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The year of the 20th anniversary of the release of his most popular album, Harvest, Neil Young released a new album that harked back to that recording, employing many of the same musicians, again dubbed the Stray Gators, as well as arranger Jack Nitzsche and background singers Linda Ronstadt and James Taylor. He also used a similar folk-country acoustic style and sang songs that often had a personal, confessional tone. But the similarities were more of form than of content because, while Harvest was the statement of a confused, if earnest, 26 year old, Harvest Moon embodied the ruminations of a somewhat regretful 46 year old. Indeed, the greatest comparison to be made between the two records was that Young tried to use the passage of time as a confirmation of continuity. In the first several songs, he seemed to be trying to reconcile with his wife and revive their love, though he was uncertain that was possible. In "One of These Days," he regretted the loss of friendships over the years. "War of Man" and the long and ponderous "Natural Beauty" concerned environmental preservation, and even the rollicking banjo tune "Old King" was a lament for the death of a faithful dog. "I never tried to burn any bridges," sang an artist whose contradictory instincts to move on and to return found him, by the time of his 27th solo album, trying to get back to the feel of his fourth. If the attempt was not completely successful, nevertheless it was well and honestly made, and Young wasn't alone in his desire. As Hollywood has long since learned, sequels have a built-in audience, and Harvest Moon became Young's best-selling album in 13 years.

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Looking at life through the rearview mirror was the inspiration for John Hiatt s brand new album, The Open Road. A classic Hiatt record, the rockin songs sizzle with the heat from two-lane blacktop on a summer s day. Hiatt and his touring band (Kenny Blevins on drums, Patrick O Hearn on bass and Doug Lancio on guitars) recorded a set that gives Garage Rock a new meaning. All the other years, my songs are about coming home, Hiatt says. But within these 11 new songs including Haulin and the title track The Open Road home is never the destination.

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The album covers in the liner notes show Mike Scott's evolution from an Arcadian Adonis to a ramshackle village folkie, mirroring his musical evolution. Indeed, part of the entertainment value of _The Whole of the Moon_ is discerning The Waterboys' roots. Mike Scott sometimes sounds like a nasal Todd Rundgren, and sometimes like one of The Hollies, and, on "She Is So Beautiful", like Bob Dylan. A few of the best songs sound a lot like other songs. "She Is So Beautiful" sounds like Bob Dylan's "Just Like a Woman". "This is the Sea" could be a speeded-up rewrite of Van Morrison's "Listen to the Lion." It's great that he has such good taste, and it's great that these echoes of those great artists emanated from The Spandex Years. This is a good collection of songs from what was by then a unique band. ~ The Sanity Inspector – Amazon.com

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Since her dense, varied, post-modernist eponymous second album illustrated that Sheryl Crow was no one-album wonder, she wasn't left with as much to prove the third time around. Having created an original variation on roots rock with Sheryl Crow, she was left with the dilemma of how to remain loyal to that sound without repeating herself on her third album, The Globe Sessions. To her credit, she never plays lazy, not when she's turning out Stones-y rockers ("There Goes the Neighborhood") or when she's covering Dylan (the remarkable "Mississippi," an outtake from Time Out of Mind). However, she has decided to abandon the layered, yard-sale production and pop-culture fixations that made Sheryl Crow a defining album of the mid-'90s. The Globe Sessions, instead, is the work of a craftsman, one who knows how to balance introspective songs with pop/rockers, one who knows how to exploit their signature sound while becoming slightly more eclectic.

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Ogdens' Nut Gone Flake was a successful concept album by the English rock band Small Faces. Released on 24 May 2022 the LP became a number one hit in the UK Album Charts on 29 June where it remained for a total of six weeks. The album was featured in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.
The title and the design of the distinctive packaging was a parody of Ogdens' Nut-brown Flake, a brand of tobacco which was produced in Liverpool from 1899.

