Since Crazy Horse first came to public attention as the backing band for Neil Young in concert and on his albums Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere and After the Gold Rush, it makes sense to expect that the band on its own would play something similar to the hard guitar rock and country-rock heard on those albums, albeit without Young's... Read More

Continuing with the stylistic developments of Stranded, Country Life finds Roxy Music at the peak of their powers, alternating between majestic, unsettling art rock and glamorous, elegant pop/rock. At their best, Roxy combine these two extremes, like on the exhilarating opener "The Thrill of It All," but Country Life benefits considerably from... Read More

Without Brian Eno, Roxy Music immediately became less experimental, yet it remained adventurous, as Stranded illustrates. Under the direction of Bryan Ferry, Roxy moved toward relatively straightforward territory, adding greater layers of piano and heavy guitars. Even without the washes of Eno's synthesizers, Roxy's music remains unsettling on... Read More

Even more remarkable than the number of different Queen collections with nearly identical track listings and artwork which are available is the fact that every one of them is pretty much beyond reproach -- such is the quality of the band's magnificent legacy. This particular version of their Greatest Hits features the original vinyl sequence and... Read More

Jazz has been unfairly slagged in some quarters as an inconsistent and unfocused record; granted, there's a bit of filler cluttering the second half, but as for the latter criticism, it's not like A Night at the Opera wasn't all over the map. The fact that it didn't produce any huge hit singles in the U.S. probably hasn't helped its reputation,... Read More

Queen's second album of 1974 (and third overall), Sheer Heart Attack, helped bridge the gap between the mystical heavy metal of their early years and the hard rock/pop perfection of future releases. The main reason why Queen issued another album so soon after Queen II (only eight months apart) was due to guitarist Brian May's hepatitis, which... Read More

This 1973 outing is the album that raised Golden Earring to an international level of popularity, primarily on the strength of the hit single and enduring radio favorite "Radar Love." However, there is much more to this album than just that hit. In many ways, Moontan is like a summation of everything the group had learned on their first three... Read More