Island Post Punk

From the outset, U2 went for the big message – every song on their debut album Boy sounds huge, with oceans of processed guitars cascading around Bono's impassioned wail. It was an inspired combination of large, stadium-rock beats and post-punk textures. Without the Edge's echoed, ringing guitar, U2 would have sounded like a traditional hard rock band, since the rhythm section and Bono treat each song as an anthem. Of course, that's the charm of Boy: all of its emotions are on the surface, delivered with optimistic, youthful self-belief, yet the unusual, distinctive guitar textures give it an unexpected tension that makes it an exhilarating debut. The songs may occasionally show some weakness – the driving "I Will Follow," the dark "An Cat Dubh," and the shimmering "The Ocean" stand out among the sonic textures – yet the band's musical and lyrical vision keep Boy compelling until the finish.

Conventional wisdom has it that all the B-52's' subsequent releases are highly inferior to their debut. While Wild Planet is not the rarefied wonder their first platter is, it's still darn good. The songs here are generally faster, tighter, and punchier than previously, though production values are not as wonderfully quirky and detailed; fewer songs here are as over-the-top crazy as the first album's "Rock Lobster" or "52 Girls." These formless selections continue to exhibit a cunning mix of girl group, garage band, surf, and television theme song influences, all propelled along by an itchy dance beat. "Give Me Back My Man" allows Cindy Wilson a unique opportunity to croon a broad, expressive melodic line. Fred Schneider parades his inimitably nervous vocals on chucklesome ditties like "Quiche Lorraine" and "Strobe Light." The best songs here are "Private Idaho," a wonderfully jittery number that employs a variant on the famous melodic snippet from the Twilight Zone theme music, and "Devil in My Car," a delightfully loopy hoot that lays the craziness on very thickly. Performances and sound quality are fine. This album is well worth hearing and recommended.

Introducing Midnight Oil's Full Tank from Sony Legacy and Sony Music Australia. This is the definitive "Oils" collection. It includes, for the first time ever, all of their 11 classic studio albums, their two EP's, plus a new DVD called 40,000 Watt RSL that contains all of the band s unforgettable music videos. Each album has been digitally remastered over recent years and its artwork has been restored to match the original releases.

Three live broadcasts of some of Talking Heads earliest and most captivating shows!

Alexis Marshall is best known as the frontman for Rhode Island’s notorious provocateurs Daughters, whose eight-year hiatus between their posthumous self-titled album and the critically acclaimed comeback album You Won’t Get What You Want found the ever-evolving band explode from down-and-out cult heroes to one of the biggest bands in the nebulous territory where abrasive noise rock fuses with high-art aspirations. For his debut album House of Lull . House of When, Marshall wanted to push that sense of chaos even further, by crafting an album around moments of spontaneity and sonic detritus, where a mistake could become a hook or the whip of a chain could become a beat.

Oil and Gold is surprising for several reasons. For one, the departure of singer/guitarist Carl Marsh midway through produced no noticeable dip in the record's quality. For another, live drums appear for the first time on a Shriekback album, thanks to Martyn Barker, a longtime associate who was added to the band at the tail end of the Jam Science sessions. Most surprising, though, is how much this album rocks out, particularly on the songs featuring ex-Damned guitarist Lu Edmonds. It even yielded an out of left field hit single in "Nemesis," which not only uses the word "parthenogenesis," but rhymes it successfully, and does so in the chorus. In truth, Oil and Gold is six-tenths of a great album. It leads off with the rip-roaring one-two-three punch of "Malaria," "Everything That Rises Must Converge," and "Fish Below the Ice," all featuring Marsh on vocals. These are followed by "This Big Hush" and "Faded Flowers," two tremendously beautiful slow numbers sung by Barry Andrews, who took over for Marsh as lead vocalist.

Jah Wobble had already explored 'Islamic funk' with his Invaders of the Heart band but here got down with some weird amalgam of Eurobeat hooked to Afro-funk of the Talking Heads kind. Snake Charmer is a mini LP and result from a collaboration between Jah Wobble, best known as Public Image Limited bass-player, U2 guitarist The Edge and German experimental krautrocker and Can member Holger Czukay produced by a forefather of the house music, the New York Studio 54 DJ François Kevorkian. Others who dropped in during the recording of the 'Snake Charmer' mini-album were Can's Jaki Liebezeit, jazz-funk singer Marcella Allen and guitarist Animal.