Bat Out of Hell is probably remembered most for its rock operetta of every teenage boy's plight, "Paradise by the Dashboard Light". Certainly the most dramatic piece on the album, it engaged Meat Loaf's testosterone-crazed tenor in an incremental game of sexual bargaining with the resistant but willing, Ellen Foley. By employing exaggerated power chords, screaming vocals, over-the-top arrangements and a sense of rock and roll as Broadway theatre, Bat made Meat Loaf a star. Jim Steinman's contribution to the record is invaluable. His classically tinged piano gave a certain lush quality to his collaborations with Meat Loaf, making songs like the hit "Two Out of Three Ain't Bad" all the more emotional. Larger than life in every sense of the word, Bat Out of Hell sometimes sounds a bit dated but has retained most of its appeal. -Steve Gdula Bat Out of Hell is probably remembered most for its rock operetta of every teenage boy's plight, "Paradise by the Dashboard Light. " Certainly the most dramatic piece on the album, it engaged Meat Loaf's testosterone-crazed tenor in an incremental game of sexual bargaining with the resistant, but willing, Ellen Foley. By employing exaggerated power chords, screaming vocals, over-the-top arrangements, and a sense of rock and roll as Broadway theater, Bat made Meat Loaf a star. Jim Steinman's contribution to the record is invaluable. [+]

Chris Rea's voice has been maturing to a whisky-soaked growl in recent years, and The Blue Jukebox should wipe away any last, lingering bits of his MOR reputation once and for all. His voice-pitched somewhere between Mark Knopfler and Tom Waits-is the perfect accompaniment to the world-weary jazz of The Blue Jukebox. Since recovering from serious illness a few years ago, he's detoured far from The Road to Hell, taking his sound right back to fundamentals, and in the process become one heck of a blues singer and guitarist, leaving contemporaries such as Eric Clapton in the dust. The slide guitar, shuffling beat and low-wailing sax of "The Beat Goes On" are even reminiscent of former indie darlings Morphine-quite a feat for a man in his 50s. Most impressively, many of the songs here-particularly "Monday Morning" and "Long Is the Time, Hard Is the Road"-have a certain timeless quality, in spite of being Rea originals. The Blue Jukebox is the ideal late-night album, and more than just Rea's best yet-it's a genuinely exceptional collection of soulful, blues-drenched jazz. -Robert Burrow.

You could trawl the rock & roll archives all the way back and never find an album quite like Red Rose Speedway. Which is not to say that it's great. Just that it's weird. Though it's a Wings album, it's entirely irradiated with Paul McCartney's personality-to the extent that virtually the entire band left him while attempting to rehearse for the supporting tour, claiming they couldn't operate in his huge, overbearing shadow. You can see where they were coming from. Red Rose Speedway, right down to the cover shot of Macca with a rose in his mouth, is about Paul McCartney, specifically his unique Seventies ability to pump up slight, pretty songs to the scale of "Hey Jude", seemingly unaware or unworried that that didn't necessarily make them as good as "Hey Jude". The high spot is the saccharine sauciness of "My Love", a lurching soft-focus ballad about his wife's sexual excellence. The rest of it-lazy, lushly produced rock, sometimes sweet, sometimes just cloying, but always unmistakably Macca-is worth hearing if just to ponder: "what the hell did he think he was doing?" -Taylor Parkes.

After a wildly successful career-first with NZ art-pop act Split Enz, then with pop classicists Crowded House-singer-songwriter Finn was understandably eager to shed many of his audience's expectations for this, his long-awaited solo debut. The album's first single, "Sinner", was presumably intended to alert fans that this was a different kind of Neil Finn album-looser, slightly funkier-and elsewhere, too, a spirit of playful experimentalism prevails. Tracks like "808 Song" and "Astro" find him incorporating discreet layers of technology and unexpected influences (house music, trance) into what remains, at heart, an essentially handmade, linear song-writing technique. Yet much like the Paul McCartney he reveres, Finn can never entirely resist the lure of a good tune, and tracks like "She Will Have Her Way" also see him at his most shamelessly Beatlesque. The album's intimate feel will satisfy established fans, but ultimately, it can't help but seem a little half-hearted, achieving neither the glorious heights of transcendence, nor the depths of heartache, of which he has previously proved himself capable. -Andrew McGuire.

Behaviour marks a bit of a departure-or, more appropriately, an evolution-in style for the Pet Shop Boys, whose previous albums are largely comprised of hungry and often slightly seedy songs with a high emphasis production-wise on the band's beloved club roots. Those dance elements are still on display here, but there's a much more mature feel to Harold Faltermeyer's production. The songs themselves have moved on from neediness and seediness to far more adult themes; opening tracks "Being Boring" and "This Must Be the Place I Waited Years To Leave", with their lyrics of reminiscence, fond and otherwise, set the tone for the next 50 minutes. There are gently melodic songs of betrayal-"To Face The Truth", "Only The Wind"-and more upbeat variations on the same theme in "So Hard" and the string-laden "Jealousy" and a touching tale of first attraction in "Nervously". The album's only real downer comes in the pompous shape of "My October Symphony", a wincingly pretentious thing which suggests the band have fallen prey to the kind of po-faced muso nonsense they poke fun at in "How Can You Expect To Be Taken Seriously". Behaviour is possibly the best album for fans of Neil and Chris' more circumspect outpourings; what it lacks in upbeat anthems and disco production it more than makes up for in intelligent, introspective song writing. And with a bonus CD of 12 remixes and B-sides, it's a must-have for anyone who likes their pop meticulously crafted and shrewdly lyrical. -Rikki Price.

In music there are entertainers, pioneers and thinkers. Tom McRae is most definitely a thinker. His self-titled debut album is a neatly laid out collection of those issues that most concern him: life, people's attitudes and society's flaws, masterfully dissected and examined in intimate detail with only tentative acoustic guitars and the occasional string quartets. This is the sound of a loner, a misfit observing from the outside a world that he neither understands nor particularly likes. From "End Of The World News" ("Driving in your fabulous car/listening to the music that reminds you/you used to be young") to the damning "Bloodless" ("We're the oil in this machine/and this machine is going wrong"), his morbid observations, delivered with passion and confidence, are astute, logical and a little too much to handle all at once. But McRae, for all his disturbing bouts of realism, knows how to write a touching tune, a tear jerking melody and a gorgeously simple song, and thinking aside, it's these ingredients that make his debut album mesmerising. -Dan Gennoe.

Dylan has issued a large number of live albums in his day but 1974's Before the Flood deserves special mention because of the presence of the Band behind him. Dylan had recently brought the Band into the studio to record the chart-topping (yet still somehow under-appreciated) Planet Waves, which was the first (and, as it turned out, only) studio record he made after leaving Columbia for Asylum. He then asked them along on the subsequent tour, which at the time became the most successful rock tour in history. The fruits of that partnership are contained on this two-CD set, which actually ignores Planet Waves completely in favour of older classics. Although the album includes several strong collaborations, the highlights ironically come during Dylan's solo-acoustic portion, which yields powerful and gritty versions of "Don't Think Twice" and "It's Alright Ma" and during the Band's own exhilarating numbers with Dylan sitting out. -Marc Greilsamer.