Well. It’s a given I’ll buy this album. It’s the sort of disc I feel I have to listen to multiple times, to get comfortable with. My initial thought is this album sounds like Rubber Soul if the Beatles got to go back and rerecord it knowing everything they learned from Revolver through The White Album.

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For yet another musical series in which I apply the personally biased Album Rank-O-Rama method to an artist’s albums, here’s an old favorite: Suzanne Vega. She just released a new disc called Beauty And Crime.

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A long time Suzanne Vega fan, I’ve been letting Beauty & Crime steep to where I could write about it objectively and not from that “This is the first album in years! It’s wonderful!” perspective.

After endless repeats and within the context of her previous work on my iPod, I feel there is much that’s genuinely wonderful. Much of the saddening sterility of the previous “divorce” album, Songs In Red And Grey, is absent, replaced with tasteful, polished production, often perfect. Lyrically, it’s magnificent - it sounds as if Vega has almost too much to say these days.

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Needless to say I’m a fair Radiohead fan. They recently announced their new album In Rainbows will be for sale via their website for a price determined by you. It’s been quite some time since their last album Hail To The Thief, so there’s a ton of pent-up demand.

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Never mind investment bubbles - the bubble that damaged me most was the hair metal one of the late eighties. After New Wave and the sexually ambiguous melodies of Kajagoogoo and Haircut 100, hard rock struck back with a vengeance via all kinds of pseudo-manly bands, waving their guitars like giant - guitars.

As hair metal grew in popularity, clones of clones of clones emerged - all  rock decedents of Van Halen and Bon Jovi in a cheap attempt to make a quick buck, hence inflating a head-banging bubble that could only collapse due the weight of the metal contained within.

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Even if you’re not a huge Beatles fan, I think this documentary about John Lennon’s jukebox is worth seeing for a neat history of the music of the sixites.

Basically John Lennon had a jukebox that he would take around with him on tour, filled with all of his favorite music.

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I’m guessing there are at least two readers of this blog that care about Crowded House, but MSN Music has a full concert recorded of a recent Crowded House concert from the House of Blues in Chicago - August 18, 2007. It’s over at MSN Music (USA link) and played just fine on my Mac.

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Yesterday, it was announced that John Lennon and his back catalog have been added to the iTunes Music Store (of course, in the case of Double Fantasy that means some of Yoko’s stuff too).

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After the band broke up in the mid-nineties, a handful of Crowded House tracks surfaced on Recurring Dream (a greatest hits compilation) and Afterglow, a mishmash of unreleased recordings.

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So my Crowded House Intra Album Rank project is done - here are the albums ranked from best to worst, with links to the reviews:

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