Manufacturer: HARD2BEAT
The debut album by Salford's The Ting Tings comes hot on the heels of their No.1 single "That's Not My Name", a nugget of pop gold that comes on like a genetic splicing of Toni Basil's "Micky" and The Knack's "My Sharona". The bulk of We Started Nothing follows a similar formula, navigating a path between the smart, angular indie of CSS, Bonde Do Role, et al and the pop mainstream. Here and ...
Manufacturer: Columbia Records
Manufacturer: RCA
Manufacturer: EMI
Aha Shake Heartbreak may have blown open the doors of fame for Kings of Leon, but their third full-length album (named for a United Pentecostal Church ministers' conference) could well usher the Nashville foursome directly to rock and roll's zenith. There's hardly a change in plans for the three Followill brothers and their cousin, and that means producer Ethan Johns, a smorgasbord of ...
Manufacturer: Columbia
Fans of High School Musical can breathe easy: Based on this soundtrack, the sequel is just as good, and perhaps even better. Though its trailer asked "Are you ready for the start of something new?" HSM2 isn't turning the franchise into The Wire, and really is more of the same--which is, of course, totally fine by us. One of the most energetic tracks is Chad and Ryan's ...
Manufacturer: Walt Disney
Leaders of the Free World, Elbow's third album, sees the band try to beat down their major league contemporaries (Coldplay, Doves) with a more ambitious set of songs. In truth, they didn't need to try so hard; Elbow have arguably been making better and more interesting music than most of their mainstream compadres since they formed in 1990. That said, the results here are undoubtedly ...
Manufacturer: Commercial Marketing
Amy Winehouse's second album, Back to Black, is one of the finest soul albums, British or otherwise, to come out for years. Frank, her first album, was a sparse and stripped-down affair; Back to Black, meanwhile, is neither of these things. This time around, she's taken her inspiration from some of the classic 1960's girl groups like the Supremes and the Shangri-Las, a sound ...
Manufacturer: Island
The death of the lead singer would spell the end of most bands. But most bands aren't AC/DC. After Bon Scott's overindulgence in alcohol lead to his undignified end, lead guitarist Angus Young and Co. simply found a singer that sounded exactly the same and carried on. The result: Back In Black, the most successful album of their lengthy career. Like every other AC/DC album, it doesn't ...
Manufacturer: Sony
The two-disc retrospective The Essential Leonard Cohen traces the Canadian bard's musical maturity from poet and novelist who sang a little, to multidimensional artist whose oracular vocals and increasingly rich arrangements are every bit as compelling as his verse. Even when Cohen came to prominence through the 1960s songcraft of "Suzanne" and "Bird on a Wire", the "folksinger" tag never ...
