Quite possibly the worst album by either Bob Dylan or the Grateful Dead, the live Dylan & the Dead completely squanders its promise. Working from an intriguing selection of songs -- it includes staples like "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" and more obscure gems like "Joey" -- the Dead and Dylan contribute listless, meandering versions that are simply boring. Both artists have done much better -- reportedly they have done better together, according to various bootleg fans -- but Dylan & the Dead is a sad, disheartening document.

(by Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide)

Skylarking was an ambitious yet concise record, one that recalled such graceful concept albums as Pet Sounds and Sgt. Pepper, so it wasn't entirely a surprise that XTC embraced psychedelia on its double-album follow-up, Oranges & Lemons, especially if their celebrated Dukes of Stratosphear side project was taken into consideration as well. Oranges & Lemons lacks the singular focus of Skylarking, but at its best, it's just as impressive as its predecessor. Instead of revelling in the form of psychedelic pop, as they did with the Dukes, XTC bring the genre's sensibility to the mature pop of Skylarking, spiking it with a wry, occasionally absurd sense of humor missing from its predecessor. The result is a record exploding with details, not the least of which are backward guitars, sound effects, and head-spinningly eclectic arrangements. It's sonically rich and filled with immaculately crafted songs, but Oranges & Lemons falls just short of being a tour de force, since each song feels like an island -- they work well as individual tracks, but they don't form a cohesive statement. However, that's a minor complaint, because Colin Moulding and Andy Partridge in particular are in peak form, contributing some of their very finest songs in "Garden of Earthly Delights," "The Loving," "One of the Millions," "Merely a Man," "Pink Thing," and the elegiac "Chalkhills and Children." Such songs make the relative weaknesses of the album well worth enduring.

(by Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide)

Making his solo debut with a nod to an earlier Irish aesthete, Friday's album isn't merely titled after a legendary line from Oscar Wilde's Ballad of Reading Gaol, but kicks off with the title track, where all lyrics in fact come from said poem. Each Man Kills shows a slightly calmer Friday at play, making the same transition to Scott Walker-inspired dark, spiked cabaret that kindred spirits Nick Cave and Marc Almond also did in their own solo careers to one extent or another. Friday's own take on that spirit actually fits exactly between Cave and Almond's work — the slow pace and country twang of "Tell-Tale Heart" could come right from Your Funeral My Trial. The fact that Friday covers two songs here that Cave and Almond would each separately do later (Bob Dylan's "Death Is Not the End" and Jacques Brel's "Next") further shows the similar inspirations shared. In keeping with the overall transformation, Friday eschews the over the top wails and shrieks of his younger days — his register is still high, but the delivery is much more controlled, showing a greater range while losing none of his desperate passion. Seezer contributes fine lead keyboard work throughout, but Friday's other key partner is producer Hal Willner, who had clearly demonstrated his own credentials for this kind of music with his Kurt Weill tribute album a few years previously. With a range of talented New York types to work with, including Bill Frisell and Fernando Saunders, Willner gets sympathetic performances from all to back Friday and Seezer's explorations into wrecked romance, tortured souls and 2 a.m. moods. It isn't mere recreation of 1930's Berlin, but a palette of styles, from the dank, slow crawl of "Dazzle and Delight" to the soaring "You Take Away the Sun" and the kicking glam rock-inspired "Man of Misfortune."

(by Ned Raggett, All Music Guide)

Went to see Del Amitri in March 1990 live in McGonagles, a now defunct venue in Sth. Anne Street, in Dublin. I didn't really want to go. I only knew one song which is the very last song on the album - 'Nothing ever happens'. The Dels seemed to be perplexed with the crowd - come on they shouted. The only song anyone seemed to know was 'Nothing ever happens'. Iwas blown away and immediately ran out the next day in my lunch hour to buy WAKING HOURS. Some people say that on WAKING HOURS Del Amitri found America. I dunno. Their first album in good in an indie sort of way but this is pure listening. Nobody's perfect, and thats something that I'm sure she'll know. How many people have thought that when they are (insecurely going out with someone?) or you've been reading SOS when its just your clock reading 505. Justin Currie's lyrics strike a chord with us insecure people left on this earth - and at the turn of the millennium, I'm afraid there are quite a lot of us. His songs, on this album, on the perfectly produced Change Everything or on the grown up album Twisted, wrench the heart out of you, tell of love lost, on purpose and by accident. They are a soap opera to themselves. Buy all the DELS stuff. They may not be the trendiest band around, but they certainly know how to strike that chord in your heart that hasn't been struck since that girl you asked to dance when you were 14 said 'no' or that guy you fancied like crazy asked your best friend to dance instead of you.

