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The
Bootleg Series, Vol. 4: Bob Dylan Live, 1966: The
"Royal Albert Hall Concert" [BOX SET] |
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Bob Dylan
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Amazon.com's
Best of 1998
1998: the same year he dances with Soy Bomb at the
Grammys, his record label finally issues Bob Dylan's
ultimate live document. A classic case of not giving the
audience what they want but what they need, Mr.
Dylan's oft-bootlegged 1966 gig begins with lovely and
supple folk that foreshadows folk music's turn from
protest song to introspection. The album's true highlight
is the legendarily ill received and rocked-out electric
set, with Dylan backed by members of the Band. There are
too many...Read
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Moon
Pix |
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Cat Power
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Amazon.com's
Best of 1998
Chan Marshall, a.k.a. Cat Power, has created an album,
Moon Pix, that somehow manages to be both complex
and difficult as well as stark and spacious. It's an
interesting contradiction mirrored in Marshall's vocal and
lyrical talents; her voice soars and croons, sometimes
trading melodies with a wandering flute line, while her
lyrics are powerful, inscrutable, and fiercely intimate.
Two of the Dirty Three evoke a subtle instrumental
landscape upon which she wanders, a place less haunting
than...Read
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In
The Aeroplane Over The Sea |
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Neutral Milk Hotel
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Amazon.com's
Best of 1998
Just from the opening seconds of Neutral Milk Hotel's
second album, you know it's going to be special: the
acoustic guitar strum is catchy beyond belief, and Jeff
Magnum's intonation lends credibility even to a line like
"When you were young, you were the King of Carrot
Flowers." Listening to In the Aeroplane is
like stepping through Alice's looking glass; you enter a
fantastic new universe that, while it doesn't always make
sense logically, feels like the home you never had. --Randy
Silver Read
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The
Salesman And Bernadette |
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Vic Chesnutt
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Amazon.com's
Best of 1998
This album comes on with a quiet grace, gradually
unwinds, then sidles into your heart with a kind of
mournful soulfulness. Vic Chesnutt's sweet and croony
vocals hover delicately above the ethereal and sparse
instrumentation provided by the Lambchop collective to
tell the story of a sad and tender misbegotten romance. It
has to be heard to be believed, and, along with Richard
Buckner's Since
and Jeff Buckley's Sketches
(For My Sweetheart the Drunk), The Salesman and
Bernadette stands among the...Read
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The
Boy With The Arab Strap |
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Belle & Sebastian
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Best of 1998
Belle & Sebastian follow up the considerable
promise of 1997's fantastic If
You're Feeling Sinister with an album that is,
unbelievably, even better. The Boy with the Arab Strap
is an immediately infectious and delicious pastiche of
fey, Nick Drake-ian vocals; lilting pop melodies; shimmery
arrangements; croony wonder; and tortured, lit-smart
lyrics. Belle & Sebastian are smarter than the Smiths,
wittier than the Beach Boys, more fun than the Velvet
Underground, and even more inscrutable than...Read
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XO |
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Elliott Smith
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Best of 1998
Elliott Smith's fourth solo album and major-label
debut, XO, brings narrative detail and a wide range
of emotion to an indie meld of '60s-style rock and
folk-pop. Whether in the broken stateliness of "Waltz
#2 (XO)," the Sgt.
Pepper tribute of "Baby Britain," or the
explosions of "Amity" and "Everybody Cares,
Everybody Understands," Smith's melodic and
arrangement senses give his vulnerable vocals and
brilliant wordcraft the maximum effectiveness. XO
is a watershed in singer/songwriter rock. ...Read
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Mermaid
Avenue |
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Billy Bragg, Wilco
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Amazon.com's
Best of 1998
A ghost, a band, a troubadour. Easily the strangest
co-op project ever, and easily one of the finest and most
evocative albums of the year. British socialist and folkie
Billy Bragg was given unprecedented access to Woody
Guthrie's unrecorded lyrics. Teaming up with alt-country
band Wilco and quoting from more than 50 years of country,
folk, and rock music, Billy and company bring Guthrie's
politics, poetry, and morality to the end of the century
and prove he's as necessary now as ever. --Tod...Read
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Piazzolla:
Mar’a de Buenos Aires / Kremer, Zenko, et al |
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Astor Piazzolla(Composer), et al
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Best of 1998
Composed more than 30 years ago, this "little
tango opera" remains a work of stunning originality.
