("Bethlehem Steel"), militia riflemen ("Homespun"), and regional migration ("Hyperion and Sunset") included. --Jeff Bateman  (less)

material reworked in post-tour sessions. This is very much a transitional album, its feel somewhere between the chamber-folk sweep of Out of Time and Automatic for the People and the distortion-pedal party that raged on Monster . It's the work of a band pretty near its peak consolidating familiar sounds and styles while tinkering with the edges. --Rickey Wright  (less)

designed for the mainstream. She's got an incredible set of pipes, and they are readily in evidence here. Haza is a charmer when she sings, soaring above even the most trivial studio dubs and musical overloads that exemplify the backing tracks. There are more traditional recordings available from Haza, both predating and following this one, that accent her Israeli and Yemenite heritage. Desert Wind is for those looking for a heavier beat, a harder pop edge, and exotic samples rather than deeper roots. --Louis Gibson  (less)

and Owensesque Dwight Yoakam are quietly assembling two of the great careers in country music history. Further evidence is now available in the form of Yoakam's second greatest-hits package (the first, Just Lookin' for a Hit , collected his 10 best singles from 1986-89). The new collection gathers 11 of his 13 Top 40 country hits from 1991-96 (strangely omitting "Nothing's Changed Here" and "Try Not to Look So Pretty") and adds three new songs. The new ones are good ones--Yoakam gives the ballad "Thinking About Leaving," cowritten with Rodney Crowell, a striking low-note guitar riff; he makes Waylon Jennings's "I'll Go Back to Her" even more traditional than it was; and he lends Queen's rockabilly romp, "Crazy Little Thing Called Love," an authe...  (less)

best known for his "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park," Lehrer combined razor-sharp wit with dry delivery inspired by everything from vaudeville and ragtime to whimsical show tunes and faux folk. Though a tad dated, Lehrer's wickedly pointed That Was the Year That Was is as good a representation of the mid-'60s American social and political climate as any. Recorded live in 1965 and composed largely of songs from the contemporaneous NBC series That Was the Week That Was , the album takes on boho Americana ("The Folk Song Army"), censorship ("Smut"), and the atomic bomb ("Who's Next"). Devilishly funny as well are the outstanding "Vatican Rag" and the puzzle that is "New Math." --Paige La Grone  (less)

the Celtic songster's reputation. Songs like "China Roses" and "Hope Has a Place" complement the simple elegance of traditional folk music with luxuriantly layered instrumentation and highly crafted studio production. The ultimate effect is dazzling, to be sure. Whether she sings in English, Gaelic, or Latin, Enya conveys a profound, if slightly disconcerting, mix of spirituality and sensuality. --L.A. Smith  (less)

even further, and Isaak's songs dig even deeper into his favorite subject, heartbreak, to shorten the distance between writer and singer. "Baby Did a Bad, Bad Thing," the set's opener, employs the same growling rock-speak as George Thorogood's notorious "Bad to the Bone," but without a trace of irony--Isaak lashes the listener with the torment of a betrayed lover, telegraphing fear, desire, and anguish as he wheels from rumbling accusations to keening falsetto cries. Elsewhere, he withdraws to the more lyrical croon of his previous work, his band wreathed with the throbbing tremolo and ghostly reverb that are their natural elements. There's a folk-rock jangle to the lovely, forlorn "Somebody's Crying," a disarming directness to ...  (less)

tackles social problems quite credibly on the English-language "Yesterday's Papers" and the Spanish-language "Noche sin estrellas," but her greatest triumphs come on seemingly simple love songs like the folk-flavored "Saying You Will," the Tejano-flavored "Esperate" and the country-flavored "I'm Not Through Loving You Yet." These plain declarations of love are delivered with apparent effortlessness, but it's no easy task to boil down complicated feelings to such natural phrases and to fit them so neatly to such enchanting tunes. If it were, "Destiny's Gate" wouldn't be such a rare achievement. --Geoffrey Himes  (less)

those traditions. Instead she has opted for an atmospheric, impressionistic art-rock that has more in common with Tori Amos and Sarah McLachlan than such previous reference points as Lucinda Williams and Emmylou Harris. This produces such awful examples of pseudo-poetry as "We'll sail upon a wind that blows above a misty sea, dancing barefoot on the soft earth touching edges of a dream" and such static, tuneless meditations as "Prisonary Life." Hinojosa switches back and forth between Spanish and English within each song, but self-indulgence sounds the same in either language. --Geoffrey Himes  (less)