Robert Christgau | Rolling Stone

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39 items by Robert Christgau

Love | ALBUM REVIEW

George Martin was a great producer precisely insofar as he was the Beatles' producer. His other great discovery was America, and nobody compares him to Christopher Columbus, so why mention him alongside Jerry Wexler or Timbaland? Praise...
November 30, 2006 12:00 AM ET
Go - The Very Best Of Moby | ALBUM REVIEW

The Domed One's finest tunes, from techno to sampled gospel hollers Seven years later, Moby has constructed an album as seductively sequenced and in-your-face melodic as Play, and give him credit — he recycled only five Play...
November 27, 2006 12:00 AM ET
Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards | ALBUM REVIEW

When Tom Waits claims he doesn't know why he called this three-CD set Orphans, he's being cagey. Orphans obviously began as an outtakes collection — unreleased work tapes plus old soundtrack, tribute and benefit tracks. Only then,...
November 13, 2006 12:00 AM ET
Panic In Babylon | ALBUM REVIEW

If you buy one of the reggae legend's many recent CDs, make it this one. You say you didn't know Lee Perry won a Grammy for Jamaican E.T. in 2003? You say the nutty old dubmaster is...
November 1, 2006 12:00 AM ET
Songbird | ALBUM REVIEW

With the still-supple Willie Nelson down to a modest album-a-year pace at seventy-three, the release of the Ryan Adams-produced Songbird so close upon March's Cindy Walker-linked You Don't Know Me suggests that maybe the old man just...
October 30, 2006 12:00 AM ET
The Crane Wife | ALBUM REVIEW

In the lyrically impaired alt-rock world, Colin Meloy is lionized for his literary prowess because his reading predates Bret Easton Ellis and he knows what "picaresque" means. That was the title of the Decemberists' 2005 Kill Rock...
September 28, 2006 12:00 AM ET
FutureSex/LoveSounds | ALBUM REVIEW

On his 2002 solo debut, Justin Timberlake was so delighted with his own audacity he could make jaws drop just by saying "good morning" to the ladies. On his skilled but sometimes labored follow-up, however, the...
September 21, 2006 12:00 AM ET
The River In Reverse | ALBUM REVIEW

"Back when he was a young geek storming pop through punk, who would have thought Elvis Costello's singing would end up more distinguished than his word-slinging? As his high baritone matured, however, its nasal angst gained technical...
May 26, 2006 12:00 AM ET
Encore | ALBUM REVIEW

Supposedly, the mainstream is where you go under and "maturity" means one foot in the grave. So the success of 8 Mile and its single "Lose Yourself" put Eminem in a bind. How and whether he'd come...
December 9, 2004 12:00 AM ET
Smile | ALBUM REVIEW

Never mind Pet Sounds. Good record, but a totem. That leaves three great Beach Boys albums. First comes a fun-fun-fun best-of: With the canonical Endless Summer deleted, settle for 2003's longer, less pristine Sounds of Summer. The...
October 14, 2004 12:00 AM ET
Everything Must Go | ALBUM REVIEW

Of course, the new Steely Dan album sounds great. Try downloading this sucker, the grizzled grouches mutter. We dare you. Even a deaf dolt like you, Mr. 80GB Information Thief, can discern how much textured dimensionality the...
June 3, 2003 12:00 AM ET
Rainbow Connection | ALBUM REVIEW

There's another connection between two secret sharers: Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson both convince you they just did whatever they did off the top of their heads. That's why Nelson's two big statements of the Nineties —...
July 9, 2001 12:00 AM ET
Stories From The City, Stories From the Sea | ALBUM REVIEW

I know it's impolite to put it this way, but sometimes getting laid can really be good for a person. On the recorded evidence — with no claim to any lowdown on Polly Jean Harvey's actual private...
October 26, 2000 12:00 AM ET
Ecstasy | ALBUM REVIEW

In the nineties, Lou Reed re-created himself as a cultural commodity. He did independent films and avant-garde operas. He published volumes of lyrics and a diary in The New Yorker. He was declared an "American Master" by...
April 13, 2000 12:00 AM ET
I'm Back | ALBUM REVIEW

Fact is, James Brown said he was back in force on Live at the Apollo 1995, and several of his Scotti Bros. studio albums are of Nineties vintage. But the Godfather can get away with calling his...
January 4, 1999 12:00 AM ET
The Best Of Friends | ALBUM REVIEW

For half a century, the much-recorded bluesman John Lee Hooker has cut music so primal, it blurs into itself — his albums often seem interchangeable, his great signature songs recorded to the nth. He defeats this tendency...
November 17, 1998 12:00 AM ET
You've Come A Long Way, Baby | ALBUM REVIEW

The ascendancy of Norman Cook — in the guise of Fatboy Slim — has to amuse anyone for whom techno's countless variants constitute one corner of the musical universe rather than a brave new world. The Housemartins...
October 20, 1998 12:00 AM ET
Car Wheels On A Gravel Road | ALBUM REVIEW

Sometimes it seems Lucinda Williams is too good for this world. Since cutting her teeth on an acoustic blues collection for the Folkways label in 1979, she has released just four albums of originals in eighteen years,...
June 18, 1998 12:00 AM ET
Fundamental | ALBUM REVIEW

In 1971, on her very first album — with Minneapolis folkies and Chicago bluesmen threading hand claps, shuttlecock shakers, tubas and tenor saxophones through the mix — twenty-one-year-old vocalist and slide guitarist Bonnie Raitt announced her resistance...
April 8, 1998 12:00 AM ET