18 Again Anthology [Extra tracks]

Amy Rigby | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (May 21, 2002)
• Original Release Date: 2000
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Extra tracks
• Label: Koch Records
• ASIN: B0000658O6
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #219,227 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Witty, wise and nod-your-head fun, November 12, 2002

By 

Music fan (Norfolk, VA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: 18 Again Anthology (Audio CD)

This is about as smart and witty as pop music gets these days. Think Randy Newman or John Hiatt with a fine voice and a woman's sensibility (albeit one who'd like to grow a pair). Like Hiatt at his best, Amy writes about family and relationships in a way rarely touched upon in music. If you like artists like Aimee Mann, Rosanne Cash, Caitlin Cary or Hiatt, you'll revere Rigby. She ought to be a household name.

While this is a fine collection, her three solo discs are also worth tracking down.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This really is a best of, May 26, 2002

By 

Phil (San Diego, CA) (San Diego, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: 18 Again Anthology (Audio CD)

If I had to put together a best of from Amy's three Koch albums, this is almost exactly the collection I'd assemble, right down to the wickedly funny unreleased (on CD) "Keep It To Yourself". Sure, my favorite Amy CD, "Middlescence" could stand to add another couple favorites here, particularly "Laboratory of Love" and "As Is" but there's always room for quibbling.

If you're already familiar with Amy, no doubt about it, you've already gotten her first three CDs. If you're not, this is a great starting point. Nothing beats Amy's combination of top notch songwriting, incisive wit and musicality. Of all the performers that my friends have turned me on to in the past dozen years or so, I'm most grateful for being introduced to the music of Amy Rigby.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars No Peer on the Current Pop Scene, July 28, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: 18 Again Anthology (Audio CD)

Though she's never drawn the adoring crowds that flock to Tori Amos or Sarah McLachlan, singer-songwriter Amy Rigby has no peer on the current pop scene. Her wit, honesty, emotional intelligence, and superior gift for melody have enabled her to capture a moment in the lives of men and women as precisely as Carole King did in the early 70s.

Like King, Rigby has mastered the paradox of rendering a generation through songs that are utterly personal; with their vivid detail and knowing observations, her lyrics cut deeper than a weekend's worth of Lilith Fair anthems. This May her three albums on Koch Records - Diary Of A Mod Housewife (1996), Middlescence (1998), and The Sugar Tree (2000) - will be condensed into a single-disc anthology as she closes out her deal with the label, and if you're unfamiliar with her music, you couldn't do better than the 17 tracks earmarked for the still-untitled release.

The frustrating working woman on the cowbell-pounding rocker "The Good Girls" declares, "My mother didn't go to work / She stayed at home and she never got paid / Now I do double time, I'm slaving six to nine/I'm so tired at night I think I've got it made." In the slinky, bongo-propelled blues "Invisible" the singer laments, "I walked into a bar, now what was I thinking / Nobody asked me, `Honey what are you drinking?'/ I'm invisible / Since I hit 35 what I want I gotta buy/I'm invisible."

For all her vulnerability, Rigby can strip the paint off a lover better than Richard Thompson: on the hammering "Balls," she snaps, "I've been seeing a pattern here, how you get lost when I get too near / Then you come `round maybe once a week, like some guys go out to bowl." Yet for all her disappointment she still savors romance like wine: on "Magicians," when a sometime boyfriend tells her he won't be around forever, she replies, "Let's leave reality out of this, shall we? / No need to mention it, it's always here / Leave the cold hard facts to the mathematicians / We're magicians / We make reality disappear."