Hippy relic created by four warring egos or a timeless Americana classic? Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s second album sold by the bucketload, yet 50 years on it still continues to divide opinion. Ben Wardle gets Déjà Vu… “When we did our first CSN record, we were very much in love with each other and each other’s music. By the time of Déjà Vu that … Continue reading Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young – Déjà Vu
On their fifth album, The Doors abandoned experimental dalliances for the raw, sonic crunch of electric blues that had defined them in the first place. Fifty years on from its release, Neil Crossley assesses the merits of the album that returned them to the attention of the hip counterculture… Few albums have started life quite so inauspiciously as Morrison Hotel, the fifth long player by … Continue reading The Doors – Morrison Hotel
Robert Smith’s guitar gently weeps over a lonely piano. Welcome to Seventeen Seconds. This unsettling instrumental sets the mood for the next 35 minutes, 40 seconds. Deliberately disjointed, the fear factor is heightened towards the end by a harrowing, almost indecipherable, moan… Whatever it is, or is intended to be, the sound will chill you to the bone. Continue reading The Cure – Seventeen Seconds
Madonna’s fourth studio album is an immaculate collection of songs which saw the superstar looking inwards for divine inspiration. Taking in grief, loss, redemption and empowerment, with the celestial Like A Prayer she created her own new testament… Though Madonna had already established herself as the definitive female pop artist of the 80s with a catalogue of classic hits under her Boy Toy belt, she … Continue reading Madonna – Like A Prayer
Shadowy gloom has haunted The Cure since the release of 1980’s Seventeen Seconds. Robert Smith curated an atmosphere that was otherworldly and unsettling, yet curiously comforting. Over the next 40 years, the band wrote some of the most effervescent pop songs ever recorded, yet the mood established here, as Dan Biggane discovers, is one they would ultimately return to again and again… Continue reading The Making of The Cure’s Seventeen Seconds
On their wildly influential debut album, Gang Of Four stepped forward to create a jarring, funky post-punk masterpiece that was the pitch-perfect distillation of their socio-political beliefs and anti-rock stance, as Gary Tipp discovers… With the dust now settled, it’s clear that punk rock wasn’t the beginning of a glorious new chapter, but rather an emphatic full stop. In the registers of music history, the … Continue reading Gang Of Four – Entertainment!
On their third release, the Pixies unleashed a sublime album, one that transformed them from darlings of the underground rock press to mainstream chart success. As Neil Crossley explains, it was a transition that saw them emerge with their raw, abrasive spirit still intact… Sift through the welter of adjectives employed by music writers over the decades and certain ones appear with alarming regularity. ‘Visceral’ … Continue reading Pixies – Doolittle
On their eighth album, Disintegration, The Cure turned their backs on the skewed brand of pop that had yielded a succession of hits, and opted instead for doom-laden introspection. Against all expectations, as Neil Crossley explains, it was the album that would become their crowning achievement… In the ego-strewn music industry, it’s often assumed that anyone who sets foot on a stage wants to be … Continue reading The Cure – Disintegration
On their debut album, 3 Feet High And Rising, Long Island trio De La Soul forged a vibrant new template for hip-hop, radically different from the macho posturing of their contemporaries. Forty years on from its release, Neil Crossley charts the creation of a suburban-inspired masterpiece… On 6 April 2011, the US Library of Congress unveiled a list of 25 recordings, drawn up the previous … Continue reading De La Soul – 3 Feet High and Rising
Fifty years ago, everything changed for David Bowie. He went from a singer on the fringes to finally finding success with Space Oddity. After the failure of his debut album two years earlier, just how did Bowie become the Starman? As three new vinyl boxsets explore his transformation, John Earls speaks to his bandmates and former girlfriend Hermione Farthingale. David Bowie was 22 when Space … Continue reading Bowie '69: How everything changed for Bowie
