The Wedding Present, "Nobody's Twisting Your Arm" The first Wedding Present album is a perfect gem, full of the best kind of frantic jangle pop. And, of course, David Gedge's heart breaking about every two minutes. Emperor, "A...
PJ Harvey, "My Beautiful Leah" Is This Desire? is the album that really completed PJ Harvey's transition from kickass rock artist to just plain ol' kickass artist. Yeah, broadly, this is still a rock record, but she started doing so...
Xzibit, "Just Maintain" Before he was a tv host, before he was an ubiquitous (and now old) meme, before he was a famous rapper who appeared in video games, Xzibit was a promising young rapper who put out a couple albums that were...
Alejandro Escovedo, "Chelsea Hotel '78" Escovedo is one of those artists that has had a long recording career, and someone whose name I'd seen in a bunch of places, but I didn't really know anything about him. I...
The Busters, "Rude Vibrations" The Busters were something of a transitional band, firmly rooted in two-tone and sounding an awful lot like Madness, but on Moon Ska and chronologically more a part of the third wave. So they kind of bridge the gap,...