Much can be said about the late Amy Winehouse, one of the U.K.'s flagship vocalists during the 2000s. The British press and tabloids seemed to focus on her rowdy behavior, heavy consumption of alcohol, and tragic end, but fans and critics alike embraced her rugged charm, brash sense of humor, and distinctively soulful and jazzy vocals. Her platinum-selling breakthrough album, Frank (2003), elicited comparisons ranging from Billie Holiday and Sarah Vaughan to Macy Gray and Lauryn Hill. Interestingly enough, despite her strong accent and vernacular, one can often hear aspects of each of those singers' vocal repertoires in Winehouse's own voice. Nonetheless, her allure had always been her songwriting – almost always deeply personal but best known for its profanity and brutal candor.

A sort of a sequel to Gatemouth's 1974 Cajun country & western cowboy album Down South in the Bayou Country, the originally issued Bogalusa Boogie Man consists of 12 tracks performed in more or less that same vein. "Bogalusa Boogie Man" was recorded in Bogalusa, LA, during March of 1975, almost exactly one year after Bayou Country. Material for this project was composed by Danny Morrison, Red Lane, Hoyt Garrick, David Craig, Jerry Hubbard, Pat Rush, Fred Martin, and Little Feat founder Lowell George, whose "Dixie Chicken" features "vocals by everyone around in the studio, including friends and neighbors and the one and only Woody Lee Lewis." George is said to have singled out this version as his all-time favorite.

Heathen Chemistry is the fifth studio album by the English rock band Oasis, released in 2002. The album was written and recorded with a back-to-basics sound with a more rock feel to it; the more crude and simple sound differs from the musical grandiosity of their previous records, Be Here Now (1997) and Standing on the Shoulder of Giants (2000), being more comparable to their early work.

With the arrival of Delta Lady: The Rita Coolidge Anthology, one can only remark: what took so long? No other singer – not Maria Muldaur, Bette Midler, Bonnie Bramlett, Carly Simon, or Linda Ronstadt – more perfectly embodied the wide range of changes that popular music underwent from the late '60s through the mid-'80s, and continues to seek new means of expression today. This two-disc anthology on Hip-O offers the first complete portrait of this complex and multivalent talent on CD (though a box set would have been nice). Rita Coolidge scored her first chart hit with friend Donna Weiss' "Turn Around and Love You" in 1969. That song earned her a studio spot where she fell in with Delaney & Bonnie, Leon Russell, and a huge cast of musicians. Being a background vocalist on Delaney & Bonnie's classic Accept No Substitute earned her a place on Russell and Joe Cocker's Mad Dogs & Englishmen revue and the rest is history, including a handful of chart hits and guest appearances that stagger the mind.

Evan Bartholomew, under the moniker Bluetech, produces his unique style from San Diego, CA. Classically trained on the piano for public performing, Bartholomew deviated from the traditional sounds and began to express the rhythms that sprouted from within him, and Bluetech was born. This resulted in his interpretation of nature's expression of being, a sound that is Ambient, Downtempo, Improvisational. He devoured the electronic potentials for musical expression and conveyed it in IDM, Dub, and Deep Techno.

Nearly 15 years after Ten, Pearl Jam finally returned to the strengths of their debut with 2006's Pearl Jam, a sharply focused set of impassioned hard rock. Gone are the arty detours (some call them affectations) that alternately cluttered and enhanced their albums from 1993's sophomore effort, Vs., all the way to 2002's Riot Act, and what's left behind is nothing but the basics: muscular, mildly meandering rock & roll, enlivened by Eddie Vedder's bracing sincerity. Pearl Jam has never sounded as hard or direct as they do here – even on Ten there was an elasticity to the music, due in large part to Jeff Ament's winding fretless bass, that kept the record from sounding like a direct hit to the gut, which Pearl Jam certainly does. Nowhere does it sound more forceful than it does in its first half, when the tightly controlled rockers "Life Wasted," "World Wide Suicide," "Comatose," "Severed Hand," and "Marker in the Sand" pile up on top of each other, giving the record a genuine feeling of urgency. (AMG)