Albino Lee Meldau

The so-called Canadian metal queen makes a left turn on this self-titled release, a reinvention to show off her vocal talents without the normal hard rock thudding. And it's refreshing, showcasing the best songwriting and strongest music of her career…

TEXTURES IN CLASSICS from renowned pianist and music scholar Sang-Hie Lee explores the rich musical possibilities offered by the piano. To do so, Lee performs works from some of the seminal composers in Western music including Mozart, Beethoven, and Brahms. The album captures Lee’s unique pianism at the height of her maturity as an artist. While contemporary performers often place an outsized emphasis on virtuosic technical skill, Lee’s performances examine the notion of texture in piano music; this ranges from the clean, crisp soundscape of Mozart’s early pianoforte to Beethoven’s exacting technique and lush harmonies. There is little doubt that TEXTURES IN CLASSICS will cement Lee’s legacy as a scholarly-artistic pianist.

With her expressive soprano voice employing sudden alterations of volume and force, and her lyrical focus on Los Angeles street life, Rickie Lee Jones comes on like the love child of Laura Nyro and Tom Waits on her self-titled debut album…

Duchess of Coolsville is Rhino's three-CD career retrospective of the work of singer and songwriter Rickie Lee Jones, an artist who changed the face of pop in the 1970s in her own way beginning with her surprise hit "Chuck E's in Love." Since that time she has continued on a highly personal, often idiosyncratic path; one that does not always give the marketplace its due…

Aside from the 1998 live set Different Stages, not much was heard from Rush after their tour wrapped up in support of their last studio album two years prior, Test for Echo. But in 2000, Rush fans starving for some new material got their wish when bassist/singer Geddy Lee issued his first-ever solo album, My Favorite Headache. Lee is joined by ex-Soundgarden drummer Matt Cameron (who sounds almost identical to Rush drummer Neal Peart) and ex-FM guitarist/violinist Ben Mink, and both help Lee craft a record that resembles what a new Rush album would've sounded like.

No doubt to the consternation of Warner Bros. Records, Rickie Lee Jones took more than three years to follow up her second (and second Top Five, gold-selling) album, Pirates (1981) with The Magazine. (In the interim, the label issued the mini-album of live tracks and outtakes Girl at Her Volcano [1983].) But from the evidence of the finished product, she might have been better advised to take a little longer. Her self-titled first album was a delightful collection of folk-jazz-pop, sparked by the hit single "Chuck E.'s in Love," but it also pointed toward the moodier and more ambitious Pirates. On The Magazine, Jones seems to be rewriting both albums at once…