33 1/3 Series Books

In August 1994, Manic Street Preachers released The Holy Bible, a dark, fiercely intelligent album that explored such themes as mental illness, mur...

This is a thoroughly researched study of the origins of the New York City punk scene, focusing on Television and their extraordinary debut record. ...

After his breakthrough with Ziggy Stardust and before his U.S. pop hits "Fame" and "Golden Years" David Bowie produced a dark and difficult concept...

Ignored by virtually everyone upon its release in November 1968, 'The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society' is now seen as one of the b...

Oasis's incendiary 1994 debut album Definitely Maybe managed to summarize almost the entire history of post-fifties guitar music from Chuck Berry t...

Transformer, Lou Reed's most enduringly popular album, is described with varying labels: it's often called a glam rock album, a proto-punk album, a...

Of all the recordings to emerge from the Athens-via-Denver collective called "Elephant 6", Neutral Milk Hotel's second album is the one that has wo...

The serene, delicate songs on Another Green World sound practically meditative, but the album itself was an experiment fueled by adrenaline, panic,...

Released in the US in 1978, Blondie s Parallel Lines brought the band their first commercial success. By mixing punk, disco and radio-friendly rock...

When the world's greatest pop band played their final public concert in January 1969, there were no tickets or posted printed. When John Lennon,. P...

Daydream Nation is the kind of gorgeous monstrosity (born of extremes, rife with difficulties, and mythic in proportion) that can crush the will of...

Described as the perfect fusion of poetry and garage band rock and roll (the original concept was 'rock and Rimbaud'), Horses belongs as much to th...

Pet Sounds is, rightly, one of the most celebrated pop albums ever released. It has also been written about, pored over, and analyzed more than mos...

This title offers a superb investigation of what is arguably Johnny Cash's greatest album, focusing on his enduring mythology. When Johnny Cash sig...

Seemingly granted 'classic album' status within days of its release in 1997, OK Computer transformed Radiohead from a highly promising rock act int...

In this wickedly entertaining and thoroughly informed homage to one of rock music's towering pinnacles, Erik Davis investigates the magic--black or...

The power and influence of Grace increases with each passing year. Here, Daphne Brooks traces Jeff Buckley's fascinating musical development throug...

When Twin Peaks debuted on the ABC network on the night of April 8, 1990, thirty-five million viewers tuned in to some of the most unusual televisi...

Michael Marra: Arrest this moment The gravel-voiced chronicler of improbable encounters and real human truths and one of Scotland s finest songwrit...

In 1991, a loose-knit collective released a record called Blue Lines under the name Massive Attack, splicing together American hip-hop and soul wit...

It's the summer of 1979. A fifteen-year-old boy listens to WNEW on the radio in his bedroom in Brooklyn. A monotone voice (it's the singer's) annou...

By pulling Kid A from its canonical status and grounding the album in various contexts, Marvin Lin explains not only why Radiohead suddenly adopted...

Loveless remains an enigma, 15 years after its release - an album so influential and groundbreaking that its chief creator, Kevin Shields, has been...

""Music From Big Pink is a moving book that succeeds not just in vividly evoking its time and place but in distilling one young man's cliched and m...

In the first decade of the twenty-first century, Kanye West created the most compelling body of pop music by an American artist during the period. ...

What resonated about Endtroducing when it was released in 1996, and what makes it still resonate today, is the way in which it loosens itself from ...

Extravagantly opaque, willfully vaporous Aphex Twin s Selected Ambient Works Volume II, released by the estimable British label Warp Records in 199...