Being off the road last week, I had less time than usual with my car CD player (at home, I’ve been mostly pushing Pandora Radio through the Roku box, which is convinced that I should really like Eminem’s “Love The Way You Lie,” and damn, if it isn’t growing on me), but, here’s the latest batch of mini-reviews/reflections on the shiny plastic discs I pull out of my disorganized collection:

♦ 10,000 Maniacs – Our Time In Eden: So far, the records that have been falling into this feature are largely examples of output from the has-been or never-was. This one’s different; Our Time In Eden is arguably the product of a group at the top of their game and peak of their talent and success, right before Natalie Merchant picked up and left to go solo (I’ll probably get to Tiger Lily at some point, I know it’s in the box). It’s an excellent record, a perfect example of late 80s early 90s alternative pop. Though Merchant was definitely “the face” (though the band continues with various lineups, they never hit like they did with her) of the band, what struck me on this re-listen was the amazing and understated guitar work – there’s some really great jangly leads running counterpoint to the vocal melody that are really impressive. Although I wasn’t listening to this kind of thing regularly at the time, to me today, this is what the early 1990s sound like, and that’s a good thing. Finally, I expect that I’d think more highly of a lot of my peers if “These Are Days” was in the running for class song, rather than Boyz 2 Men’s “End of the Road” at high school v2.0 (and almost every other small town high school ever*).

♦ Whitesnake: Greatest Hits: It’s interesting that it’s taken me this long to get to a “Greatest Hits” collection, as I own quite a few (it seemed a more economical way to replace aging cassette tapes with digital media). The inherent problem with Greatest Hits records is the fact that they are, by design, collections of disparate items, rather than cycles of songs that (might have been) designed to hang together as a cohesive whole. That’s not a huge problem with this record, because with Whitesnake, you pretty much know what you’re getting – David Coverdale and a constantly revolving cast of band members doing their best to carry the British heavy blues tradition in the absence of Led Zeppelin, and occasionally hitting it right, and otherwise making stylish heavy power ballads that make DJing at the strip club a lot easier for those who find themselves in that vocation (seriously, there isn’t a song here that doesn’t immediately conjure images of a girl on a pole…all the videos with Tawny Kitaen didn’t help). Overall, though, there’s some good work here, especially a couple of gems I’d forgotten from Slip of the Tongue, mostly due to Steve Vai’s guitar playing. Final thoughts? “Judgement Day” really, really wants to be “Kashmir” when it grows up, but even if it fails at that, it’s probably still going to keep the crown for the most effective use of the theme from world 1-2 in a hair metal song.

♦ Sheryl Crow: This one, the self-titled follow-up to Tuesday Night Music Club is the first Sheryl Crow record to come after she became SHERYL CROW, international pop star. That said, it still carries a lot of the same feel as TNMC; even though it spawned a ton of huge radio singles. As a whole, it still manages to keep that stripped-down, slinky low-fi sound that’s all over TNMC, but people mostly don’t talk about when referring to it. In context, top-10 hits like “If It Makes You Happy” just fit as part of the whole, and work for the listener in different ways than if it was sandwiched between “The Macarena” and Dishwalla’s “Counting Blue Cars” on a top 40 station in the summer of ’96. It’s a great listen in terms of being a solid rock album, with deeper cuts like “Sweet Rosalind” and “Oh Marie” being just as catchy as the charting singles. I honestly fell of the Sheryl Crow train after this record – if the later albums have the same vibe as the first two, I might have to revisit the catalog.

♦ Huey Lewis & The News: Sports: First off, please just insert your own Patrick Bateman/American Psycho joke here, because we’ve already heard them all. the av club recently did a big feature on this record as part of their “We’re No. 1” series, and it’s really worth reading; an interesting discussion of the record’s place in pop culture, and the machinations behind a middle-of-the-road 60s-inspired everyman managed to ascend to the height of pop stardom for a couple of years in the mid-eighties. A lot of people of my general vintage claim this as one of the first records they ever bought – I remember the songs on the radio, and I think I had a copy of the “If This Is It” 45rpm single; but I honestly don’t know where I got this CD. I think, as the Wayne’s World joke goes, this one was issued to suburban kids in the ’80s as Fleetwood Mac’s Rumors was in the ’70s. That said, the actual experience of listening to the record was kind of an exercise in nostalgia – despite all the really interesting, innovative stuff going on in the music world in 84-85, for so much of the world, including sheltered little ten year old me, this record was rock & roll. I couldn’t help but hum along with all the big radio hits (even if I was singing the lyrics to “I Want A New Duck” instead – thanks, ‘Weird’ Al!). What struck me most, though, was exactly how many synths there are all over the record (including the iconic MIDI handclap!), and that I really liked some of the dark compressed guitar tone on the rhythm parts under all the “Woah Oh!s” and saxophone solos.

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*-except, that is, for high school v1.0, which chose “Dreams” by Van Halen, which wasn’t an awful choice, all told (and not surprising given the almost total metal-focus of that particular construct). Self-help book schmaltz goes down a little better with a driving electric guitar holding it up.