Indeed, the alchemy achieved here by tango master Astor
Piazzolla--whose avant-garde, quasi-symphonic meditations
on this vital dance form have achieved renewed
popularity--and librettist Horacio Ferrer involves a
particular amalgam of music and surrealist poetry that is
part cabaret, part smoky Sprechstimme, and
ultimately sui generis. Violinist Gidon Kremer and a tight
ensemble of colleagues show...Read
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Ocean
Songs |
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Dirty Three
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Amazon.com's
Best of 1998
On Ocean Songs, guitarist Mick Turner strums in
grand and mournful sweeps while violinist Warren Ellis
draws a rough, heart-pulling bow. On top, David Grubbs
bumps lonely on his tom while keeping time with scratchy
snare whispers and flickering tips and taps on the
cymbals. It's a gorgeous blend that is fully informed by
folk forms yet still manages to bristle with electricity.
Dirty Three may seem like some mutant folk trio from the
old country, but underneath there is a rock band--a
dangerous,...Read
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PŠrt:
Kanon Pokajanen / Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir |
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Arvo PŠrt(Composer), et al
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Best of 1998
It seems as though every year, mystic Estonian
composer Arvo PŠrt delivers a new, thoroughly riveting
composition. This year, it was Kanon Pakajanen.
From the canon of repentance of the Russian Orthodox
Church, Part created an a cappella masterpiece, a
minimalist work that builds itself gradually, yet
completely, upon haunting voices, harmonies, and volume.
On this disc, the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir
delivers a gripping performance, with gorgeous sound
quality. It's more than 80...Read
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Since |
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Richard Buckner
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Amazon.com's
Best of 1998
With Since, California troubadour Richard
Buckner has found a way to give his high-concentrate
vocals and heavyhearted lyrical pensiveness a flattering
dash of ebullience. But fear not, fans of such modern
country-dread touchstones as Devotion
+ Doubt and Bloomed:
this is still the man who can summon the essence of such
disparate spirits as Nick
Drake and the Louvin
Brothers while remaining ever faithful to his own
wounded soul. --Steven Stolder Read
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La
Llorona |
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Lhasa De Sela
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Amazon.com's
Best of 1998
Lhasa De Sela has distinguished herself as a singer
and storyteller with her debut album, La Llorona.
The 25-year-old Montreal resident, who grew up traveling
through Mexico while living on a school bus, sings of her
tortured heart with the accompaniment of
guitarist-producer-arranger Yves Desrosiers and a
cabaret-style band. Already compared to that of Edith Piaf
and Billie Holiday, De Sela's haunting voice is memorable
on each of the 11 songs (only three are not original) that
range in...Read
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Hildegard
von Bingen - 900 Years / Sequentia |
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Hildegard of Bingen
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Amazon.com's
Best of 1998
For all the effort put behind the Hildegard von Bingen
revival in the past decade, no one has been as persistent
as Sequentia. They capped their Hildegard cycles in 1998
with the two-CD set Saints and then this eight-CD
collection. Nowhere else can you get such a focused study,
showing exemplary growth in vision and polyphonic
presentation. The music isn't flashy, but it's inventive
in methodical steps and an abiding sense of vocal textures
that sounds multidimensionally complex and still...Read
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Miss
Perfumado |
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Cesaria Evora
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Amazon.com's
Best of 1998
Cesaria Evora asked heartache to come in and set a
spell. The morna, the slow, rhythmically balladic
blend of African blues and the Portuguese fado, was
the perfect medium. Released in 1998 in the United States,
this 1992 album about nostalgia, longing, hit-and-run
lovers, and the sea features titles like "Barbincour
("The Conman") and "Torura"
("Torture"). Not the least of Evora's magical
appeal is that her smooth, honey-rich vocals suggest a
universe of passion and pain with nary a spasm of...Read
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Deserter's
Songs |
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Mercury Rev
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Best of 1998
For 1998, Mercury Rev did something completely
different: they shunned the psychedelic rock of their
previous ways and went for baroque. Literally. On Deserter's
Songs, bowed saw plays as prominent a role as guitar,
and most of the songs are ballads, not anthems. There's a
tender, folksy quality here that was missing in the
group's previous (albeit also great) recordings. Mercury
Rev have always been difficult to classify; yet on this
album they make the pigeonholing even more difficult. --Jason...Read
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Victory |
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Billy Joe Shaver
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Amazon.com's
Best of 1998
Unfortunately, the roots of this record stem from a
terminal illness in the Shaver family. Yet, as has been
proved often, some of the most rewarding music grows out
of misery and misfortune. The pared-down gospel originals
offered by Billy Joe and son Eddy perhaps hit a little too
close to home. Stark and desolate yet illuminating, Victory
vividly illustrates the difference between spirituality
and religiousness and the conflict between the worldly and
the ethereal. --Marc Greilsamer Read
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The
John Lennon Anthology [BOX SET] |
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John Lennon
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Amazon.com's
Best of 1998
John the primal screamer, John the street politician,
John the L.A. party boy, and John the house husband. The
John Lennon Anthology provides a window into all those
phases of the artist's post-Beatles career. Compiled under
the watchful eye of Yoko Ono, this rich stash of demos,
studio outtakes and chatter, and live and alternate
versions serves as both historical artifact and source of
entertainment. --Steven Stolder Read
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Mos
Def & Talib Kweli Are Black Star |
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Black Star
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Amazon.com's
Best of 1998
They're not on every soundtrack, and they aren't
featured guests on every crossover hit. That's OK. Mos Def
& Talib Kweli are leaders of a different school;
though they've got beats by the pound and the lyrical
chops to pull off an (updated) cover of Slick Rick's
classic "Children's Story," Black Star
proffers a more philosophical take on hip-hop. Years from
now this album, much like the Freestyle Fellowship's Innercity
Griots, will still be revered. --Randy Silver
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Turn
The Heat Up |
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Shemekia Copeland
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Amazon.com's
Best of 1998
This debut album from bluesman Johnny Copeland's
daughter is a powerful surprise. Powerful, because
Shemekia Copeland's voice has the impact of a mature
vocalist's despite her youth; a surprise, because it's so
rare to hear such a great performance from one so young.
