Music reviews. CD reviews. Critically hip!

ATLANTIS: HYMNS FOR DISCO by K-Os is one of those discs that I heard all sorts of things about before I actually heard it. The general consensus was that one track --- “Sunday Morning” --- is a killer and the rest of the project sucks. I accordingly went directly to ...

For the first time in over 5 years, Kamelot have put out a CD that’s not based on the Faust myth, and isn’t a concept album. The result is, Ghost Opera, their 8th studio disc. On this CD, Kamelot has turned to a darker place, with songs about death and ...

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.  ...

Kathie Baillie’s first solo album, Love’s Funny That Way, is a solid selection of straightforward country pop-rock and ballads that’s easy on the ears. Although, calling this a solo album might be a stretch: husband Michael Bonagura, who was another third of the trio from her Baillie and the Boys ...

This is the formula of Kathy Compton’s first CD: It is a recipe of musical medicine. It is of and it is for... RECOVERING HUMANS. Poured into a cardioid capacitor microphone - (the frying pan). Compton’s vocal salt, sugar and lyrical honey are heated ...

On March 4, 2008, singer/songwriter, Katie Sawicki will release her third album, Time Spent Lost. This album is fraught with songs about loneliness and leaving loved ones, yet the lyrics are some of the most honest and heartbreaking I have ever heard. Sawicki puts her feelings and emotions directly into ...

"Oh, my gosh, Jennifer! You remember that night in Cancun, when we got wasted on cerveza, and those two guys dared us to kiss? And you know remember how we wished there was a song to describe that moment perfectly? Well, now there is!" "Oh, my gosh, Jessica! That's awesome, ...

Keke Wyatt arrives on the music scene to join the ranks of R&B female vocalists with some flair, but little hype.  Her voice does her justice, but the music she has to work with is less than what would make her a bona fide R&B diva.  Soul Sista possesses moments ...

I TALK TO THE STARS is an interesting project, being a pop project recorded in Nashville by Kellee Bradley, a Seattle native. It is misimpression that Nashville is only about country music; there is probably no other city that has a wide a variation of musical styles represented to the ...

If you like Elliott Smith, chances are that you will enjoy Kelley Stoltz. With similar vocal and musical qualities, both Smith and Stoltz have similar music except that the tracks on Stoltz’s seventh album, Circular Sounds, are much more upbeat than anything produced by Smith. This is because Stoltz experiments ...

With all the buzz about AMERICAN IDOL Season Two, and the singles from almost tied two finalists Clay Aiken and winner Ruben Studdard being released on 06/10/03, last year's ORIGINAL AMERICAN IDOL, Kelly Clarkson, released her Debut Album, "Thankful" with probably less notice than it would have received at another ...

Eighteen year old Kelly Sweet does a pretty good job on her first album, We Are One. Although I can’t say the album was my cup of tea, it can't be denied that Sweet can sing and has a sweet voice. I do have to say though that her purity and ...

Kemp Harris’s sophomore effort, Edenton, is an album of striking vocals and haunting lyrics.  One song bleeds into the next, with the subject matter straying from joyous (“Didn’t It Rain”) to hurtful (“Tryin Times”).  Harris, earning full chops as a blues-gospel artist, truly understands the concept of an album’s continuity.  ...

I’m detecting a ground shift in popular music. Nothing major, like what took place in the early 1960s when The Beatles transformed popular music by bringing to the forefront a bunch of styles and influences that had been percolating underneath what had been getting airplay. No, what’s happening now seems ...

This single CD combines two of Kenny Rogers’ early solo albums: 1977’s Kenny Rogers, and the 1979 follow-up simply titled Kenny. If you’re a die-hard Rogers fan, you might want these. But truth be told, given the plethora of Rogers’ greatest hits albums out there, it’s hard to justify the ...

Kenny Wayne Shepherd travels down the back roads of the South in search of a dying breed, the Delta Blues man. He sets out to document and play with anyone he can find before it is too late. The vast majority of these musicians are in their latter years, most ...

Songs From Those Days, the latest CD released by Indiana-raised Amish composer Kent Heckaman, is not one that will make you want to get up and dance when you hear it.  However, if you are looking for the kind of music that will help you wind down after a hectic ...

My first impression of Keram was that his music was a little dry.  The first track, Fascinating has the makings of a nice tune but it sounds unfinished and too quiet.  Keram doesn't sing this song with much energy and he barely strums his guitar.  While he's focusing on making ...

Keren Ann strings the songs on her self-titled album together like golden droplets on a gossamer thread. With hollow, echoing, ephemeral vocals, she spins her poetry in an imaginative combination of dreamy reminiscences and ironic cynicism. It’s All a Lie sets the tempo with a lyrical musicality and honeyed lament ...

When I first heard the acoustic version of Kevin Michael’s We All Want the Same Thing I was ecstatic. I thought, now here’s a young man making catchy, soulful pop with meaning, something sorely missing from these days. Sadly, his whole album doesn’t live up to that initial credo. ...

I was let on to Kings of Leon several months ago.  I wasn’t sure what to make of their music at that point.  It seemed slightly off kilter, maybe a little too cookie-cutter.  There were no ambitious segments of the songs outside of the standard exchanges between “verse” and “chorus”.  ...

Sit down.  Stand up.  It doesn’t matter, because this album has got it covered from end to end.  No exaggeration.  Kinion’s self-titled LP is the obvious mark of amazing things to come from a band that smatters dub reverb over reggae rock in a way that is as fresh as ...

Kinky was originally introduced to me as a Hispanic rap band (before the term “reggaeton” became popularized). While there are hip hop (as well as electronica and rock) elements to its music, however, Kinky is more of a world music dance band, populated by multi-instrumentalists. And while ...

Kiran Ahluwalia's album Wanderlust is a relaxing and moving 45 minutes of Indian music that is modern with a touch of tradition. For those of you who aren't familiar with Indian music, do not fret. Ahluwalia's style is careful and sweet, very easy to get into. The lyrics to her ...

For better or worse, KISS is a huge, albeit way too commercialized, phenomenon. The kabuki makeup laden New York quartet took the theatrics of Alice Cooper and cleaned up the Glam power hooks of the New York Dolls and were, for a time, the biggest American hard-rock band of the ...