Almost a decade since the release of their first effort, time and experience have softened Crosses' bite. On Goodnight, God Bless, I Love U, Delete., the pair (Far's Shaun Lopez and Deftones' Chino Moreno) dig deeper into their electronic sides, embracing synth pop, new wave, and goth influences. Less crunch, fewer guitars, and barely any screaming -- it's like Trent Reznor, Thom Yorke, and Sade formed a supergroup. Whereas their self-titled debut might be categorized as a "Deftones Lite" exercise, this sophomore set finally sounds like a truly separate entity. Moody as ever, the album is set to chilly synths and cold soundscapes, diving into an even darker chasm. Descending into shadowy club territory on opener "Pleasure," a skittering beat and jagged synth stabs are enveloped by a spacious, atmospheric bubble as Moreno intones a sultry "Pleasure, pleasure, pleasure." The sparse "Invisible Hand" sounds like it could be a sweet pop ditty with its melodic chorus, but with a repetitive vocal sample strung throughout the track, it ends up being anxiety-provoking and utterly unnerving. That interplay, between the sensual and discomfiting, makes for an engaging listen -- and the listener can't really predict what Lopez and Moreno will do next. In addition to highlights such as the ominous "Pulseplagg" and sprawling "Grace," Goodnight also features appearances by Run the Jewels' El-P on "Big Youth" and Cure frontman Robert Smith on "Girls Float † Boys Cry." Moving way beyond their debut, Goodnight, God Bless, I Love U, Delete. is the sound of artistic maturation and sonic expansion, a logical culmination of what they were trying to do in the first place.© Neil Z. Yeung /TiVo

Extreme's first album shows the band struggling to shed their influences, particularly Van Halen, and develop a style of their own; consequently, it's wildly uneven, but guitarist Nuno Bettencourt is always worth hearing.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

If Frankie Valli was the voice of the Four Seasons, and he certainly was, possessing an astounding high tenor voice that could ascend effortlessly into falsetto range at the beat of a drum, then Bob Gaudio was the group's heart and soul. A fine songwriter, arranger, and producer, Gaudio was the creative auteur behind the Seasons in much the same way that Brian Wilson was the creative and production force behind the Beach Boys. He knew the kind of talent he had in Valli, and wrote songs like "Sherry," "Dawn," "Rag Doll," and countless others to put that amazing, soaring voice in play, and he did it well, with the Four Seasons ending up the fourth most successful singles act in pop history, trailing only the Beatles, Elvis Presley, and Ray Charles, placing nearly 50 singles in the Billboard Hot 100 between 1962 and 1995. This box set collects 18 of their albums released between 1962 and 1992 in facsimile gatefold editions, preserving most of the group's legacy and history (a few things are missing, including 1962's Christmas release The Four Seasons' Greetings; the 1968 compilation Edizione d'Oro, which featured stereo mixes and alternate takes; 1972's Chameleon, which was released by and is still controlled by Motown Records; and 1981's Reunited Live). That's a lot of Four Seasons, who were always mainly a singles act. The group's albums were packaged around the hits, and usually included covers and other filler to flesh things out, so a set like this is primarily focused on ardent fans and collectors, who may be disappointed to find no additional annotation other than the original album notes for each facsimile, and some songs listed are in fact not actually on the discs, although over the course of 18 albums, it's a minor problem, but still irritating.© Steve Leggett /TiVo

The success of the musical revue Smokey Joe's Café, which ran on Broadway between 1995 and 2000, and the book musical Mamma Mia!, which opened on Broadway in 2001 and was still running in the fall of 2005, led to a string of so-called jukebox musicals in which pop music catalogs of various performers were recycled in a theatrical context. Many of these shows failed, but others, notably Movin' Out, which featured Billy Joel's music choreographed by Twyla Tharp, succeeded. Jersey Boys, a stage biography of the Four Seasons, looked like one of those few hits after it opened on November 6, 2005. The New Jersey-based vocal group bested only by the Beatles, the Supremes, and the Rolling Stones on the pop singles charts of the 1960s (as noted by annotator Charles Alexander) turned out to have a compelling career story containing not a little of the crime and mobster connections the Garden State was famous for, and critics who had disparaged musicals based on the songs of the Beach Boys and Elvis Presley looked more fondly on it, as did audiences. Usually, an original Broadway cast album is recorded on a day-off a week or two after a successful opening, but this one actually preceded the show itself, turning up in record stores five days before the official start of Jersey Boys' run. Also, more time was spent on it than the usual one-day session that Broadway union rules generally require. Producer Bob Gaudio, who was also an original member of the Four Seasons and the songwriter of many of their hits, seems to have been determined to get the sound right. Of course, the other original members of the group were not involved; instead, a talented young cast re-creates the familiar recordings. There, of course, is the problem. If critics in the theater often squirm at the ways librettists shoehorn well-known songs into the story lines of the jukebox musicals, record critics can have even less patience with the souvenir albums. The reason is easy to see. It's one thing to suspend disbelief in a theater as a group of actor/singers make like the Four Seasons. But a recording is immediately in competition with the still-available original recordings, and that's a battle that simply can't be won. Unquestionably, John Lloyd Young, playing lead singer Frankie Valli, has a good voice (if not quite the preternatural range Valli displayed in his prime), the rest of the singers are good, and Gaudio has achieved reasonable approximations of the original recordings. But who needs it? The album is not simply a Four Seasons tribute record, however. Snatches of Marshall Brickman's and Rick Elice's dialogue are included here and there to give some sense of the plot, but they usually sound overacted and clichéd. ("You wanna get a hit song, it's like the Stations of the Cross. You gotta get past the record company, the program directors, the DJs, and if you're lucky, you get to the people.") The album has been released by Rhino Records, a reissue label not generally known for its interest in Broadway. Why? Connections. As Alexander makes a point of saying in the liner notes, "You can buy the original recordings on the Rhino label."© TiVo

The final Columbia vehicle for Martha Wash and Izora Redman-Armstead; things had soured for the duo with the label. They began as a novelty act, but were truly a gospel-tinged soul unit who could also score with the dance crowd. They never really were allowed to showcase their real personalities or styles, and by the time this album was issued, they were doing formula pop-soul and dance filler.© Ron Wynn /TiVo