Mali’s finest couple, a flash of the evangelicals, Nina Simone on fire and lots of other things we like greatly too.

We are easing into the new week with La Vie Est Belle; choice picks, deep cuts and never-before-heards from Mali's super-couple Amadou & Mariam. The curation here is great as each track shows off their tremendous dynamism, from the joyous to the sad and all so free flowing with winding guitar hooks and a chorus of vocals.

We’re long-time Cass McCombs fans over here at Drift so it’s great news - for us and you both - that 4AD have gone back to the start and produced new 2024 pressings of his discography. We start with his 2003 debut album A and the following 2005 PREfection. This alongside his 2002 debut Not The Way EP that we didn’t even know that well. He can do dark, but one of the Cass trademarks is the easygoing flow. It’s never over fussy, he’s a great songwriter and he just plays ‘em.
Originally released in 1972 as a private press (somewhere around 99 copies), D.R. Hooker’s The Truth really is something weird and wonderful. Broadly, a sort of not-quite-Laurel-Canyon LP of psychedelic country, but that doesn’t tell the tale at all. The Truth was his only registered release (although we did read that a followup titled Armageddon was at the very least demo’d), created after reinventing himself from a substance-abusing hippy to an evangelical Christian. There is such a sweetness to it, the production is actually fantastic too with some great field recordings adding to the swirl. The B-Side starts with ‘Forge Your Own Chains’ and it is a low-key classic, we tell you!

+ Available on The Sea Blue colour vinyl.

We have a Verve Acoustic Sounds Series pressing of the seminal Nina Simone in Concert. The 1964 set is absolutely one of the most direct musical reflections of the Civil Rights movement. Mississippi Goddam is incendiary. I don’t think anyone has ever sounded both as joyous and as sad, an iconic voice and this is a key one in telling the story of a peerless artist.

+ Verve’s Acoustic Sounds Series features transfers from analogue tapes and remastered 180-gram vinyl in deluxe gatefold packaging.

Also pressed super-nicely this week is saxophonist Jackie Mclean’s Let Freedom Ring. Recorded in 1962, the quartet are quite mournful, but still have lots of avant-garde energy as it evolves out of the bop world into something else. When it screams, it screams.

+ Produced by Joe Harley, mastered by Kevin Gray from the original analogue master tapes, pressed on 180g vinyl at RTI, and packaged in a deluxe gatefold tip-on jacket.

Also this week; we have a limited 25th Anniversary Edition of Flaming Lips’ The Soft Bulletin, pressed on a stunning double Zoetrope that has been designed by Drew Tetz and Wayne Coyne. To mark the release of Neil Young’s Archives Vol. III box (a 17 CD goliath), we have a sixteen track ‘Takes’ vinyl compilation with unreleased songs and alternative versions from the 1976-1987 period of his journey. The version of ‘Hey Hey, My My’ really does have some slap. We also have an all-new (yellow!) 2024 pressing of Soul Jazz’s essential Studio One Soul 2 compilation that has been out of print for ages. A mixture of classics, super-rare and unreleased tracks from Studio One all lovingly digitally re-mastered for this release.

And finally today, to celebrate Conor J. O'Brien’s new lyric book, Domino have repressed the entire Villagers back catalogue. We have all-new colour vinyl editions of; Becoming A Jackal, {Awayland}, Darling Arithmetic, The Art of Pretending to Swim and Fever Dreams. It was a great opportunity to run through them in sequence and hearing his songs and voice evolve was a treat. He really is one of the best.