Top 5 Albums of the Week
Culture Calling's Top 5 albums of the week, an eclectic mix of records from across genres and decades. Come discover weekly albums to bulk out your collection.
By Charlie Walker | Updated Jun 9 2025
Woody Guthrie - This Land Is Your Land, The Asch Recordings, Vol.1 (1997)
The Asch recordings, from between 1944 and 1949, make up the bulk of Guthrie’s recording output, with tracks used sporadically on releases throughout the subsequent decades.
I’ve no knowledge on how the volumes were pieces together, or what logic they used in grouping them, but Vol. 1 seems to contain the hits: the eponymous track that featured in last years A Complete Unknown, a reprise of it, among his famous tracks ‘Grand Coulee Dam’ and ‘Jesus Christ’, however, the lesser known tracks here shine the most.
The humorous album outro, ‘Why? Oh Why?’, complete with childish questions, even more childish answers, with the occasional bit of socialism (“What make the landlord take money?/Why, oh why, oh why?/I don't know that one myself”) shows Woody at his most relaxed, laughing throughout the take, bending the songs structure to his will, painting a picture of a strong-willed and intelligent artist who knows how to kick back and have a laugh, on his own studio recording no less.
But the biggest highlight, one where we see Guthrie at his most poetic, is ‘Pastures of Plenty’, a patriotic song that puts the worker front and centre. Written in the second person, Guthrie is your faceless, nameless farmer, tilling the land, providing you the privileges to which you’re unaware, yet prepared to defend the land with his life.
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I worked in your orchards of peaches and prunes
I slept on the ground in the light of your moon
On the edge of the city you'll see us and then
We come with the dust and we go with the wind
Various Artists - Slam Dunk Presents Funk Carioca (2005)
Before funk carioca (also called carioca funk, baile funk, or simply ‘funk’) took off internationally in its current, recognisable form, here in 2005 it is much closer in style to its primary influence of Miami bass.
Retrospectively, you can hear the faint percussive elements that would shoot off and become the rhythmic centrepiece of the future genre, but what really dominates here are the heavy, dark, club-oriented Miami bass-style beats, and of course, the yawps of the MCs, which take front and centre in all forms of Brazilian funk.
Innovative usage of autotune as melodic enhancement, developing styles of singy-rap that remain in blueprint today, with vocals mixed so high that they pierce through just about any sound system, truly, without the vocalists, this funk wouldn’t be half as fun. You don’t even need to know a word of Portuguese (even if you did, I doubt it would help you here), for the voice is the strongest instrument here on display.
Soft Machine – The Soft Machine (1968)
Recorded on their 1968 tour with Jimmy Hendrix, the contemporarily-inconsequential yet now wildly-influential debut of Canterbury Scene group Soft Machine has come to be recognised as a core work in jazz fusion.
Inspired by the beefiness of Hendrix’s pedal-chugging guitar and the shoulder-rubbing with contemporaries Pink Floyd, Kevin Ayers and his malleable men pinned down an area of psychedelic rock so experimental that it became the father of a few different genres.
The drums from Wyatt are the clearest standout, making the record more jazz that rock in places, as he traverses from solo to solo, keeping the pace during lulls, using every fibre of his being from preventing even one moment of staleness setting in. It’s impressive then, that this managed to sell absolutely no records.
Syl Johnson – Complete Mythology (2010)
Another top release from the Numero Group – a label that trawls the back catalogue of America’s obscure soul - Complete Mythology is a daunting, three-hour record that rereleases just about very track under the Syl Johnson banner.
At times a strongly similar to Bo Diddley, other times to James Brown, Johnson’s musical trajectory moved with the times, beginning with blues rock, like most, before exploring the depths of funk and soul.
Though he’s well-known now for his heavily sampled ‘Different Strokes’ and for the prominent role ‘Take Me To The River’ played in Season 2 of Sopranos, the standouts on this record come from his more downbeat tracks, ‘Soul Heaven’ especially. A great journey through a crucial period in American musical history.
Ali Farka Touré and Toumani Diabaté - Ali & Toumani (2010)
One of the most accessible in-roads to Kora music – named after the west African guitar-like instrument – Ali & Toumani doesn’t descent into typical microtonal mayhem, but rock-solid grooves on the captivating, serene instruments of the Malian desert.
Ali Farke Touré, one of Africa’s most well-known and influential artists, here teamed up with Toumani Diabaté, voted as being one of the top 50 of best African artists, forming something of a brief African supergroup, producing one of the continents greatest ever releases.
The 21-stringed kora, itself somewhere indefinably between a guitar and a harp, provides the backbone for the bulk of the albums melody-making, in some ways resembling flamenco guitar, producing an unmatched intimacy which blends African music and blues eloquently.
The whole record is breath-taking, with laser-fast melodies and deeply intuitive harmonies that fill your living room with a near derelict quietude.