AS YOU CAN SEE from our rundown of the 50 best albums of the year, 2023 has been a vintage year for new music. It has also been astonishingly bountiful when it comes to reissues. A landmark album from Bob Dylan gave up a treasure trove of new material, Pharoah Sanders' 1977 masterpiece Pharoah was finally repressed, we got to hear The Who’s Life House, De La Soul’s classic albums became available again, plus there was even more super deluxe goods to be had from Nirvana, Tom Waits, Neil Young and more. It’s been a busy year, then, but here is MOJO’s pick of the best reissues of 2023...
20.
VARIOUS
Wattstax ’72: The Complete Concert
(CRAFT)
A fantastic year for Stax fans kicked off with this definitive 12-CD overview of the 1972 LA festival – overtures, stage announcements and all. Come for the uplifting Staples, stay for deeper dives into the label’s roster, like Lee Sain’s Them Hot Pants.
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19.
NIRVANA
In Utero
(GEFFEN/UME)
The final Nirvana album’s 30th anniversary was marked by a box that accommodated two great, unreleased West Coast shows from December ’93 and January ’94. Also included: much replica memorabilia, notably a 3D mobile of the album cover art angel.
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Krist Novoselic interviewed: “Kurt had this charisma, this intensity that was compelling to people.”
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18.
HAWKWIND
Space Ritual
(ATOMHENGE/ CHERRY RED)
“When we mixed it I think we all took LSD, which is why the original’s a bit messy,” Dave Brock told MOJO of Hawkwind’s seminal 1973 live album. But besides new mixes, this 11-disc set included three full shows from the Space Ritual tour.
BUY: Amazon/Rough Trade
17.
DE LA SOUL
3 Feet High And Rising
(CHRYSALIS)
Long unavailable – until recently De La Soul weren’t even on streaming services – the hip-hop pioneers’ catalogue resurfaced, headed by this magical 1989 debut. Poignant, too: Dave ‘Trugoy’ Jolicoeur died in February, just as his music was reissued.
LISTEN/BUY: Spotify/Apple Music/Amazon/Rough Trade
16.
LITTLE FEAT
Dixie Chicken
(RHINO)
After last year’s valuable reissue of 1978’s Waiting For Columbus, Rhino bulked out Lowell George and co’s second and third albums. MOJO’s pick, narrowly, was for 1973’s Dixie Chicken over ’72’s Sailin’ Shoes, with outtakes and a killer Boston ’73 gig.
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15.
THE BREEDERS
Last Splash
(4AD)
Another 30th anniversary memento from grunge and alt-rock’s high summer. Crisply remastered from tapes presumed lost, The Breeders’ fuzzy joie de vivre remained infectious. And among the extras, a real treasure: Divine Hammer sung by J Mascis.
LISTEN/BUY: Spotify/Apple Music/Amazon/Rough Trade
14.
JOE GIBBS & THE PROFESSIONALS
The 1970s Dub Albums Collection
(DOCTOR BIRD)
Jamaican producer Gibbs was a foundational influence on UK punk, if perhaps undervalued next to Lee Perry and King Tubby. The year’s essential reggae box reasserted his case, with his ’70s dub output on four CDs.
BUY: Amazon/Rough Trade/Hive
13.
TOM WAITS
Rain Dogs
(ISLAND)
Tom’s Carny Years revisited, as Waits and Kathleen Brennan began a remastering of their Island period. Out of the first tranche – alongside Swordfishtrombones (1983) and Franks Wild Years (1987) – this 1985 odyssey was the MOJO bourbon jockeys’ selection.
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12.
SPARKLEHORSE
Bird Machine
(ANTI-)
A meticulously constructed, sensitively managed, entirely plausible attempt at building the fifth Sparklehorse album, from 2009 sessions left behind by Mark Linkous when he died in 2010. These 14 tracks were cranky, atmospheric, dynamic and up there with Linkous’s very best.
LISTEN/BUY: Spotify/Apple Music/Amazon/Rough Trade
11.
