Contributor
58 items by James Hunter
-
PNYC | ALBUM REVIEW
This exceptional concert recording dramatizes how the musical goals that drive this Bristol, England, quartet eclipse anything as fleeting as trip-hop (that most stupid of Nineties pop coinages). Mostly recorded at New York's Roseland Ballroom on July...
November 26, 1998 12:00 AM ET -
Celebrity Skin | ALBUM REVIEW
"Hey, there's only us left now," Courtney Love notices on the title rocker that opéns Hole's new album, the band's first since 1994's Live Through This. Her co-stars are a bassist, Melissa Auf Der Maur; a drummer,...
September 1, 1998 12:00 AM ET -
Crystal Ball | ALBUM REVIEW
With this four-CD set, the transformation of Paisley Park into a fully dimensioned subculture seems complete. It's now a funky studio rat's glam answer to the Dead, a gungho audiophile republic of rockers and popsters and hip-hoppers...
August 4, 1998 12:00 AM ET -
We Ran | ALBUM REVIEW
In her Seventies country-rock heyday, Linda Ronstadt brought a lusciously formal approach to pop singing, which put all the money on song interpretation. Los Angeles ballads, singer/songwriter rarities, rock & roll chestnuts; North American regionals, Sinatra, opera...
June 25, 1998 12:00 AM ET -
From The Choirgirl Hotel | ALBUM REVIEW
In 1991, as Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" recharged rock & roll, Tori Amos and her piano appeared. She was a North Carolinian conservatory dropout with a whole lotta love on the brain. A veteran of one...
April 16, 1998 12:00 AM ET -
A Rose Is Still a Rose | ALBUM REVIEW
On "A Rose Is Still A Rose," her new single, Aretha Franklin dispenses advice to an unsuspecting young woman who's had her first round of rotten love, having tangoed with a lying guy who wages, as Franklin...
February 25, 1998 12:00 AM ET -
Blur | ALBUM REVIEW
Aside from a minor hit three years ago, with the perfect pop single "Girls and Boys," England's beloved Blur have never quite killed alternative-era America. The band's 1994 Parklife, with its deft character sketches and musical finesse,...
March 6, 1997 12:00 AM ET -
The Police Live | ALBUM REVIEW
From the late '70s through the early '80s, Police fans listened and learned as a trio comprising two crafty musicians and a restless former schoolteacher slowly began to rule the New Wave world. As the first disc...
August 24, 1995 12:00 AM ET -
HIStory: Past, Present, Future, Book I | ALBUM REVIEW
A decade after Thriller and MTV transformed pop, Michael Jackson releases a collection that combines a classic greatest-hits anthology with a jarring and uneven new album. Throughout HIStory we're reminded of the Michael Jackson who helped groove...
August 10, 1995 12:00 AM ET -
Lucky Thirteen | ALBUM REVIEW
The album tracks, remixes and live recordings on Lucky Thirteen come from Neil Young's trying affiliation through the Eighties with Geffen Records, a period that found him more slagged than celebrated. In fact, that passage only clarified...
April 29, 1993 12:00 AM ET -
Wish | ALBUM REVIEW
Near the middle of the Cure's new album, Wish, Robert Smith, the band's singer, songwriter and guitarist, encounters a girl who says, "It looks like you could do with a friend." This is funny, and...
April 21, 1992 12:40 AM ET -
Love Over-due | ALBUM REVIEW
At heart, James Brown's first album since his parole from a South Carolina correctional facility seeks to evoke the R&B warmth of the earliest stage of his career. Fans who lately have traveled first-class through Star Time,...
September 19, 1991 12:00 AM ET -
Unplugged: The Official Bootleg | ALBUM REVIEW
A limited release, according to Capitol Records, that will not exceed a U.S. run of 500,000 copies, this seventeen-song concert nonetheless could turn out to be a significant album for Paul McCartney — much more than another...
June 27, 1991 12:00 AM ET -
I'm Your Baby Tonight | ALBUM REVIEW
Whitney Houston indulges few quirks, follows few agendas. When, after much planning, she sprang her mega-successful 1985 debut, Whitney Houston, on the world, Houston's Manhattan-soul stylings, dance-pop workouts and Dior ballads seemed as poised for mass favor...
January 10, 1991 12:00 AM ET -
Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1 | ALBUM REVIEW
Among the distinctions he has gathered along the slick road to pop superstardom, George Michael found himself the object of a funny Saturday Night Live skit a while back, when Dana Carvey lampooned the famous hip shakes...
October 4, 1990 12:00 AM ET -
Cry Like A Rainstorm, Howl Like The Wind | ALBUM REVIEW
Like her friend Neil Young, Linda Ronstadt has, for most of this decade, recorded albums that explore diverse, distinctive styles. Because she's an interpretive singer, this has meant different song periods, from pre-Beatles pop to Mexican mariachi...
January 11, 1990 12:00 AM ET -
Seven Year Itch | ALBUM REVIEW
Etta James tore up audiences while at Chess Records in the Sixties. She opens this new set with the Otis Redding classic "I Got the Will," with horns blaring and former Muscle Shoals drummer Roger Hawkins keeping...
February 9, 1989 12:00 AM ET -
Nine Lives | ALBUM REVIEW
In the early Seventies, Bonnie Raitt left Radcliffe College to sing the blues on the Cambridge folk circuit. Within a few years, this native Californian had become a mainstream L.A. rock singer with powerfully lucid traces of...
November 20, 1986 12:00 AM ET
