Hobart Rowland

Metallica Reload (Elektra) Put plainly, Metallica's last album, 1996's Load, made me angry: To see a band that I had always valued for its integrity change its music for what appeared to be commercial reasons was deeply frustrating. But after catching the quartet in concert earlier this year, I was...

The Beach Boys The Pet Sounds Sessions (Capitol Records) Not long ago VH1 aired a documentary on the making of some Fleetwood Mac record -- it hardly matters which. Lindsey Buckingham sat behind the console, fiddling with knobs and dials until he managed to completely deconstruct one song, isolating the...

Concrete Blonde y Los Illegals Concrete Blonde y Los Illegals (Ark 21) For decades Los Angeles has been a center of American punk rock and its descendent genres. And for much longer the city has been a focal point for Latin culture in the United States. But while the pairing...