My Bloody Love

Veteran sonic visionaries Brian Eno and Kevin Shields, two giants of perspective-altering modern music production, teamed up for a single called “Only Once Away My Son” last year. They’ve just followed it with a new one called “The Weight Of History,” which was released Saturday as a Record Store Day exclusive with the prior track as its B-side.

Dutch group Golden Earring has always inhabited a strange and twisted territory between hard rock and straight-ahead pop that's also home to Blue Oyster Cult and modern acts like Monster Magnet. On Bloody Buccaneers, Golden Earring doesn't come up with any real surprises, but manages to deliver a surprisingly consistent record of the same sort of hooky, roots-influenced heavy guitar music that made the band famous. Despite the lack of any songs as good as "Radar Love," Golden Earring's career-making mega-hit, the material is pretty decent and played with panache. Barry Hay's powerful vocals are still wonderfully sandpaper tough and George Kooymans' guitar playing is as ballsy and filled with punk rock 'tude as ever.

After proving they could keep 10cc alive as a duo act with 1977's successful Deceptive Bends, Eric Stewart and Graham Gouldman pressed on in 1978 with Bloody Tourists. Although it scored some notable hits, it was a less consistent and less memorable affair than its predecessor. The problem with Bloody Tourists is that it feels like a group of session musicians trying to come up with songs in the 10cc style instead of a proper 10cc album. The eccentric humor that once flowed freely feels forced on this album: "Reds In My Bed" is a lame stab at Cold War satire that never really succeeds in saying anything while "Shock On The Tube (Don't Want Love)" tries to be daring with its tale of a subway sex fantasy and instead comes off as smutty and dull…

This 5xCD box set from Cherry Red offers a compelling look at shoegaze's prime era. Still in a Dream takes a wide trawl approach to its genre, which has upsides and downsides. As with Rhino’s goth box A Life Less Lived, shoegaze is generously interpreted to include antecedents and formative influences, which bulks up the quality.