“This is an exploration of pain, passion and perseverance,” is how Sprints present their debut album. After having developed their decidedly British garage-punk under Nice Swan Recording with the EPs A Modern Job and Manifesto, released in 2021, the young quartet from Dublin has moved onto the Berlin-based indie label City Slang (Calexico, Hauschka, Gold Panda, Tindersticks, as well as Anna Von Hausswolff) for Letter To Self. Produced by expert of noise texture and bassist of Gilla Band, Daniel Fox, and recorded in just 12 days in Anjou, this dazzling record of 11 garage tracks doesn’t hold back, seeking catharsis over subtlety.“Music became an outlet for emotion, and a way for me to understand myself and society,” reveals Karla Chubb, the group’s ringleader, whose shattering voice has been backed by Colm O’Reilly’s guitar, Jack Callan’s drums, and Sam McCann’s bass, since the middle of the 2010s. Thunderous kick (“Ticking”) and plenty of saturation (“Cathedral”), rises in power until the point of implosion, almost giving a taste of the 90s (“A Wreck (A Mess)”). Adding efficient riffing (“Up and Comer”) and post-punk bass (“Literary Mind”), this high-tension record unfolds like a continuous flow of avalanches. If you’re looking for some respite, we recommend you wait for the last minute, where the guitar notes gently flow over softer, spoken vocals into silence. Qobuzissime! © Charlotte Saintoin/Qobuz

Michael Jackson had recorded solo prior to the release of Off the Wall in 1979, but this was his breakthrough, the album that established him as an artist of astonishing talent and a bright star in his own right. This was a visionary album, a record that found a way to break disco wide open into a new world where the beat was undeniable, but not the primary focus -- it was part of a colorful tapestry of lush ballads and strings, smooth soul and pop, soft rock, and alluring funk. Its roots hearken back to the Jacksons' huge mid-'70s hit "Dancing Machine," but this is an enormously fresh record, one that remains vibrant and giddily exciting years after its release. This is certainly due to Jackson's emergence as a blindingly gifted vocalist, equally skilled with overwrought ballads as "She's Out of My Life" as driving dancefloor shakers as "Working Day and Night" and "Get on the Floor," where his asides are as gripping as his delivery on the verses. It's also due to the brilliant songwriting, an intoxicating blend of strong melodies, rhythmic hooks, and indelible construction. Most of all, its success is due to the sound constructed by Jackson and producer Quincy Jones, a dazzling array of disco beats, funk guitars, clean mainstream pop, and unashamed (and therefore affecting) schmaltz that is utterly thrilling in its utter joy. This is highly professional, highly crafted music, and its details are evident, but the overall effect is nothing but pure pleasure. Jackson and Jones expanded this approach on the blockbuster Thriller, often with equally stunning results, but they never bettered it.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

Her self-titled debut LP (later retitled Ain't No Mountain High Enough after the single became a hit) was arguably her finest solo work at Motown and perhaps her best ever; it was certainly among her most stunning. Everyone who doubted whether Diana Ross could sustain a career outside the Supremes found out immediately that she would be a star. The single "Reach Out and Touch (Somebody's Hand)" remains a staple in her shows, and is still her finest message track.© Ron Wynn /TiVo

As an event, Depeche Mode's huge (attendance around 60,000) Los Angeles Rose Bowl concert in 1988 remains legendary; no single artist show had totally sold out the venue since eight years beforehand, while the film documentary done by Dylan-filmer D.A. Pennebaker based around the show clearly demonstrated fans' intense commitment to a near-decade-old band most mainstream critics continued to stupidly portray as a flash-in-the-pan synth pop effort. This start-to-final-encore record of the concert showcases a band perfectly able to carry its music from studio to stage as well as any other combo worth its salt should be able to do. Understandably focused on Music for the Masses material, the album shows Depeche experimenting with alternate arrangements at various points for live performance; big numbers like "Never Let Me Down Again," "Stripped," and "Blasphemous Rumors" pack even more of a wallop here. Slower numbers and more than a couple of ballads help to vary the hit-packed set, including a fine "Somebody" and "The Things You Said" combination sung by Martin Gore. "Pleasure Little Treasure," on record an okay B-side, becomes a monster rocker live, the type of unexpected surprise one could expect from a solid band no matter what the music. With a triumphant set of closing numbers, including magnificent takes on "Never Let Me Down Again," "Master and Servant," and the set-ending "Everything Counts," with what sounds like the entire audience singing the chorus well after the song has finally ended, 101 does far better at its task than most might have guessed.© Ned Raggett /TiVo

