Iraq 2004

Nearly 30 years and nine albums in, Patti Smith shows no signs of giving up, or giving in, despite the fact she expected to be quietly doing her work instead of making rock & roll albums and playing in front of audiences. But then 9/11, Afghanistan, war in Iraq. Smith lives the vocation of a poet in an old-world sense of that word…

John Fogerty is many things, but predictable is not one of them. His solo career has proceeded in fits and starts, with waits as long as a decade separating solo albums, and when the records did arrive, they could be as brilliant as Centerfield or as bewilderingly misdirected as Eye of the Zombie. There was no telling what a new Fogerty record would bring, but perhaps the strangest thing about his sixth studio album, 2004's Deja Vu All Over Again, is that it's the closest thing to an average, by-the-books John Fogerty album that he's released in his solo career. Unlike its immediate predecessor, the Southern-obsessed Blue Moon Swamp, there is no unifying lyrical or musical theme, nor was it released with the comeback fanfare of that 1997 affair.