Arriving after years of sonic bombast in Hüsker the reflective, acoustic nature of Bob Mould´s first solo album, Workbook, was a bold statement of renewal. Like all of Mould's work, it's an intensely introspective record, finding him purging demons left over from the dissolution of Hüsker Dü. Instead of relying on raging guitars, Mould explores a wide variety of styles, from pure pop ("See a Little Light") to reflective folk laced with cellos. It´s an astonishing array of styles, and the songs are among Mould´s finest. For many observers, the record established him as a major songwriter, but it also established a way for underground post-punk artists to mature -- echoes of Workbook could be heard throughout the ´90s, from R.E.M.´s elegiac Automatic for the People to Nirvana´s use of cellos on In Utero and Unplugged. But Workbook remains a stunning work of individuality, marrying a distinctive body of songs with an original musical vision. Occasionally, the production is a little too pristine, but the power of the songs cannot be diminished

(Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide)

Workbook was the beginning of a fresh chapter in Mould's life, being the first album he'd released since the demise of Husker Du in 1988 & leaving Warners to sign to Virgin America. Husker Du, like The Replacements, found themselves close to being the next big thing (this would turn out to be REM, in retrospect)- songs like Could You Be the One?, Hardly Getting Over It & Sorry Somehow should all have been huge...the Du are often cited as the band without whom no Pixies, no Nirvana...Here Mould leaves the sound of Husker Du behind- rumoured to have become bored of the formula, the Du had moved from Ramones power-punk pop to New Wave paranoia to hardcore punk to psychelic feedback freakouts to jangly guitar pop. On Workbook, Mould wrote & produced the songs, working with Anton Fier (Golden Palominos) & Jane Scarpantoni (Lou Reed's Ecstasy). The use of cello on most of the tracks predicts the approach of Nirvana's Unplugged...Mould is more of a classic singer-songwriter here, somewhere between Candy Apple Grey/Warehouse-Du and Richard Thompson- the lyrics are quite bleak- its hard not to think of Husker Du/Grant Hart when hearing words like "these poison years, it's just a memory" or "They've held me down for long enough; Like a flower I need to grow". In fact, Compositions for the Young & Old stems from the post-Warehouse era of Husker Du, which produced the underwhelming Ain't No Water in the Well & the standard Now That You Know Me. The acoustic sound is suitably lovely, fitting easily alongside REM's Green and Replacements'Don't Tell a Soul. Mould also goes for that upbeat college rock thing with See a Little Light & Dreaming I Am- Mould's fresh sobriety & outlook hinting at the postive. Workbook is Mould's year zero then- he's only really started embracing Husker Du-era material recently. Tracks like Brasilia Crossed with Trenton & Whichever Way The Wind Blows see Mould move towards more epic structures than usual- very much continued on his next solo album. The greatest track for me is the opening salvo of instrumental Sunspots and Wishing Well- the latter showcasing Mould's melancholic sensibilities with sublime acoustics & strings. Wishing Well is easily one of Mould's greatest songs from before or after this album. Workbook is ideal Autumn, Winter music, just the right side of MOR- though I don't know how fans expect artists to freeze on Land Speed Record, New Day Rising or Candy Apple Grey. Mould would shift from this record to the epic rock of Black Sheets of Rain (much more a downer & the album Ragged Glory should have been!), prior to the poppy-Du of Sugar. The Virgin/Solo years are looked over, which is a shame- one final piece of advice: buy both Workbook & Black Sheets...rather than the Poison Years compilation (though you might want that for the storming cover of Shoot Out the Lights...)...just buy the lot!

Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart closed with Lowery singing about how "Life Is Grand" in pointed response to "those of you who have appointed yourselves to expect us to say something darker." So when Key Lime Pie came out, its moodier music and imagery, not to mention that soon after the fact the band fell apart on the tour for the album, led more than one person to think those darker times had finally arrived. As it is, the group had already gone through one major shake-up between the two albums -- founding member Segel had taken a powder to concentrate on other efforts, with Morgan Fichter brought in as a replacement violinist. Her abilities were certainly praiseworthy, as the album-starting instrumental "Opening Theme" shows quite well. However, it's definitely not the same band that did Telephone Free Landslide Victory a mere four years previous -- things are more straightforwardly rock here most of the time, perhaps not too surprising in light of Lowery's subsequent work in Cracker. As it is, though, it's excellently conceived rock, with space, moodiness, and more to spare. Consider "Jack Ruby," with its wordless backing vocals, tense rhythms, and thick soloing, or "Laundromat" and its steady but unnerving crunch. It's not all potential melancholia, though -- "June" in particular is an underrated number, celebrating the early summer with sweetness and love (at least up to the increasingly stranger ending). Lowery's singing is his best yet, perhaps a little less prone to wackiness but an emergent, distinct voice all the same, and certainly prone to sing a quirky lyric or two still. The oddest thing of all was that the band actually gained a little mainstream attention on MTV and radio via a cover of Status Quo's psych-era nugget "Pictures of Matchstick Men."

