Brett Dennen - Hope For The Hopeless
Artist: Brett Dennen Review: Brett Dennen was a hippie camp counselor before he became a John Mayer-approved troubadour on 2006's So Much More. So brace yourself for "Closer to You," where he admits to "wearing nothing but my birthday suit." That unsettling mental image aside, Dennen's third disc suggests he may soon give Dave Matthews a run for his tour grosses. "Make You Crazy" is a jubilant rave-up with Femi Kuti on vocals, while the quiet ballad "So Far From Me" is perfect for a dorm-room make-out. Dennen can be heavy-h... Rating: 3 Stars
Hank Williams - Hank Williams Unreleased Recordings
Artist: Hank Williams Review: In 1951, if you were awake at 7:15 in the morning and your radio was within the long reach of Nashville's WSM-AM, you had Hank Williams with your farina, singing with his Drifting Cowboys and selling sacks of flour for his sponsor, Mother's Best. Williams wasn't in the WSM studio at that hour; he prerecorded the shows on days off from touring. But the 54 performances in this three-CD set pack a magical, concentrated immediacy that is, in its time and way, as electrifying as Johnny Cash's Sixties... Rating: 4.5 Stars
Eagles Of Death Metal - Heart-On
Artist: Eagles Of Death Metal Review: There are more important rock groups than Eagles of Death Metal, but are any of them this much fun? Jesse Hughes and Josh Homme are essentially a comedy act, sending up and celebrating that high-Seventies hybrid of garage, glam and ZZ Top: scuzz rock. On their third album, the duo are as danceable as ever, but they've tiptoed away from straight musical pastiche, crudding up their blues boogie with low-fi fuzziness and oddball percussion. Much of the fun is in the lyrics, which revel in AM-rock-r... Rating: 4 Stars
Jimmy Hughes - The Best of Jimmy Hughes
Artist: Jimmy Hughes Review: An overlooked gospel-turned-R&B singer with a keening, feminine voice, Jimmy Hughes put Muscle Shoals, Alabama, home of the Fame label and studios, on the map with his Top 20 hit "Steal Away" in 1964 — several years before Aretha Franklin and Otis Redding recorded there. His verge-of-tears intensity enlivens this collection, out of print for years, which spans from soft, elegant ballads like "Why Not Tonight" to greasy funk workouts such as "I'm a Man of Action." Some of the material, like... Rating: 3.5 Stars
Arthur Russell - Love Is Overtaking Me
Artist: Arthur Russell Review: Arthur Russell was the secret link between New York music scenes of the Seventies and Eighties — an experimental composer, a pathbreaking disco producer, a rocker in Talking Heads' orbit, a wildly original singer. His downfall, though, was a perfectionism that kept him from finishing his recordings. Culled from his ample archives, this set collects unheard pop songs from 1973 to 1991, a year before his death from AIDS-related complications. Russell's lighter-than-air voice, murmuring about... Rating: 3.5 Stars
Genesis - Genesis: 1970-1975
Artist: Genesis Review: At first, Genesis were five English ex-boarding-school mates playing complex songs about hogweed and Greek myth. They slimmed that audacity into platinum pop as members left: guitarist Anthony Phillips (1970), singer Peter Gabriel (1975) and guitarist Steve Hackett (1977). But bassist Mike Rutherford, keyboardist Tony Banks and drummer Phil Collins were never as compelling later as they were in the band that made the five LPs in this box. The country-cathedral air of 1970's Trespass and the... Rating: 4.5 Stars
The Smiths - The Sound of the Smiths
Artist: The Smiths Review: Overseen by Morrissey and guitarist Johnny Marr, this compilation emphasizes the compositional might behind the miserablism of England's most idiosyncratic and influential Eighties band. Sound traces the quartet's four-year evolution from savage tenderness to refined despair: Morrissey articulates both bleak romanticism and omni-deprecating humor, while Marr accompanies him with chiming, multilayered riffs. The Smiths often relegated their most emotionally detailed and musically divergent tracks... Rating: 5 Stars
White Denim - Exposion
Artist: White Denim Review: With their EPs, Austin's White Denim have built buzz as the next heroes of fuzzed-out psychedelic power blues in the style of the White Stripes and the Black Keys. But while "All You Really Have to Do" and "Shake Shake Shake" support that rep, their debut full-length shows a more versatile outfit. "Don't Look That Way at It" mixes looped guitar swarms, wordless chants and off-kilter grooves. "Wda" is a gear-shifting jam that echoes golden-era Pavement. And "All Truckers Roll" is a woozy road ant... Rating: 3.5 Stars
