A pair of sequels to two outstanding Americana-oriented compilation series, each also emphasizing the deep-seated connections between both black and white Southern music traditions.

"Country Soul Sisters is a second guide to the great female country singers who helped define a musical genre, as artists such as Dolly Parton, Loretta Lynn and Tammy Wynette attained staggering commercial success in the previously male-dominated musical world of country music...Here you will also find Kitty Wells—the first solo female career recording artist—singing her stunning version of Bob Dylan's 'Forever Young,' joined by an all-star group of Allman Brothers alumni, as well as African-American country singer Linda Martell's incredible version of the Winstons' '60s soul classic 'Color Him Father.' In fact, the links between country and soul music feature throughout, and also included are songs by Aretha Franklin, Luther Ingram and more." - Soul Jazz Records

"Sweet Dreams carries on from where Behind Closed Doors left off by presenting 23 more sublime interpretations of great country songs. A who's-who of songwriters is represented, among them Willie Nelson, Hank Williams, Don Gibson and Dan Penn. The cast of performers is no less stellar—who wouldn’t want to buy a CD that includes top-drawer performances from such iconic artists as Otis Redding, William Bell, Bettye Swann, Esther Phillips and Bobby Bland, to name but a few?" - Ace Records

"Having written The Association’s 'Windy' while living in David Crosby’s basement, Ruthann Friedman remained an intriguing and mysterious figure of '60s pop for decades. Until recently, her released output consisted of a lone folk album issued in 1970. Unbelievably, many fascinating recordings she created with some of the most revered names in West Coast pop have remained locked away in the vaults…until now!" - Cherry Red

"While we're on the subject of weird melodies, I'd like to introduce you to Prince Nifty. Experimental in nature, the vocals are free-flowing like Gregorian chant. Avant-garde artist Thomas 'THOMAS' Gill is one of the contributors to his latest, Pity Slash Love, most audible in the keyboards of the album's second track."- Ride the Tempo

Meanwhile, fellow Montrealer Alex Zhang Hungtai's sophomore full-length sees him retain his Alan Vega-influenced croon, while replacing the loops and samples of his debut Badlands with an array of live-played, distorted drum machines and synths that, while naturally indebted to Suicide, also inventively and soulfully nods to a wide variety of related dark/outsider music of 30+ years past, from coldwave and industrial post-punk à la Cabaret Voltaire to the 'electronic body music' of DAF. 

"An Acoustic Confusion was recorded in the early winter of 1971. Tilston tells of how the heat in the house where the album was recorded broke down from time to time, so he was forced to record with a fur coat and freezing fingers. Not the best conditions for the 20-year-old Tilston, but he managed to make magic there, assembling an album of ten beautiful, personal, catchy and haunting songs with fantastic lyrics, and a terrific level of composition.

All the songs have a big cloud of inspiration from Jansch/Renbourn/Jones/Graham, but it's also a very solid and strong personal statement for the young musician. He avoids the Drake melancholy, the Jones humor, and the Jansch darkness. He’s closer to Paul Simon and Al Stewart in his songwriting than the fathers of his inspiration." - Sunday's Child

"Make way for a brand new selection of collectables, curios and rug-cutters for R&B fans who feel the beat and need new sounds to scratch their itch...Inevitably it’s the debutantes that will steal the show and attract the more traditional R&B fan. There is a pounding blues by Freddie North from Bob Holmes' tapes, when he was working with Freddie along with Slim Harpo in Nashville in the late '60s. From Los Angeles there is Adolph Jacobs' unreleased Class recording 'Cannibal Stew' that sounds like the Coasters and might even have them singing behind him (he was their guitarist at the time). Then we have a taster for the forthcoming Ace CD of Richard Stamz's Chicago blues productions, with a fine mover from Tony Gideon called 'So Strange.'" - Ace Records

"Intended as a follow-up to 2007′s Copia, Nightmare Ending incubated while Cooper dove down a more pop-oriented channel in 2010 with two EPs and a full-length. Featuring both vocals and something like percussion for the first time, Similes showed that Eluvium’s elegiac movements could be mapped onto the verse-chorus-verse blueprint. This experiment in constraint proved to be the exercise necessary to finish Nightmare Ending, a double album that plays out as the sum of all Cooper has learned through Eluvium. The title could allude to the release that comes after a long period of creative frustration—the feeling of finally getting it all out." - Consequence of Sound

"For all the self-generated hype that Tzadik releases carry on their spine inserts, the one that accompanies Bill Frisell's Silent Comedy is pretty close to accurate. This really is the guitarist as you've never heard him before—at least on record. He's improvising live in a studio with no edits or overdubs. Some of the 11 pieces included here carry traces of his signature bell-like tone, but this is a very free recording. The set's longest cut, 'John Goldfarb, Please Come Home,' is a meld of spaced-out sonic effects, harmonic invention, skeletal phrasing, and aggressive skronk that moves from halting melody to pure dissonance." - Allmusic

"Guitarist Pat Metheny is revered for his bright, accessible modern jazz. Saxophonist and composer is associated with much knottier, often dissonant experiments. Metheny's new Tap: John Zorn's Book of Angels, Vol. 20 unites these two known opposites of instrumental music, and the result is often intensely visual. These Zorn compositions are part of a mammoth series of songs inspired by (and built around) the ancient scales of traditional Jewish music. Zorn started the project in the 1990s. It eventually ballooned to more than 500 tunes, the last 300 written in a three-month period. Metheny selected some of those for this album, and began recording them in his home studio between tours. He plays all of the instruments except drums, which are handled by his frequent collaborator Antonio Sanchez." - NPR

"From the beginning of her career and into the early '70s, Françoise recorded quite extensively in English, German, Italian and Spanish, but that material is not easy to find these days. This collection, recorded variously in Paris and London between 1968 and 1972, comprises tracks drawn from her albums En Anglais, One-Nine-Seven-Zero and Françoise Hardy (a.k.a. If You Listen), and offers a very welcome opportunity to hear her perform in English." - Ace Records