Eleanor McEvoy (Special Edition/Remastered & Expanded) - Eleanor McEvoy

Advantages: Live, and excellent sound
Disadvantages: NONE

...Recorded live at the impressive Althorp Park in Northamptonshire U.K., it's easy to tell why this album was nominated for a Grammy. What a better way to celebrate her 60th birthday then with a live concert! Bassey is vocally superior to counterparts half her age, as she flawlessly belts out all her best on this CD. Having studied voice and music theory myself, I can appreciate the quality of Ms. Bassey's voice that progessively gets better with age. There's no shaky grandma voice here when she hit's those unbelievable high notes in "Hey Jude", "This Is My Life", and "I Wanna Know What Love Is"! Not only is every song a vocal masterpiece, but her audience interaction is fun and playful. An expanded version of this same concert is available on the Import CD titled "Diamond Collection" and on another CD titled "Contemporary Classics... Read review

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Advantages: Eccentric rock played in a grandstanding style; Eleanor's voice
Disadvantages: A highly mixed bag of tricks, the lyrics are as strange as ever

...Widow City marks the return of Matthew and Eleanor Friedberger, the duo whom The White Stripes could have been - had they been just that bit more adventurous. The Fiery Furnaces, as they are gloriously known, make garage rock in the same mould of the Stripes. Yet after their first album they began moving out and expanding their musical vision. Their subsequent album Blueberry Boat took the idea of short sharp songs centred around grizzly guitar and cut it up with scissors, before sticking the pieces into a blender and mixing the whole thing up with some keyboards and synths, before taking out the resulting gooey whatever and putting it on record. And yes, that truly is the most drawn-out metaphor I've written this year - hurrah! That album had songs which split up into shorter songs, and rambled around aimlessly before reforming... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average very helpful

Advantages: Quality band, timeless songs, plenty of them
Disadvantages: Heard it all before and this adds nothing

...The Beatles are back - again! How many re-releases can we cope with? Well, this one is obviously popular with a good proportion of the country, thanks to its recent entry at number 1 in the album charts. So what is new? Well, nothing really. I listened to a friend's copy. This is a collection of the Beatles Number 1 hits over the years, which if you are a true Beatles fan, you will have already, and still buy this CD just because you have to. If you don't particularly like the Beatles, then buying this album isn't going to change your mind - we've all heard most of these tracks already, and if we'd wanted to buy them, we would have done so long ago. The disk is digitally remastered, although because of the time span and the quality of the masters, you can still hear hiss and I can't say there's any real improvement. The CD does contain... Read review

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