Arriving in the U.S. a year after its U.K. release, Electric Six's second album, Señor Smoke, shows that it'll take more than having been without a record deal in their own country to derail them. After all, they've survived a name change and taken more than a few lineup shifts in stride. Through it all, they've displayed a very Detroit kind of scrappiness and sense of humor that is stronger than ever in their music (though it's hard to expect anything less from a band that names one of its B-sides "I Am Detroit"). The foundations of their sound still come from disco, synth pop, glam, and arena rock -- genres that had their last heydays several decades ago, which is oddly fitting for a band from a city often portrayed as having its best days in the past. Police sirens blare over Señor Smoke's first two tracks, and the electro-tinged "Devil Nights" pays homage to one of Detroit's most notorious "holidays" and the city's pioneering electronic music in one fell swoop. Dick Valentine is as charismatic and campy as ever, singing "live" as "lee-uhv" and "city" as "cit-ay," and selling lyrics like "be my dark angel/be my Capri Sun" and "I'm a man, not a disco ball!" Yet Señor Smoke doesn't just sound like Fire warmed-over. While it doesn't have a monster single like "Danger! High Voltage" or even "Gay Bar," overall Señor Smoke is a sharper, more focused album that somehow manages to be zany with a serious undercurrent. Electric Six find value in what is supposed to be trash and vice versa, taking aim at and sending up presidents, pop culture, conspicuous consumption, and media saturation. As on Fire, they make their points with heroic doses of tongue-in-cheek humor and sincere camp. On "Rock and Roll Evacuation," "Iraq" is rhymed with "rock" (as in "you don't know how to"), while "Bite Me" is as much about siphoning gas as it is about sex. "Jimmy Carter" is the album's power ballad, and the Electric Six equivalent of "Under the Bridge" (although this song is intentionally over-the-top); "Future Boys," meanwhile, rattles off a list of pod-person-like corporate lackeys to jerky new-new wave. Señor Smoke plays like a concept album, moving from darker, rock-based tracks to more playful, plastic synth pop like the brilliantly named closer, "The Future Is in the Future." Even the cover of Queen's "Radio Ga Ga" fits in well with the album's overall themes. Like Fire, Señor Smoke runs out of steam toward the end; for the first half of the album, it's hard to keep up with them, but by the second half, it's hard for them to keep it up. Nevertheless, this is Electric Six's strongest work to date, and the fans who have stuck with them through their trials and tribulations won't be disappointed.
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Sandwiched in between Third Reich and Roll, Eskimo, and The Commercial Album, Duck Stab/Buster & Glen hasn't always received the fanfare of other late-'70s Residents material. It's one of the few that isn't a concept album and probably the least experimental of the bunch. Still, it's quintessential Residents' rock -- which is to say, it's like nothing else on the planet. Few of the songs last longer than a couple of minutes, and only a few instruments can be heard at any given time. Rather than relying on guitars, the Residents stick to the relatively primitive synthesizers and electronic gadgets of their time. Chorus chants on "Bach Is Dead" meet with a melody that sounds like a cross between a sixth grader playing recorder and someone scratching on a balloon. Snakefinger's nasally vocals fit in all too well with their high-pitched electronica, which then somehow merges with funereal marching percussion. It seems annoying and stupid at first, but over time you feel compelled to listen again and again. Such is the glory of the Residents!

