The Fab Four’s 1965 album gets the deluxe treatment at last. By today’s standards, Rubber Soul was a rush job. In mid-October 1965, as the Christmas deadline loomed, the Beatles convened with produce...

Today I’ve got a review of the new 30th-anniversary edition of Buena Vista Social Club, which actually came out 29 years ago, not that trifling details like that matter a whole lot. It’s true that the...

Welcome back to another week in reissued vinyl. As usual, we’ll kick things off with the latest announcements before getting into what’s landing this Friday. It’s a relatively quiet week for preorder...

Two recent OJCs commemorate Coltrane’s centennial. One hundred years ago today, John Coltrane was born in Hamlet, North Carolina. He died at age 40 of throat cancer in Long Island on July 17, 1967. I...

1972’s Occasional Rain gets an all-analog Kevin Gray cut on Slow Down Sounds’ vinyl reissue. There isn’t anyone quite like Terry Callier. In fact, even picking a genre descriptor for his reflective, ...

It’s another fine week of vinyl reissues, with all sorts of albums returning to wax or, in some cases, appearing there for the very first time. We’ll get into this week’s bounty in a moment, but first...

New reissues from Counting Crows, the Cranberries, Sheryl Crow, D’Angelo, and GZA. It’s been a little bit since I checked in on UMe’s Vinylphyle series. Launched in November of last year, the imprint...

The big news this week, of course, is the much-awaited Maggot Brain reissue from Org Music and Westbound Records—read my review for that Funkadelic classic here—but there are of course plenty of other...

When Org Music partnered with Westbound Records to produce a series of authoritative vinyl reissues of the Westbound catalog, the first thing out of everyone’s mouths was, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, great—so ...

I’ve got two reviews for you as we Americans head into this holiday weekend. One is for a heady experimental jazz record from 1973 and the other is for a triple-LP set of outtakes from a band’s prolif...

As I’ve been doing lately, I’ll preface the weekly new reissues post with a roundup of some recent announcements about upcoming releases coming later in the year. As you might expect, there’s been a s...

The Dutch band’s 1973 breakthrough Moontan receives the deluxe treatment from Artone Signature. When Golden Earring officially called it a day in 2021, the Dutch group was at that point one of the lo...

Today I’m reviewing Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab’s new edition of Television’s 1977 debut, Marquee Moon, which underwent Mobile Fidelity’s UltraDisc One-Step process and marks the first time this seminal...

Plus a ton of new announcements, including Rhino’s Rocktober, three new Vinylphyles, the R.E.M. DSS, and more. It’s another brimming week of vinyl reissues, but before I get into that, a huge amount ...

Rhino High Fidelity’s new pressings of CSN’s 1969 self-titled debut and Joni Mitchell’s 1971 masterpiece Blue. Today I’m catching up on two of the most recent Rhino High Fidelity pressings. These two...

Welcome back, friends. It’s a relatively streamlined week for new vinyl reissues—perhaps a good thing, as it looks like we’ll be getting a deluge of wallet-tempting stuff in the back third of 2026. Ne...

Today I’m reviewing the two latest releases from Dust and Memory, a new reissue label from Bilbao, Spain, run by Álvaro Lissón, who’s also responsible for the excellent Meritorio Records. So far, Dust...

We’ve got another metric ton of new vinyl reissues to sift through today—but first I wanted to mention the recent layoffs at the four music-news outlets owned by a company called Veeps. This happened ...

The two vinyl reviews today don’t have a ton in common, although both albums come from troubled geniuses who lived difficult lives and died before their time. Both artists transcended their genres—sou...

I’m back with another rundown of this week’s vinyl releases. Things have been a little quiet around here while I was traveling to visit family, but it’s been a very busy week in terms of announcements...

It feels a little funny to be listening to a compilation of Icelandic artists during the hottest days of American summer. But as every non-Icelandic person surely knows by now, Iceland is more than a ...

A new Rhino Reserve pressing marks Year of the Cat’s 50th anniversary. I’ve got another review from Rhino’s Spirit of ’76 campaign today... but first, the big vinyl news this morning was that Mobile ...

Shake Some Action gets a 50th anniversary reissue with a new analog cut and an extra disc of bonus music. Today I’ve got a review for the 50th-anniversary expanded edition of Flamin’ Groovies’ fantas...

A new Rhino Reserve pressing makes 1970’s Express Yourself bigger than ever. Today I’m continuing my survey of the five Rhino Reserve pressings that came out in June as part of Black Music Month. Las...

Hello—today’s review covers the only solo album from one of Fela Kuti’s most indispensable sidemen: baritone saxophonist and Egypt 80 bandleader Lekan Animashaun. The album had a protracted process of...

