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13 items by Debra Rae Cohen

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  The Concert | ALBUM REVIEW

  When I was growing up in New York City, Creedence Clearwater Revival was the closest we ever got to America. Their stream of Top Forty singles — each with a homely, supple guitar riff pulling it into...

  June 12, 1985 12:00 AM ET
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  Eat To The Beat | ALBUM REVIEW

  Blondie has always been a band less concerned with weaving dreams than with critiquing them in order to emphasize the distance between desire and fulfillment. They pioneered a reverse-twist musical archivism that's antiromantic rather than escapist: instead...

  November 30, 1983 12:00 AM ET
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  Ghost In The Machine | ALBUM REVIEW

  Esperanto, like the League of Nations, was one of those good ideas that just didn't work. Intended as an international language not native to anyone but foreign to no one — an answer to divisiveness dating back...

  December 10, 1981 12:00 AM ET
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  Tattoo You | ALBUM REVIEW

  For too many years it's seemed almost impossible for the Rolling Stones to make an album that hasn't involved — at least partially — the problem of being the Rolling Stones. This difficulty dogged them throughout...

  August 24, 1981 12:00 AM ET
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  Hard Promises | ALBUM REVIEW

  There's a peculiar challenge that faces rock & rollers who aren't at the music's cutting edge: the problem of how to mature. The genre's intellectuals may challenge themselves with philosophical lyrics and ethnic rhythms, changing the parameters...

  July 23, 1981 12:00 AM ET
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  Boy | ALBUM REVIEW

  "I Will Follow," the kickoff cut from the debut album by Irish whiz kids U2, is a beguiling, challenging, perfect single. With its racing-pulse beat, tinkling percussion and mantra-simple chorus of dogged affection ("If you walkaway, walkaway/I...

  April 16, 1981 12:00 AM ET
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  Scary Monsters | ALBUM REVIEW

  In Nicholas Roeg's movie The Man Who Fell to Earth, there's a scene in which David Bowie, playing a vulnerable extraterrestrial visitor, intently watches the ritualized, larger-than-life violence of a Kabuki performance. That scene — the way...

  December 25, 1980 12:00 AM ET
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  Taking Liberties | ALBUM REVIEW

  Taking Liberties takes its title from "Crawling to the U.S.A.," Elvis Costello's scathing equation of foreign aid and whoredom — perfect for the latest installment of Costello's love-hate affair with America. As a commercial gesture toward our...

  December 11, 1980 12:00 AM ET
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  Boys Don't Cry | ALBUM REVIEW

  In the spectrum of self-conscious postpunk British bands, the Cure fall squarely between Wire's sophisticated, jagged architectonics and the Undertones' concise, wide-eyed pop music. They incorporate a little of each. I guess this means that these guys...

  August 21, 1980 12:00 AM ET
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  The Up Escalator | ALBUM REVIEW

  There's a big gap between being a rock & roll classicist and actually turning out classics. Specifically, it's the difference between reaffirming traditional rock truisms and reinvigorating them — between, say. Tom Petty, whose rich and ringing...

  July 24, 1980 12:00 AM ET
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  Recent Songs | ALBUM REVIEW

  Like many people, I came to Leonard Cohen's work by way of cover versions — in my case, Judy Collins' rendition of "Dress Rehearsal Rag." The lyric is one of Cohen's most searing — razor in hand,...

  February 21, 1980 12:00 AM ET
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  Reggatta De Blanc | ALBUM REVIEW

  Those people who indicted the Police's debut album — citing the trio's arch exploitation of the New Wave — will find plenty on Reggatta de Blanc to justify charges of recidivism. The group once again exhibits the...

  December 13, 1979 12:00 AM ET
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  Spy | ALBUM REVIEW

  It may have seemed surprising, a few years back, for Carly Simon to record a sensual ode to James Bond ("Nobody Does It Better"), but Spy finally makes the connection clear. If Simon's an "international spy in...

  October 4, 1979 12:00 AM ET