Category: Rock (Page 126 of 241)

The divorce album is a long, proud rock & roll tradition, and with the provocatively titled Summer of the Whore, former Mendoza Line singer Shannon McArdle adds her own dirty emotional laundry to the pile. If you’re a Mendoza fan, you’ll know the record was inspired by her split from former husband and bandmate Timothy Bracy – but even if you’ve never heard a lick of the band’s music, a cursory glance at the album’s lyric sheet will be enough to show you all the blood on these songs’ tracks. And the lyrics, by the way, are bracingly raw – McArdle pulls no punches here, either on her ex or herself, and lines like ”You’d like to wash my fresh mouth out / Shove in a big bar of soap / But you know that I always swallow / I let it slide down my throat” suggest an unforgettable album. Pity, then, that the music doesn’t reflect the emotion that went into it; musically, the album is one long snooze, stacking one meandering ballad after another and wasting loads of promise along the way. A song like “He Was Gone” – which laments a miscarriage with lines like ”He would have had blue eyes, I’m sure / He would have made you love me more” — should pack an unforgettable wallop, but here, it just fades into the cold gray haze. McArdle obviously needed to get this one off her chest, but she could at least have made the ride enjoyable for the rest of us. (Bar/None 2008)

Shannon McArdle MySpace page

Sony BMG’s Playlist series has almost all the marks of a well-thought-out and potentially trendy new product line. It’s environmentally friendly – the packaging is made of 100% recycled paperboard, and the CD booklet is accessible on your computer as a .pdf file to save paper – and the price is relatively low. Add a solid song selection, and it’s a sensible (if typically redundant) way to hawk the label’s back catalog. However, in the case of Heart, who hopped across at least four different labels over the years, the disc suffers from an ever-present problem that has plagued single-label compilations by multi-label bands for years. Granted, hearing a stripped-down, acoustic treatment of their ‘80s smash for Capitol, “Alone,” among Heart’s ‘70s Epic and Portrait classics is awfully refreshing, who on earth would prefer the 2002 Alive in Seattle versions of “Magic Man,” “Crazy on You” and “Dreamboat Annie” over the original hit records from ‘76? On the flip side, this otherwise decent collection rightfully fetes buried album tracks like the mandolin-laden acoustic folk of “Dream of the Archer” and the dramatic, slow-burning “Mistral Wind.” (Epic/Legacy 2008)

Heart MySpace page