Music
Artist: 311
Community Score: 7.95

311's debut album, Music, is an infectious mix of funk metal and hip-hop. While the band fails to come up with a consistently solid batch of songs, their raw energy makes up for the lack of strong songwriting. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide Read More

The Best of Anne Clark
Artist: Anne Clark

Songwriter and pianist Anne Clark has been a cult figure since the early '80s and has amassed a rather sizable catalog despite her small but rabid following. She writes nearly-Gothic love songs full of obsession and pathos, and pretty orchestral settings with clever instrumental figures and stinging piano runs and minor-key epiphanies. She's a... Read More

Loved
Artist: Cranes
Community Score: 7.38

On the band's third major album, Cranes found themselves balancing more immediate accessibility with its own particular musical obsessions like never before. If nothing on the album was as immediately harrowing as much of the band's late-'80s/early-'90s work -- guitars and drums both were generally less forceful and out in front -- Loved was... Read More

I Could Live in Hope
Artist: Low

Like so many of their contemporaries, Low are repeatedly lumped into numerous derivative and nondescript headings intended to encompass slow-paced, instrument-driven music that maintains an indie aesthetic. Quite simply, no category can truly reveal the beauty and glory of Low's debut record I Could Live in Hope. Sad core? Not even close! I... Read More

4-Track Demos
Artist: PJ Harvey
Community Score: 8.60

Since Steve Albini gave Rid of Me such an uncompromisingly noisy finish, it may have made sense for Polly Harvey to release her original demos, augmented by several unreleased songs, six months later as an album. After all, the initial British pressings of Dry came with a bonus disc of her demos. Still, the official, independent release of... Read More

Transient Random-Noise Bursts With Announcements
Artist: Stereolab
Community Score: 7.58

Though it was the group's major-label debut, Stereolab's Transient Random-Noise Bursts With Announcements showed no signs of selling out. If anything, it's one of the most eclectic and experimental releases in Stereolab's early career, emphasizing the group's elongated Krautrock jams, instrumentals, and harsh, noisy moments. The album begins and... Read More

Where You Been
Artist: Dinosaur Jr.
Community Score: 9.15

By the time Where You Been surfaced, Seattle had completely exploded, and given that Dinosaur Jr.'s sound, attitude, and more were as proto-slacker as could be, the temptation must have been great to cash in. But J Mascis stuck to his guns, and there's little about Where You Been that would have seemed out of place on Green Mind or even some... Read More

Radio 1 Evening Show Sessions
Artist: The Chameleons UK

This disc is actually the perfect complement to the Peel Sessions collection: not only does it contain two more full radio broadcast sessions of the band from 1983 and 1985, there is zero track duplication with the other collection. Even more happily for hardcore fans of the band, between the two collections one can create an entire alternate... Read More

The Full Custom Gospel Sounds
Artist: Reverend Horton Heat
Community Score: 10.00

With fellow Texas maniac Gibby Haynes on production, Heat and his trusty sidemen go at it again on The Full Custom Gospel Sounds and do so with all the style and sass one could want. Kicking off with "Wiggle Stick," a perfectly lubricious number that ended up scoring the band some airplay with Beavis and Butthead, the good Reverend serves notice... Read More

Rid of Me
Artist: PJ Harvey
Community Score: 8.20

Dry was shockingly frank in its subject and sound, as PJ Harvey delivered post-feminist manifestos with a punkish force. PJ Harvey's second album, Rid of Me, finds the trio, and Harvey in particular, pushing themselves to extremes. This is partially due to producer Steve Albini, who gives the album a bloodless, abrasive edge with his exacting... Read More

Cardinal
Artist: Cardinal

The sole album from the Richard Davies/Eric Matthews pairing achieved something close to legend status in a few short years, at least among those taken by the fusion of guitar pop with orchestrations. Although the combination isn't that groundbreaking to begin with -- everyone from the Left Banke to Burt Bacharach had already tried something... Read More