(by Ned Raggett, All Music Guide)

Supposedly, the Dead had broken their studio jinx with In the Dark and finally learned how to make good albums without an audience in front of them. So why was this follow-up such a letdown? Perhaps because they hadn't taken seven years to write and perfect new material as they had with the previous album. The dominant songwriter here was keyboard player Brent Mydland (who died the following year), while the crucial songwriting team of Garcia and Hunter contributed only minor efforts. Chastened, the Dead once again retreated from studio work.

(by William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide)

By this time, Mark Mulcahey and Neal Ray had become a duo and recorded this smart set of acoustic songs. Mulcahey has emerged as a great folk-rock singer in his own right, no longer trying to cop Michael Stipe, though through no fault of his own there are traces of Van Morrison and Mike Scott in his rush to spit out the verbiage, set to sturm und drang guitar work. He might have found some popularity in the singer-songwriter renaissance that would soon follow, but he began to fade from the public eye just as he was coming into his own.

(by Denise Sullivan, All Music Guide)

In retrospect, "i" now seems like a crystal ball prophesying virtually every major musical development of the 1990s; from the shimmering techno of "A Love from Outer Space" to the liquid dub of "What's All This Then?," from the alien drone-pop of "Conundrum" to the sinister shoegazer miasma of "Supervixens" -- it's all here, an underground road map for countless bands to follow. Breathtaking in its scope and positively epic in its ambitions, the album is loosely organized into four sonic suites containing four tracks each, broken up by a series of wild-card noise interludes; the music shifts and mutates constantly, growing progressively deeper and darker with each passing song. Largely overlooked upon its original release, "i" is still an underappreciated masterpiece, but it's inconceivable to imagine that electronica and post-rock could ever have blossomed without it.

Biography

Arguably the most criminally under-recognized band of their era, the British duo A.R. Kane anticipated virtually all of the key musical breakthroughs of the 1990s a decade before the fact, with the roots of everything from shoegazing to trip-hop to ambient dub -- even those of post-rock -- lying in their dreamy, oceanic sound. Formed in London in 1986, A.R. Kane were essentially the partnership of Alex Ayuli and Rudi Tambala; hailed in the press as "the black Jesus and Mary Chain" upon debuting the following year on One Little Indian with the single "When You're Sad," they moved to 4AD later in 1987 to release the follow-up EP Lollita, an impressively eclectic blend of gorgeous dream pop bliss and nightmarish squalls of feedback produced by the Cocteau Twins' Robin Guthrie.

While at 4AD, label chief Ivo Watts-Russell suggested that Ayuli and Tambala team with roster mates Martyn and Steven Young of Colourbox, champion mixer Chris "C.J." Mackintosh, and London DJ Dave Dorrell to record a single fusing the rhythms and beats of classic soul recordings with state-of-the-art electronics and production. Dubbing the collaboration M/A/R/R/S, the resulting single, "Pump Up the Volume" -- a breakthrough effort heralding sampling's gradual absorption from hip-hop into dance music and ultimately the pop mainstream -- soon topped the British charts, the first 4AD release ever to accomplish the feat. Plans for a M/A/R/R/S follow-up never materialized, however, and A.R. Kane again picked up stakes, moving on to Rough Trade to begin work on their much-anticipated full-length debut.

The resulting album, 1988's 69, fulfilled all the promise of A.R. Kane's earlier work and more; cosmic yet funky, its liquid grooves immersed in waves of ecstatic noise, the record's mastery of atmosphere and mood -- in tandem with its nearly formless songs -- establish it as a clear antecedent not only of the nascent shoegazer sound but also much of the underground dance music to emerge in the years to follow. The duo's double-LP follow-up, 1989's i, was even more impressive in its scope, breathlessly veering from melodic dance-pop to eerie drone-rock to epic dub mosaics. And then...nothing: only three years later did the next A.R. Kane LP, Americana -- a handful of new tracks combined with past highlights -- appear on the Luaka Bop label. By the time of a proper follow-up, 1994's New Clear Child, the moment had clearly passed.

