To Hell With Love

Arriving hot on the heels of 2010’s highly conceptual Hang Cool Teddy Bear, Hell in a Handbasket feels like an intimate affair but that assessment is relative. Coming from any other artist, Hell in a Handbasket would sound overblown but for Meat Loaf, it’s relatively reflective, containing thunder in its production but lacking melodrama in its composition. Despite the strategic deployment of “hell” in its title, this album has nothing to do with the three previous Bat Out of Hell albums, including 2006’s Jim Steinman-less The Monster Is Loose, but it has Meat Loaf's signature everything-plus-two-kitchen-sinks approach, sometimes stretching past the point of parody as when he brings in his fellow Celebrity Apprentice contestants John Rich, Lil Jon, and Mark McGrath in for the nonsensical cluster-duet “Stand in the Storm.”

Love Gun was Kiss' fifth studio album in three years (and seventh release overall, peaking at number four on Billboard), and proved to be the last release that the original lineup played on. By 1977, Kiss merchandise was flooding the marketplace (lunch boxes, makeup kits, comic books, etc.), and it would ultimately lead to a Kiss backlash in the '80s. But the band was still focused on their music for Love Gun, similar in sound and approach to Rock and Roll Over, their previous straight-ahead rock release…

Red Rose Speedway is the twelfth release in the Paul McCartney Archive Collection, personally supervised by Paul McCartney. Released in April 1973 and featuring the #1 single ‘My Love,’ Red Rose Speedway was the first Wings album to hit #1 on the U.S. chart. The 2CD digipack features the original album remastered at Abbey Road Studios on CD1 and bonus audio of singles, B-sides and previously unreleased tracks on CD2.