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Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain : L.A.'s Desert Origins
Pavement may have been alternative rock's most notorious mess, but this deluxe reissue of their best album, appended with nearly forty extra tracks, illuminates one of their precious gifts: Like nobody else, the Stockton, California, band could make simple pop-rock chords sound really, really sarcastic. On its breakthrough, 1992's Slanted and Enchanted, melodies crept into […]
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Live Review: Green Day at Irving Plaza, New York
Snotty punks show maturity with a truly great rock opera
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London Calling [25th Anniversary Legacy Edition]
In 1979, London Calling was sold with a sticker declaring that the Clash were the only band that matters, and they acted as if they believed their own hype. Broadcasting from the middle of the wild-eyed mess that was English punk rock, a milieu that often dismissed idealism as a liability, the band was criticized […]
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Al Green Explores Your Mind
When writer Toni Morrison said that black artists always seem to move with ease, she was talking about someone like Al Green. He sings from the side of his mouth, seemingly straight from the heart — his every sigh, mutter, trill and moan worth 100 twenty-dollar words — yet it seems like he's just being […]
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Call Me (Reissue)
When writer Toni Morrison said that black artists always seem to move with ease, she was talking about someone like Al Green. He sings from the side of his mouth, seemingly straight from the heart — his every sigh, mutter, trill and moan worth 100 twenty-dollar words — yet it seems like he's just being […]
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Run That By Me One More Time
Back in the day, Willie Nelson wrote devastatingly good songs for Ray Price, one of country's greatest barroom crooners. This is their second duet album, a short and bittersweet affair with western-swing music. One highlight is the cosmic country waltz "I've Just Destroyed the World I'm Living In," in which the singers take turns staring […]
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Hits, Rarities & Remixes
The tip-off to all of a Tribe Called Quest's considerable talent was the grainy, mischievous curl in rapper Q-Tip's voice: Tribe were abstract imps who always made you chuckle along with their surrealist bonhomie as much as gasp at their skills. This collection of hits and just-misses sensitively plots the flash points of their run, […]
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Diamonds On The Inside
Even as he invokes folks such as Bob Marley and Jimi Hendrix, Ben Harper turns rock cliches inside out until they mean something new again. The Black Crowes-damaged title track of Harper's fifth studio album — a lush sweep of twelve-string and pedal steel guitars — is sweeter than ninety percent of the cock rock […]
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Camber Sands
In techno music, a remix can be either a rebirth or a waste of good studio time. There's more of the former on these three EPs of reworkings of stuff from Fatboy Slim's 2000 CD Halfway Between the Gutter and the Stars. The standouts include Timo Maas' breakdown of "Star 69," which he reimagines as […]
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The Pimp
In techno music, a remix can be either a rebirth or a waste of good studio time. There's more of the former on these three EPs of reworkings of stuff from Fatboy Slim's 2000 CD Halfway Between the Gutter and the Stars. The standouts include Timo Maas' breakdown of "Star 69," which he reimagines as […]
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