Several of my favorites appear: Rosanne Cash’s album-length breakthrough as an singer-songwriter of unusual perspicacity whose rhythmic sense is as innate as her introspection; Alexander O’Neal bellowing over Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis’ most gleaming tracks; a New Jersey megastar for whom introspection was a rare glimpse into compassion for other women; and a mononym whose mastery of every instrument and emotional register justified his curiosity and perhaps compassion for other women. Los Lobos’ follow-up to their well-regarded How Will the Wolf Survive? sports even better songwriting.
Looming over them all, though, is Prince’s third official album since 1987: a distillation of several projects demonstrating his capacious genre appetites. In retrospect “Play in the Sunshine,” “It,” and “Hot Thing” aren’t eye-opening like “New Position,” “Condition of the Heart,” or other take-your-picks, but as part of what used to call the gestalt they reinforce each other’s strengths so well that cavils make me look ungenerous. And in the sequence between “U Got the Look” and “The Cross” he goes as far into Christian sexual ecumenicism as anyone’s ever gotten since Al Green.
The Sound, Solid category includes lots of adequate eighties boringness, though, some of which, like 10,000 Maniacs’ fascination with guitar textures from every dusty corner of Americana, matched the literal, literate weirdness of Natalie Merchant’s Songs About Important Subjects.
The Hague
Robbie Robertson – Robbie Robertson
Meh
John Hiatt – Bring the Family
The dB’s – The Sound of Music
Tom Waits: Frank’s Wild Years
Sound, Solid
Terence Trent D’Arby – Introducing the Hardline According to Terence Trent D’Arby
Hüsker Dü – Warehouse: Songs & Stories
Marianne Faithfull – Strange Weather
10,000 Maniacs – In My Tribe
Van Morrison – Poetic Champions Compose
The Replacements – Pleased To Meet Me
Stevie Wonder – Characters
Chris Isaak – Chris Isaak
The Jesus & Mary Chain – Darklands
U2 – The Joshua Tree
That Petrol Emotion – Babble
Good to Great
Prince – Sign o’ the Times
Alexander O’Neal: Hearsay
Pet Shop Boys – Pet Shop Boys, Actually
Public Enemy – Yo! Bum Rush the Show
Sonic Youth – Sister
Rosanne Cash – King’s Record Shop
R.E.M. – Document
Bruce Springsteen – Tunnel of Love
Eric B. & Rakim – Paid in Full
Sly and Robbie – Rhythm Killers
Ornette Coleman – In All Languages
Los Lobos – By the Light of the Moon
John Cougar Mellencamp – The Lonesome Jubilee
XTC – Skylarking
The Jury’s Out
French, Frith, Kaiser, Thompson – Live, Love, Larf and Loaf
Humanizing The Vacuum 