Lee Ann Womack - Call Me Crazy
Artist: Lee Ann Womack Review: Lee Ann Womack does low-key better than most of her country contemporaries. The gentle mien of Call Me Crazy suits her nuanced singing — the subtle swoops and honeyed drawls that build momentum without bothering to rock out. Lyrically, Womack mostly shuffles between sadness and devotion, mourning a dead marriage on "Either Way" and admitting she's smitten on "I Found It in You." But producer Tony Brown adds some soul to the hard-drinking ballad "Solitary Thinkin' " and builds an ambient... Rating: 3 Stars
Rodney Crowell - Sex & Gasoline
Artist: Rodney Crowell Review: Ever since 2001's The Houston Kid, country singer Rodney Crowell has been coming to terms with his private life in his music. The largely acoustic Sex & Gasoline is his meditation on femininity — not just a celebration of women, but a real attempt at empathy. In the midtempo shuffle "The Rise and Fall of Intelligent Design," he imagines what it feels like to be female. Over the fingerpicked folk of "Moving Work of Art," he reveals his own tendency to objectify women. And in "I've Done... Rating: 3.5 Stars
Marc Broussard - Keep Coming Back
Artist: Marc Broussard Review: Marc Broussard's early albums established him as the heir to Texas white-soul icon Delbert McClinton. But Keep Coming Back shows the 26-year-old Louisiana singer coming into his own. His coarse baritone fires up the Seventies-style funk of "Power's in the People," the disco-fied anthem "Man for Life" and the warm, strings-drenched piano ballad "Evil Things." He lapses into pedestrian pop-soul-disco on the ponderous "Another Night Alone," but he makes up for it on "When It's Good," a brawny... Rating: 3 Stars
Parts and Labor - Receivers
Artist: Parts and Labor Review: The Facebook generation just got its own spectacularly overblown epic in the tradition of Pink Floyd's The Wall. Channeling the motorized grooves of Can and the industrial experiments of Throbbing Gristle, these Brooklynites deliver a chilling, post-apocalyptic concept album about failing to keep up with capitalism and technology. On the synth rocker "Nowheres Nigh," singer Dan Friel shouts, "Consumption is our plight/These wasteful Westerns of our time." And "Satellites" is a rush of electro... Rating: 3.5 Stars
Guns N' Roses - Chinese Democracy
Artist: Guns N' Roses Review: Let's get right to it: The first Guns n' Roses album of new, original songs since the first Bush administration is a great, audacious, unhinged and uncompromising hard-rock record. In other words, it sounds a lot like the Guns n' Roses you know. At times, it's the clenched-fist five that made 1987's perfect storm, Appetite for Destruction; more often, it's the one sprawled across the maxed-out CDs of 1991's Use Your Illusion I and II, but here compressed into a convulsive single disc of... Rating: 4 Stars
Seal - Soul
Artist: Seal Review: Amy Winehouse, what hath thou wrought? In the wake of the Great Beehived One's world-beating success, it seems everyone is getting in touch with his or her retro-soul muse. The latest bandwagon-jumper is Seal — who, with megaproducer David Foster playing the part of Mark Ronson, has delivered a collection of classic-soul covers, dripping with melodrama and tricked out with swooping symphonic orchestration. Seal is a fine singer, whose flavorful tenor combines the smoothness of old-school... Rating: 2.5 Stars
David Archuleta - David Archuleta
Artist: David Archuleta Review: On he most recent season of American Idol, David Archuleta was a golden-voiced koala, too sweet to be sexy. His debut is similarly flavorless: Beautifully sung but snoozy tunes like "My Hands" never achieve takeoff, and his chaste voice is a poor match for lovey-dovey lyrics. He only sounds like he's having a blast on "Don't Let Go," co-written with JC Chasez, which digs into an edgier melody and trades vocal gymnastics for pure power. At least the disc ends with a reminder of how Archuleta got... Rating: 2.5 Stars
Belle and Sebastian - The BBC Sessions