(by Jason Ankeny, All Music Guide)

Folk and pop melodies drive this magnificent album from start to finish. The chorus to "Sun Gone Down" holds up against any great hook, from Nick Lowe to Tommy James. Tantilla is pure Southern Gothic, as subjects from religion to the Civil War are addressed and set to a roots music beat that is handy, tight pop/rock at the core. After so many years, this record has worn quite well.

(by Denise Sullivan, All Music Guide)

The final Live Skull album showed that the quintet didn't merely go down fighting, but outright brawling, able to suggest everything from punk antecedents to, oddly enough, U2 dedicated to the art of rampage. That may sound a strange comparison, but the advantage is that Zedek sounds nothing like Bono, and, more to the point, the band suggests a variety of early-80s U.K. post-punk riffers (Gene Loves Jezebel, Siouxsie and the Banshees, even early Cult) without sounding like a goth band per se. There's very much the same sense of bright, hyper-trebly guitar slashing through the mix, semi-tribal rhythm rumble, and more adding to this sense of dramatic darkness, with Zedek's singing making for the unexpected twist, not conventionally goth in its husky appeal. The result spikes up "Sunday Afternoon Whiteout" and "Safe From Me," to name two songs, with an energy that steers away from many indie rock groups of its time. The Birthday Party might be the best comparison, to an extent — Zedek does have something of Nick Cave about her, though not entirely, while the band itself doesn't quite show the Australians' full range. But the energy and dark beauty is all there, infusing even the calmer moments like "Riches House" with a slightly twisted blues/cabaret feel. Live Skull keeps its own individual flair, though, resulting in sometimes quite beautiful numbers as "Amputeased," which could almost be their version of a ballad and which helps forecast, a little bit, where Zedek would go with Come in future. That the group keeps the songs fairly short and compact is to its advantage; not a note feels wasted, and the quintet does a great job at setting up the atmosphere of a song and then carrying it through. CD versions of Positraction include Snuffer as a bonus.

(by Ned Raggett, All Music Guide)

Short-Distance-Psycho-Folk - das ist die selbstgewählte Nische der Krefelder Gruppe, die melodienverliebt und verschmitzt die Grenzen zwischen Walzer und Punk aufhebt, Akkordeon, Musikbaß und Heavy-Metal- Gitarre einträchtig nebeneinander existieren läßt: Die quirlige Kollektion aus elf Songs ist ein unkonventionelles Plädoyer für das reine Vergnügen an der Musik.

(© Audio)

Sie wandeln stilsicher über die Pop-Gewässer: M. Walking On The Water legen mit ihrem zweiten Album ein außergewöhnlich vielschichtiges Werk vor. Markus Maria Jansen, Mike Pelzer, Ulrich Kisters und Jürgen Jähnke behaupten sich nicht nur im Kielwasser britischer Gitarrenbands ("Love"), sondern liegen auch mit der fast schon klassischen Ballade "Day To Day" oder dem akkoreonverzierten "Anymore" gut im Wind. Und Sinn für Astrologie haben die Ruhrpott-Rocker obendrein: Das atmosphärische Titelstück widmeten sie dem Planeten Pluto, der 248 Jahre benötigt, um die Sonne zu umkreisen. Solange kann's bis zum Durchbruch von M. Walking On The Water kaum dauern. ** Interpret.: 06-09 ** Klang.: 07-08

(© Stereoplay)

The album is probably called Up because three tracks are titled "Down." The sound is engagingly Velvet Underground-like, with a tendency toward long numbers built around a train-on-a-run rhythm that click along until they stop, as does the epic "B52," which comes across as a great club number -- the guitars chug along, the bass weaves in and out, and the drummer ticks along like a metronome. Vocalist/guitarist Phil Parfitt doesn't have quite as tuneless a voice as Lou Reed, mind you, which is probably to the good. Overall, it's a nifty piece of work, varying between thoughtful acoustic pieces and chugging rock & roll -- the three "Down" variations are good stuff, while "B52" and "Time to Kill" stand out very well, the former for its hypnotic rhythm and repeated refrain of "Go Bo Diddley/Go home," the latter for being a grand old-fashioned club rocker. This is one of those albums that winds up getting serious repeat plays.

(by Steven MacDonald, All Music Guide)

Im April 1989 veröffentlichte Neil Young in Japan und Australien das 5-Track-Mini-Album »Eldorado« auf CD unter dem Namen »Neil Young and the Restless«. Neil (Gitarre und Gesang) wurde von Rick Rosas am Bass und Chad Cromwell am Schlagzeug unterstützt, und sein langjähriger Crazy Horse-Bandkollege Frank »Poncho« Sampedro steuerte die Gitarre zum Titeltrack bei. Die »Eldorado« EP ist voll von wilder Verzerrung und erdigem Crunch.