Album Reviews

It’s difficult to believe this November 18th, 1993 Sony Music Studios performance is almost seventeen years old. Though it aired on MTV a month later, it wasn’t issued on vinyl or CD until November 1st, 1994, six months after Kurt Cobain’s suicide.

Icy cold vistas, shards of broken electronic glass, relentless thumping disco beats and possible mysteriously encrypted bits of dialogue may not sound like something that would be particularly inviting on a full range audio system, but somehow Fuck Buttons makes it so on this album of artificial mayhem and just plain noise.

No one has ever claimed PJ Harvey creates music made for easy, or even pleasant listening. Much of it is dark and painful, but even at its weakest, Harvey's music is provocative and worthwhile.

Paul Simon can't go back to his folk-rock roots. It's too late for him to turn around, but a younger generation surely can use the hybrid genre as a start-up base of operations. The first and second Fleet Fox albums demonstrate that. 

When Aaron Copland titled his Abraham Lincoln musical tribute “A Lincoln Portrait,” he was using the word “portrait” figuratively.

There were good reasons British blues musicians like the original Peter Green led Fleetwood Mac or blues influenced ones like The Rolling Stones wanted to record in Chess's legendary Ter-Mar Studios in Chicago. One, of course, was the possibility of jamming with blues legends like Willie Dixon, Otis Spann, Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolk and, well, you can run down the names yourself, including “Guitar Buddy,” what Buddy Guy had to be called due to contractual obligations. The other reason is to get that fabulous Ter-Mar Sound, which The Stones managed to do on some of their earlier albums.