CD of the Month January, 2011

Rumors of a Roxy Music reunion swirled around the making of Olympia. And while the album bares just the name Bryan Ferry, Olympia. is witness to collaborations with a number of Roxy alums as well as healthy dose of guest stars. Ferry sounds effortlessly in the now on his 13th studio album and only his second album of mostly original material since the mid-90s.

Rumors of a Roxy Music reunion swirled around the making of Olympia. And while the album bares just the name Bryan Ferry, Olympia. is witness to collaborations with a number of Roxy alums as well as healthy dose of guest stars. Ferry sounds effortlessly in the now on his 13th studio album and only his second album of mostly original material since the mid-90s.

The French pop band Phoenix continue to write utterly engaging, dance-inspired songs on their fourth studio album Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix. And while the band has already garnered some minor buzz and success with their previous releases, this new album boasts the potential to draw an even wider fan base.

It's their first release in 16 years, but after listening to Funplex once, it's like they never went away. The B-52's' new album is everything you were hoping it would be: fun, irreverent, bouncy, kooky. Time certainly has changed since the band emerged from Athens, Georgia (of all places) in the late 70's, looking and sounding like absolutely nothing else, but the band's inherent kitsch and attitude hasn't changed one iota. Even better, vocalist Cindy Wilson is back in the fold after not appearing on 1992's Good Stuff. Founding members Kate Pierson, Keith Strickland and the irrepressible Fred Schneider are back as well.

On her latest release The Comfort of Strangers, Beth Orton has managed to present listeners with the most intimate, soulful album of her career. Always able to sonically channel enigmatic '70's songwriters like NICK DRAKE and SANDY DENNY, this new album harkens the ghosts of those artists like never before. Deftly produced by JIM O'ROURKE (who's lately been a part of SONIC YOUTH), Orton composed all thirteen of these new tracks, including a songwriting collaboration with O'Rourke and M. WARD on the title cut.

In 1963, renowned chemists Bear Owsley and Nick Sands developed a strain of designer LSD which had a reputation for inducing tribal hallucinations. This strain of acid was called “west indian girl,” hence the name for which the Los Angeles duo of Robert James and Francis Ten have chosen to call their musical collaboration.