6 Great vinyl reissues from Summer/Fall 2025
It’s widely believed that vinyl purchases began increasing worldwide around 2007, and during and after the pandemic, those numbers soared exponentially. Heavyweight is a column that helps you sort through the worthy and eliminate the meh. Each edition will feature a “Dusty Fingers” pick—something so incredible, or in this edition’s case, so commonly heard, that sometimes it’s just perceived as pedestrian. You won’t believe it until you pull back and consider the legacy. Then, you’ll hear it. Differently. Join us as we indulge in your favorite vinyl addiction.
This is Heavyweight.
Note: When you buy something through our affiliate links, Treble receives a commission. All albums we cover are chosen by our editors and contributors.
Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings – Naturally (20th Anniversary)
Until her death in 2016 after a battle with cancer, Sharon Jones, who worked as a corrections officer at New York’s Rikers Island prison and as an armored car guard for the Wells Fargo corporation previously, carried the flag for James Brown, Aretha Franklin and Tina Turner-type soul. That sweat-drenched, blues-referencing, dime-dropping live show and band performance established this 40-something-year-old, Black woman as the leader of the world-renowned ambassadors of this little Brooklyn imprint that did, called Daptone. So impressive in fact, Prince took notice and booked the outfit to open for him on tour in 2011. That is an anointment.
Their dart-accurate knack for constructing self-assured original arrangements in that classic R&B structure fueled the surge of oldies DJ nites that popped up globally around the 2000s. Daptone Records, led by Miss Sharon Jones, put Black music from the ’60s back into the air in a way that everybody had to get a taste of. Amy Winehouse crossed the Atlantic and came to Daptone for that extra slap, that sound of authenticity, to the slight chagrin of Jones.
As it probably fueled her entire career, Jones was once told by a record producer early on that she was “too fat, too black, too short, and too old.” You can imagine Sharon saying “cool” along with something else, and then using that moment, that feeling from then on. That “tell it like it is” persona, showmanship, and pure grit could have made her a perfect fit at Motown or Stax had she been born a decade earlier.
Behind that shake, shout, and blow-’em-away stage presence, found all over Naturally from 2005, you had composers, weaned on the arrangements of Gamble and Huff, Holland–Dozier–Holland, and Norman Whitfield, amongst others, who could recontextualize, translate, and change up the vibe of any composition as needed. Separating the commercial ad from the sentiment presented, “This Land Is Your Land” a standout from the album, the band takes Woody Guthrie’s canonic campfire flag-waver back to the streets. Inserting the latter, more accusatory verses that got lost over the years, while attacking horn charts, puts our current political garbage fire on blast.
She’s preaching from beyond. Man. It’s hard, real hard, hearing her voice, realizing she’s gone. But we gotta take the lesson and victory to heart. Next time you think somebody is “too fat, too black, too short, and too old”, hire ’em.
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Amazon (vinyl)
Brian Auger & the Trinity – Definitely What!
I snatched up a beaten-up, yet very much loved copy of Definitely What! on an early morning record dig in the Mission District of San Francisco years ago. When I was growing up, there was this Sunday night jazz show on terrestrial radio that played an insane amount of jazz organ artists. These thrift store digs were the only way I could afford to have these prized records I heard when I was just starting to form my own, very young, ideas about music.
Even as a youngling, tho, I knew Brian Auger was just a beast behind those keys. He was constantly expanding on ideas, riffs, and melodies, ideas. Just everything. He played it as it came, fast, loose, and most importantly, fun to the ear.
That version, his version of “Bumping On Sunset,” written by the brilliant jazz guitarist Wes Montgomery, caught Auger taking his time before giving you that explosion. So methodic, large like the Pacific Ocean, confident like James Bond, but still noodling, weaving, and comping like his hero Jimmy Smith. As revealed in the reissue liner notes, it was Auger’s version that was Wes Montgomery’s favorite cover.
Legends recognize real. Auger was so good, just that quick, he had no fear in adding what was happening in the culture of the late ’60s, such as open-minded design, masterful organ and piano skills blended with jazz, R&B, psychedelic influences, and soulful grooves like no one else did. That freedom, wit, and dedication to the immediate feel is the stuff that makes the greats, and this reissue soar throughout time.
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Amazon (vinyl)
Manu Dibango – Dibango 82
Many got very familiar with Manu Dibango through his international pop-funk archetype model “Soul Makossa.” Bully for you, but Manu was large, like expansive in his reach. Dibango 82 brings you up to date. It’s a live performance from the Cameroonian musician and songwriter who played saxophone and vibraphone and developed a musical style fusing jazz, funk, and traditional Cameroonian music. A roomy, change-filled celebration of this oft-corned and thought of one-hit wonder of an artist.
