Maria McKee - Life is Sweet
Armed with one of the best voices in music, Maria McKee's career has been a confounding and confusing series of starts and stops, beginning with her impressive debut with her old band Lone Justice and ending, during the last few years, with big hits overseas but little impact
John Hiatt - Walk On
After finishing the '80s on the top of his game as one of the best singer-songwriters in captivity, John Hiatt has spent much of this decade playing the court jester on adult contemporary stations, a sort of comic-relief sideshow to slip in between the unremitting earnestness of cuts by
The John Doe Thing - Kissingsohard
On his first solo album, Meet John Doe, the vocals were pushed forward as far as possible, establishing Doe as a frontman in the wake of the temporary demise of X. Combined with unimaginative roots-pop arrangements the results were somewhat less than spectacular. Not surprisingly the album was quickly forgotten.
Dwight Yoakam - Gone
Let's cut to the chase: Gone is Dwight Yoakam's best record. The writing is top notch--all the heartbreak and loneliness we've come to expect. That voice, oh that voice: it's still the epitome of high and lonesome. And Gone isn't
Bruce Springsteen - The Ghost of Tom Joad
Directing his artistic vision outward again, Bruce Springsteen returns to the role of social critic. The album and its 12 songs will inevitably draw comparisons to the 1982 masterpiece Nebraska, an accidental collection of lost characters, bad luck, and meanness. Recalling that album, Springsteen said in 1990 that he hadn&
Blue Rodeo - Nowhere to Here
On Blue Rodeo's Five Days In July album of a couple years back, the band consistently produced track after track of terrific country-flavored rock 'n' roll. A very successful, very talented quintet with platinum sales in their Canadian homeland, they've been trying to crack