University
Artist: Throwing Muses
Community Score: 6.80

Possibly their finest album, Throwing Muses' fifth album, University, blends the rock power of Red Heaven, their first effort as a trio, with the shiny, surreal pop of The Real Ramona. The result is a collection of songs, like the album opener, "Bright Yellow Gun," that are as ferociously kinetic as they are insinuatingly melodic. At first,... Read More

Lost in America
Artist: Gathering Field

It is always a shame when a band releases one major label album and then is never heard from again. Such is the story of Pittsburgh, PA's The Gathering Field. Their 1996 debut Lost in America came and went unnoticed. Sadly, it was prophetically titled. The band actually got lost in the wake of a more successful rock band also on Atlantic... Read More

Lemon Parade
Artist: Tonic
Community Score: 7.67

"Open up your eyes, don't let your mind tell the story now," reverberates the chorus of Tonic's feverish radio hit single. For this group, it meant bringing a message of openheartedness and vitality to its listening fan base. Certainly, Tonic's sounds can be linked to many of the heavy-hitting alternative rock groups during their heyday in the... Read More

Wooden Leg
Artist: Wooden Leg

Blood Oranges founder Jimmy Ryan has come back around to rurally inspired rock & roll with Wooden Leg, whose self-titled debut also features former Oranges guitarist Mark Spencer (now a regular in Freedy Johnston's band) and drummer Keith Levreault. Ryan's mandolin is placed up front in the mix, but this is not a bluegrass album: The guitars and... Read More

Mood Elevator
Artist: Jack Logan

Jack Logan's true debut album (1994's Bulk was a two-disc set of demos recorded over the course of a decade), 1996's Mood Elevator finds the swimming pool motor repairman/part-time comic book artist backed by a full band, the aptly-named Liquor Cabinet, led by long-time co-conspirator Kelly Keneipp. All of the songs this time are co-written,... Read More

Down by the Old Mainstream
Artist: Golden Smog
Community Score: 3.00

Like most supergroup projects, Golden Smog's Down By the Mainstream is a loose, relaxed affair that sounds like it was a lot of fun to record. Unlike most supergroups, the members of Golden Smog improve on their regular bands. Comprised of a number of alternative country-rock stars -- including Wilco's Jeff Tweedy, the Jayhawks' Gary Louris, and... Read More

The Brooklyn Side
Artist: The Bottle Rockets
Community Score: 4.00

While the Bottle Rockets' brand of Skynyrd-esque raunch & roll is considerably more good-timey than most of the band's roots rock brethren, their incisive, provocative songwriting skills set them squarely among the genre's elite. The Brooklyn Side, produced by Eric "Roscoe" Ambel, is fairly bursting with dead-on character studies exploring the... Read More

Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot
Artist: Sparklehorse
Community Score: 8.90

Sparklehorse's 1996 full-length debut, Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot, has even more sad, beautiful, weird moments of spacy, rural folk-rock than it does letters in its name. Primarily the project of singer/songwriter/guitarist Mark Linkous, Sparklehorse's sound embraces impossibly frail, cobwebby ballads like the album opener "Homecoming... Read More

Unclogged
Artist: X

Perhaps referring to the staid forum known as contemporary "unplugged music," or their own aging arteries, Unclogged successfully reprises X's finest work in an electro-acoustic live set. No worse for the wear, John Doe and Exene Cervenka are in perfect voice, while Tony Gilkyson and D.J. Bonebrake play the songs they played a million times with... Read More

Singles
Artist: The Smiths
Community Score: 7.86

The Best of the Smiths collections didn't work because they didn't have a sense of history and distorted the underlying sense of urgency that helped make the Smiths important. Singles simply collects all of the singles from one of the greatest singles bands since the Beatles. It's essential and influential guitar pop, presented in a way that... Read More

The Mountain EP
Artist: The Palace Brothers

Like the previous An Arrow Through the Bitch, The Mountain EP compiles a pair of Palace singles for U.K. audiences. The title cut was the first and only Palace single to also appear on a proper album, in this case the brilliant Viva Last Blues -- strangely, it's perhaps the weakest song on the LP, and consequently the least-effective single... Read More