Instead of being a one-off comeback, 2002's Heathen turned out to be where David Bowie settled into a nice groove for his latter-day career, if 2003's Reality is any indication. Working once again with producer Tony Visconti, Bowie again returns to a sound from the past, yet tweaks it enough to make it seem modern, not retro. Last time around, he concentrated on his early-'70s sound, creating an amalgam of Hunky Dory through Heroes. With Reality, he picks up where he left off, choosing to revise the sound of Heroes through Scary Monsters, with the latter functioning as a sonic blueprint for the album. Basically, Reality is a well-adjusted Scary Monsters, minus the paranoia and despair -- and if those two ingredients were key to the feeling and effect of that album, it's a credit to Bowie that he's found a way to retain the sound and approach of that record, but turn it bright and cheerful and keep it interesting. Since part of the appeal of Monsters is the creeping sense of unease and its icy detachment, it would seem that a warmer, mature variation on that would not be successful, but Bowie and Visconti are sharp record-makers, retaining what works -- layers of voices and guitars, sleek keyboards, coolly propulsive rhythms -- and tying them to another strong set of songs. Like Heathen, the songs deliberately recall classic Bowie by being both tuneful and adventurous, both hallmarks of his '70s work. If this isn't as indelible as anything he cut during that decade, that's merely the fate of mature work by veteran rockers. So, Reality doesn't have the shock of the new, but it does offer some surprises, chief among them the inventive, assured production and memorable songs. It's a little artier than Heathen, but similar in its feel and just as satisfying. Both records are testaments to the fact that veteran rockers can make satisfyingly classicist records without resulting in nostalgia or getting too comfortable. With any luck, Bowie will retain this level of quality for a long time to come.
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The "unofficial" subtitle of this CD is "music for multi media installations." All that to say that the songs on this release date back to 1990 and were used as part of Sylvian and Russell Mills' exhibit Ember Glance-The Permanence of Memory (1990) and 1994's Redemption-Approaching Silence, which was done by Sylvian and Robert Fripp. Since the music is ambient at its finest, the dates of recording do not matter. The question is does this music stand up on its own, apart from the exhibit. The answer is a resounding yes! Sylvian produces original and interesting ambient music. The selections are long ("Approaching Silence" is over 38 minutes long) yet never get boring. It is to Sylvian's credit that he can keep the listener interested for that long with this genre of music. Sylvian uses instruments and sounds to create his own creative ambient music. The short-wave samples, for example, add an eeriness in "The Beekeeper's Apprentice," which adds to the overall sound of the piece. This music is not for every taste, but fans of Sylvian and ambient music will find this to be a treat.

New Adventures in Hi-Fi was recorded during and after the tour in support of Monster in 1995. The material on the album mixed the acoustic and country feel of much of Out of Time and Automatic for the People with the rock sound of Monster and Lifes Rich Pageant. Guitarist Peter Buck said that the band tried so hard to be a rock band again with Monster, but it just didn't quite work out. They stopped trying, and they ended up putting together their most rock and roll record to date. In the years following its release, the band called the album one of its favorites.

Recorded during and immediately following R.E.M.'s disaster-prone Monster tour, New Adventures in Hi-Fi feels like it was recorded on the road. Not only are all of Michael Stipe's lyrics on the album about moving or travel, the sound is ragged and varied, pieced together from tapes recorded at shows, soundtracks, and studios, giving it a loose, careening charm. New Adventures has the same spirit of much of R.E.M.'s IRS records, but don't take the title of New Adventures in Hi-Fi lightly R.E.M. tries different textures and new studio tricks.

It isn't without reason that Red Mecca is often referred to as one of Cabaret Voltaire's most cohesive and brilliant records. There are tangible bumpers (the record is buttressed by squealing/wheezing interpretations of Henry Mancini's music for Orson Welles' Touch of Evil), so by that aspect there's a tangible center. And taken as a whole, the record contains all the characteristics that have made the Sheffield group such an influential entity when it comes to electronic music of the untethered, experimental variety that isn't afraid to shake its tail a little. Unlike a fair portion of CV's studio output, Red Mecca features no failed experiments or anything that could be merely cast off as "interesting." It's a taught, dense, horrific slab lacking a lull. Dashes of Richard H. Kirk's synthesizer are welded to Chris Watson's tape effects for singed lashes of white noise, best heard on the lurching "Sly Doubt" and the jolting "Spread the Virus." Throughout, Mallinder's sinister jibber jabbering punctuates the high-pitched menace. What he's ranting about is rarely obvious, as the clarity of his voice is often obstructed by the tape effects, synth work, and other random whip-cracks (Watson's periodic surges of organ are another treat). Judging from his irritated tone, odds are the lyrics have little to do with bunnies jumping over dandelions or anything nearing pleasant -- it's that lack of definition that makes things all the more unsettling. Several tunes have a thick rhythmic drive. The instrumental "Landslide" is painfully short at two minutes, with a bopping machine beat and barely perceptible vocal samples that dart between the left and right channels. A grainy programmed rhythm and Kirk's sickly guitar manglings dominate the sleazy "Split Second Feeling." Sick, searing, engrossing. Along with 2X45 and The Living Legends, this is their best offering.

The Residents are true avant-garde crazies. Their earliest albums (of which this is the first) have precedents in Captain Beefheart's experimental albums, Frank Zappa's conceptual numbers from Freak Out, the work of Steve Reich and the compositions of chance music tonemeister John Cage -- yet the Residents' work of this time really sounds like nothing else that exists. All of the music on this release consists of deconstructions of countless rock and non-rock styles, which are then grafted together to create chaotic, formless, seemingly haphazard numbers; the first six "songs" (including a fragment from the Nancy Sinatra hit "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'") are strung together to form a larger entity similar in concept to the following lengthier selections. The result is a series of unique, odd, challenging numbers that manage not to be entirely successful. The album cover is a fierce burlesque of the Beatles' first U.S. Capitol label release, sporting puerilely doctored photographs of the Fab Four on the front and pictures of collarless-suited sea denizens on the back (identified as Paul McCrawfish, Ringo Starfish, and the like). This is an utterly bizarre platter that may appeal to very adventurous listeners.

