If you asked me to describe Oxbow's music in three words, I'd call it "abstract blues rock." Then again, they've always gone those one or two steps over a line that most modern-day practitioners of "da blooz" would rather not tiptoe near. On their 1990 debut album, Fuckfest (Pathological), the mood is not "I'm blue 'cause my baby left me"; it's "Someone's throwing dishes at me, a baby's crying in the next room, and there's a grown man in a diaper passed out on the kitchen floor with a bottle of liquor spilled all over the place."

Twelve years (and four albums) later Oxbow are still dealing with grand-scale disaster, and they sound as unhinged as ever. But An Evil Heat is actually an improvement on their early albums, which is strange because real rock bands aren't supposed to age this well. You can't chalk it up to "maturity," because just listen to Eugene Robinson's "fuck"-filled lyrics and shriek-and-moan vocals. The band have sharpened their feel for dynamics and for creating a sense of flow throughout an entire album, which they didn't always do. The next-to-last track, "Sorry," is the highlight, veering from heartbroken minor-key guitar strums to violent, free jazz-unto-grindcore outbursts (with Robinson muttering phrases like "a handful of ass" and "I fuck like I pray" in between). Like the rest of the album, it's a catastrophe, but a really well-orchestrated catastrophe. (Will York)

Larry Vuckovich
Blue Balkan: Then and Now (Tetrachord)

Much has changed since pianist Larry Vuckovich recorded his debut LP for Inner City in 1981. Mainstream jazz has undergone something of a commercial renaissance; the pianist's native Yugoslavia has ceased to exist as a single state; and several musicians, trumpeter Dave Douglas and bassist George Mraz among them, have recorded brilliant albums presaged by Blue Balkan's integration of eastern European folk melodies into jazz settings. On the other hand, despite raising his national profile by spending the latter half of the '80s in New York City and recording another seven superb albums, the beret-wearing hipster is still an underappreciated treasure on the Bay Area scene, earning his keep largely as a hotel pianist.