Neil Young: Five Best Albums
Neil Young has enjoyed a long and erratic music career. His first brush with fame came with Buffalo Springfield in the 1960s. He released his first solo album in 1969, and he also teamed up with Crosby, Stills, and Nash…
Aphoristical
Graham Fyfe has been writing this website since his late teens. Now in his forties, he's been obsessively listening to albums for years. He works as a web editor and plays the piano.
Cool in the Pool – Holger Czukay
We’re reaching peak rock star death era – many of the musicians active during rock music’s formative years are reaching their seventies. This week we lost Walter Becker of Steely Dan, who was an integral part of one of the…
The Band: Albums Ranked from Worst to Best
After years of playing live, The Band recorded the Basement Tapes with Bob Dylan, where they developed their unique melding of rock with traditional folk, country and blues forms. The organic harmonies, the virtuoso but unassuming musicianship, and songs that seemed to…
I Wanna Be By Your Side – Syreeta
Not content with merely creating some of the greatest albums ever made (and winning a bucket-load of Grammy Awards) during the 1970s, Stevie Wonder also produced a couple of albums for his ex-wife Syreeta Wright. He wrote most of the…
Come Around – Sugar
Whether he’s recording as the guitarist and co-leader of Hüsker Dü, as a solo artist, or as the leader of Sugar, you generally know what you’re going to get from Bob Mould. I understand that he’s diversified somewhat on some…
Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft – The Carpenters
The Carpenters, from Downey California, released some transcendent songs in the early 1970s. Karen Carpenter’s beautiful voice showcased beautiful melodies with dark undertows, on songs like ‘Rainy Days and Mondays’ and ‘Superstar’. But the brother and sister duo’s career was…
Anchor Me by The Mutton Birds
Don McGlashan is up with Dave Dobbyn and the Finn brothers as New Zealand’s best mainstream guitar-rock writers. He’s best-known for his work in 1990s rock band The Mutton Birds, but they were the third group he recorded with. His…
Sweet Freedom by Michael McDonald
When my wife and I bought our own first house, we lived next door to a young man with mental health issues. I quickly earned his dislike by calling the police on the first day after we moved in –…
Tom Waits Albums: Ranked from Worst to Best
California’s Tom Waits has enjoyed a remarkable career. Emerging in the early 1970s as a whisky-soaked, piano-playing balladeer, his career was seemingly petering out in the early 1980s. But he reinvented himself with the junkyard clang of 1983’s excellent Swordfishtrombones,…
Hey Snow White by The New Pornographers
The New Pornographers are a Canadian power pop super-group – the members were drawn together from other projects. Notable alumni include leader A.C. Newman, previously of Zumpano, alt-country vocalist Neko Case, and Dan Bejar, who records as Destroyer. The group…
