Music reviews. CD reviews. Critically hip!

A Little Space is essentially two guys, Alan Gruskoff, aka "Big Al," who with a few exceptions writes and performs literally everything on A LITTLE SPACE; and Terrell Moran, who provides vocals on nine of the fourteen tracks on this release. And therein lies the split personality of this disc. ...

Innovative, intuitive, intelligent… just a few of the earliest thoughts that crawl into your head after a once over of their new self-titled night flight into the expanse of exploration. AI's foundation is one of life itself and the self-discovery within evolution on an instrumental odyssey that touches upon everything ...

I absolutely love this DVD and have watched it several times compared to once of pretty much all the others. This is the London performance of the "Brutal Planet" tour in February of 2000. When contrasted to "Welcome To My Nightmare" it's obviously a grown up version of the dude ...

Disc one is pretty much what you would expect from the story of a band. There are live cuts from concerts over the years, along with a narration by Alice Cooper and the original band members before he went solo. Between songs (many of them not the full song) the ...

This is an original recording of the actual "Welcome To My Nightmare" live show, and it's really something when you consider the performance was filmed in 1975. We've become so sophisticated and spoiled by all our years of MTV, you really have to appreciate what Alice Cooper was doing that ...

With apologies to partially strangling a beloved band's name, this is the real international noise conspiracy. Five German gents who manage to squish most of the Strokes' alluring street urchin cool along with At The Drive-In's abandonment, then rammed with a good shot of that Big Chief/Zen Guerilla badass-rock boyz ...

At the time of their arrival over a decade ago, Rock was dealing with its off and on bout with the flu, successfully distancing itself from eager youth looking for a new label to remedy discontent from simplicity and stage presence.  So The Black Crowes, all the more remarkable in ...

Cheb Nasro is a proponent of Rai music, the northern Africa sound that fuses western rhythms with Far Eastern beats. DEPARTURES is his first release to actually see official world-wide distribution. Though he is a resident of the United States, he has been largely unknown here, notwithstanding the acquaintance of ...

The expectations for Christina Aguilera’s sophomore release,  Stripped have been pretty high.Abandoning the Teen-Pop saccharine of her 1999 debut and trying to distance herself from the pack of blond ambitious youthful chanteuse’s, Aguilera has taken a big chance (a rarity in Pop circles) and has conveyed an assorted bag of ...

Having spent most of his career shakin' a contortionist's wobbly leg and scratchin' out sizable hooks with the English Beat and Fine Young Cannibals, guitarist Andy Cox finally steps (teeters?) out of the shadows as the arranger/musical head of Britpop duo Cribabi.  Often marveled for his imaginative reconstructions of island ...

CARAVANA is the brainchild of Joao Pedro Veloso Rodrigues; he combines snippets of vocal and instrumental middle eastern and African traditional music tracks with western samples, basslines, and beats to exotic effect. The CD booklet contains an artist's rendition of Rodrigues sitting at a console, surrounded by assorted and sundry ...

Call 'em Power Pop, dumbed down Punk, mainstream Rock, what have you, it all leads to the same destination-good music. Difficult to classify a true Punk band anymore these days with so many "borrowing" clips and catch phrases from the past, paint by numbers lyrics and unassuming personalities, you'd be ...

Unless you count Rodney Crowell, there's not many certifiable "headliners" here. It is, however, the only tribute album to the revered Man In Black you'll ever own where ALL the artists have been profoundly influenced by Johnny Cash's sorrow-bound songwriting and stirring vocals.  Even a certifiable demoniac like Hank III ...

The perfect marriage of beer, bagpipes and brawling! This disc is also one of the year's best live albums, capturing the Murphs in all their ale-soaked eminence. Beantown knows that the band's sold-out St. Patty's shows are a spectacle like no other - on a plane with the first Warped ...

If you're wondering, yes, Evick is the namesake for band leader Pete, and while I wouldn't rip out the Bon Jovi comparisons too soon, there is a similar quality running through the catchy and heartfelt songs that stretches further than the 1985 time warp they're caught in. And yet looking ...

Lacking that special something that propelled Filter into stardom in their prior efforts, the new album ‘The Amalgamut’ disappoints on a number of levels.  Frontman Richard Patrick sounds very lethargic at times on the disc, and the supporting cast does little to make up for the poor effort.  The disc ...

One of those inexplicable phenomenon's… The Goo Goo Dolls remaining a chart-topping success, while Def Leppard and decline bond together like two long lost friends separated by adulthood. They struck a nerve with "A Boy Named Goo" all those years ago and really defined a Pop/Rock sound that's continually tapped ...

John Garcia and Kyuss set the high water mark for low-ended Heavy Rock many a desert moon ago, bursting on the scene with their rumble and thud styled driving Blues bouncing over the bumpy roads carved by the Sabbath's before them. When Kyuss disbanded in the early nineties', the band ...

Hurricane was among those less regarded step-children of the and bygone eighties' hair Metal era; a promising student that for two records had headline potential before breaking off into mediocrity and totally disbanding like many of the rest. Few can argue though that when they hit the scene with their ...

20 odd years ago, this is what I had hoped the future of British punk would have sounded like. Clawing away ferociously against the popular musical grain, but with a strange pretense that has come to define most of UK's cult obssessions (from Syd Barrett on down).  Ikara Colt are ...

"Rock In Rio" is a Live Concert video from the last date of Iron Maiden's "Brave New World Tour." The live show format is the most popular type of DVD, but this particular entry is WAY above the crowd in quality and quantity. Iron Maiden is a very energetic band ...

The Heavy Metal Gods were back in 2001 with a new lead singer, Ripper Owens, and a new album, "Demolition." This is a concert DVD, filmed at a live performance in London in December of 2001, supporting "Demolition." I've been inundated with concert videos of late and this one falls ...

Kansas has been a busy band lately… and how many people knew? It's not everyday some quiet, unassuming mid-western sons get to celebrate a 25th anniversary and some 30 million in overall album sales… and still live to tell and tour about it. Not that the two are interrelated however.  ...

Formed in 1997, Oracle is the sophomore effort from this London, Ontario three-piece. Morgan Lander (vocals, guitar), Mercedes Lander (drums), and Talena Atfield (bass) prove that girls can expel their rage with as much gut wrenching brutality as any testosterone driven group. After gaining massive public exposure during Ozzfest 2000 ...

Another boy band!? Yeah, that's right, another boy band. But unfortunately for LMNT, they lack the vocal skills of their male counterparts. Even though they still sing the typical "girl I love you so much and I'll die if you're not by my side" pop, they just don't have enough ...