Talking With the Taxman About Poetry
Artist: Billy Bragg
Community Score: 10.00

The cover to Billy Bragg's Talking With the Taxman About Poetry features the subtitle "the difficult third album," and while it's obviously meant as a joke, there's also a certain truth to the statement -- after two EPs and a full album that only rarely featured anything other than Bragg's voice and electric guitar, Talking With the... Read More

Storefront Hitchcock: Music From Demme Picture
Artist: Robyn Hitchcock

On Hitchcock's last U.S. tour, he played Hendrix's "The Wind Cries Mary" as well as "Are You Experienced," sometimes within the same set. It's the kind of act that defines his performing genius as a whimsical iconoclast; but then Hitchcock once performed most of Dylan's "Royal Albert Hall" concert, so such live acts of devotion shouldn't come as... Read More

Uncorrected Personality Traits: The Robyn Hitchcock Collection
Artist: Robyn Hitchcock

Hitchcock is an album-oriented artist with an extensive oeuvre, so this 20-track anthology of '80s material is best valued as a summary of selected career highlights for those who don't want to collect all of his full-length efforts. As such, it does a decent job, offering college radio hits like "Egyptian Cream," "My Wife & My Dead Wife," "The... Read More

Mercury Poise: 1988-1995
Artist: Michelle Shocked

With a title that plays on Graham Parker's corporate-venomous song and EP Mercury Poisoning, the disc skims a dozen layers of feminist-folk-punk cream from three eclectic albums (folk-rock, swing-jazz, and Southern roots music) recorded for the label between 1988 and 1991, plus tracks previously only available on soundtracks, compilations, and... Read More

Between the Wars
Artist: Billy Bragg

Billy Bragg's earliest releases suggest a no-frills Cockney version of Bob Dylan with electric guitar substituted for acoustic. This particular platter combines his first and third albums into one release, side one repeating Life's a Riot With Spy Vs. Spy and the flip side reprising the EP Between the Wars. While there are some topically... Read More

Arkansas Traveler
Artist: Michelle Shocked

Michelle Shocked created 1992's Arkansas Traveler as an album that dealt with sociology as much as music, and in many respects it's the sociology that makes the record problematic. A set of songs which draw in a variety of ways from American rural musical traditions, Shocked states in her liner notes that she originally wanted the front cover of... Read More

Brewing Up With Billy Bragg
Artist: Billy Bragg
Community Score: 7.35

Bragg's first full album delivers another clutch of memorable, clever songs. Here the rudimentary voice and electric guitar arrangements prevalent in Life's a Riot With Spy Vs. Spy are refined and sweetened by occasional use of overdubbed vocals ("Love Gets Dangerous"), organ ("A Lover Sings"), and trumpet ("The Saturday Boy"); this last... Read More

So You Think You're in Love
Artist: Robyn Hitchcock
I Often Dream of Trains
Artist: Robyn Hitchcock
Community Score: 10.00

Hitchcock was so shaken by the entire Groovy Decay disaster that he retired from recording for two years. When he returned in 1984 with I Often Dream of Trains, it was clear that the time off had affected his music. A collection of spare, acoustic-based pop-folk songs, I Often Dream of Trains is one of Hitchcock's most introspective and charming... Read More

Eye
Artist: Robyn Hitchcock

Robyn Hitchcock recorded Eye, his fourth proper solo album, after the disappointing Queen Elvis. Eye marked a return to the acoustic-oriented folk-pop of I Often Dream of Trains, featuring a collection of his most personal songs. Where I Often Dream of Trains was a kaleidoscopic journey through a colorfully twisted world, Eye sounds more... Read More

House Full
Artist: Fairport Convention

Recorded during Fairport Convention's September 1970 shows in Los Angeles (their second visit to the city in six months), House Full captures the four-piece Full House lineup at its zenith -- a point proven by the marathon renditions of "Sloth" and "Matty Groves," which are among its epic highlights. Anybody who thought Sandy Denny was the only... Read More

Rattlesnakes
Artist: Lloyd Cole & The Commotions

One of the finest debuts of the '80s and possibly the defining album of the whole U.K. indie jangle scene that also included Prefab Sprout, Aztec Camera, and dozens of other bands, Lloyd Cole and the Commotions' Rattlesnakes is a college rock masterpiece of smart, ironic lyrics and sympathetic folk-rock-based melodies. The Glasgow-based band... Read More

Reaching to the Converted
Artist: Billy Bragg
Community Score: 4.00

This is no ragtag rummage sale of leftovers, castoffs, and third-rate rejects. Having previously purchased the ten singles Reaching is culled from, spanning 1985-1997, one nevertheless revels in the poignant, luxurious breadth of Bragg's heart and brain. Like Bragg's real LPs, this is a roadmap to the spectrum of feeling, from bliss to misery... Read More