The peak of the band's industrial-gone-mainstream fusion, and still one of the best electronic music albums yet recorded, Some Great Reward still sounds great, with the band's ever-evolving musical and production skills matching even more ambitious songwriting from Martin Gore. "People Are People" appears here, but finds itself outclassed by some ...
Travelling Without Moving deepens the acid jazz and '70s soul fusions of Return of the Space Cowboy, yet it doesn't have the uniform consistency of its predecessor. Nevertheless, Jamiroquai's fusions sound more fully realized with each outing, which makes its patchy songwriting forgivable. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide
Becoming X is one of the most engaging byproducts of post-Portishead trip-hop. While the Sneaker Pimps don't have the doomed romanticism of Portishead or the nasty experimental tendencies of Tricky, they have a cool sense of pop hooks and an edgier guitar attack than their predecessors. "Tesko Suicide" moves along with jagged guitars and rhythms, ...
Substance is a double-disc set collecting New Order's singles, including several songs that were never available on the group's albums, at least in these versions. While there are a couple of re-recordings of earlier singles, most of Substance consists of 12" single mixes designed for danceclub play. Arguably, these 12" mixes represent New Order's ...
Trainspotting concerns the adventures of a group of young, nearly criminal, drug-addicted Scottish friends. The novel, written by Irvine Welsh, became one of the most popular books in the British indie scene in the early '90s and was adapted to film in 1996 by the makers of Shallow Grave. Appropriately, an all-star collection of British pop and ...
Most of the Pet Shop Boys' albums are well-crafted and thoroughly intriguing in their own right, but dance-pop is a medium that is driven by hit singles. Discography collects all the duo's numerous hit singles, including a handful of non-album tracks, in their original 7" single mix, which occasionally varies from the album version, particularly ...
After Debut's success, the pressure was on Björk to surpass that album's creative, tantalizing electronic pop. She more than delivered with 1995's Post; from the menacing, industrial-tinged opener, "Army of Me," it's clear that this album is not simply Debut redux. The songs' production and arrangements -- especially those of the epic, modern ...
It's rare to find bands capable of keeping their own best qualities to the fore while trying something new each time out, but Depeche Mode demonstrate that balance in full on the marvelous Exciter. Arguably the first album made by the group as a cohesive unit since Violator (and bearing some resemblance to that record in overall title and song ...
Ever since his thrilling 1994 debut with Mellow Gold, each new Beck album was a genuine pop cultural event, since it was never clear which direction he would follow. Kicking off his career as equal parts noise-prankster, indie folkster, alt-rocker, and ironic rapper, he's gone to extremes, veering between garishly ironic party music to brooding ...
Alphabetical is Phoenix's second album, trailing their debut by nearly four years. It's much less of a mishmash than its predecessor, basing itself around the group's soft, cunningly arranged pop that occasionally reaches beyond '70s AM and '80s sophisti-pop to slip in discreet traces of hip-hop. During their time away, Phoenix became much more ...
Neither a flat-out retread nor a full-fledged progression, Version 2.0 is almost too accurate a title for Garbage's second album. Everything that made Garbage a success is here -- Shirley Manson's seductive strength, strong pop sensibility, a production that falls halfway between alternative rock and techno -- presented in a slightly newer form. ...
Females in rock received a massive push toward the end of the '90s thanks to the spirited effort of Sarah McLachlan's Lilith Fair and the fierce drive of urban female artists such as Erykah Badu and Lauryn Hill. During the new millennium the door remained open for other female singer/songwriters, including Emiliana Torrini. Torrini's beautiful ...
When I Was Born for the 7th Time is a remarkable leap forward for Cornershop, the place where the group blends all of their diverse influences into a seamless whole. Cornershop uses Indian music as a foundation, finding its droning repetition similar to the trancier elements of electronica, the cut-and-paste collages of hip-hop, and the skeletal ...
With their second album, Actually, the Pet Shop Boys perfected their melodic, detached dance-pop. Where most of Please was dominated by the beats, the rhythms on Actually are part of a series of intricate arrangements that create a glamorous but disposable backdrop for Neil Tennant's tales of isolation, boredom, money, and loneliness. Not only are ...
When news surfaced in 1995 that Alan Wilder had departed Depeche Mode to concentrate on his solo project Recoil, the immediate concern among fans was whether the band would be able to hit past heights again. Though Wilder's profile was always much lesser than that of Martin Gore and David Gahan -- and almost even that of Alan Fletcher, whose ...
Garbage's self-titled debut has all the trappings of alternative rock -- off-kilter arrangements, occasional bursts of noise, a female singer with a thin, airy voice -- but it comes off as pop, thanks to the glossy production courtesy of drummer Butch Vig. Not only is the sound of the record slick and professional, but all the songs are well ...
Vince Clarke can claim involvement in two stunning debuts in only two years: Depeche Mode's Speak and Spell and Yaz's Upstairs at Eric's. While Speak and Spell is, by far, the more consistent record, Upstairs at Eric's is wholly more satisfying, beating the Depeche record on substance and ambition, and is light years ahead in emotion. "Don't Go" ...
With a visual style as messy and maddening as the musical foundation, Midnite Vultures is hardly for the faint-hearted or, indeed, anyone seeking consistency within individual songs, never mind an entire album. Beck Hansen snatches up threads from all kinds of directions, with the result that the record tends not to make consistent sense from one ...
Alphaville's 1984 debut, Forever Young, deserves to be viewed as a classic synth pop album. There's no doubting that Germans are behind the crystalline Teutonic textures and massive beats that permeate the album, but vocalist Marian Gold's impressive ability to handle a Bryan Ferry croon and many impassioned high passages meant the album would ...
In a word, stunning. Perhaps an odd word to use given that Violator continued in the general vein of the previous two studio efforts by Depeche Mode: Martin Gore's upfront lyrical emotional extremism and knack for a catchy hook filtered through Alan Wilder's ear for perfect arrangements, ably assisted by top English producer Flood. Yet the idea ...
Beck began work on 2006's The Information after Sea Change but before he reunited with the Dust Brothers for 2005's Guero, eventually finishing the album after Guero was generally acclaimed as a return to Odelay form. So, it shouldn't come as a great surprise that The Information falls somewhere between those two records, at least on sonic terms. ...
The full addition of Alan Wilder to Depeche Mode's lineup created a perfect troika that would last another 11 years, as the combination of Martin Gore's songwriting, Wilder's arranging, and David Gahan's singing and live star power resulted in an ever more compelling series of albums and singles. Construction Time Again, the new lineup's first ...
Both more and less than what a partnership of Sumner and Marr would promise, Electronic's debut has weathered time much better than might have been thought upon its release, but ultimately only half works. When it does, though, it's fantastic, sometimes shifting from okay to fantastic within the same song. Opening number "Idiot Country" is a bit ...
At their peak, the Happy Mondays were hedonism in perpetual motion, a party with no beginning and no end, a party where Pills 'N' Thrills and Bellyaches was continually pumping. The apex of their career (and quite arguably the whole baggy/Madchester movement), Pills 'N' Thrills and Bellyaches pulsates with a garish neon energy, with psychedelic ...
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