Artist: Belle and Sebastian Review: Fans of Belle and Sebastian's witty bookworm pop are an obsessive lot, and no doubt they'll snap up this cherry-picked collection of BBC recordings from 1996 to 2001. The draw for devotees is four rare songs from a 2001 session, including a hilarious fan letter to kindred indie-pop intellectuals the Go-Betweens ("Shoot the Sexual Athlete") and a kind of hushed farewell sung by Isobel Campbell, who left the group soon after ("Nothing in the Silence"). Otherwise, aside from a breezy glockenspiel... Rating: 3.5 Stars
Nickelback - Dark Horse
Artist: Nickelback Review: What's a poor rock band to do when your last album sold 8 million copies at a time when nobody buys CDs anymore? You can hire a guy who produced AC/DC, Def Leppard and Shania Twain albums that sold even more. On Dark Horse, "Mutt" Lange lightens Nickelback's dreary post-grunge plod, applying guitar shimmer to prom ballads and detonating big beats under frat-party shouts and raplike vocal parts. Lyrics revel in dorkitude, hair-metal style: "No class/No taste/No shirt/'N shitfaced." The two... Rating: 3.5 Stars
Land Of Talk - Some Are Lakes
Artist: Land Of Talk Review: Elizabeth Powell's sultry howl is like a stiff drink: icy, not too sweet and capable of knocking you on your ass. On Land of Talk's debut LP, she channels Cat Power and Chrissie Hynde over her band's turbulent bass-guitar-and-drums attack. Produced by Bon Iver's Justin Vernon, cuts like "Yuppy Flu" and "It's Okay" are steeped in morbid imagery, but Powell's passionate delivery makes this set life-affirming: As she sings on "Got a Call," "You can't keep down a girl who loves music." Rating: 3.5 Stars
Friendly Fires - Friendly Fires
Artist: Friendly Fires Review: In the vein of funky white guys like Hot Chip and LCD Soundsystem, these British lads take disco and rock, rave and pop, groove and melody, and Cuisinart them into an airy froth. But unlike many dance-rock peers, this trio never actually stretch out for the high-steppers at the discothèque: Only one cut on their 10-song, 37-minute album goes past the four- minute mark. At heart, they are strict pop formalists, packing each track with peppy hooks ("On Board," as heard in a Wii ad), gushy New Roma... Rating: 3.5 Stars
Phish - At The Roxy
Artist: Phish Review: Recorded in 1993 during a three-night run in Atlanta, this mammoth eight-disc box captures Phish right when they were putting a spit-shine polish on the live improvisation that would make them kings of the Nineties jam-band scene. At the Roxy is a must-have for one reason: the second show on February 20th, where Phish unleashed their most experimental set to date. On Disc Five, guitarist Trey Anastasio, keyboardist Page McConnell, bassist Mike Gordon and drummer Jon Fishman play for 60 nonstop... Rating: 4 Stars
Blake Shelton - Startin' Fires
Artist: Blake Shelton Review: It's not hard to figure out why Blake Shelton is leading country's next generation of stars. He's a blue-eyed CMT dreamboat with a famous girlfriend (Miranda Lambert), and he's equally adept at schmaltz-dipped ballads and laugh-out-loud novelty hits. His fifth album leans toward slow, thoughtful stuff, like "Home Sweet Home," in which Shelton flees the Nashville circus for the comforts of a breadbasket backwater. But he's at his best in funny songs like "Green," a proud-to-be-a-redneck anthem... Rating: 3.5 Stars
The Doors - Live at the Matrix
Artist: The Doors Review: The Doors were still a club band in the late winter and spring of 1967 — not yet stars, not quite spectacle, reliant on blues and R&B covers to get through a whole evening on the bandstand. Stuck in a long limbo between the January release of their debut album, The Doors, and the summertime explosion of their second single, "Light My Fire," the group played discothèques in Los Angeles and New York and, during a legendary engagement that March, more than a dozen sets over five nights... Rating: 4 Stars
Powderfinger - Dream Days At The Hotel Existence
Artist: Powderfinger Review: "I was bored listening to the same chords," Powderfinger's Bernard Fanning sings in "Lost and Running." He doesn't mean it. The Australian band, together since the mid-Nineties, spiritually hails from an older intersection: mid-Eighties U2 and (no shock, given Powderfinger's name) the fuzz-toned Seventies of Neil Young's Crazy Horse. The best songs here do not stray far. Dirty-guitar shriek and burnt jangle fortify Fanning's earnest romanticism in "Head Up in the Clouds" and "Long Way to Go."... Rating: 3 Stars