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The Cowboy Junkies debut album reveals the band's innovative sense of interpretation, deep, dark ethereal soundscapes, and a brooding, hypnotic, laconic musical style uniquely their own. Featuring classic blues repertoire written by the legendary likes of John Lee Hooker and Robert Johnson, Whites Off Earth Now also features a raw, eerie version of Bruce Springsteen's "State Trooper". This evocative sonic alchemy succeeds due to Margo Timmins's languid, haunting vocals, Michael Timmins's sparse, yet soul piercing guitar, Alan Anton's evocative, gently loping bass, and Alan Aton and Peter Timmins's tastefully, understated percussion embellishments.The result is a profoundly mesmerizing and absolutely bone chilling listening experience. MOFI

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Tom Gray and Mark Johnson are the rusty, banged up Cadillacs of the slide guitar, side by side coughing up smoke and spitting backwoods dirt, but unswerving in their precision and singular style. Gray and Johnson form the axis of Delta Moon, and their slippery, rousing blend of delta-style blues and rock 'n' roll consciousness never fails to be gutsy and mesmerizing.

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On his eighth studio album of new original material (his 15th release overall) and first in five years, Elliott Murphy returned to a style familiar from his first several albums of the 1970s, singing a group of folk-rock songs full of highly literate lyrics that commented on modern life from an ironic perspective. Many years into European expatriation, the ex-New Yorker, turning on CNN, still found reasons to send "Love to America," as the leadoff track proclaimed. But in the album's strongest track, "Real Time," he showed skepticism about the brave new world of software and virtual reality, describing the future as, "A universe of aging celebrities on the run/In made for TV movies, repackaged compact discs/They call it home entertainment/It's the same old sh*t." Murphy recommended his listeners read a book instead. He also turned personal at times, recalling departed friends such as Andy Warhol and Federico Fellini (in one of whose films he had appeared), and reflecting on the changes in his domestic life in "A Whole New World." The playing was excellent, and Murphy was joined on one song by Bruce Springsteen, with whom he has always shared a sensibility, and on another by the Violent Femmes, whose work he has influenced.

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Far out -- like wow, the colors.... Seriously, the Psychedelic Psoul portion of this two-LPs-on-one-CD package (the Freak Scene's album is paired on the same CD with Hard Rock from the Middle East by the Devil's Anvil) is a complete period piece -- it is also one of the spacier psychedelic records to come out of Columbia, a label that didn't exactly jump into the Summer of Love headfirst...

First released in 1972, The Beach Boys are on this album at their rootsiest , musically assimilating the style of CCR. First album with Ricky Fataar and Blondie Chaplin in the line up. Brian Wilson is reduced here to a background presence.

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Sittin' In is the first album by singer-songwriters Loggins and Messina, released in 1971. It began as a solo album by Kenny Loggins; Jim Messina was with Columbia Records, serving as an independent producer when he met Loggins. In the course of producing Loggins' work, Messina provided backup vocals and guitar, leading to the album's full title, Kenny Loggins with Jim Messina Sittin' In.

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Full Sail is the third album by singer/songwriter duo Loggins and Messina, released in 1973. This album showed the versatility of the duo, with everything from 1950's retro to island-style to sappy ballads. The single "My Music" charted at #16, and the follow-up, "Watching The River Run" made it to #71. The album as a whole did better, reaching #10 on the Pop Charts.

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The third biggest-selling album in the group's history, Crazy Eyes is also the group's liveliest and most bracing work and contains some of their most soulful music. In short, it's the fruition of everything they'd been working toward for four years. Curiously, it's also one of a handful of examples of their use of outside help, including Chris Hillman on mandolin. The resulting sound is richer than anything found on any other Poco album, and the only tragedy is that the band reportedly cut enough tracks for two whole albums -- one longs to hear the material that remained in the can. As it is, there's not a weak song, or even a wasted note anywhere on this album, and most bands would kill for a closing track as perfect as "Let's Dance Tonight. AMG Review by Bruce Eder

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