One of the coolest collections of underground Thai rock we've seen – and it certainly is The Heavier Sound Of the Luk Thung Underground – including a uniquely Thai vision flavored with a Black Sabbath riff, psych makeovers of Thai folklore, and a bunch great tunes that meld Bangkok life with western garage and psychedelia masterfully! All of the tunes are heavy in their own way, but it's by no means heavy in a simple hard rock way – loads of impassioned vocals, astounding percussion, tripped out guitar and other strings and woozy organ keep the arrangements exciting, and the otherworldly aspects play nice with accessible melodies. Titles include "Kuen Kuen Lueng Leung" (the aforementioned heady take on Sabbath's "Iron Man"), "Ruk Kun Samong" by Plearn Promdan, "Pai Joi" by Rung Petchburi, "Nam Mun Pang" by Sroeng Santi, "Dub Fai Kui Gun" by Sroeng Santi and more. 14 massive slabs of heavy Thai psych in all! (Global Grooves, Rock) LP, Vinyl record album

Badfinger's early 70s win streak continues on Straight Up – a straight up classic set of tuneful 70s rock with big emotions and catchy songs – one that keeps just enough grit underneath those killer melodies! Titles include "Take It All", "Bably Blue", "Name Of The Game", "Perfection", "It's Over", "Sometimes" and more. This might be the group's most consistent batch of songs to date, and it's essential early 70s rock for sure. LP, Vinyl record album

A heck of a great batch of blue eyed soul tracks – much harder-hitting than you'd expect from the name of the group, and done with a "live studio" feel that really makes the session kick! The group's a big one, of mixed origin – of the sort of party club type acts that used to play a lot in the south in the 60s – and alongside original tunes, they also really groove on some upbeat numbers in a soaring Sam & Dave sort of mode. Titles include "I've Been Trying", "I'm Losing You", "Hey You", "Such A Fuss About Sunday", "Soul Man", "Shake", and "I Feel Good". (Soul, Rock) LP, Vinyl record album

The Beatles at their late best – on 1968's self-titled set – now immortalized as The White Album! The White Album capped offed a period of intense creativity for the band with a double that's as freewheeling as anything they'd ever release. It's got raw rockers with wry lyricism, tender acoustic balladry, psych blues jams and some flat out weird bits. As was always the case, John's and Paul's songs cover the majority of the sides, but The White Album also features what's arguably George's most vital moment as a Beatle with "While My Guitar Gently Weeps". Other tracks include "Back InThe USSR", "Dear Prudence","Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da", "Happiness Is A Warm Gun", "Martha My Dear", "Rocky Raccoon", "Why Don't We Do It In The Road", "Julia", "Yer Blues", "Sexy Sadie", "Helter Skelter", "Revolution 1", Good Night" and more. LP, Vinyl record album

Hard to deny the lasting power of this crucial album from The Beatles – a set that unleashed some of their trippiest sounds and most tender moments too! The mix of wit and honesty is wonderful – and the sonic range is dynamic as the archetypal cover image – a package that's had an undeniable impact on modern music for the past few decades! Titles include "With A Little Help From My Friends", "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds", "She's Leaving Home", "Lovely Rita", "When I'm Sixty Four", "A Day In The Life", and "Fixing A Hole". LP, Vinyl record album

An unusual collection of early work by The Beau Brummels – pre-Warner material recorded for Autumn, but on a record issued by the Vault label! There's a great sense of jangle-pop throughout – a slight twang that would later unfold in different ways in Bradley's Barn, but which here works to give the tunes this little sense of sadness amidst the warmer melodies – which themselves are particularly great, and much better-crafted than some of the other US groups of this nature at the time. The boys definitely borrow a bit from The Beatles (including a name that gave them placement right next to the fab four in the record racks) – but maybe they're also drawing on some of the folk harmony groups from the SF scene they called home, too. LP, Vinyl record album

Mindblowing minimalism from the legendary Sandy Bull – an artist who might have had acoustic roots in folk music, but who was instantly turning his music into something else – drawing on modal styles of Eastern music, European generations of expression on guitar, jazz-based improvisation – and maybe even prefiguring work to come from composers like Terry Riley and La Monte Young! This album's one of Bull's first, and it's pure genius right from the start – with a side-long performance on the incredible "Blend", which features slight drums from jazz musician Billy Higgins – which Sandy extrapolates these long passages on acoustic guitar. Side two features the fantastic "Carmina Burana Fantasy" on banjo – a kind of trans-historical performance that's right up there with John Fahey's best of the decade – alongside equally mindblowing "Non Nobis Domine" and "Little Maggie" – and the closing electric guitar genius of "Gospel Tune". (Folk/Country, Rock) LP, Vinyl record album

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The American debut of The English Beat – aka the UK group The Beat, who'd been making some big waves with import 45s on the 2Tone label, the burst forth on our US market with a slight shift in name, due to another group hogging their original moniker on our side of the Atlantic! That bit of backstory hardly need matter, though – as the group wear their English loud and proud here, setting off a huge ska revival as they blend Jamaican roots with London attitude in the post-punk years – stacking up a set of classics that continue to groove many turntables all these many years later. Titles include "Mirror In The Bathroom", "Hands Off She's Mine", "Twist & Crawl", "Big Shot", "Best Friend", and "Jackpot". LP, Vinyl record album

