Up! [Mercury, 2002]
I'll take the "green" mixes, and **** you for asking ("I'm Gonna Getcha Good!," "Ka-Ching!") *

The Blue Mask [RCA Victor, 1982]
After this becomes a cult classic, in a week or so, noncultists are gonna start complaining. "My Dedalus to your Bloom/Was such a perfect wit"? And then bringing in "perfect" again for a rhyme? What kind of "spirit of pure poetry" is that? One that honors the way people really talk. Never has Lou sounded more Ginsbergian, more let-it-all-hang-out than on this, his most controlled, plainspoken, deeply felt, and uninhibited album. Even his unnecessarily ideological heterosexuality is more an expression of mood than a statement of policy; he sounds glad to be alive, so that horror and pain become occasions for courage and eloquence as well as bitterness and sarcasm. Every song comes at the world from a slightly different angle, and every one makes the others stronger. Reed's voice--precise, conversational, stirring whether offhand or inspirational--sings his love of language itself, with Fernando Saunders's bass articulating his tenderness and the guitars of Robert Quine and Reed himself slashing out with an anger he understands better all the time. A

(What's the Story) Morning Glory? [Epic, 1995]
give them credit for wanting it all--and (yet another Beatle connection!) playing guitars ("She's Electric," "Roll With It") **

Every Breath You Take: The Singles [A&M, 1986]
Though they're thought of as slick, no putative pop band of this era has aired more pretensions. The new-agish textural excursions (not the chords and structures that flesh out their tunes) are excised here, but Sting is scarcely less pompous when servicing the marketplace than when expressing himself in the privacy of his own throwaways. From the love object with the dress of red to the dreams of imaginary energy sources, from sexist condescension to Sufi twaddle he's one step up the evolutionary ladder from Billy Joel. He's got loads of musical gifts. He's even got verbal gifts. But he's tried to convert the sharpest couplet he'll ever write--"De do do do, de da da da/They're meaningless and all that's true"--into a philosophy of life. He's just lucky it was possible musically. A-

Ashanti [Murder Inc., 2002]
shallow orgasms aren't bad orgasms, but she could probably do better with her own hand ("Foolish," "Rescue") *
乃听过她么，昨天看到某封面觉得还蛮漂亮的……不过没下

Roxy Music [Reprise, 1972]
From the drag queen on the cover to the fop finery in the centerfold to the polished deformity of the music on the record, this celebrates the kind of artifice that could come to seem as unhealthy as the sheen on a piece of rotten meat. Right now, though, it's decorated with enough weird hooks to earn an A for side one. Side two leans a little too heavily on the synthesizer (played by a balding, long-haired eunuch lookalike named Eno) without the saving grace of drums and bassline. B+

拉拉之光获得老人家亲授的 泥坑天后 美誉
Puddle Dive [Righteous Babe, 1993]
or is that puddle diva? ("Names and Dates and Times," "Pick Yer Nose") **

Love to Love You Baby [Oasis, 1975]
Did you come yet? Huh? Did you come yet? B-

The Whitey Album [Enigma/Blast First, 1989]
"Into the Groovey" you should know. "Burnin' Up" you shouldn't, 'cause this one's "the original demo on four-track cassette," and also 'cause it sucks. "Addicted to Love" was cut live to a canned backing track in a record-your-own-single booth and will make my top 10 if they deign to release it as a single. The rest is funny mixes, found girl talk, beats from a band not noted for same, and other remembrances of their avant-bullshit roots. Why don't they take this stuff to John Cage? I want to be sure I get course credit. C

Ambient [Instinct, 1993]
his best since Before and After Science ("Heaven," "J Breas") ***

The Kink Kronikles [Reprise, 1972]
Self-konfessed kultist John Mendelsohn has kreated an inkomparable kompilation. Great hits are few--the Kinks have made U.S. top forty only twice since their first best-of, with "Lola" and "Sunny Afternoon." But great songs abound, assembled with a konnoisseur's kraft (all right, I'll stop) from available (and deleted) LPs, uncollected singles (told you I'd stop), and the vaults. Mendelsohn has little use for Ray Davies the would-be satirist ("Well-Respected Man," etc.), apologizing even for such marginally "boorish" efforts as "King Kong" and "Mr. Pleasant." So we get twenty-eight tracks that concentrate on Davies the lyric realist, the poet of pathos and aspiration, at his tuneful, readymade best. Definitely the world's most charming (and untidy) ripoff artist. And he wrote "Waterloo Sunset," the most beautiful song in the English language. A