Legacy Recordings Vinyl & CDs

Review: This Record Store Day 2023 exclusive Carole King album, The Legendary Demos, pulls together 13 demo recordings of hers from between 1962 and 1971 on nice milky clear vinyl. It was first put out over a decade ago in 2012 and remains a cult favourite amongst fans who appreciate the realness and the rawness of the recordings as well as hearing the slightly different takes on a number of well known songs of hers. The pop rock queen includes the likes of 'Crying in the Rain' from early 1962 right up to several 1971 tunes from her hit album that year, Tapestry. A must have for fans old and new.

Review: Avril Lavigne's Let Go was the debut LP by the American singer-songwriter and OG sk8er girl. It was released in 2004, when she was just 16 years old. Fast forward to almost two decades later, and the album is seeing its first ever reissue via Legacy. Not only does this version contain all of Lavigne's earliest and most well-known hits; it also has a wealth of bonus material. For example (pop-head nerd hat on): the Kelly Clarkson song 'Breakaway' was originally written for Lavigne, and while it was originally scrapped to make way for Clarkson's ensuing chart-toppage, Lavigne's original version can finally be heard in full quality here. That's not to mention a big bag of demos too.

Review: RECOMMENDED
The story behind No Code is one of resilience, rights, and division. First released in 1996, it arrived at a point in time when the band were still reeling from their troubled Vitalogy tour, in which they took a stand against Ticketmaster by boycotting the company, giving a sneak preview of the problematic relationship between bands, fans and ticketing platforms that would grow more visible in the following decade.

Once again, Pearl Jam struck it big here, with the record landing at number one in the Billboard 200 charts, making for the group's third consecutive number one album. However, the success was short-lived. Combining the alternative and grunge rock they were known for with elements of garage, experimental balladry and worldbeat, it's easily their most diverse, but that didn't suit everyone back then. Hit play today, though, and we're not sure anyone could argue against the depth and innovation at play.

Review: While the soundtracks to earlier Stranger Things seasons often included lots of original music lovingly composed and produced to sound like atmospheric synthesiser jams of the 1980s, this compilation of music from the latest season does not. Instead, it rounds up some of the classic pop music of the period used in the series. Kate Bush's 'Running Up That Hill', which of course returned to the top of the UK singles charts on the back of its inclusion in the series, naturally appears, alongside a mixture of big '80s pop hits (see the cuts by Journey, Kiss, Dead Or Alive and Metallica), much-loved cuts from earlier eras (the Beach Boys, Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald, James Taylor) and, more surprisingly, a later track from Moby.

Review: If you didn't catch The Summer of Soul on the big screen then we're really, truly, very sorry indeed. The documentary was one of the most fascinating and evocative, not to mention poignant box office releases of the immediate post-pandemic lockdown period, and in our opinion is up there with the best non-fiction flicks we've ever seen.

Centring on the Harlem Cultural Festival, which took place over successive weekends in 1969, it tells the story of how this Black-run, and predominantly Black-billed event welcomed hundreds of thousands and hosted groundbreaking performances, but was quickly forgotten and lost in the shadows of the much more mythologised and predominantly white Woodstock, which took place at the same time. The long-overdue reappraisal is a musical feast, with great archive footage of numerous greats, and asks serious questions about who owns and decides on which narratives survive, while this album offers a fantastic overview of the sounds and names involved.