Michael C. Harris

Jonny Lang Wander This World (A&M) Pop culture mavens are always looking for a pretty new face on which to pin their fortunes. Nearly three years ago they found one in sixteen-year-old Jonny Lang, an anomaly of a teenager. Unlike most others his age, Lang spent the majority of his...

Beck Mutations (DGC) Over the course of the half dozen or so albums Beck Hansen has released, on indie labels as well as for major DGC, what is emerging is the sound and thought of a truly visionary (albeit warped) artist. Don't be surprised if Beck turns out to be...

Kiss Psycho Circus (Mercury) From 1974 to the present, Kisstory is a winding parable of greed, folly, and ego, but the basic facts are simple to comprehend: In the beginning, there were Paul, Gene, Peter, and Ace. First they rocked. Then they sucked. Then they fought, and two of them...

There's always been an unflinching quality to Jay Farrar's songs, a refusal to romanticize the facts into an ego-sparing balm or a conscience- calming salve. Not that he isn't a romantic; like many other great lyricists, he attempts to transcend in song the weight of the everyday. The dignity of...

Battering-ram six-string power and inescapable melody have long been the tools of Bob Mould's trade. Through the hostile punk punches of his HYsker DY days in the Eighties and the sublime soaring of his pop-leaning early-Nineties excursion with Sugar, Mould crafted a body of work that elevates the bone-pounding possibilities...