Yes. His 1972 single “Soul Makossa” has been referred to as the most sampled African song, but on this wide-eyed sampling of improvisational “social music,” a Miles Davis term for jazz, we find certain moments on “Africa Boogie,” served up with Santana vibes. His stellar eight-piece group has no problems switching gears of the ultimate sort. Later on down the line on “Waka Juju Part 3,” Dibango lets the crowd in on his Ramsey Lewis-type keyboard chops.
Unrushed and very particular, this unreleased live recording gives the world a new taste of the very large menu Dibango—who passed five years ago at the age of 86—was cooking with.
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)
Sly & the Family Stone – The First Family: Live at Winchester Cathedral 1967
To grasp just how far ahead Sly Stone was in determining talent, in his Bay Area confines, you start to catch a whiff in the joyous overshare documentary by Questlove, aka Ahmir K. Thompson, Sly Lives! (aka the Burden of Black Genius), still available on Hulu. There, we find out that Sly was Grace Slick’s first producer.
Yes, he built and assisted on “Someone to Love,” later famously covered by Jefferson Airplane but originally recorded by The Great Society, with Sylvester Stewart providing the band with suggestions on how to improve the track. Sly also helped in production for a pre-fame version of the Grateful Dead, back when they were known as the Warlocks in the early 1960s.
Let me remind you. This is the same Sly Stone about which Miles Davis famously said, “If this MF learns Jazz, he’s gonna put me outta business.” That drove me to find a cover version of “I Wanna Take You Higher” by master organ player Brian Auger, just to get a representation of Miles cursed statement. He was correct.
The First Family: Live at the Winchester Cathedral 1967, Sly and the Family Stone’s live recording from High Moon Records, gives us the inside baseball on how Sly was pushing ideas and then trying them out at the band’s local gig for a crowd that for sure would let them all know, if these concoctions were half-cooked. They were not.
Through the ten songs in under 50 minutes, recorded on March 26, 1967, listeners now in 2025—the year in which Sly passed—can hear how familiar the crowd is with this band. Singing along to sounds, cheering band members on, just carrying on a respectful conversation with the eager young outfit, while they are playing, as if the audience is an extended family member, inserting themselves into the performance because it’s what the performers are used to. You can behold early workings of “Dance To The Music” in the opening song “I A’int Got Nobody,” hear Sly work through the musical question, one he seemed to keep coming back to throughout his career, “What Is Soul?”, check the band’s cover of “I Cant Turn You Loose” (no it’s not an intro to The Blues Brothers movie), mingle and peruse the blues through the trumpet playing of Cynthia Robinson, a founding member of the band on “Saint James Infirmary” to a conclusive standing ovation from the crowd.
But the mind-blowing idea is this: This soulful, review version of Sly’s band probably would have been better received at the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, the subject of Questlove’s Academy Award-winning documentary, Summer of Soul. In truth, you can never predict the future. Sly and his merry band of musicians dressed in Haight Street’s finest vines, not uniform performing attire, were done with appeasing audiences, black or white; that version of Sly and The Family Stone that showed up in Harlem on that day was a finished product. Woodstock bound.
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)
SO-DO – Studio Works ’82-’85
I used to have this ongoing dialogue with a buddy of mine about the post-punk movement and what was going on in downtown New York City in the late ’70s and early ’80s, where everything, just for one second, musically, was listening to everything around it. I’ve said it before and shall repeat it. It was on the biggest Black owned and operated radio station in the country, the most influential at that time, WBLS 107.5, that I first heard The Clash.
Yes. That Clash. BLS was just bumping the shit out of “Outside Broadcast,” the “(This is) Radio Clash” remix, and on one listen, I was sold forever on those cats. Even Sandinista!, back in the day. It was in that sliver of time that pop, disco, dub, funk, and punk hooked up and decided to hang out for a couple of years.
“Chief Rocker” Frankie Crocker, Disc Jockey and program director at the station, was actively listening to Larry Levan’s DJ set at Paradise Garage until the wee hours of the morning. Depending on how the dancefloor reacted, Crocker would ask, some have said begged, for Levan’s setlist to play on BLS well, later on that same day. The station broke a lot of UK/international artists, along with underground/downtown American artists as well. Larry Levan’s dancefloor was surgical with its taste. Such a dope time. While mainstream America might have missed it, Japan was listening.