THE TEARDROP EXPLODES
Culture Bunker 1978-82
(UNIVERSAL)
Julian Cope finally opened up his vaults to help compile this 6-CD trove of singles, demos and live tracks (57 unreleased); the deep dive the ever-mutating Teardrops deserved. Most noteworthy: kosmische demos for their doomed third album.
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10.
FUN BOY THREE
The Complete Fun Boy Three
(CHRYSALIS)
The brief, glorious, unerringly deadpan life of thepost-Specials popsters captured in toto: 69 tracks (including unheard outtakes) across five CDs, plus a DVD featuring an antic Terry Hall, Lynval Golding and Neville Staple show from ’83 at the Regal Theatre, Hitchin.
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9.
THE WHO
Who’s Next/ Life House
(UMR)
“One thousand interviews I’ve done about Life House,” Pete Townshend told MOJO, returning to the aborted project that’s haunted him for over 50 years. This time, it came added to a Who’s Next refit: 89 unreleased tracks and a brand new manifestation – a Life House graphic novel!
LISTEN/BUY: Spotify/Apple Music/Amazon
8.
BETTY DAVIS
Betty Davis
(LIGHT IN THE ATTIC)
A crucial figure in the late-’60s/early-’70s crucible of rock, soul and jazz, Davis’s ultra-nasty, psychedelically funky solo debut only gained importance with age, remastered for its 50th anniversary. Also available: three more Davis LPs, with one, from 1979, previously unreleased.
LISTEN/BUY: Spotify/Apple Music/Amazon/Rough Trade
7.
NEIL YOUNG
Chrome Dreams
(REPRISE)
This legendary artefact stood out from 2023’s Neil archive glut, notwithstanding Ragged Glory expansions et al. Shelved in 1977, much of Chrome Dreams had already been released, but together it emerged as an all-time classic. One surprise: Ronnie Wood’s cover art.
LISTEN/BUY: Apple Music/Amazon/Rough Trade
6.
ARTHUR RUSSELL
Picture Of Bunny Rabbit
(AUDIKA/ROUGH TRADE)
Over 30 years since his death, the archive of unreleased Russell kept dispensing classics, this one from the same period as his 1986 landmark, World Of Echo: cello sighs and scrapes, ghostly murmurs, rendered minimally but with sacred heft.
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5.
VARIOUS
Written In Their Soul: The Stax Songwriter Demos
(CRAFT)
An incredible find: 149 demos (140 unheard) from the Stax vaults, recasting familiar hits and revealing lost gems. Also recommended: the Stax Uncovered sampler that came with MOJO 357, including Mack Rice’s pulsating prototype of Respect Yourself.
LISTEN/BUY: Spotify/Apple Music/Amazon/Rough Trade/HMV/Hive
4.
PHAROAH SANDERS
Pharoah
(LUAKA BOP)
A holy grail for spiritual jazz fans, Sanders’ 1977 album (AKA Harvest Time) had only been available as a bootleg for decades before this expansive reissue. A serene rather than fiery career highlight, usefully augmented by live tracks.
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"It’s time, finally, to reap what he sowed..." Read MOJO's review in full.
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Pharoah Sanders Interviewed:“I just have to make sure I mean every note.”
LISTEN/BUY: Spotify/Apple Music/Amazon/Rough Trade
3.
JONI MITCHELL
Archives Vol. 3: The Asylum Years (1972-1975)
(RHINO)
Five CDs plotted Mitchell’s trajectory through For The Roses, Court And Spark and The Hissing Of Summer Lawns. Among the myriad revelations: a gorgeous alternate take on You Turn Me On I’m A Radio backed by Neil Young & The Stray Gators.
LISTEN/BUY: Apple Music/Amazon/Rough Trade
2.
JOHN COLTRANE & ERIC DOLPHY
Evenings At The Village Gate
(IMPULSE!)
