Led
Zeppelin : II
From the first grinding notes of the famous
vamp that introduces "Whole Lotta Love," LED ZEPPELIN
II announces for all to hear that they are the definitive hard
rock band of their generation. But before the listener can even
settle into the groove, things takes a hard left turn into a spacey
new rhythm, exotically flavored by Page's droning feedback and
innovative use of a violin bow. By tune's end, Zeppelin has repeatedly
toyed with the listener's expectations.
This subversive quality distinguishes most
of the arrangements on LED ZEPPELIN II, as in the soft/hard dynamic
shifts of "What Is And What Should Never Be," the gospelish
mood of "Thank You," the rocking vamps and funk rhythms
of "Heartbreaker" and "Living Loving Maid,"
and the country music echoes of "Ramble On." And in
their appropriations of source materials from Howlin' Wolf, Robert
Johnson, and Sonny Boy Williamson, Page and company continued
to mine the rich vein of the blues.
Rolling Stone
- Ranked #75 in Rolling Stone's "500 Greatest Albums Of All
Time"
- "This album opens with one of the most exhilarating guitar
riffs in rock & roll..."
Led
Zeppelin : IV
Led
Zeppelin's epochal fourth album finds both the band's blues-rock
thunder and their gentler, more lyrical side filed down to a razor-sharp
point. "Black Dog" and "Rock and Roll" aren't
just perennial air-guitar anthems; they're the ultimate distillation
of the blues-inflected, hard-rock fury the band had already been
perfecting for the past three years. Robert Plant's Little Richard-on-amphetamines
wail rides perfectly atop the band's strategically directed crunch
for maximum impact. "When the Levee Breaks"is a titanic
take on the blues, with John Bonham's thunderous drums echoing
through the subsequent decades. The folkier, acoustic tracks provide
welcome moments of beauty and respite, and all the elements of
the band's sound come together in "Stairway to Heaven,"
a suite of shifting dynamics that would become the Eiffel Tower
of classic-rock radio forevermore.
Rolling Stone
- Ranked #66 in Rolling Stone's "500 Greatest Albums Of All
Time"
- "...Towering..."
NME
- Ranked #56 in NME's list of the 'Greatest Albums Of All Time.'
Van
Halen : II
While it's tough to follow up a classic,
VAN HALEN II comes close to matching the brilliance of the band's
debut. Once again, the record begins with a fat bass line from
Michael Anthony, and his piercing background vocals are featured
on "You're No Good," an explosive cover of the Linda
Ronstadt tune.
While the group's early material was slightly
too heavy for Top 40 airplay, here they take a commercial stab
with the brilliant "Dance the Night Away" and "Beautiful
Girls." "Somebody Get Me a Doctor" features the
trademark wails of David Lee Roth, and Eddie Van Halen's magical
soloing. Alex Van Halen's playing takes a slightly complex turn
on "Outta Love Again" with some funky drum fills. Eddie
shows his versatility with the gorgeous, flamenco-styled solo
"Spanish Fly." The band kicks it full throttle once
again on "D.O.A.," which accelerates to a mighty finish.
"Women in Love" features lessons from Mr. Roth on dealing
with female fickleness. VAN HALEN II would go on to be a huge
success, reaching the U.S. Top 10.
Van
Halen : Women And Children First
WOMEN AND CHILDREN FIRST reached #6 in April
1980 and shows a band progressing towards their eventual peak.
"And The Cradle Will Rock" is one of the album's two
radio staples, along with "Everybody Wants Some." These
two anthems set the stage for one hell of a rock & roll party
album.
"Fools," a relatively obscure
VH tune, features thumping rhythm, the piercing background vocals
of bassist Michael Anthony and some David Lee Roth scatting at
the end. Preferring sneaky licks and heavy riffs, Eddie Van Halen
does fit some excellent acoustic work into "Could This Be
Magic" and "In A Simple Rhyme." WACF shows a hungry,
talented rock band delivering the goods. Longtime producer Ted
Templeman helps the band achieve their signature sound, producing
a fantastic album.
Van
Halen : Fair Warning
A classic and gritty riff opens "Mean
Street," and Eddie Van Halen and David Lee Roth are off and
running. "Sinner's Swing" is a hard-rock take on the
big-band sound, with Mr. Roth successfully capturing the vibe
of the swing era. "Unchained" contains Eddie's hyperactive
riffs and majestic soloing, while "When Push Comes To Shove"
features a funky bassline by Michael Anthony, and a slinky rap
from Roth. "So This Is Love" contains a sing-along chorus
and a fluid, blues-based solo. Capping off the album is a synthesizer
solo that foreshadows the 1984 album.
If it's not broke, don't fix it--Van Halen
relied for quite a while on the same infectious hard-rock formula
that makes FAIR WARNING a winner. The album is questionably their
finest moment and is a perfect place to start exploring one of
hard rock's premier outfits.
Q
- 4 out of 5 stars
- "...[This album] remains their best variation on the theme
since their first record, housing both Eddie's most dynamic riffs
and Roth's best gibberish lyrics..."
Van
Halen : Diver Down
DIVER DOWN was a #3 smash for Van Halen
in 1982. The band scored its biggest hit up to that point with
"(Oh) Pretty Woman," and were to begin its "Hide
Your Sheep" tour by headlining the US festival. Although
criticized for containing nearly 50 percent cover material, DIVER
propelled the group into the rock stratosphere.
