While freaks abound in popular music, country music has produced — in kd lang and Lyle Lovett — two of the most chameleonic beasts. And while Lovett seems to be content skating around the edges of country music better than anyone else, lang has regularly taken the dive into the deep end of the musical pool reinventing herself as a diva or chanteuse, and easily shedding her country skin. With her newest release, Invincible Summer, lang once again holds her breath for a long time only to surface in a very foreign place. Word has it that lang is madly in love and wrote all the songs on Invincible Summer while hanging on the beach. She also must have spent a bit of time listening to Wilco’s seminal Summerteeth, pumping a (perhaps too) heavy helping of analog synthesizers into the mix. Everything on Invincible Summer sounds great, and it will surely be a huge hit among the Adult Acoustic Alternative set (possibly even snagging some Grammy nominations); but amidst all the cool synth send-up and impeccably produced layered vocal tracks, something is missing from Invincible Summer — lang’s heart. An ounce of the heart that went in to making Absolute Torch and Twang would have made this an incredible record. Instead, Invincible Summer wallows in slow, uninteresting mid-tempo blahs that go nowhere fast. (Warner Brothers)

On their self-proclaimed "collection of orphans and strays," Crowded House assembles some of the left over bits and pieces that remain of their 11-year stint as a band in their latest release, Afterglow.

Yes, Crowded House separated in 1996, but it should come as no surprise that lead man Neil Finn and the band would put out a collection from the closet. After their breakup, the band still had quite a stock of unrecorded B-sides and concert favorites that, although they didn’t "fit" into the albums they were intended for at the time, made great live performances and became part of the recorded sound that’s captured here.

Despite the misfit label, the album outlines a progression of talent in the sound and artistry that made the band popular. "Recurring Dream," an Afterglow key, was penned in the early days when the band went by the moniker The Mullanes, while "Help is Coming" exhibits a Together Alone tone, which was released in 1993 near the end of the band’s existence. Balancing these typical sounding Crowded House tracks is "I Love You Dawn," a Beatle-esque love song from Neil Finn to his wife. Spanning nearly ten years of musical development, the songs comprising Afterglow meld well to create this diverse collection.

But don’t count this to be the final glint from Crowded House. As Finn states, "There’s something about home demos that reek of atmosphere and feeling. There are many more of these, but that’s another album..." (Capitol)