Eva Cassidy — “Live at Blues Alley”

Welcome to Seven in Seven, where each week we typically take a look at shows coming to the region over the next week. And while venue doors are slowly opening again, due to the current pandemic they aren’t quite there yet. That doesn’t mean the music stops, and new releases are coming out weekly from artists you know and love and some waiting to be discovered. Each week we’ll be looking at some of the best hitting shelves and streaming services and a can’t miss show in the region.

Whether your musical tastes are rock and roll, jazz, heavy metal, R&B, singer-songwriter or indie, there’ll always be something to check out. Here’s what’s on the docket for the week of December 3:

Show of the week

The only solo album released during the late singer Eva Cassidy’s short lifetime, “Live at Blues Alley” is now available as a specially remastered 25th anniversary edition on CD and digital formats as well as a 180 gram 45rpm double LP set created to fully showcase the recordings’ phenomenal sound. This will mark the recording’s first appearance on vinyl. Cassidy’s now legendary concert at Washington, D.C.’s, Blues Alley nightclub on Jan. 3, 1996, was in some ways a happy accident. Although she had spent years in the studio with producer Chris Biondo creating an eclectic body of work, the pair decided that a live album was the quickest way to achieve their immediate goal of creating a CD to sell at live shows. It was released that summer, has since become known the world over, and is the cornerstone of a posthumous career.

As expected of a band that claims Judas Priest, King Diamond and Queensrÿche as major influences on their sound since day one, the new record is a high-energy, in-yourface salute to the music that inspired the formation of the unit some 20 years ago. From the aptly titled lead-off single “Forged in Metal” to the scorching album opener “Burn in Hell” and the crushing anthem “Chains of Fury,” “Armageddon” showcases Manimal as a band unafraid to unleash their own brand of power metal on the world. while bringing in influences not found in those bands like the Jesus Lizard and Refused. The new EP “With Offerings” is the latest, ahem, “offering” from the Louisville, Ky., alternative rock duo and provides plenty headbanging riffs and singalong melodies. freak-rockers Naked Giants on the introspective “Won’t Walk Back” and many, many more.