The best CDs of 1998
by Seth Rogovoy

(WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass., Dec. 11, 1998) -- Once a year the bosses around here allow me to cast all pretense of professional objectivity out the window and indulge in this annual orgy of personal favoritism.

Thus, the following list of the best albums of 1998 is to be taken for what it is, and no more: one listener's favorites, albeit a listener whose job it is to draw distinctions, to separate the wheat from the chaff, as it were.

Here's the wheat of the past year:

1. Bob Dylan, "Live 1966" (Columbia/Legacy): In any ordinary year, Lucinda Williams would have topped this list (see number two). It's just her bad fortune to have the album of her career come out during the same year that someone finally had the sense to release this 32-year-old recording, one of the most significant aural documents in one of the most significant careers in rock music, if not the Holy Grail of rock 'n' roll itself. Dylan and the Hawks breathe fire in the famed "Royal Albert Hall" concert. Thirty-two years later, it sounds just as electrifying. In fact, the power is so palpable, visceral, so immediate, it's almost impossible to imagine this music having been made in 1966.

2. Lucinda Williams, "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road" (Mercury): It was worth the six-year wait for this album, one of the best of this or any decade, an instant classic in its timeless portrayal of an all-American life. Imagine a book of Bobbie Ann Mason short stories put to catchy, heartland roots-rock. Like a great writer, the narrative power is all in Williams's voice, whose slurs and catches and breaks reveal emotional truths far beyond her lyrics. Anyone who thinks country music is about Deana Carter and Travis Tritt ought to listen to this, and if it doesn't persuade them otherwise, well, then there's just no hope, is there?

3. Brave Old World, "Blood Oranges" (Pinorrekk): A work of sheer majestic beauty which takes the sound of Eastern European klezmer and, while retaining its integrity, transforms it into a lushly ornamented, contemporary acoustic art music that speaks to and with a universal voice.

4. The Nields, "Play" (Zoe/Rounder): The Nields don't just make albums -- they record novels, or in this case, a drama. To its credit, the Northampton-based band is able to make a concept album that also works as pop, and "Play" is chock-full of would-be pop hits that combine the giddy infectiousness of Fleetwood Mac with the literary sophistication of Joni Mitchell.

5. Dan Bern, "Fifty Eggs" (Work): On this album, Dan Bern emerges as an authoritative social critic, one who in the great tradition of Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan is able to particularize his observations of the world around him and make them universal. Bern cuts through hypocrisy wherever he finds it -- on the right, the left, in the center -- and slices it open with the deft accuracy of a catchy, three-minute, Ani DiFranco-produced pop song.

6. Ani DiFranco, "Little Plastic Castle" (Righteous Babe): In just a few short years Ani DiFranco has gone from angry-grrrl punk to elder stateswoman, and she wears the latter role with as much dignity as the former had fire. "Little Plastic Castle" opened up her sound and her point of view. The follow-up, to be released next month, is equally inspiring, if not moreso.

7. Milagro Saints, "Milagro Saints" (MoodFood): A latter-day Van Morrison in his combination of soulful and spiritual yearning, frontman and songwriter Stephen Ineson gathered around him a sympathetic ensemble of roots and horns, as well as the angelic vocals of Joyce Bowden that so starkly contrast with his earthiness. Along the way, the group achieved the elusive folk-rock ideal.

8. Cheri Knight, "The Northeast Kingdom" and Bap Kennedy, "Domestic Blues" (both E-Squared): Credit producers Steve Earle and Ray Kennedy (working as "The Twangtrust") for knowing talent when they hear it. Stockbridge native Cheri Knight and England's Bap Kennedy share a deep, abiding respect for Anglo-American roots music combined with rock. The result is timeless Americana -- in Knight's case, evocative of her rural surroundings in the Pioneer Valley, in Kennedy's case, evocative of the album's title. Gives new meaning to the term "country music."

9. Billy Bragg and Wilco, "Mermaid Avenue" (Elektra): It took England's Bragg and middle-America's Wilco to bring life to these newly-discovered Woody Guthrie lyrics. The result is a rousing celebration of Guthrie's craftily written songs melded with country-rock evocative of The Band. Had Guthrie survived professionally into the rock era, this might well have been what his music would have sounded like.

10. Talvin Singh, "OK" (Island): London's Talvin Singh exists betwixt and between two worlds. He's a wog to the English, and a Brit to his Indian countrymen. Perhaps it's his relative statelessness that allows him to combine so many different sounds to make for this unique, ambient-world fusion for the electronic age.

Best box-sets: Randy Newman, "Guilty: 30 Years of Randy Newman" (Reprise/Rhino), Various Artists "The Look of Love: The Burt Bacharach Collection" (Rhino), Various Artists, "The Jazz Singers" (Smithsonian), Ray Charles, "The Complete Country and Western Recordings" (Rhino), Charles Mingus, "The Complete 1959 Columbia Recordings" (Columbia/Legacy), Gang of Four, "100 Flowers Bloom" (Rhino).

Honorable mention: Jim's Big Ego "Don't Get Smart" (Eastern Front), Wolf Krakowski, "Unbounded" (Kame'a), Jennifer Kimball, "Veering from the Wave" (Imaginary Road), Various Artists, "Jackie Brown: Music from the Miramax Motion Picture" (Maverick/A Band Apart), The Lounge Lizards, "Queen of All Ears" (Strange and Beautiful), David Krakauer's Klezmer Madness!, "Klezmer, NY" (Tzadik), Amy Rigby, "Middlescence" (Koch), Joni Mitchell, "Taming the Tiger" (Reprise).

Also R.E.M., "Up" (Warner Bros.), Soul Coughing, "El Oso" (Slash/Warner Bros.), The Klezmatics/Chava Alberstein, "The Well" (Green Linnet), Bonnie Raitt, "Fundamental" (Capitol), Hasidic New Wave, "PsychoSemitic" (Knitting Factory), Ray Mason Band, "Old Souls Day" (Wormco), Rust Farm, "Rust Farm" (Daring), Anam, "Riptide" (Green Linnet), Angry Johnny and the Killbillies, "What's So Funny?" (Tar Hut), Madonna, "Ray of Light" (Maverick/Warner Bros.).

New Berkshire folk

Berkshire folk trio Wintergreen celebrates the release of its elegant new album, "Potluck," with two area concerts this weekend. The group, which includes Alice and Larry Spatz and Jared Polens, performs on Friday night at the Pittsfield Community Music School at 7:30 (442-1411 for info) and Saturday night at the Old Stone Church in Williamstown (663-7705 for reservations).

The stately "Potluck" highlights the trio's versatility, with several original songs, instrumentals, versions of contemporary tunes by the likes of Mary Chapin Carpenter, Kate Wolf and Dillon Bustin, a handful of Anglo-Celtic standards, and even one klezmer tune thrown into the mix. The sum effect is a kind of chamber-folk: a celebration of timeless melodies and sounds produced by instruments including mandolin, bowed psaltery, hammered dulcimer, recorder, fiddle and acoustic guitar.

Many of the songs boast two- and three-part harmonies that would make Peter, Paul and Mary blush -- Alice Spatz in particular is the Berkshires' answer to Emmylou Harris. A few guest musicians, including fiddler/mandolinist Greg Spatz, add color to the album, which was recorded at Derek Studios in Dalton.

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[This column originally appeared in the Berkshire Eagle on Dec. 11, 1998. Copyright Seth Rogovoy 1998. All rights reserved.]