One of the great new wave/early MTV records, She's So Unusual is a giddy mix of self-confidence, effervescent popcraft, unabashed sentimentality, subversiveness, and clever humor. In short, it's a multifaceted portrait of a multifaceted talent, an artist that's far more clever than her thin, deliberately girly voice would indicate…
The unsung heart and soul of the Motor City rock & roll scene, Mitch Ryder was simply one of the most powerful vocalists to rise to fame in the '60s, a full-bodied rock belter who was also one of the most credible blue-eyed soul men of his generation. He first made a nationwide impression fronting Mitch Ryder & the Detroit Wheels, whose fiery R&B attack boasted a gritty passion and incendiary energy matched by few artists on either side of the color line.
After such a fine debut as Of Skins and Heart, creating a follow-up might have been a burden for the Church – and maybe it was, but the end result was well worth it. Perhaps even better than their first, Blurred Crusade captures what for many remains the classic early Church sound, blending both the various strains of '60s inspiration and postpunk drive detected from the start with an even more elegant melancholy. Musically, both Willson-Piper and Koppes are just fantastic, their combination of guitar playing running the range from sparkling post-Byrds chime to sharp power. If the group doesn't fully explode here as much as later albums would demonstrate, especially on Heyday, that perhaps can be laid at producer Bob Clearmountain's feet.
Nils Lofgren has a story unlike any other in rock & roll. Something of a teenage rock & roll prodigy, he first made waves when he played on Neil Young's After the Gold Rush at the tender age of 17, just around the time his D.C.-based band Grin relocated to Los Angeles in hopes of hitting the big time. Grin never became stars, but Lofgren did. His association with Young provided a launch pad for a solo career that was acclaimed and fitfully commercially successful, with the late-'70s albums Cry Tough, I Came to Dance, and Night After Night all making waves in album rock…
In contrast to all the urban contemporary, hip-hop, dance-pop, and electronica artists who have operated in the high-tech realm exclusively, adult alternative is a place where artists have been known to be totally acoustic one day and totally electronic the next. Some adult alternative recordings are quite organic sounding, and others are heavily or entirely programmed. ~ AllMusic