Pearl Jam’s new album marks the band’s first studio release in nearly four

years and is the first studio album to be released through their new label,
J Records.

“It’s a very special opportunity for us to work with a band that possesses
such an historic legacy,” comments J Records founder and BMG U.S. Label
Group Chairman Clive Davis.

The album was produced and mixed by Adam Kasper and Pearl Jam at Studio X
in Seattle, Washington. Kasper co-produced Pearl Jam’s 2002 release, Riot
Act.

Since their inception in 1991, Pearl Jam has sold nearly 60 million albums
worldwide, including millions of live bootlegs. The band has released 7
studio records, 2 live records, one double-disc b-sides record, and one
double-disc greatest hits record.

We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions is an unusual Bruce Springsteen album in a number of ways. First, it's the first covers album Springsteen has recorded in his three-decade career, which is a noteworthy event in itself, but that's not the only thing different about We Shall Overcome. Springsteen, a notorious perfectionist who has been known to tweak and rework albums numerous times before releasing them (or scrapping them, as the case may be), pulled together the album quickly, putting aside a planned second volume of the rarities collection Tracks after discovering a set of recordings he made in 1997 for a Pete Seeger tribute album called Where Have All the Flowers Gone: The Songs of Pete Seeger. Enthralled by this handful of tracks -- one of which, "We Shall Overcome," appeared on the tribute -- Springsteen decided to cut a whole album of folk tunes popularized by Pete Seeger. He rounded up 13 musicians, including some who played on those 1997 sessions, and did two one-day sessions in late 2005 and early 2006, swiftly releasing the resulting album that April. As Bruce stresses in his introductory liner notes, these were live recordings, done with no rehearsals, and We Shall Overcome does indeed have an unmistakably loose feel, and not just because you can hear the Boss call out chord changes in a handful of songs. This music is rowdy and rambling, as the group barrels head-first into songs that they're playing together as a band for the first time, and it's hard not to get swept up along in their excitement. Springsteen has made plenty of great records, but We Shall Overcome is unique in its sheer kinetic energy; he has never made a record that feels as alive as this.
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This 22-cut double-disc set finally gets at it. Issuing a single disc of Dire Straits and Mark Knopfler would be a silly thing at best and a hopelessly frustrating one at worst. When the band burst on the scene with "Sultans of Swing," there was a lot happening in rock music, but most of it was under the radar and remains forgotten except in the historic annals of music fanatics. Knopfler and his band were full of rock & roll romance and proved it through their first four recordings time and again. They couldn't help but become superstars and mainstays of MTV. But there is another story told on this best-of, which begins with "Telegraph Road." The story-songs Knopfler wrote were always the best anyway, and this set is full of them, from "Sultans" to "Romeo & Juliet," "Skateaway," "So Far Away," "Walk of Life," and (of course) "Brothers in Arms," which made for the most dramatic marriage of the little screen and rock music when it was featured in the closing sequence of an episode of Miami Vice. But there are many other stops along the way, like "Private Investigations," "Sailing to Philadelphia," "Going Home" (from Local Hero), and "The Long Road" (from Cal). But "On Every Street," "Calling Elvis," and "What It Is" are here, too, making for a wonderfully rounded if argumentative best-of collection that goes the distance and explains sonically what all the fuss was about in the first place. There's the guitar sound that's as much Tony Joe White as it is J.J. Cale and Billy Gibbons, and the elegance of James Burton and Chet Atkins. There is soul, pathos, drama, and a bittersweet memory that Van Morrison first evoked on Astral Weeks and Saint Dominic's Preview. There is a new cut here as well, a duet with Emmylou Harris called "All the Roadrunning," taken from an upcoming collaborative album, and it's nice -- beautiful, in fact -- and keeps the line of continuity and excellence in perspective. This is not only a fine collection for fans because of its wonderful sequencing, but the best introduction to the man and the band that one could ask for.
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The titles in Legacy's 16 Biggest Hits series have been so well done otherwise that it is surprising its Johnny Cash title is such a disappointment. While many of Cash's biggest hits, among them "Ring of Fire," "Understand Your Man," and "A Boy Named Sue," are included, so are minor hits and songs that were not hits at all. Not that there's anything wrong with tracks like "I Still Miss Someone" and "The Legend of John Henry's Hammer," it's just that they are not appropriate to an album of this name. Cash had 13 number one country hits between 1956 and 1976; you'll only find eight of them here.
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The Breeders are an American rock band, formed in 1988 as a side project for Kim Deal of Pixies and Tanya Donelly of Throwing Muses.

