God Is Not Dead: The Jimi Hendrix Re-Issues
Sean MurphyGet excited. There is a new Jimi Hendrix album fully comprised of previously unreleased material. I know I was excited when I first heard the news of Valleys of Neptune,…
Beguiling shoe-gaze ebullience with dark undertones is NOT DEAD!!!
There is an approximately 100% chance that Beach House's third album Teen Dream is going to end up on my best-of-year list. It's kind of neat when an album is…
But first: Are You Experienced?
Ah, if only one could come home to packages like this every evening. Wait, check that. That would be too much of a good thing. Who could handle sensory overload…
Ali Farka Touré’s Finished Business
There are usually two distinctive types of posthumous releases in music. The first and more frequent is the one that makes you cringe, often involving the rapacious pillaging of the…
2000-2009: Let’s Break it Down (Epilogue)
So, the recent discussion of the Top 50 albums of the last decade was supposed to end, as it began, with a sampling of songs. The introductory entry covered 2000-2004;…
Did You Get The Knack?
Look at that guy. You know which one I'm talking about. You've got three surfer dude boys in the band and the frontman with the thousand yard smirk. You know that…
Top 50 Albums of the Decade, Part Five
10. The Fiery Furnaces, Bitter Tea (2006) It's a funny thing: as decidedly out there as this effort obviously is, compared to the album that preceded it, Bitter Tea is practically conventional. Well,…
Top 50 Albums of the Decade, Part Four
20. Fiona Apple, Extraordinary Machine (2005) Mad genius? Compulsive artiste? Fragile chanteuse? Misunderstood icon? All of the above? More? Whatever it is (and it could be none of this), there…
Top 50 Albums of the Decade, Part Three
30. Sonic Youth, Murray Street (2002) Some might say Sonic Youth did their best work in the '80s; some may claim it was the '90s; others may insist they reached…
Top 50 Albums of the Decade, Part Two
40. Cornershop, Handcream For A Generation (2002) It seemed too good to be true that this band became one of the big stories in 1997 with their breakthrough When I…