All of a sudden, it feels like the vinyl calendar is exploding with reissues. Things don’t normally feel this way until the holiday shopping season gets going, but after a few quiet weeks, it seems th...

The Rhino Reserve series revisits two gems of Miami soul. Just a couple of quick newsy bits before I get into today’s reviews: • Maggot Brain is coming! The third installment in Org Music’s reissue ...

It’s time for our weekly look at the passel of new reissues coming our way—and it’s a slower week than usual, due to the American holiday of Independence Day on July 4. The upside of this is that many...

Today I’ve got a deep dive on the latest release from Rhino High Fidelity for you, for Curtis Mayfield’s immortal Super Fly. For those keeping tabs on the series, Rhino have also announced their next ...

Greetings and salutations, vinyl friends ’n’ vinyl fiends—it’s another jam-packed week in the realm of newly pressed reissues, so let’s hop to it. To accompany our journey, here’s the new playlist, which is bursting at the seams with all of this week’s choice reissues.

I talk a lot about sound quality in this newsletter. That’s hardly surprising. But one of the reasons we’re all into vinyl is that it can offer a lot more than just an aural experience. (There are ple...

It’s another fine week in Vinyldom, with reissues, more reissues, and even more reissues behind those first reissues. Plus, reissues! We’ll get right into what’s on tap, including two new Vinylphyles...

Brian Wilson’s 1966 masterpiece comes to DSS and Vinylphyle, plus other 60th-anniversary goings-on. Hello, readers—at long last, here is my coverage of the recent reissues of Pet Sounds. I hope by no...

Welcome back to another week in vinyl reissues. It’s a bit of a slow week, all things considered—but there’s absolutely nothing to complain about, as there are a few things hitting stores this week th...

Real Gone Music expands the 1975 reunion album with an extra LP. Before we get into the review today, here’s a quick reminder that today (Sunday, June 7) I’ll be appearing on Steve Westman’s Live Aud...

Welcome, my lovely subscribers, to the first proper edition of Is This Real?, my newsletter covering the Portland music community. Glad to have you with me. My plan is to send out new posts on Tuesday...

It’s another fine week in Vinyl-land, with more reissues that you can shake a stick at. (What are you doing shaking sticks, anyway? Put that stick away.) Seriously, there are a lot of vinyl reissues t...

Analog-cut reissues of Court and Spark and 3614 Jackson Highway arrive on Rhino’s premium vinyl line. I’m reviewing two of the latest Rhino High Fidelity reissues today, both cut from tape by Kevin G...

Lots of new vinyl reissues to get into this week, but I’ll start today’s newsletter with some interesting announcements for reissues coming later this summer.  First up: Fontana Records, the British ...

A groundbreaking Ghanaian highlife classic from 1974 gets a sweet reissue from Strut. Before I get into today’s review, here are some “What We Did on Our Holidays” pics. I went up to Seattle over Mem...

It’s another high-flyin’ week in the world of vinyl reissues, and we’ll glide into that in just a moment, but I’ll kick off today’s newsletter with a bit of vinyl-related news. Yesterday, Interscope-...

1969’s The Gilded Palace of Sin now comes in an all-analog Vinylphyle pressing. Today I’m reviewing one of my favorite records, the Flying Burrito Brothers’ debut album. This was one of those records...

Catching up on a pair of Blue Note Tone Poets. Today I’m reviewing two pieces of vinyl that were released back in March but got temporarily side-shifted during the onslaught of Record Store Day. The ...

We have another stuffed week of vinyl to sink our proverbial fangs into, and I don’t have much of a preamble today other than to draw attention to today’s remarkable playlist, which features a track f...

Leafing through the new deluxe edition of 2004’s To the 5 Boroughs. We’ve been living without the Beastie Boys for a while now. Since the death of Adam Yauch, aka MCA, in 2012, the two remaining memb...

Once again, we’ve got another big week of hot new vinyl re-releases to explore, with a little bit of everything for everyone. And this week our exclusive playlist is supercharged, with extra selection...

1993’s Anodyne on Rhino High Fidelity. Today we sink our teeth into the final album from Uncle Tupelo, the St. Louis-area band that is often credited with spearheading the alt-country movement of the...

It's that time of the week when we rummage through the current release schedule and pick out the best, coolest, and most notable new vinyl reissues coming at you on Friday. Now, we know that Friday is...

We’ve got three new reviews for you today, including a look at the second installment in Org Music’s reissue series of the formidable Funkadelic catalog. We’ve also got some wonderful rediscovered syn...