Blurring the Edges
Artist: Meredith Brooks
Community Score: 8.50
Drive - JAPAN BONUS TRACKS
Artist: Bic Runga

New Zealand export Bic Runga not only wrote everything on her debut, Drive, but also played guitar and xylophone, and even served as producer. The result is a lovely first effort that hints at greater things to come. Using her engaging, childlike voice to full effect, Runga mostly ruminates on love lost and found, all within the confines of... Read More

Fumbling Towards Ecstasy - JAPAN BONUS TRACK
Artist: Sarah McLachlan

Fumbling Towards Ecstasy finds Sarah McLachlan racing toward success as she reteams with producer Pierre Marchand on her breakthrough release and finest offering to date. Stretching her lyrical wings and experimenting a bit more instrumentally, the radiance of her work has somehow solidified here. Ecstasy is certainly attained, though not by... Read More

Pieces of You - JAPAN BONUS TRACKS
Artist: Jewel
Community Score: 5.00

Pieces of You is a charming debut that is somewhat undone by its own naïveté. Jewel has a rich voice and an innocent, beguiling charm that makes "Who Will Save Your Soul," "I'm Sensitive," and "You Were Meant for Me" -- songs with slight, simple lyrics and catchy, sweet melodies -- quite endearing; they sound like a high-school diary brought to... Read More

The Best of the Lemonheads: The Atlantic Years
Artist: The Lemonheads

Evan Dando -- for all intents and purposes, he is the Lemonheads -- is a sporadically brilliant songwriter. Every one of his albums contains as many flops as masterpieces, sometimes more. Hardcore fans have learned to live with this and even cherish his dopey detours, but there are many others who would prefer to have all the best bits on... Read More

Drive
Artist: Bic Runga
Community Score: 8.00

New Zealand export Bic Runga not only wrote everything on her debut, Drive, but also played guitar and xylophone, and even served as producer. The result is a lovely first effort that hints at greater things to come. Using her engaging, childlike voice to full effect, Runga mostly ruminates on love lost and found, all within the confines of... Read More

Rufus Wainwright
Artist: Rufus Wainwright
Community Score: 9.30

What separates Rufus Wainwright and the other second-generation singers who sprang up at the same time (Sean Lennon, Emma Townshend, and Chris Stills the most notable among them) is that Wainwright deserves to be heard regardless of his family tree; in fact, the issue of his parentage is ultimately as immaterial as that of his sexuality -- this... Read More

Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk
Artist: Jeff Buckley
Community Score: 7.63

Jeff Buckley was a mess of contradictions: a perfectionist who believed in spontaneity, a man who was at once humble and vain, a musician who shunned his father's tumultuous legacy while creating one of his own. These are some of the reasons why he took his time writing and recording the material for his second album, laboring over many songs... Read More

Left of the Middle
Artist: Natalie Imbruglia
Community Score: 8.17

Expectations for Natalie Imbruglia's debut album, Left of the Middle, were high because of the runaway success of the pre-album single "Torn" during 1997-1998. Fans of the single will be pleased to hear that the album is quite similar in approach and sound to the breakthrough single: laid-back alt-pop with sweetly melodic vocals. Admittedly,... Read More

Other Songs
Artist: Ron Sexsmith
Community Score: 9.50

The quandary of the whole solo singer/songwriter thing is that one listener's deeply personal and affecting music is another's boringly self-absorbed slop. And the fine line between them, between naked emotion and unadulterated pap, is the production, its intent, and above all, the talent trapped in it -- so highly exposed, after all. In this... Read More

Complete Collection: 1991-1998
Artist: Tori Amos