A really groovy little record – and one by a group who might well be better-named "Funky Duck", given all the heavy drums and sharp riffing on the tunes! These guys are definitely a rock group, but they've also got the sort of instrumentation that would be right at home on a funky soul session – massive drums from Paul Francis, who also handles a lot of percussion, plus wicked basslines from Mick Hawskworth, who works with Francis very hand-in-glove – while Roy Sharland delivers lots of organ and electric piano, and Graham White handles the sharp guitar and vocals too. Were this set issued in the US back in the day, it would have been the kind of crate-digging funky rock record valued by the true school generation – and cuts include "Time Will Be Your Doctor", "Mrs. Prout", "Just Look Around You", "Afternoon Out", "More Than I Am", "Country Boy", "In Our Time", and "A Word From Big D". LP, Vinyl record album

Roger Glover steps aside from Deep Purple – and delivers one of his strangest records of the 70s – an oddly glammy, hard rock interpretation of material from the children's book of the same name! The set actually scored a surprising hit with the very catchy "Love Is All" – which features Ronnie James Dio on vocals – and the set features Dio singing on a few other cuts, "Sitting In A Dream" and "Homeward" – then features Glover working with other singers who include Jimmy Helms on "Waiting", Eddie Hardin on "Sir Maximus Mouse", Tony Ashton on "Together Again", and Glenn Hughes on "Get Ready". Glover produced – and the whole thing is way cooler than you might expect! LP, Vinyl record album

Groovy 60s work from the great Lesley Gore – produced by Quincy Jones, with titles that include "I Don't Care", "What's A Girl Supposed To Do", "A Girl In Love", "Before & After", "Just Another Fool", "Baby That's Me", and "No Matter What You Do". LP, Vinyl record album

Elton back when he was genius, and unlike anyone else – with titles that include "Ballad Of A Well Known Gun", "Son Of Your Father", "Burn Down The Mission", "Love Song", and "Where To Now St Peter". LP, Vinyl record album

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Yoko shows her Fluxus roots on this album of trippy experimental stuff. Side one is a live piece called "Cambridge 1969", which is performed by John and Yoko, with the help of avant jazzmen John Tchicai and John Stevens. Lots of noisy guitar on that one. Side 2 features a number of spare tracks recorded on a cassette at Queen Charlotte Hospital, in 1968. Cuts include "No Bed For Beatle John" (as pictured on the cover), "Baby's Heartbeat", and "Two Minutes Silence". LP, Vinyl record album

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One of the standout moments in the career of Rod Argent – a record that gave his self-named group one of their biggest hits ever, yet a set that still kept all the depth and diversity of their other records too! The album starts out with the group's famous "Hold Your Head Up" – the anthemic strutter that crossed over big, and which burns here with plenty of great organ lines from Rod. Other numbers really mix things up – rocking harder than Rod's Zombies work, but also showing some complicated sensibilities too – brought out nicely by co-producer Chris White, who also wrote most of the songs on the date with Argent. Titles include "Pure Love", "He's A Dynamo", "Hold Your Head Up", "Be My Lover Be My Friend", "Keep On Rolling", and "I Am The Dances Of Ages". LP, Vinyl record album

A really striking album in the career of Atomic Rooster – one that's a little bit groovier than most, and maybe a bit funky as well! The drums are great, and have plenty of soulful currents – and the Hammond, piano, and electric piano work of Vincent Crane almost seem to echo earlier UK beat group currents, but turned towards a much hipper 70s vibe – one that's followed by an equally extended range from vocalist Chris Farlowe, who seems to fold together both his mod and prog experience in the vocals! Steve Bolton brings in some tight, riffing guitar – and titles include "Time Take My Life", "Never To Lose", "Breathless", "People You Can't Trust", "All In Satan's Name", "Close Your Eyes", "Little Bit Of Inner Air", and "Stand By Me". LP, Vinyl record album

Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah, Y- Y- Y- Y- Y- Y- Y-eah, this is one of best art rock albums of all time – the Eno produced full length debut of Devo – the caustic, sarcastic and fun soundtrack to society's devolution! There's nothing we don't love about Devo at this point, from their unprecedented use of multimedia, to the hard to pull off fusion of sneering social and pop culture satire with good humored fun, and that's just the conceptual stuff. The songs are original and inimitably great, too, with those squeeling synth punk dynamics. Tracks include (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" (best rock cover ever?) "Jocko Homo", "Mongoloid", "Uncontrollable Urge", "Space Junk", "Come Back Jonee", "Sloppy (I Saw My Baby Gettin')" and more. LP, Vinyl record album

A real shift in sound for the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band – as the group drop the "nitty gritty" for their name, and go for a well-rounded sound that shows off their songwriting in a very different way! There's little of the rootsy elements of Will The Circle Be Unbroken here – as the group warm things up in more of an AOR style, yet still include some acoustic elements too – almost going for a mix of country roots and more polished crossover modes, with a sound that's more in keeping with their LA roots than most of their other 70s records. Yet taken from the perspective of a mainstream record, the songwriting and execution are great – definitely a cut above – and titles include "You Can't Stop Loving Me Now", "Whoa Babe", "Escaping Reality", "For A Little While", "Lights", and "Wild Nights". LP, Vinyl record album