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Album Reviews Archive

Album Review: Alicia Keys ‘Girl on Fire’

It seems like Alicia Keys can almost do no wrong at this stage in her career. She has established herself, earning respect to such a degree that listeners are willing to give her a chance no matter what she does. This affords her the opportunity for great musical freedom. Whether she is up to the

Album Review: Kid Rock ‘Rebel Soul’

Kid Rock had a strangely structured rise in rock music, starting off somewhere between genres and making the most of it with enormous sales to match his ego and image. In recent years though it feels like he has come to a plateau, and while the sales are still there his music hasn’t seemed as

Album Review: Soundgarden ‘King Animal’

Of all the bands to come out of the pacific northwest in the grunge era, Soundgarden never truly fit in. They still don’t, and their music is still different from what is popular today, but it’s not dated. They haven’t put together a studio record featuring new music since the 90s golden age of alternative

Album Review: One Direction ‘Take Me Home’

It really doesn’t matter if this album is any good. Millions of people are going to buy it without reading a review or hearing more than one song, and an equal number of people are going to passionately denounce it with about the same level of ignorance. That’s the blessing and the curse of being

Album Review: Green Day ‘¡Dos!’

When I wrote my review for the first of Green Day’s three-part album release, ¡Uno!, ¡Dos! and ¡Tre!, I said that parts two and three would have to differentiate themselves in some way or the whole collection might be just about irrelevant. Putting out records in this way lends a band a great deal of

Album Review: Andrew Bird ‘Hands of Glory’

When Andrew Bird recorded Break It Yourself he found himself with a separate collection of songs along a slightly different theme, which wouldn’t have fit as well on that record. The followup EP, Hands of Glory, has a decidedly western slant to it, featuring Appalachian fiddle more strongly than the lush and soaring violin of

Album Review: Trey Anastasio ‘Traveler’

When Trey Anastasio made the decision to enter into the realm of indie rock, it can at least be said that he was in no way trepidatious about it. This album is so loaded with quirky ambience and atmospheric swells of strings that it puts bands like Arcade Fire and The National to shame, but

Album Review: Jason Aldean ‘Night Train’

As country singers go, Jason Aldean has a voice and a style that absolutely drip of stereotypes, laid on so thick as to seem like a caricature, but he’s so insanely good at it that nobody seems to mind that he might be playing it up a little. Maybe a lot. Night Train is his