Proclaiming his intentions with "Are You Ready for the Country?", Young detoured briefly to the Nashville mainstream. On this 1972 album, even the singer's acquired-taste voice comes across smooth and beautiful--the smash "Heart of Gold", with steel guitars and Linda Ronstadt's backup vocals, is by far Young's most commercial-sounding song. His usual dissonant touches, like the otherworldly guitar ...
Cute, curly-headed diva Beth Rowley won many hearts with her charming Violets EP. Born in Peru and raised in the English West Country, Rowley has been mentored by Carleen Anderson and now follows up on the success of that EP with Little Dreamer, an album that continues her sweetly old fashioned, Motown-esque blend of blues, gospel, soul and jazz--all peppered with a classic ...
Emmylou Harris has always had a way with woe. On All I Intended To Be, she seems more maudlin than ever as she sings her way through songs about loss, heartbreak, even the odd funeral. Of course, this is the kind of material Harris has always been comfortable with, but as her career and years advance gracefully, so her gliding soprano seems to breathe ever more refinement and soul into her ...
There can barely be an Eagles fan on the face of the planet, after waiting patiently for the best part of 30 years--ignoring the piecemeal (and some might say mean-spirited) sprinkle of new songs on 1994's Hell Freezes Over--that doesn't crave every last minute of this epic stack of original work. But then there also hasn't been a double album in history that couldn't have been improved by ...
After labouring in Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Neil Young finally hit perfect pitch--if his endearing off-centre whine can be called "perfect"--with his third album. He's equally passionate with trippy riddles (has anybody figured out what "We've got mother nature on the run" means in the title track?) and pointed protest (after 30 years of rock-radio overplay, "Southern ...
The two discs of The Essential Bob Dylan don't exactly provide a thorough overview of four decades of recording by one of the most important and prolific performers of his time. So the collection definitely skates over his leagues-deep oeuvre, summarizing his monumental first half-dozen years in disc one and skirting over the following 34 years in disc two. Delving into Columbia's three ...