Marshall Crenshaw's rock & roll has the kind of crafty simplicity that has to be called classic. Like the Everly Brothers and the early Beatles, he works within a relatively small territory and gains the whole world he's after – that is, the complete attention of anyone who believes that rock & roll can perform magic on himself or herself.

What is that territory? In Crenshaw's case, it's a...

To those who felt Marshall Crenshaw's eponymous debut album heralded him as the Great White Hope of the post-Beatles generation. Field Day will disappoint, though not dash, those expectations. For despite the fact that Crenshaw's gift for song craft is still gloriously evident on his second album, the songs themselves tend to suffer from a dogmatically European production approach and lose their...

On 'Life's Too Short,' Marshall Crenshaw's sixth album, the bespectacled singer-songwriter stays true to the increasingly arcane notion that all you need to rock is a guitar, a handful of chords and a rhythm section ready to make some noise. Crenshaw is hardly alone in his devotion to the concise style of pop rock epitomized by Buddy Holly and the Beatles. The irony is that latterday music inspire...