that drummer, whose superbly-miked set carries the show, funky and punky and as snapping cool as Duck Dunn. (Which makes sense; they’re a Detroit band, after all.) Even on the epic ten-minute slow-burn “Serves You Right To Suffer,” they’re not showing off, they’re grinding on an intense groove, and if no babies were conceived in the audience that night it’s not the band’s fault. Ten out of motherfucking ten.

A Keeper? Hell, I’m almost sorry the list isn’t over now. I don’t remember what’s coming up next, but it can’t live up.

Vinyl Rip: Lookin’ For A Love