Though probably nobody fully appreciated it at the time -- perhaps least of all the band! -- Depeche Mode's debut is at once both a conservative, functional pop record and a groundbreaking release. While various synth pioneers had come before -- Gary Numan, early Human League, late-'70s Euro-disco, and above all Kraftwerk all had clear influence on Speak & Spell -- Depeche became the undisputed founder of straight-up synth pop with the album's 11 songs, light, hooky, and danceable numbers about love, life, and clubs. For all the claims about "dated" '80s sounds from rock purists, it should be noted that the basic guitar/bass/drums lineup of rock is almost 25 years older than the catchy keyboard lines and electronic drums making the music here. That such a sound would eventually become ubiquitous during the Reagan years, spawning lots of crud along the way, means the band should no more be held to blame for that than Motown and the Beatles for inspiring lots of bad stuff in the '60s. Credit for the album's success has to go to main songwriter Vince Clarke, who would extend and arguably perfect the synth pop formula with Yazoo and Erasure; the classic early singles "New Life," "Dreaming of Me," and "Just Can't Get Enough," along with numbers ranging from the slyly homoerotic "Pretty Boy" to the moody thumper "Photographic," keep everything moving throughout. David Gahan undersings about half the album, and Martin Gore's two numbers lack the distinctiveness of his later work, but Speak & Spell remains an undiluted joy.© Ned Raggett /TiVo

Replacing the original Catching Up with Depeche Mode compilation, Singles 81>85 subtracts two tracks -- the lightweight curiosity "Flexible" and "Fly on the Windscreen," which surfaced to better effect on Black Celebration -- and adds two, the full six-minute remix of "Just Can't Get Enough" and the original version of "Photographic," Depeche's recording debut on a 1980 compilation album. The overall collection remains the same, though, namely, a run through the peerless singles that kept the band on the charts in the U.K. and elsewhere, as well as building up their increasing cult following in America. It's an embarrassment of riches, from such bouncy early hits as "New Life," "Just Can't Get Enough," and "The Meaning of Love" to the increasingly heavier sound of "Everything Counts," "People Are People," and "Blasphemous Rumors." Nearly all the tracks appear in the original single mixes, some quite different from their album versions, others essentially the same (the one subtle difference in "Somebody" is an echoey percussion pattern buried in the mix, for instance). Two otherwise unavailable singles also appear here: "It's Called a Heart" is pleasant enough, but "Shake the Disease" is great, an obsessive love lyric matched to a wonderful, slow dance melody and an excellent pairing of David Gahan's more aggressive and Martin Gore's gentler vocals. As an introduction to Depeche's brilliant knack for catchy tunes evolving over time into a more challenging but no less popular collection of songs, at once defining and expanding the boundaries of synth pop, look no further.© Ned Raggett /TiVo

"Mad in Love," "Greatest Love Story Never Told," "To Be Yours"...the song titles of this ninth album from Jennifer Lopez (ten years after her previous release AKA) speak for themselves: JLO has returned to talk to us about love. Accompanied by a film released simultaneously on Amazon, This is Me…Now serves as a sort of original soundtrack, not only to the film, but also to the New York singer and actress's life. Over R&B, pop, and hip-hop rhythms, she retells the story of a young woman healing from the loss of her first love (actor Ben Affleck). As a reminder, the two stars dated in the early 2000s, before breaking up in 2004 and then going on to marry in 2022. We follow a character named The Artist, who faces three failed marriages. To find a new beginning, The Artist is guided by guardian angels, who rule as an astral council, representing the 12 signs of the zodiac. It's quite an adventure! The tracks that stand out from this musico-cinematographic mash-up include "Dear Ben, Pt. 2." a true declaration of love for her husband, and "Broken Like Me," a guitar/vocal ballad on which JLO gives her all. At 54 years old, on screen as well in the studio, Jennifer Lopez tells her story with touching sincerity, as well as a good dose of self-deprecating humor. © Nicolas Magenham/Qobuz

