David Gans

The Ones That Look the Weirdest Taste the Best

Perfectible Recordings

David Gans neatly bridges the gap between folk-rocker and rabble-rousing protest singer on his seventh self-released album since 1997. The Oakland singer-songwriter is also a veteran radio man, and his best music draws elegant connections between real people and real life in places where individuals and their communities intersect. 

Thus "An American Family" depicts the travails of a family shaken by our failing economy, with one all-too-recognizable character singing, "This family’s ailing fortunes may be more than I can take/I am married to a decent man who cannot get a break."

Gans also makes an elegant case for an agnostic-liberation movement in "Save Us From the Saved."  appears to have penned the local food movement’s national anthem with "The Bounty of the County" (the album title refers to heirloom tomatoes).

With fleet-fingered help from members of the fine New Jersey bluegrass group Railroad Earth, "The Ones That Look the Weirdest" sounds timely, classy, and classic at once.

Various Artists

The Complete Motown Singles Vol. 11A: 1971 Motown

Groovily packaged and musically mind-blowing, Motown Records’ comprehensive ongoing series of reissued singles dedicates volume 11 to just the first six months of 1971. The Temptations’ "Just My Imagination (Running Away With Me)" became the year’s best seller, while Marvin Gaye reinvented the Motown sound with "What’s Going On" and "Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)."

The 116 other tracks in this informatively annotated five-CD set (with bonus vinyl single) include releases by Sammy Davis Jr. and Bobby Darin, a medley of protest songs, Meatloaf’s debut, and forgotten (and sometimes forgettable) releases from Motown’s rock subsidiary, Rare Earth. It’s a democratic enterprise too, with obscure B-sides and peculiarities (such as Chuck Jackson’s "Pet Names") right alongside some of the best work ever by the Jackson 5, Diana Ross, and Stevie Wonder.