Pop Review

A few weeks ago during his concert at the El Rey Theatre, young R&B singer Frank Ocean stood alone in front of a mike onstage while a big image of a solar eclipse shone behind him. He was in the middle of his "American Wedding," which isn't really his song per se but him crooning new lyrics over the music of the Eagles' classic L.A. snapshot "Hotel California. " He moved through his updated verses, a wonderful yarn about marriage and divorce, as the moon passed across the sun behind him and the song made its way toward that epic Don Felder and Joe Walsh tag-team guitar solo.

Few longtime pop music critics have been as fearlessly unhip in both their likes and dislikes, have been so willing to accept oft-ignored music on its own terms and have been as rock 'n' roll as Chuck Eddy, writer, former Village Voice music editor, self-described curmudgeon, ex-Army captain and hair-metal expert. Eddy's work is compiled in "Rock and Roll Always Forgets: A Quarter Century of Music Criticism," a career overview whose very title is contrarian: The writer's got a problem with the premise of Bob Seger's hit song "Rock and Roll Never Forgets.

Assessing Chris Holmes' place in popular music often results in cinematic comparisons. "He has a Zelig-like ability to insert himself into any event that matters," explains Greg Kot, music critic for the Chicago Tribune. "He's Forrest Gump for all these little subcultures," notes Brian Liesegang, former member of alt-rock hitmakers Filter and Nine Inch Nails and Holmes' current partner in the band Ashtar Command. Holmes agrees. "I've lived my life on the sidelines of all this stuff that's happening" he says.

Kelly Clarkson was three songs into a stripped-down set at West Hollywood's Troubadour last week before she offered a declaration. . "This is my new CD. I just got it today," said Clarkson, barefoot and giggly after a pre-show shot (she prefers vodka), clutching a copy of "Stronger," released on Monday. "I'm in love with [it]. " Nearly a decade has passed since the 29-year-old was crowned the first "American Idol. " Though she's since become a force on the charts with her sassy pop-rock anthems (her biggest record, "Breakaway," has sold more than 6.1 million copies)

Jane's Addiction's new album, "The Great Escape Artist," was still a work in progress last May when the band appeared on an outdoor stage at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Jane's was the musical entertainment at an exhibition opening for director Tim Burton's work as an artist and filmmaker, and singer Perry Farrell was dressed for the part, wearing the Mad Hatter's Victorian top hat and coat from Burton's reimagined "Alice in Wonderland....

Over the course of three hours of conversation at a roadside diner here called Pete's Henny Penny, Tom Waits, the singer, songwriter, pianist, arranger, actor and note taker, will offer the following similes and metaphors, seemingly at random though just as likely cataloged in his memory for future use: an aging musician as "a Popsicle in the sun on a bus bench in Florida"; the process of creation as "like making Chinese food — it's very exotic and...

It's a sad irony: The digitization of music has impoverished the average listening experience. Not only do compressed files sound meager compared to the sonic prowess of good old vinyl, but buy an album on iTunes and you also don't even get production credits, let alone booklets full of strange photos and imponderable lyrics. And then comes "Biophilia. " Björk's seventh album hits stores Tuesday as not just a collection of MP3s or a compact disc. The best way to experience "Biophilia" is to download it as a free iPad, iTouch or iPhone app, then purchase apps for the individual tunes.

The cristal baschet is one of the most beautiful musical instruments you will ever see, made of vibrating, tuned steel, fiberglass amplification cones and wire "whiskers" that shimmy when fingers rub the glass-rod keyboard. Film composer Cliff Martinez's version, which resides in the living room of his Topanga Canyon home, is about the size of an upright piano and is as much sculpture as instrument. Martinez, whose scores support three films this year, bought his expensive cristal when he was scoring Steven Soderbergh's surreal 2002 space fantasy "Solaris" but had pined for one as far back as their first collaboration, "Sex, Lies, and Videotape" in 1989.

For the last song of the Head and the Heart's set at the Music Box on Thursday, "Rivers and Roads," the band slowed down to a tense build. The acoustic guitars took on a head of stream, the low-tuned drums pounded like a distant, gathering storm. Finally, at the big payoff crescendo, singer-violinist Charity Rose Thielen took the mic and ripped off a Southern-soul shout that seemed to come from a wholly new well of primal, musical joy for the band. The Music Box crowd went ballistic.

There is an element of calm amid the chaos in Travis Barker's dressing room. It's hours before showtime at Blink-182's concert at the Honda Center in Anaheim, and Barker's three kids are running wild, banging on his drum kit, spinning on a skateboard, playing an unplugged electric guitar, happily tumbling and laughing. The drummer watches it all with genuine serenity. Even on tour, he keeps the three children close whenever possible. "My kids were very healing for me," he says. At 35, Barker looks much as he always has, in a backward baseball cap and elaborate tattoos etched across his wiry, muscular body.