At a time when fundamentalism is on the rise, traditional religions are in decline and postmodernity has challenged any system that claims to be all-defining, young people have left their traditional places of worship and set up their own, in clubs, at festivals and within music culture.
If You're Feeling Sinister shows how Belle & Sebastian transformed themselves over the space of a decade, from a slightly shambolic cult secret into a polished, highly entertaining, mainstream pop group.
In this wickedly entertaining and thoroughly informed homage to one of rock music's towering pinnacles, Erik Davis investigates the magic-black or otherwise-that surrounds this album.
Non-fans regard Celine Dion as ersatz and plastic, yet to those who love her, no one could be more real, with her impoverished childhood, her (creepy) manager-husband's struggle with cancer, her knack for howling out raw emotion.
Though Nevermind was Nirvana's most commercially successful album, and the record that broke them - and the grunge phenomenon - internationally, In Utero has increasingly become regarded as the band's best album, both by the critics and the band members themselves.
In the spring of 1969, the inauspicious release of Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band's Trout Mask Replica, a double-album featuring 28 stream-of-consciousness songs filled with abstract rhythms and guttural bellows, dramatically altered the pop landscape.
Spanning nearly seventy years, Buck Clayton's autobiography offers fascinating insights into not only the life of one of the most significant trumpeters and bandleaders in jazz, but also American social history in general.
Though Nevermind was Nirvana's most commercially successful album, and the record that broke them - and the grunge phenomenon - internationally, In Utero has increasingly become regarded as the band's best album, both by the critics and the band members themselves.
An album which distilled a genre from the musical, cultural, and social ether, Portishead's Dummy was such a complete artistic achievement that its ubiquitous successes threatened to exhaust its own potential.
When they were creating and releasing their most influential albums in the mid to late 1970s, Kraftwerk were far from the musical mainstream - and yet it is impossible now to imagine the history of popular music without them.
Of all the seminal albums to come out in 1991-the year of Nevermind, Loveless, Ten, and Out of Time, among others-none were quieter, both in volume and influence, than Spiderland, and no band more mysterious than Slint.
Neil Young's Harvest is one of those strange albums that has achieved lasting success without ever winning the full approval of rock critics or hardcore fans.
Of all the recordings to emerge from the Athens-via-Denver collective called Elephant 6, Neutral Milk Hotel's second album is the one that has worked its way under the most skins.
If You're Feeling Sinister shows how Belle & Sebastian transformed themselves over the space of a decade, from a slightly shambolic cult secret into a polished, highly entertaining, mainstream pop group.
Of all the seminal albums to come out in 1991-the year of Nevermind, Loveless, Ten, and Out of Time, among others-none were quieter, both in volume and influence, than Spiderland, and no band more mysterious than Slint.
Through a series of interviews with a wide range of people connected to Pink Floyd in their earliest days (including Nick Mason, Peter Jenner, Jenny Fabian, Storm Thorgerson, Duggie Fields and Peter Whitehead), John Cavanagh paints a vivid picture of how this remarkable debut album was created.
Released when ELP and Elton John were plodding from one packed stadium to the next, Radio City was a radical album influenced by records that were already deemed oldies and yet sounding like a lean electrical jolt from the future.
After Rumours became the best-selling single album of all-time, Fleetwood Mac asked Warner Brothers Records to buy them a studio (the label refused, costing both Warner Brothers and the band significant cash in the long run) and then handed the reins to their guitarist and resident perfectionist Lindsey Buckingham.
For his 2007 critically acclaimed 33 1/3 series title, Let's Talk About Love, Carl Wilson went on a quest to find his inner Celine Dion fan and explore how we define ourselves by what we call good and bad, what we love and what we hate.
Issued on America's premier rap label at the peak of the thrash metal movement, Slayer's controversial Reign in Blood remains the gold standard for extreme heavy metal, a seamless 29-minute procession of ten blindingly fast, apocalyptic songs.
What could be more punk rock than a band that never changed, a band that for decades punched out three-minute powerhouses in the style that made them famous?
The Stone Roses shows a band sizzling with skill, consumed with drive and aspiration and possessing an almost preternatural mastery of the pop paradigm.
Includes the best-loved traditional carols from the hymn books and carol sheets, plus the best of the new carols which have become popular through radio and TV or schools.
Tracing the creation of Exile on Main Street from the original songwriting done while touring America through the final editing in Los Angeles, Bill Janovitz explains how an album recorded by a British band in a villa on the French Riviera is pure American rock & roll.
Ween now seems like a permanent fixture on the pop-cultural landscape, but when the band first hit MTV in the early '90s, their longevity wasn't so secure.