School Of Seven Bells - Alpinisms
Artist: School Of Seven Bells Review: This New York trio of ex-Secret Machines guitarist Benjamin Curtis and twins Alejandra and Claudia Deheza is the sum of hip contradictions: om-drone modernism coated with the Dehezas' antique vocal blur of Gentle Giant's prog-choir counterpoint and the harmonies of a medieval Shangri-Las. The effect is warm goth — New Order with more eros. "Chain" veers close to electro-candy Madonna, but the Neu-like zoom and robot-nun chanting in "Sempiternal/Amaranth" are more beguiling, like an evening... Rating: 3.5 Stars
Anya Marina - Slow & Steady Seduction: Phase II
Artist: Anya Marina Review: Anya Marina's childlike voice doesn't jibe with her randy album title. But that doesn't stop the San Diego singer from growling come-ons on "Afterparty at Jimmy's" ("You got soul onstage, boy/How about soul in the sack?") or purring like Jessica Rabbit on the cabaret-style "All the Same to Me." She dials it back on "Vertigo," a sweet ode to a dizzying dude. With blippy drum loops, it sounds like a play date with a Casio — proof that Marina still has G-rated fun. Rating: 3 Stars
Tobacco - Fucked Up Friends
Artist: Tobacco Review: Tobacco's Tom Fec just made one of the year's best stoner-rock records — only it's powered by synths, hip-hop beats and vocoders instead of guitars. Moonlighting from his electronic psych-rock band Black Moth Super Rainbow, Fec crafts spectacular, Air-style instrumentals ("Pink Goo") and expertly spins reedy Mellotrons into indelible hooks ("Hawker Boat"). Bonus points for lyrics that get lost in pot-smoke profundity: "Honey Bunches of Oats is the greatest cereal ever." Rating: 3.5 Stars
Death Cab For Cutie - Something About Airplanes (Deluxe Edition)
Artist: Death Cab For Cutie Review: A strange and beautiful thing happens on this reissue's bonus live disc. During the first song of their maiden Seattle show, in 1998, Death Cab play "Your Bruise" with the melancholy precision that later became their hallmark. Not every cut on their debut is that assured: Guitarist-producer Chris Walla hadn't yet mastered the studio, and singer Ben Gibbard's articulate moodiness isn't consistently memorable. But on the lovely, cello-adorned "Bend to Squares," the band creeps along with deliberat... Rating: 3.5 Stars
Various Artists - Love Train: The Sound of Philadelphia
Artist: Various Artists Review: Founded in 1971 by local R & B writer-producers Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff, Philadelphia International Records was designed to be a hit factory — a Motown with East Coast swagger, a Stax with silken swing — and this four-CD history tells the tale as they intended. Opening with a smash — the Soul Survivors' "Expressway (To Your Heart)," a 1967 blast of psychedelic funk from Gamble and Huff's freelance years — Love Train keeps on giving with dozens of top R&B and pop... Rating: 4.5 Stars
Anya Marina - Slow and Steady Seduction: Phase II
Artist: Anya Marina Review: Anya Marina's childlike voice doesn't jibe with her randy album title. But that doesn't stop the San Diego singer from growling come-ons on "Afterparty at Jimmy's" ("You got soul onstage, boy/How about soul in the sack?") or purring like Jessica Rabbit on the cabaret-style "All the Same to Me." She dials it back on "Vertigo," a sweet ode to a dizzying dude. With blippy drum loops, it sounds like a play date with a Casio — proof that Marina still has G-rated fun. Rating: 3 Stars
Pavement - Brighten The Corners: Nicene Creedence Edition
Artist: Pavement Review: In 1997, these slacker romantics slowed things down and serenaded their fans, delivering an album short on noise and long on artfully dissonant ballads. Stephen Malkmus worked softy sentimentality even into his funniest lines, rhyming "quasar in the mist" with "kaiser has a cyst" ("Stereo"). With a second disc of bonus material — including classic B sides like the insanely catchy "Harness Your Hopes" and welcome ditties like "Destroy Mater Dei" — this reissue bonanza shows the Nineti... Rating: 4.5 Stars
Fall Out Boy - Folie a Deux
Artist: Fall Out Boy Review: Fall out Boy have become the kings of emo — without actually showing much emotion. Sure, they make all the signature emo moves: Singer Patrick Stump bellows cries of hurt, catalogs of grievances and confessions of inadequacy over guitars that hurtle toward big choruses. The group's fourth album, Folie à Deux, begins in high-angst mode, with him crooning "I'm coming apart at the seams" over a funereal organ. But behind the melodrama there is a smirk. In the galloping "Disloyal Order... Rating: 3.5 Stars
Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavillion
Artist: Animal Collective Review: Like the Grateful Dead before them, the psychedelic heads of Animal Collective are evolving from raging sonic hallucinations into gentler, more melodic trips. The ninth disc from this Brooklyn/Baltimore crew tries balancing shameless beauty with ecstatic weirdness, and when they nail it, it's breathtaking. "Summertime Clothes" is a swirling pastoral with dance-music thrust, while "Guys Eyes" is a cauldron of the Pet Sounds vocal fractals. "Lion in a Coma" and "No More Runnin" get lost in their... Rating: 3.5 Stars
A.C. Newman - Get Guilty
Artist: A.C. Newman Review: Between his solo output and his work with the New Pornographers, Carl Newman has turned out five records in six years — pretty prolific for a guy who seems to spend loads of time crafting his songs. Newman's second solo album shuffles between power pop and mild psychedelia while tossing in horns and coed harmonies. Get Guilty isn't quite as consistent as a typical Pornographers record, but the arrangements are lusher. And like all Newman records, it shows off his smarts and maintains a... Rating: 3.5 Stars
Ladyhawke - Ladyhawke
Artist: Ladyhawke Review: For Phillips "Pip" Brown, the New Zealand-born singer-songwriter known as Ladyhawke, 1985 is not merely a year: It's a career choice. Ladyhawke — the name comes from a Matthew Broderick fantasy film released in, yep, 1985 — is a retro fetishist, slathering her songs in synthesizer fanfares and thudding drum machines that precisely evoke the mid-Eighties sound of Pat Benatar, Kim Wilde and the Top Gun soundtrack. Ladyhawke is a skillful craftswoman, and in songs like the grandiose... Rating: 2.5 Stars
Anthony Hamilton - The Point Of It All
Artist: Anthony Hamilton Review: Most of today's gold-plated R&B stars are ideally suited to economic boom times. Anthony Hamilton is a down-home sort: a man to help you muddle through a recession. "We don't have to worry 'bout no groceries/We can fill up on love alone," he sings on "Cool," from his sixth album. The least flashy of the neosoul singers that emerged in the Nineties, Hamilton still has a Seventies jones (check out the Curtis Mayfield impersonation in "The News"). But his real calling card is solace, emotional and... Rating: 3 Stars
Plies - Da REAList
Artist: Plies Review: Do you like Young Jeezy but think he's a little soft? Then this Florida MC and self-avowed "goon" is for you. Da Realist is Plies' second album of 2008, coming on the heels of the gold-selling Definition of Real. Over minimalist hand claps and kick drums, Plies dishes singsong choruses and asserts his goon-itude: On the creepy "All Black," he dreams of when he can "kill my first rap nigga . . . all head shots." Changes of pace include "Spend the Night," a pop-friendly sex jam where Plies tells a... Rating: 2 Stars
Titus Andronicus - The Airing of Grievances
Artist: Titus Andronicus Review: Named for an obscure Shakespeare play and flaunting song titles like "Albert Camus," this fivesome of suburban punks are proud nerds. But they know when to kick ass: "Fear and Loathing in Mahwah, NJ" sounds like a kiss-off ballad, until the 23-year-old singer-songwriter Patrick Stickles stops short and bellows "Fuck you!" with his bandmates and they hurtle into a breakneck Celtic rocker that recalls the Pogues at their most raucous. There's emo in the tortured lyrics and E Street Band in the arr... Rating: 3.5 Stars
The Derek Trucks Band - Already Free
Artist: The Derek Trucks Band Review: Derek Trucks could very well be the best guitarist of his generation, and his sixth studio disc is his band's most accessible blues-rock set to date. Trucks hones the R&B, jazz and Middle Eastern influences of his previous outings into a tight groove on?Already Free. It kicks off with a gritty, swamp-boogie take on Dylan's "Down in the Flood" and stomps through a cover of the Southern-soul classic "Sweet Inspiration." The originals pull their weight, from the dusty, field-recording vibe of the... Rating: 3.5 Stars
Nalepa Tadeusz
Przyczepa, przylepa - prostacko i do rymu. Po latach Tadeusz Nalepa śmiał się z tych przezwisk, ale w szkole bardzo mu przeszkadzały....
