The Courteeners, St Jude
A northern band with a lead singer who has an outspoken opinion?
Ladytron, Velocifero
If there's any justice, Velocifero will catapult Ladytron out of their decade-long cult status into deserved commercial success.
Buena Vista Social Club - Buena Vista Social Club at Carnegie Hall
Artist: Buena Vista Social Club Review: In 1998, the aging members of this Cuban collective realized a lifelong dream: playing to a sold-out audience at Carnegie Hall. That show, captured on this two-disc set, is even more emotionally engaging than the group's eponymous album, which triggered a worldwide Latin-jazz revival. Highlights include a fiery vocal workout on "El Cuarto de Tula"; the intoxicating folk of "Orgullecida," featuring Ry Cooder's Hawaiian-style slide guitar; the wistful bolero "Dos Gardenias," sung with delicate nua... Rating: 4.5 Stars
U2 - October
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 Stars
Katy Perry - One Of The Boys
Artist: Katy Perry Review: "I hope you hang yourself with your H&M scarf/While jacking off listening to Mozart," Katy Perry tells her metrosexual ex on "Ur So Gay." Risqué words, coming from the daughter of two Christian pastors who only let her listen to gospel tunes as a kid. Now 23, the L.A. singer bucks the WWJD'ers with a debut full of mall-punky, grrrl-power tunes produced by Glen Ballard (Alanis Morissette) and Dr. Luke (Avril Lavigne). But her attention-grabbing doesn't feel very rebellious: On the New Wave-y club... Rating: 2 Stars
Razorlight
Pierwsza zasada PR mówi: nieważne, co mówią, ważne, by w ogóle mówili. Tej lekcji wokalista kwartetu Razorlight Johnny Borrell wysłuchał z aż nazbyt należytą uwagą. ...
Cage The Elephant, Cage The Elephant
If you want to release some good time rock 'n' roll, listen to this album.
Weezer, The Red Album
The Red Album is quintessentially theirs, but with a somewhat misguided twist
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
Tunng
Zaczęło się w 2003 r. od dwóch pasjonatów muzycznego eksperymentowania Mike?a Lindsaya i Sama Gendera. Zamknięci w piwnicy tworzyli swoje pierwsze folkowe kawałki. Tak powstał londyński zespół Tunng, który po cudownym rozmnożeniu stał się...
Vanessa Hudgens - Identified
Artist: Vanessa Hudgens 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 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
Tapes 'n Tapes - Walk It Off
Artist: Tapes 'n Tapes Review: It may strut its funky virtuosity like Prince, threaten to collapse in a drunken heap like the Replacements or rage like Hüsker Dü, but Minneapolis rock is always tuneful — an important comfort to folks freezing their nuts off most of the year. On the follow-up to their 2006 debut, The Loon, Minnesota's Tapes 'n Tapes hew to tradition, conjuring the Hüskers on "Le Ruse," a tirade on betrayal, with guitars and cymbals swarming like late-summer mosquitoes. Flaming Lips producer... Rating: 3 Stars
Mattafix, Rhythm and Hymns
This has its share of pop hooks, but attempts to square this with Mattafix's world music sympathies don?t always come off.
Creedence Clearwater Revival - Willy and the Poor Boys
Artist: Creedence Clearwater Revival Review: Hailing from El Cerrito, California, Creedence Clearwater Revival should've logically been another hippie collective waving flowers in neighboring San Francisco. As these 40th-anniversary editions suggest, leader John Fogerty instead invented an alternate identity for his band based on its otherwise unremarkable 1968 debut album's rumbling reinvention of a rock oldie. His singing voice swollen with the exaggerated vowels and slurred consonants of shouting Southern bluesmen, Fogerty discovered... Rating: 4 Stars
Metallica
Historię muzyków, którzy szturmem podbijają rynek, stając się dziś najbardziej rozpoznawalnym metalowym zespołem znają wszyscy. Może lepiej więc spojrzeć na Metallikę pod kątem ukazującej się właśnie płyty "Death Magnetic"?...
The Corrections, Repeat After Me
This is a likeable but underwhelming album: Coldplay won't lose any sleep.
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
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
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
Cure, The
Trzydzieści lat minęło jak jeden dzień. Dawniej jedni z prekursorów zimnej fali, dziś żywa legenda stanowiąca inspirację dla niezliczonej ilości artystów....