Chapman Tracy - Where You Live
($12.99) [For nearly two decades, Tracy Chapman has been a truly individual voice on the modern musical landscape, charting and artistic path that owes nothing to trend and fashion, and everything to personal spirit, intelligence, and integrity. An eloquent teller of stories that are at once deeply intimate and yet speak to universal human concerns and a wider social conscience, Chapman has created a body of work that has been as consistently compelling as it is honest and uncompromising.]
Crow Sheryl - Wildflower
($11.99) [Since her 1993 debut, Tuesday Night Music Club, Sheryl Crow has been churning out unassailably appealing CDs in an unassailably appealing voice. Which means, according to the rules of the pop music cosmos, by album six it's about time for a misstep. Natural law, fortunately, will have to keep checking its watch. Wildflower moves Sheryl Crow one step closer to Hall of Fame status as she shunts the established rock star's impulse to get all experimental, but instead sprawls, rambling rose-like, across the substance-spiked pop landscape she helped pioneer.]
Dylan Bob - No direction home
($18.99) [Book-ended with an embryonic recording made by a high school friend and a live, boisterous take of 'Like a Rolling Stone' less than seven years later, the fifth release in the Bob Dylan Bootleg series (and the soundtrack to Martin Scorsese's Dylan documentary of the same name) proffers just how far the folk idol turned rock star had come between his last year in a Minnesota high school and 1966's contentious UK tour. The double CD is sequenced chronologically and features 26 rare and unreleased recordings (most between 1961 and 1966), including 1959's muddied 'When I Got Troubles,' reportedly the first song Dylan ever put to tape, and Woody Guthrie's 'This Land Is Your Land,' performed live soon after Dylan's arrival in New York. ]
Guy Buddy - Bring em in
($13.99) [The Chicago blues legend's recent divorce is weighing on his mind, if 'Somebody's Been Sleeping in My Bed' and 'Now You're Gone' are to be believed. That's bad for Buddy Guy, but good for his fans, who, on these contemplative, regretful numbers, get treated to some of Guy's most sweetly improvisational and melodic guitar since his '60s hallmark A Man and the Blues. There's slash 'n' burn, too, as he gunfights with Carlos Santana on 'I Put a Spell on You' and squeezes pure heart from his strings teaming with John Mayer on 'I've Got Dreams to Remember.' Guy also plays prettily and trades vocals with Tracy Chapman on a rote but right 'Ain't No Sunshine,' although Robert Randolph and Keith Richards are slight on 'Lay Lady Lay' and 'The Price You Gotta Pay,' respectively. Guy hasn't cut this many classics in a while, but he channels enough raw, emotional sensitivity to make the oldies sound like they're pumping fresh blood.]
Jamiroquai - Dynamite
($13.99) [Almost 4 years on from the from the release of their last album, the multi platinum, no 1 Funk Odyssey (his best selling UK album since Travelling Without Moving), Jay Kay and his band return with their eagerly anticipated 6th studio album, entitled Dynamite. Dynamite and it is - is set to further enhance Jamiroquais reputation as one of the UKs most successful exports of the last decade and more, with over twenty million worldwide album sales to date. Dynamite is also Jamiroquais most accomplished and diverse work to date, with new co-producer Mike Spencer at the controls with Kay, it encompasses fantastic song writing and plenty of floor filling classics-in-waiting.]
Queen & Paul Rodgers - Return of the champions
($17.99) [Following their hugely successful 32 date European Arena tour Queen plus Paul Rodgers release this double CD capturing the magic of their performance. Featured alongside some of the most famous Queen songs are Bad Company & Free classics such as 'All Right Now' & 'Can't Get Enough'. The package features a 16 page booklet with photographs taken by fans throughout the tour. 27 total tracks. ]
Raitt Bonnie - Souls Alike
($12.99) [After almost 35 years of recording, Bonnie Raitt knows exactly who she is and what she wants, as Souls Alike, the first self-produced album of her career, attests. Though Raitt wrote none of the material, the selection bears her imprint and highlights both her strengths and her range. The album's opening 'I Will Not Be Broken' provides the sort of signature, stick-to-your-guns affirmation for Raitt that 'My Way' did for Frank Sinatra and 'I Won't Back Down' did for Tom Petty. Two songs written by pianist Jon Cleary, 'Love on One Condition' and 'Unnecessary Mercenary,' reflect the Little Feat-in-New Orleans side to Raitt's music, while the reggae underpinnings of 'God Was in the Water,' the electro-worldbeat of 'Deep Water,' and the slide-guitar funk of 'Trinkets' find her settling naturally into a variety of grooves.]
Williams Dar - My better self
($13.99) [On Williams's revival of Neil Young's 'Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere,' Marshall Crenshaw provides vocal counterpoint and stinging guitar, while she teams with Ani DiFranco for a disembodied duet on Pink Floyd's 'Comfortably Numb.' With its intimations of immortality, 'Blue Light of the Flame' features a shimmering keyboard generating space-age atmospherics reminiscent of early David Bowie. 'So Close to My Heart' and 'The Hudson' (with harmonies from Patty Larkin) return Williams's music to its folk base, but much of the rest suggests rites of passage, at a time when all sorts of 'better selves' seem open to possibility, with the radio always on.]
Wilson Gretchen - All Jacked Up
($12.99) [Here for the Party, this sassy, strong-singing Redneck Woman's 2004 debut, was a giant smash, but All Jacked Up's even better: diverse, rockin', and topped by a sensuous, soulful surprise bonus-track version of Billie Holiday's 'Good Morning Heartache.' Wilson kick-starts this guitar-and-fiddle-fired CD with the title track--a whiskey-drinkin' sequel to 'Redneck'--and the ode to down-home women 'California Girls.' 'Skoal Ring' suggests that the couple that chaws together stays together, and 'One Bud Wiser' is a crafty tongue-in-cheek weeper that pays tribute to George Jones in both its lyrics and Wilson's copycat phrasing.]
Young Neil - Prarie Wind
($12.99) [An artist for all musical seasons, Neil Young returns to autumnal harvest mode on Prairie Wind, with homespun material and sing-song melodies that renew the spirit of some of his most popular releases. Yet the mood here is darker in its maturity than on Harvest and Harvest Moon--the previous releases in what now sounds like a trilogy--and the arrangements have greater range and aural depth, with Wayne Jackson of the soulful Memphis Horns, the Fisk University Jubilee Singers gospel choir, and a string section employed to striking effect. This is a song cycle of dreams, memories, family ties, and the passage of time--what is lost and what endures. The elliptical, epic 'No Wonder,' with its evocation of 9/11, ranks with the most ambitious songs of Young's career, while 'Falling Off the Face of the Earth,' 'It's a Dream,' and the bluesy title cut combine childlike innocence with unsettling experience. ]