Death Cab For Cutie - Something About Airplanes (Deluxe Edition)
Artist: Death Cab For Cutie Review: A strange and beautiful thing happens on this reissue's bonus live disc. During the first song of their maiden Seattle show, in 1998, Death Cab play "Your Bruise" with the melancholy precision that later became their hallmark. Not every cut on their debut is that assured: Guitarist-producer Chris Walla hadn't yet mastered the studio, and singer Ben Gibbard's articulate moodiness isn't consistently memorable. But on the lovely, cello-adorned "Bend to Squares," the band creeps along with deliberat... Rating: 3.5 Stars
Lucinda Williams - Little Honey
Artist: Lucinda Williams Review: "Is your death wish stronger than you are?" Lucinda Williams asks in "Little Rock Star," a cautionary song swathed in guitar noise that someone should instant-message to Pete Doherty, Ryan Adams and Amy Winehouse. While it shows that the 55-year-old barbed-wire country singer is wary of rock's trappings, Little Honey proves she's still crushed out on the music. On "Real Love," amid boogie-rock riffing, she alternately pledges her heart to a guy, a girl and an electric guitar. And "Honey Bee"... Rating: 4 Stars
School Of Seven Bells - Alpinisms
Artist: School Of Seven Bells Review: This New York trio of ex-Secret Machines guitarist Benjamin Curtis and twins Alejandra and Claudia Deheza is the sum of hip contradictions: om-drone modernism coated with the Dehezas' antique vocal blur of Gentle Giant's prog-choir counterpoint and the harmonies of a medieval Shangri-Las. The effect is warm goth — New Order with more eros. "Chain" veers close to electro-candy Madonna, but the Neu-like zoom and robot-nun chanting in "Sempiternal/Amaranth" are more beguiling, like an evening... Rating: 3.5 Stars
Scouting For Girls
Męskie trio z Londynu zdołało już nie raz i nie dwa zawojować, w ciągu zaledwie trzech lat swojej scenicznej aktywności, w czołówkach zestawień brytyjskich bestsellerów. ...
Living Colour
Czwórka czarnoskórych Amerykanów nigdy nie okupowała pierwszych miejsc list przebojów. Nie sprzedali porażającej liczby albumów. Mimo to są grupą kultową, mają sporą grupę oddanych fanów....
Conor Oberst - Conor Oberst
Artist: Conor Oberst Review: On last year's "Cassadaga," Conor Oberst left his home in New York to wander the country's byways. On his latest album, recorded in Mexico, the Omaha, Nebraska, native is still drifting, having ditched both his Bright Eyes moniker and longtime producer Mike Mogis. A rough-hewn, death-haunted travelogue, this set proves that while you can run from home, you can't run from yourself. And sometimes that's OK. Largely, this is the introspective folk rock of Bright Eyes, though there's some welcome... Rating: 3.5 Stars
Miley Cyrus - Breakout
Artist: Miley Cyrus Review: History teaches us not to dismiss kiddie pop. Stevie Wonder was once Little Stevie Wonder, just as Lil Wayne was once little Lil Wayne, child gangsta rapper. And let's not forget ex-Mouseketeers Britney and Justin. Purists disdain teenybopper music as cynical pap, foisted on the young by Svengalis who lurk in the shadows, counting money. But bubblegum can be a great farm system, honing skills that pay dividends in later life. Lately, Disney's kiddie pop has been plenty profitable, with High... Rating: 3.5 Stars
Sigur Rós
O muzyce Sigur Rós mówi się, iż jak mało która na świecie elementami niezwykłości i cudowności przyciąga wielkie zastępy śmiertelników....
