It feels like a bit of a cheat to write an article about the work of an artist who died in 1978 when I was supposed to be writing about an album from 1992, but it’s not my fault Chris Bell’s I Am the Cosmos was released more than thirteen years after his death, rescued […]
Document sits in a unique place in R.E.M.’s discography. It’s their final album with I.R.S. records, and it’s also the one that broke them through to the mainstream. While they’d been beloved in the “college rock” circles and had made a dent in the Mainstream Rock charts (“Fall on Me,” from 1986’s Lifes Rich Pageant, […]
When I was in college, one of the first ways I started discovering music I hadn’t heard before was by visiting AllMusic and looking for bands that influenced some of my favorites; finding connections between, say, Big Star and a host of power-pop type bands that came afterward, like the dB’s, Game Theory, or […]
Pearl Jam had one of the strangest careers of any of the major grunge acts in their first five years of existence. Their winding road took them to massive commercial success with debut Ten, an album that as much as any defines the grunge sound in the public memory (thanks to hits like “Alive,” “Even […]
New Adventures in Hi-Fi marks the end of an era. As the title quote, from final track “Electrolite,” indicates, the album (and that song specifically) is a bit of a send-off to the 20th century, a goodbye that might arrive a few years early but is still fond in its own ways of what […]
In so much of the popular imagination, especially among people of a certain age, Lyle Lovett is probably still best known as “that guy Julia Roberts married despite his face.” That’s a shame, because Lovett’s unique brand of bittersweet folk-rock country-fusion is one of a kind, making him a standout even among that set […]
A reviewer once wrote that Elisabeth Fraser sang “with the voice of God,” and I’m not sure you need to know much more about the Cocteau Twins than that. But I’ll tell you anyway: The Scottish band was formed in 1979 by Robin Guthrie and Will Heggie, although they didn’t really take off […]
Italo-disco hit a brief revival patch in the mid-2000s, with bands and music being inspired by those late-70s / early-80s synth boppers and dance-floor tracks, but with a unique style and sheen that distinguishes them from “traditional” disco. None were so inspired quite like Johnny Jewel (he’s so cool), who, after over a decade […]
To live outside the law, you must be honest. -Epigraph to Norm Macdonald’s Based on a True Story “Absolutely Sweet Marie” isn’t my favorite Bob Dylan song. It’s not even my favorite song on this album– I haven’t exactly ranked the songs, but at least two of them would definitely place ahead of it– […]
This one is short– greatest hits albums don’t lend themselves to deep thematic analysis. I just wanted to review a band I really like and find underappreciated. If, like many Americans, you only know Squeeze from “Tempted,” you’re really missing out. The best band named after the worst Velvet Underground album were pop […]
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