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
Carola Dibbell:
  Carola's Website
  Archive
CG Search:
Google Search:
Twitter:

Recyclables

BRUCE COCKBURN
Anything Anytime Anywhere: Singles 1979-2002

Rounder

It's been sitting there since a few months after 9/11, waiting for the moment I needed it, and with the Archbishop of Denver and the Southern Baptists and their nondenominational ilk doing their damnedest to overrun the electoral system, this is it. Both modernist and high church, Cockburn's disdainful Christian dudgeon is a vast improvement on fundamentalist blinderdom even if you're a convinced populist. Singing about love or imperialism (though he's better on imperialism), he assumes a moral vantage whose cleansing clarity is a comfort on nights when the future's so dark you gotta wear a miner's hat. And sufficient unto the day is the musicality thereof.


PHOEBE SNOW
The Very Best of Phoebe Snow

Columbia/Legacy

Great round rough funky voice. Better writer than editor. Air of mild chronic dysfunction. Coulda been a diva, wasn't tough enough. True New York liberal type. Why pay cover charges for white lounge blues when you can order this online and never leave your studio apartment? Oh, I get it--unlike Snow, you want to leave your studio apartment. Like maybe to vote.

Village Voice, Oct. 26, 2004


Dec. 14, 2004 Dec. 14, 2004