Toots and the Maytals, Light Your Light
Toots' voice sounds just as captivating as it did in the 60s.
Joe Higgs, Life Of Contradiction
A work of astonishing depths and bruised, aching humanity.
Death Vessel - Nothing is Precious Enough For Us
Artist: Death Vessel Review: No, Joel Thibodeau is not a girl. Though the Death Vessel mastermind, whose falsetto matches his pixielike stature and long hair, is probably used to people making that mistake. On Thibodeau's Sub Pop debut, his voice is as delicate as Juliana Hatfield's, threading wispy notes into haunting ballads that crib from the backwoods folk of acts like Iron and Wine. The result evokes a makeshift jam session in an Appalachian cabin: fingerpicked ditties like "Block My Eye" and "Jitterakadie" use railroa... Rating: 3.5 Stars
Motley Crue - Saints Of Los Angeles
Artist: Motley Crue Review: All the filth and fury of their Eighties heyday, finally funneled into an album Mötley Cüe have created a cottage industry out of rehashing their excesses: Their tales of debauchery have already fueled dozens of books and a standard-bearing episode of Behind the Music. Now they've woven those stories into their first album in eight years. Inspired by their 2001 sleazeography, The Dirt, Saints of Los Angeles finds Vince Neil flashing back to the band's golden age: gigging on the... Rating: 3 Stars
Genesis - Genesis: 1970-1975
Artist: Genesis Review: At first, Genesis were five English ex-boarding-school mates playing complex songs about hogweed and Greek myth. They slimmed that audacity into platinum pop as members left: guitarist Anthony Phillips (1970), singer Peter Gabriel (1975) and guitarist Steve Hackett (1977). But bassist Mike Rutherford, keyboardist Tony Banks and drummer Phil Collins were never as compelling later as they were in the band that made the five LPs in this box. The country-cathedral air of 1970's Trespass and the... Rating: 4.5 Stars
U2 - War
Artist: U2 Review: From the beginning, U2 aspired to profound ecstasy. But it took Bono, the Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr. a while to get there. Two of U2's first three albums are undeniable classics: 1980's precociously magnificent Boy for its proudly spiritual optimism in the thick of post-punk nihilism and for the Edge's reveille-treble guitar; 1983's War for its arena-rock muscle tone (honed over three years of touring) and the matured blend of soldier's ardor and pop wile in the singles "Sunday... Rating: 4.5 Stars
Pavement - Brighten The Corners: Nicene Creedence Edition
Artist: Pavement Review: In 1997, these slacker romantics slowed things down and serenaded their fans, delivering an album short on noise and long on artfully dissonant ballads. Stephen Malkmus worked softy sentimentality even into his funniest lines, rhyming "quasar in the mist" with "kaiser has a cyst" ("Stereo"). With a second disc of bonus material — including classic B sides like the insanely catchy "Harness Your Hopes" and welcome ditties like "Destroy Mater Dei" — this reissue bonanza shows the Nineti... Rating: 4.5 Stars
Waglewski, Fisz i Emade
Ojciec i dwaj synowie. Legenda rocka i legendy hip hopu - razem tworzą historię. ...
Ponto De Equilibrio , Abre La Janela
Abre a Janela is a good inroad to reggae from the less conservative end of the 'world' music scene.
The Notwist, Devil, You & Me
A masterpiece of electronic songcraft.
T.Love
Grupa nagrywała swój debiutancki album w najlepszym wówczas studiu w Polsce - S4 w Warszawie przy ulicy Woronicza. Nie obyło się bez spięć, bowiem producentem materiału był Jerzy Regulski, pracujący wcześniej z Perfectem i Bajmem....