The album spawned the hit "Cannonball." Cannonball hit #2 on the Billboard Modern Rock Charts, and the album "Last Splash" was certified Platinum thereafter.

The Breeders have a unique style of music in my opinion, and this album LAST SPLASH is undoubtably one of my favorites, if not my favorite alternative album of the 90's. It's perfect, its infectuous and endearing, it's everything an album should be, and what I wish music was more like today.

In the wake of Brit-pop's unraveling and the legitimization of prog rock by Radiohead and Spiritualized, Gomez was seen as the future of Brit-rock upon their debut. Bring It On was caught between those two poles: traditionalist on one hand, yet striving for a larger goal. Gomez's secondhand appropriations of American music, crossed with ambling arrangements and a hazy atmosphere indigenous to home recordings, won them a larger audience who expected the group's second album, Liquid Skin, to be a great breakthrough. They may be disappointed to find that it's not. Instead, Liquid Skin is a cleaner, more streamlined version of the debut; it's clear that the band made the move from the garage into a professional studio. In doing so, they wound up with a dead ringer for Pearl Jam's No Code, in which America's best traditionalist band of the '90s strove for a glorious, pan-ethnic mess and pretty much succeeded. Liquid Skin doesn't rival No Code, not just because Gomez isn't as passionate, but also because Pearl Jam didn't sound as self-conscious or predictable when they decided to stretch out. Throughout the record, Gomez betrays their age, playing music that they believe to be experimental or rootsy, but not quite going far enough in either direction. This was true of Bring It On as well, but the cleaner sound and improved focus brings these factors to the forefront. And, frankly, that's not such a bad thing, either. In this context, they might not seem as adventurous (and, therefore, important), but they do bring back varying strands in interesting ways. They still seem to be trying too hard, and treading water in doing so. Still, Liquid Skin will satisfy fans of the first record, just as it will undoubtedly frustrate those who didn't get with them the first time.
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On their debut album, Bring It On, England's Gomez introduce their original take on bluesy roots rock. Unlike Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, this isn't amphetamine-fueled freak-out music but similar at times to Beck's acoustic-based work (One Foot in the Grave), with more going on vocally. The band has a total of three strong vocalists, who can switch from pretty harmonies to gutsy blues outpourings in the blink of an eye. The band manages to cover a lot of ground convincingly on Bring It On, which is unusual, since it commonly takes bands the course of a few releases to hone their sound. The three British singles released from the album are definite highlights -- "Get Myself Arrested," "Whippin' Piccadilly," and "78 Stone Wobble," the latter containing a beautifully haunting acoustic guitar riff similar to Nirvana's unplugged version of the Meat Puppets' "Plateau." All the praise that Gomez's debut received is definitely not hype. The album is consistently great, as proven by such tracks as "Tijuana Lady," "Love Is Better Than a Warm Trombone," and "Get Myself Arrested."

To think that David Gilmour waited 22 years to record his third solo album is a pretty solid indicator that he's not the kind of bloke to merely cash in on his name. After all, he's the guy who sold his house for four million English pounds and gave the money to charity. Perhaps now that the Pink Floyd reunion happened and he and Roger Waters are at least civil to one another, the Floyd enigma can finally find its way into the annals of history and rock legend. Of course, this brings listeners to On an Island. Those wanting something edgy and dramatic will have to wait. Some of the more misanthropic Floyd heads (and there are many) will give voice to their ire that he's written six of these ten tunes with his wife, Polly Samson, who also plays a bit of piano and sings here. You can hear them now -- "She's the new Yoko Ono!" -- at which point the pair will rightfully smile, quietly and bemusedly. Musically, On an Island is mostly a laid-back, utterly elegant English record. It has the feel of taking place between twilight and dawn. There are a few rumblers here to upset the balance of tranquility and stillness, like flashes of heat lightning across the dark skies, but they only add dimension to these proceedings. Produced by Gilmour, Phil Manzanera (who appears on keyboards a lot), and Chris Thomas, the album features guest spots from the likes of Richard Wright, Robert Wyatt, B.J. Cole, Floyd/Sly Stone drummer Andy Newmark, Georgie Fame, David Crosby and Graham Nash, Jools Holland, Willie Wilson, and many others.