Unheard jazz gigs proliferated in 2023, including sets by Ahmad Jamal and Nina Simone. But nothing touched the epiphanic power of Coltrane’s quintet with Dolphy, McCoy Tyner, Elvin Jones and Reggie Workman. A jazz revolution, live and direct from 1961.
LISTEN/BUY: Spotify/Apple Music/Amazon/Rough Trade
1.
BOB DYLAN
The Bootleg Series Vol. 17: Fragments – Time Out Of Mind Sessions (1996–1997)
(COLUMBIA)
A de-mixed Time Out Of Mind and its outtakes opened up a world of wonder in 2023. By Grayson Haver Currin.
IN THE SPRING of 2022, Michael Brauer invited a neighbour to his home studio in New York’s Catskill Mountains to listen to the record he’d just finished mixing. Brauer had mixed hundreds of records across three decades, bona fide hits by the likes of Coldplay, John Mayer and Angélique Kidjo. But this time, Brauer was nervous, because he’d actually remixed a masterpiece – Bob Dylan’s 1997 resurrection, Time Out Of Mind. His neighbour knew not only every word but also every guitar squeak and drum hit. Brauer worried he’d ruined it.
“When the producers first asked me to remix it, my first question was, Why would I want to touch this record? No fucking way,” says Brauer. “I’ll get drilled for trying to do this. There’s no way I should touch this record, because it shouldn’t be touched.’”
But as they sat in Brauer’s home, his neighbour, John Raffaele, beamed. It was crisp and wonderful, he repeated, and he could hear and understand Dylan’s tale – the heartbroken, lovesick saga at Time Out Of Mind’s twilit centre – more clearly than ever. Brauer could breathe easily again, because that had been his charge: to lift the music from the shadowy, ineffable depths favoured by original producer Daniel Lanois and position Dylan at the centre of his own saga. “They wanted to see what it was like if it was scaled-down, simpler, so you could hear Bob better,” says Brauer. “His story became much more pronounced and obvious.”
Brauer’s revelatory work was the anchor of Fragments, Volume 17 in Dylan’s long-running Bootleg Series and a full excavation of the massive effort that prompted his popular reintroduction – entailing Grammys, bigger tours, an unbroken streak of intriguing albums ever since. “Time Out Of Mind was the first time in many years I became a fan again,” as Brauer puts it, his experience echoing that of many.
WHEN DYLAN arrived at Miami’s legendary Criteria in 1996, the core of his career seemed far behind him. He had passed from his ecclesiastical ’80s to make two covers albums that suggested a flicker of the flame that, in the late ’60s, lit the basement of Big Pink. He loved, however, the sample-heavy records of Beck and, as always, obdurate blues; after he read Lanois his sad-eyed lyrics in a New York hotel room, they began hatching an approach that might combine the two and afford Dylan a new sonic vantage.
Those sessions, though, were fraught. The big band was astounding, with two drummers (Jim Keltner and Brian Blade), a horde of guitarists, and Southern keyboard-and-vibes legends Augie Meyers and Jim Dickinson. Tension loomed, as Dylan and Lanois chased different interpretations of the blues through takes that constantly upended how entire songs sounded. The bevy of alternate versions on Fragments suggested the tirelessness of Dylan, Lanois, and their ensemble, with the unifying belief that they could deal with the chaos to pursue the songs in which they both believed. In the end, of course, they reached a renaissance; Fragments was their broken and fascinating road map.
But Fragments did more than look backward to reveal the labour, strife, and perseverance that led to Time Out Of Mind. It turned forward, too, to chronicle Dylan and his expansive band playing this material over the course of three years, from Atlantic City to Oslo. You could hear a mischief in his voice as he shuffled lyrics in Highlands, hear a wonder in his playing as his crew recast Make You Feel My Love as an acoustic moan. If the mid-’90s supposition was that Dylan was done, the mid-’20s question seems to be: will he ever be finished, writing and touring and re-imagining his own canon? You could hear that frameshift happen here, on Fragments, and can witness it yourself the next time Dylan visits your town.
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