"Where Have All The Good Times Gone"
actually exceeds the Kinks' original, using the same formula that
worked with "You Really Got Me." "Hang 'Em High"
contains a blistering Eddie Van Halen solo, while the somber instrumental
"Cathedral" shows Ed's use of digital delay and electric
guitar volume swells to create a synthesizer-like sound. On "Dancing
In The Street" the band tries to stay true to the vibe of
the original tune while still injecting the Van Halen sound. The
flamenco-style intro of "Little Guitars" leads into
another distinct, innovative Eddie guitar line. The album concludes
on a humorous note with "Happy Trails." Great songs,
David Lee Roth's charismatic vocals, and Eddie's virtuoso guitar
are just some of the reasons to check out DIVER DOWN.
Beck
: Odelay
Like its creator's freewheeling songwriting
process, ODELAY is a monument to wondrously precise pastiche.
It's a glowing junkyard of musical styles, absurdist images, distorted
samples, postmodern anti-emotions, you name it. Over the course
of his three previous albums, Beck tinkered with more traditions
and aesthetic approaches than an average cultural-studies professor
sees in a career: hip-hop beats, acoustic folk-blues, indie-punk
guitar squalls, DIY production, commercial smash! ODELAY accounts
for all those things, too, but it also furthers the seamless,
rump-shaking sheen of its collage nature, turning process into
possible meaning.
Rolling Stone
- Ranked #27 in Rolling Stone's "50 Coolest Records".
Sheryl
Crow : C'mon C'mon
"Steve McQueen" won the 2003
Grammy Award for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance.
C'MON C'MON was nominated for the 2003
Grammy Awards for Best Rock Album and Best Engineered
Album (Non-Classical).
"Soak Up The Sun" was nominated
for the 2003 Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal
Performance.
"It's So Easy" was nominated for
the 2003 Grammy Award for Best Pop Collaboration With
Vocals.
So you think you know Sheryl Crow, eh? Well,
the closest thing to what one might consider a "trademark"
Crow tune on C'MON, C'MON is probably "Soak up the Sunshine,"
whose ironic good-timey feel and slide guitar recall TUESDAY NIGHT
MUSIC CLUB. "You're An Original" is a ' 70s-style bluesy
hard-rocker whose stylistic bent is further underlined by the
guest vocal appearance of Lenny Kravitz. The low-key "Safe
and Sound" combines Beatlesque chord progressions with contemporary
R&B loops for an interesting meld of sounds. The plangent
guitars of the title track are the most obvious example of Crow's
debt to early-'70s rock, with passages that seem to have EVERY
PICTURE TELLS A STORY stamped all over them.
Producers include: Sheryl Crow, Jeff Trout,
John Shanks.
Engineers include: Trina Shomaker, Eric Tew, Dean Basskerville.
O
Brother, Where Art Thou? Soundtrack
O BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU? won the 2002
Grammy Awards for Album Of The Year and for Best
Compilation Soundtrack Album For A Motion Picture, Television
Or Other Visual Media.
"O Death" won the 2002 Grammy
Award for Best Male Country Vocal Performance.
"I Am A Man Of Constant Sorrow"
won the 2002 Grammy Award for Best Country Collaboration
With Vocals.
Hillbilly and bluegrass sounds underscore
T-Bone Burnett's soundtrack to the award-winning Coen brothers
film. Burnett researched into the type of music that was popular
in 1937 to give added musical element to the movie. Among the
musical legends T Bone called on to be part of the soundtrack
are Ralph Stanley, Gillian Welch, John Hartford, Alison Krauss,
Emmylou Harris, the Fairfield Four, and Norman Blake.
Those kings of cinematic quirkiness, the
Coen brothers, fashioned their film O BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU?
as a contemporary adaption of Homer's Odyssey, centering around
a group of American chain-gang prisoners. The film's earthy Southern
setting makes it a natural for a bluegrass-oriented soundtrack,
for which producer T-Bone Burnett picked the cream of the country
crop.
"Didn't Leave Nobody But the Baby,"
for example, is a summit meeting of some of the finest contemporary
female country vocalists (Gillian Welch, Emmylou Harris, and Alison
Krauss). The old school isn't forgotten either, as evidenced by
a chilling a cappella rendering of "O Death," courtesy
of Ralph Stanley, and by the closing cut, where the Stanley Brothers
issue an elegant plea to heaven with "Angel Band."
Jet
: Get Born
Whenever the proverbial Next Big Thing rolls
around, it usually takes a few different bands to push the style
into the mainstream. With grunge, Nirvana lit the spark, but it
was Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, and Stone Temple Pilots who convinced
everyone the Seattle sound was no fluke. In the case of the New
Rock phenomenon, the Strokes brought style and the White Stripes
added artiness, but with GET BORN, Jet put all the pieces together.
Perhaps the first band of the genre to completely
absorb and effectively reconfigure classic rock & roll influences
without a trace of winking irony, Jet not only swaggers like the
Stones and pouts like Iggy Pop, but injects sorely needed doses
of romanticism and variety into a style that otherwise often seems
perilously close to oldies revivalism. The most immediate difference
between the Australian foursome and their shaggy-haired brethren
is the band's talent for soaring sad songs. On the gorgeous "Look
What You've Done" and "Radio Song," Jet proves
that trashy guitars and neo-garage sneering are not the only way
to rock, in the process satisfying both fans of piano-driven ballads
and the much edgier NYC sound.
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