Robert Christgau: Dean of American Rock Critics

Consumer Guide:
  User's Guide
  Grades 1990-
  Grades 1969-89
  And It Don't Stop
Books:
  Book Reports
  Is It Still Good to Ya?
  Going Into the City
  Consumer Guide: 90s
  Grown Up All Wrong
  Consumer Guide: 80s
  Consumer Guide: 70s
  Any Old Way You Choose It
  Don't Stop 'til You Get Enough
Xgau Sez
Writings:
  And It Don't Stop
  CG Columns
  Rock&Roll& [new]
  Rock&Roll& [old]
  Music Essays
  Music Reviews
  Book Reviews
  NAJP Blog
  Playboy
  Blender
  Rolling Stone
  Billboard
  Video Reviews
  Pazz & Jop
  Recyclables
  Newsprint
  Lists
  Miscellany
Bibliography
NPR
Web Site:
  Home
  Site Map
  Contact
  What's New?
    RSS
Social Media:
  Substack
  Bluesky
  [Twitter]
Carola Dibbell:
  Carola's Website
  Archive
CG Search:
Google Search:
****

AL GREEN
The Absolute Best
The Right Stuff/Hi

Two well-chosen discs of Al Green classics--though you could just buy his regular albums

Less schlock-prone than any other great twentieth-century singer except Billie Holiday, Al Green has never put his name on a bad album. This two-disc exploitation (with a second four-disc box due later in 2004) is superb throughout--and that includes the two previously unreleased tracks. It would be a spendthrift purchase for any owner of Al Green's Greatest Hits, all 15 of whose selections it duplicates (two in alternate versions), or the 1997 box set Anthology. But the 19 non-Greatest Hits tracks--all of classic '70s vintage, topped by "Simply Beautiful," "Love Ritual," "Rhymes" and "Strong as Death, Sweet as Love"--are markedly sweeter and sharper than those that fill the remarkably schlocky More Greatest Hits collection. Caveat emptor--or dig it, as the case may be.

Blender, Mar. 2004