Fire Engine - Warrior Tribe - Old Mule Skinner
Family Affair - Woman Dream - I Got A Right
Gimme Some Skin - Rock Action - Modern Guy
Run Like A Villain - Eat Or Be Eaten - Sixteen
Love Bone - The Winter Of My Discontent
Puppet World - One For My Baby - Hassles
Flesh & Blood - I’m Crying - I’m Alright
You Really Got Me - Batman Theme
Louie Louie/Hang On Sloopy
No Fun/Waiting For My Man - 96 Tears.

In addition to being bandmates within Miles Davis' mid-'50s quintet, John Coltrane (tenor sax) and Red Garland (piano) head up a session featuring members from a concurrent version of the Red Garland Trio: Paul Chambers (bass) and Art Taylor (drums). This was the second date to feature the core of this band. A month earlier, several sides were cut that would end up on Coltrane's Lush Life album. Soultrane offers a sampling of performance styles and settings from Coltrane and crew. As with a majority of his Prestige sessions, there is a breakneck-tempo bop cover (in this case an absolute reworking of Irving Berlin's "Russian Lullaby"), a few smoldering ballads (such as "I Want to Talk About You" and "Theme for Ernie"), as well as a mid-tempo romp ("Good Bait"). Each of these sonic textures displays a different facet of not only the musical kinship between Coltrane and Garland but in the relationship that Coltrane has with the music. The bop-heavy solos that inform "Good Bait," as well as the "sheets of sound" technique that was named for the fury in Coltrane's solos on the rendition of "Russian Lullaby" found here, contain the same intensity as the more languid and considerate phrasings displayed particularly well on "I Want to Talk About You." As time will reveal, this sort of manic contrast would become a significant attribute of Coltrane's unpredictable performance style. Not indicative of the quality of this set is the observation that, because of the astounding Coltrane solo works that both precede and follow Soultrane -- most notably Lush Life and Blue Train -- the album has perhaps not been given the exclusive attention it so deserves.
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Tigermilk is the 1996 debut album from Scottish pop group Belle & Sebastian.

The album is named after a song that didn't end up making the cut--an instrumental that was later performed numerous times on Belle & Sebastian's early tours. All of the songs on the album were written by Stuart Murdoch between 1993 and 1996, and originally performed solo on the Glasgow open mic circuit. Though he perfoms on the album, trumpet player Mick Cooke was not yet an official member of the band.

Split the Difference, the fourth album from Gomez, is a real return to basics for the band. The rampant sonic experimentalism that characterized In Our Gun is largely absent (although there are some excellent details down in the mix) in favor of some straight-up rock & roll. Working with someone outside the band for the first time, Gomez brought in Tchad Blake, and the result is their most straightforward rock album yet. The songs are lean, filled with great melodies, singalong choruses, and their trademark vocal harmonies. And there are some big sounds on this album, with some of the most muscular bass playing heard yet on a Gomez album, and killer guitar sounds: for instance, the super-crunchy overdriven guitar on "Where Ya Going?" that sounds more like a squall than a solo. Also, Olly Peacock's drumming should not go unmentioned, giving the songs just what they need, from the great shuffle groove of "These 3 Sins" to the driving "Where Ya Going?"; the man is a tasteful powerhouse. Gomez is a guitar band (count 'em, three guitar players), but they are nothing remotely resembling a jam band, despite having fans from that community. There is no endless jamming, or even prominent guitar solos to speak of. Actually, without really sounding like it at all, Split the Difference has the feel of Exile on Main St., in that it covers practically every kind of roots rock/rock & roll idiom with a certain effortlessness, all filtered through Gomez's strong personality. The Junior Kimbrough cover, "Meet Me in the City" drives this analogy home (not to mention "Sweet Virginia"), providing something of a similar change-of-pace interlude as "I Just Want to See His Face" off Exile, with both being positioned about two-thirds of the way into the album. The first two singles, "Catch Me Up" and "Silence" are catchy rockers, while "Sweet Virginia" (not the Stones' song) and "There It Was" should satisfy those who enjoy ballads like "Tijuana Lady" (which should not always be taken at face value with Gomez, by the way). Actually, there's not a weak song on the entire album. For those who have been waiting for Gomez to come up with something that truly rivals their amazing debut Bring It On, wait no longer. This one is great.
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