Whether it's sassy attitude on the title track, or the
subtle power of "Ghetto Child," Copeland is
always in control. We'll be hearing a lot more from her in
the years to come. --Genevieve Williams Read
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Noon
Chill |
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Arto Lindsay
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Amazon.com's
Best of 1998
For three albums now, Arto Lindsay has done his best
to be a modern-day Antonio Carlos Jobim. Backed with
subtle electronica sounds (yes, it's possible) and guitar,
the ballads and bossa novas found on Noon Chill are
some of his finest. Lindsay is at his best on tracks like
"Simply Are," a jazzy number with great vocals
that serenades your stereo speakers. Great stuff. --Jason
Verlinde Read
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Telegraph
[ECD] |
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Richard Davies
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Amazon.com's
Best of 1998
Australian Richard Davis is best known as an exponent
of a baroque, sophisto pop informed by equal parts Pink
Floyd, Robyn Hitchcock, and Nick Drake. Singing in a soft,
rather plain tenor, Davis pens quirky, literary lines and
places them against softly brushed strings and intricately
orchestrated arrangements. What makes Telegraph so
special is not just its impeccable pace and feel, but its
uncanny ability to transmit bolts of vivid emotion. --S.
Duda Read
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Tartini:
The Devil's Sonata / Andrew Manze |
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Giuseppe Tartini(Composer), Andrew Manze
(Performer)
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Best of 1998
Violinist Andrew Manze did something truly
breathtaking in 1998--he transformed the way we hear
Giuseppe Tartini's The Devil's Sonata by playing it
solo, without accompaniment. And we'll never hear it the
same way again. It's a riveting performance, filled with
as much improvisation as many jazz compositions, and yet
it remains thoroughly faithful to Tartini's vision (Manze
was inspired to play the work solo by the composer's own
correspondence). Hands down, one of the best Baroque
performances...Read
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Car
Wheels On A Gravel Road |
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Lucinda Williams
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Best of 1998
Six years in the making, Car Wheels somehow
lives up to its lofty expectations because of Williams's
direct songwriting and her wonderfully unaffected vocals.
With assistance from cohorts such as Steve Earle, Williams
uses the acoustic accents of Dobros, mandolins, slide
guitars, and accordions to add color to her grooves,
whispers, and rumbles. Her lyrics are undisguised as she
presents to us the travelogue of her memory. We can't wait
for 2004! --Marc Greilsamer Read
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The
Complete 1959 Columbia Recordings [BOX SET] [ORIGINAL
RECORDING REMASTERED] |
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Charles Mingus
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Best of 1998
This three-CD box, with its 28 Mingus ensemble tracks,
rounds out a portrait of jazz in 1959, a year when Miles
Davis recorded Kind of Blue, John Coltrane cut Giant
Steps, and Ornette Coleman unloosed The Shape of
Jazz to Come. Mingus was on Columbia for a blink, only
long enough to cut a couple of LPs (both of which appear
here sans the unclean edits that've marred prior
reissues). There is so much additional material here that
the set warrants easy Best of 1998 kudos and nearly
mandates that...Read
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Signal
Series |
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Chessie
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Best of 1998
Stephen Gardner, onetime member of indie-pop group
Lorelei, took electronica to new heights with his Chessie
imprint by refining drum & bass. Inspired by the
rhythms of trains, Signal Series is thoroughly
unique: breakbeats mingle with guitars; tracks waver
between ambient, dance, and postrock; and the train theme
seems to somehow unify everything. It's a thoroughly
listenable disc, and one of 1998's best. Sure, we've heard
these sounds before, but never so intelligently assembled.
--Jason...Read
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