The Time Capsule imprint, out of London, consistently delivers rare and private press music from Japan that originally was not supposed to be released to the world. Their So-Do Studio Works ’82-’85 release illuminates the long-lost post-punk/new wave band, letting the world know that bands like The Police or artists such as Adrian Belew, Chaz Jankel, and Arthur Russell did not just shake CBGB’s or Paradise Garage floor in the States. Those same ideas about fusing rock and groove, dub, and synth-pop approach, breaking down barriers in dance clubs and FM radio, traveled the world several times over.
So-Do burned bright for a couple of years and then, in classic punk form, burnt out. Funky, playful, and dubby, So-Do reps a well-produced, finely orchestrated version of protest music that is funky as hell one moment and then contemporary, dancey, and droney the next. Hopefully, with this telling snippet about a band, again, 5,810 miles from the States, it will put them on a global timeline they deserve.
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp
De La Soul – The Grind Date (20th Anniversary Edition)
RIP DAVID JOLICOEUR AKA TRUGOY THE DOVE, PLUG TWO, AND DAVE 9/21/68-2/12/23
Like Basquiat defaulting to the spray can just to show folks he could still do it, De La Soul—the incendiary trio of emcees from Long Island—went back to seething lyrical pressure as the priority for their seventh studio album, The Grind Date, and let a crop of 2004 new dudes handle the beats. With no skits in sight, inferring stakes got much higher, the message, not a comeback one, just a continuation, needed to be crystal clear. With producers J Dilla, Madlib, 9th Wonder, Supa Dave West and Jake One contributing far above average tracks, guest emcees Common and, more importantly, MF DOOM and Ghostface deliver animated yet surgical verses generally reserved for solo projects. But it’s still De La serving the hard lesson and sharp quotables. Posdnuos relays the personal math on “Rock Co.Kane Flow” with: “They say the good die young, so I added some/ Bad-ass to my flavor to prolong my life over the drum/ Everyone cools off from being hot/ It’s about if you can handle being cold or not.“
Observing how Hip-Hop from the late ’90s to the early oughts went from expanding minds to brainwashing them—lukewarm producers’ names being shouted over tracks instead of lyrics—the trio brandished a wiry and quick-moving release, better for the administering wisdom that bites.
Listen/Buy: Spotify | Rough Trade (vinyl)
Dusty Fingers Pick
Steely Dan – The Royal Scam
All-timer down to its core. Before we even get to the music, which guided many an afternoon being around older adults as a child or getting hip as a teen, realizing these guys could frigging swing. Yep, before we get to that. Peep the cover art, an image of a man in a suit sleeping on a bus stop bench in Boston and dreaming of skyscrapers with monstrous animal heads at the top. Meant as a satirical take on the “American Dream,” how that dream is a 2025 nightmare. OK, bud, let’s ride.
Packed with jazzy allusions, funky-rock elements, bluesy trappings, and lyrics that reference all things fictional or only slightly truthful to keep it interesting, The Royal Scam, upon its release in 1976, was not as popular as their other albums. But I can personally vouch for this: I picked up a ragged copy in the ’90s, slapped it on the thrift store-bought turntable, and we played it at the apartment on South Van Ness in the Mission District of San Francisco, all five roommates and how many other guests we had staying on the living room floor that weekend—we liked to entertain—and it was an immediate hit.
In the context of 2025, Michael Collins of DrugDealer and Joel Robinow, formerly of Once & Future Band, both write, sing, and perform in a style that is reminiscent of the distinctive sound of Steely Dan. Their work is not cliché; rather, it is a heartfelt and personal tribute.
Between the grooviness of “The Fez” and the warm thumper “Green Earrings,” The Royal Scam shows it has some impressive musical moves now. However, its best features lie in the shrewd lyrical mastery of Donald Fagen. For instance, “Everything You Did” contains the memorable lyric: “Turn up the Eagles, the neighbors are listening,” which offers a keen observation of the mid-’70s zeitgeist. Additionally, the album boasts a stellar lineup of musicians, including guitarist Larry Carlton, drummer Bernard Purdie, and keyboardist Victor Feldman, who expertly executed the vision that Fagen and Walter Becker had in mind.
Scam exemplifies that late ’70s, West Coast breezy cool, blue-eyed mellowness. In fact, Rolling Stone recognized this classic by giving it a well-deserved five stars, many years after the fact. Put on “Green Earrings,” and you can almost see, through bloodshot eyes behind some gas station shades, the Pacific Coast Highway coming into view.
Listen/Buy: Spotify | Rough Trade (vinyl)
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