Amy Winehouse's second album, Back to Black, is one of the finest soul albums, British or otherwise, to come out for years. Frank, her first album, was a sparse and stripped-down affair; Back to Black, meanwhile, is neither of these things. This time around, she's taken her inspiration from some of the classic 1960's girl groups like the Supremes and the Shangri-Las, a sound ...
The death of the lead singer would spell the end of most bands. But most bands aren't AC/DC. After Bon Scott's overindulgence in alcohol lead to his undignified end, lead guitarist Angus Young and Co. simply found a singer that sounded exactly the same and carried on. The result: Back In Black, the most successful album of their lengthy career. Like every other AC/DC album, it doesn't ...
Leaders of the Free World, Elbow's third album, sees the band try to beat down their major league contemporaries (Coldplay, Doves) with a more ambitious set of songs. In truth, they didn't need to try so hard; Elbow have arguably been making better and more interesting music than most of their mainstream compadres since they formed in 1990. That said, the results here are undoubtedly ...
The two-disc retrospective The Essential Leonard Cohen traces the Canadian bard's musical maturity from poet and novelist who sang a little, to multidimensional artist whose oracular vocals and increasingly rich arrangements are every bit as compelling as his verse. Even when Cohen came to prominence through the 1960s songcraft of "Suzanne" and "Bird on a Wire", the "folksinger" tag never ...