Ever since Neil Young got divorced, his albums have increasingly referenced his own life, more directly and blatantly than they did for the...

Back in 1965 somehow an 18-year-old kid got the attention of Shel Talmy, the expatriate American producer who’d already started making hits...

Only two installments into the Dead’s “From The Vault” series came another release program that actually became an ongoing series that last...

By now the Beach Boys were in direct competition with the Beatles, and Brian Wilson was determined to make albums of their quality, even in...

By now it should have been clear that Paul Weller wasn’t kidding about this whole Style Council thing. Two albums, as well as several singl...

We can’t think of anyone whose first nine albums included three collections of singles and B-sides, but that’s just one thing that makes Mo...

Ben Folds is a strangely divisive performer—it seems people either love or hate him. His particular brand of geek-rock can be grating to nay...

Somehow Tom Verlaine still had a record deal, so right on schedule he went back in the studio with his usual sidemen and recorded another a...

Aerosmith was on a roll as well as a winning streak, so they holed up in a converted convent and, by their own admission, spent as much tim...

Even if the Kinks had become something of an oldies act, their following was still fervent. So when they finished their most recent tour, t...

Given his higher profile from the Rolling Thunder Revue and the success of his Cardiff Rose album, one might think Roger McGuinn would bu...

The British blues scene of the early ‘60s was rife with important individuals who may not have become household names, like Alexis Korner, ...

After a quarter-century of people possibly knowing his name and what he did for a living, Daniel Lanois decided to make himself the subject...

Another memoir composed on his phone coincided with a fresh batch of Robyn Hitchcock songs. The events of Stranded In The Future cover his...

The ‘80s saw a lot of surprising comebacks, and one of the biggest was that of Yes. Having imploded and scattered following the poor recept...

It’s tough enough when one of your siblings is famous, and worse when you’re trying to make a name for yourself. Michael Penn has never (to...

The experience making Hackney Diamonds was apparently so positive that the old geezers just kept going. Some of Foreign Tongues had been ...

Ever changing and constantly evolving, the fourth Waterboys album shared only a few components to what went before. Recorded over a period ...

In 2006, David Byrne and Brian Eno’s My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts , which had long been hailed as “seminal”, was reissued with the requisi...

YouTube video by Matt Oswalt

Without a major label trying to tell him what to do, Prince continued to follow his muse—or whatever it was—to the neighborhood of jazz for...

For his third release of 2023, Van fans were able to exhale in relief yet again. Not only was Accentuate The Positive another collection o...

Most of the best songs he’d written were spread across his first two albums for the Asylum label, so when it came time for his next, Warran...

If you’ve been paying attention to the narrative, you might remember that the Beach Boys’ label—the ever resourceful Capitol Records—had pu...

As we’ve learned from the various reissues and forensic work done by scholars, Frank Zappa loved to edit and re-edit. One prime legendary e...

It worked the last time, so here was Steve Winwood back after a short (for him) break with another one-man band album driven by synthesizer...

History has shown that the time Paul McCartney spends making an album is no indication of the subsequent quality. His pace has slowed since...

A multi-disc overview was one way for Elton John to assess his career, but he wasn’t done doing that. Along with the box set trend, themati...

Having finally achieved sobriety, Elton John was determined to start the ‘90s strong. And since it was becoming the trend for artists of hi...

The 8-track tape music format dominated the industry for a few decades. These bulky plastic cartridges split an album’s program into four s...

A year after his double-whammy bipolar Stereo and Mono albums, Paul Westerberg stuck with the formula with two more albums that equally i...

The latest “new” Monkees album, released to celebrate the 30th anniversary of their 20th anniversary, got kudos for its choice song materia...

The Live Aid concerts in July 1985 were a big deal, and of all the artists given twenty minutes to strut their stuff onstage, Queen pretty ...

The curators of the Grateful Dead’s archives were always mindful, knowing that their audience was somewhat particular. Rather than just thr...

The cover of Sandman is something of a joke; the front shows Harry Nilsson happily sitting on a beach, fully clothed, while the rear sugge...

Despite the rise of grunge, Axl Rose kept Guns N’ Roses in the spotlight till the mid-‘90s, courting controversy and creating events with e...

This enjoyable Faces side project snuck out four years after it was recorded, the soundtrack for a film that didn’t get a wide release eith...

Straight out of the gate, the Style Council kept fans busy with singles, 12-inches, and a second album. As with its predecessor, Internatio...

In the early days of the Internet, various chat groups were dedicated to generating fake Morrissey song titles. His album titles weren’t so...

When you get your sound down, the thing to do is work to perfect it on your next album, especially when you need a follow-up and fast. Rock...

Perhaps feeling he’d exhausted the songwriting potential surfing offered, Brian Wilson decided to focus more sharply on that other Californ...

So Pink Floyd were officially worldwide superstars. Now what? Certainly that’s what their new American label wanted to know, and luckily fo...