Album Reviews

All of Fiona Apple's albums have been been personal and confessional (some might say "self absorbed") but this one is really personal and confessional and attractively self-absorbed too.

This is the third album from Brooklyn based Clare and the Reasons and its first to be issued on vinyl. Movie, the group's 2007 debut features Van Dyke Parks and Sufjan Stevens to give you an idea of what's going on here.

“Strange Days” was the perfect album for its time. For music lovers at a time when records were the main means by which a generation communicated with its culture, the title, cover art, music and sound resonated with the meaning of the fall of 1967 (even though the album was recorded the previous spring at L.A.’s Sunset Sound).

Originally released in June of 1972, Bowie's "rock concept album" broke the then still obscure musician and changed the face of rock'n'roll forever—and that ain't hyperbole. If this wasn't the album that gave Freddie Mercury his dream, I can't imagine what was.

You can tell me yours, but my first encounter with Thelonious Monk was the 1963 Columbia album Criss-Cross(CS 8838). I'd given up on rock'n'roll, which had become all Fabian and Frankie Avalon-ed out and new musical adventures of a more adult nature were in order for this high-schooler.

NIck Lowe has aged more than gracefully—he's never been better melodically and especially lyrically. On his latest release, issued by Yep Roc on a "wide groove 45rpm" record, Lowe waxes both melancholic and bemused about a break up.

Talk Talk's Mark Hollis may have long ago retired from the music business, but his musical legacy prospers and grows. A near cult-like devotion hovers around the group's records as succeeding generations discover his dense, probing, faith-based cogitations. The intensity and strength of his spiritual commitment was matched only by the forcefulness of his later "spirited" rejection.