A sequel two decades in the making, This Is Me…Now finds Jennifer Lopez returning to the territory she first explored on This Is Me…Then: namely, grappling with the strong emotions generated by her relationship with Ben Affleck. Lopez wrote and recorded This Is Me…Then while in the throes of her romance with the actor, releasing the album in November 2002 at what turned out to be roughly the midpoint of their initial union. By early 2004, their engagement was severed. The next two decades were filled with high-profile love affairs by both parties -- they each started families with subsequent spouses -- but the pair reconnected in 2021, leading to marriage in July 2022. This Is Me…Now chronicles this rekindling, and in no small way: the record is accompanied by a full-length film featuring a music video for each of the album's 13 songs, plus there's a documentary called "The Greatest Love Story Never Told," which borrows its name from a series of love letters written by Affleck to Lopez.Separating the album This Is Me…Now from its two interlocking films isn't quite as difficult as it seems. Where the visual components are rife with celebrity cameos -- Jane Fonda appears in both, while the film finds space for Post Malone, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Trevor Noah, and Sofia Vergara, among others -- the album is relatively streamlined and sleek, containing no guest appearances and showing no overt attempts at chasing trends. While she enlists collaborators with impressive contemporary credits -- Roget Chahayed executive-produced Jack Harlow's Come Home the Kids Miss You and produced Doja Cat's "Vegas" -- she's intent on having This Is Me…Now be an answer record to This Is Me…Then, so it's filled with callbacks to glitzy Y2K pop: "Hearts and Flowers" goes so far as to interpolate "Jenny from the Block," the signature hit from Then. Lopez may be looking back but she's not attempting to re-create the past so much as strengthen the bond between two periods of her life that clearly mirror each other; she underscores the connection by delivering "Dear Ben, Pt. 2," an explicit response to an album cut 20 years prior. Occasionally, Lopez lets herself show signs of vocal wear -- she lets her voice crack on the austere ballad "Broken Like Me" -- but her maturation is evident in how she keeps returning to self-help empowerment throughout the album. Almost all of these words are directed to herself and Affleck -- on "Hummingbird," she proclaims, "'Cause you help me be the best version of me/And all I wanna do is help you be the best version of you," while "This Time Around" declares "We're gonna put the house in both our names" -- with a frankness that's simultaneously admirable and slightly alienating. Lopez is so intent on preserving the moment that her love for Affleck reignited that she ended up finding no space for ambiguity or interpretation, a decision that can make This Is Me…Now seem slightly cloistered. In its unapologetic candor, however, it stands as something of a definitive document of celebrity culture in the 21st century.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

Surprisingly, very few artists can float a digital-age collection of number one singles without resorting to trickery involving foreign countries or obscure charts. The Beatles had little trouble (The Beatles 1) and Elvis Presley managed both a disc of number ones (Elvis: 30 #1 Hits) and one of number twos (2nd to None), but Michael Jackson bent the rules so far that calling his disc Number Ones is tantamount to consumer fraud. Additionally, a collection of number one singles may not be the best representation of an artist's career; the Elvis volume included nothing from his Sun years, and the Beatles' set skipped "Strawberry Fields Forever." The #1's, Motown's collection of chart-toppers by Diana Ross & the Supremes, fares much better. It benefits from two Supremes characteristics: as a pop group through and through, their biggest hits were often their best songs, and, with the help of the solo Diana Ross, they spent a long time on the charts (nearly 20 years separates the Supremes' debut at the top from Ross' last number one single). While Motown's separate volumes on Diana Ross and the Supremes (in the Ultimate Collection series) remain the best source for a single-disc picture of either act, The #1's works remarkably well. It includes 19 number one pop singles (13 from the group, six from the solo Ross), plus various number ones on the R&B and dance charts, and there aren't any glaring omissions. Granted, fans of early Motown can't live without the girl-group chestnuts "Buttered Popcorn" and "Your Heart Belongs to Me," while those who enjoy latter-day Ross won't find "One More Chance" or "Why Do Fools Fall in Love?" -- but of course, this collection wasn't created with them in mind. For the group who recorded more hit singles during the '60s than any other act except the Beatles, and for one of the reigning solo artists of the '70s, The #1's is a worthy tribute.© John Bush /TiVo

Truly a band out of time, Giant might have sold millions of records during the heyday of album-oriented rock in the early '80s, but their bright melodies and clean production values sounded completely unfashionable by 1989 standards. Strong opener "I'm a Believer" hints at but doesn't betray the band's Christian beliefs and leads the way into such solid arena rock anthems as "Innocent Days" and "Hold Back the Night" and gorgeous power ballads like "It Takes Two" and "I'll See You in My Dreams." The latter did manage to briefly crack the Top 20, but with other tracks such as "I Can't Get Close to You" and "No Way Out" veering dangerously close to Loverboy territory, this is hardly a perfect album. The band members' utter lack of image (all were rather faceless ex-session musicians) didn't help either, and Giant would only manage to struggle through one more album before calling it a day.© Eduardo Rivadavia /TiVo

Again working with Alan Moulder but now also using a live drummer on most tracks -- namely Monti from Curve, one of the Mary Chain's many descendants -- the Reids came back strong with Honey's Dead, on balance a more consistent and satisfying record than Automatic. There's a sense of greater creativity with the arrangements, while the balance between blasting static rampage and precise, almost clinical delivery is the finest yet, making the album as a whole the best straight-through listen since Psychocandy. Monti's drumming finally replaces Bobby Gillespie's properly; he's a much more talented musician than the Primal Scream overlord, using the warped funk hits familiar from Curve's work to the Mary Chain's advantage. Even the drum machine-driven cuts work better than before, especially the brilliant, coruscating opener, "Reverence." Burning with some of the best nails-on-chalkboard feedback the band had yet recorded, combined with a whipsmart sharp breakbeat, all it took was the finishing touch of Jim Reid's sneering lines like "I wanna die like Jesus Christ" to make it another stone-cold classic single from the band. Other winners include "Sugar Ray," with beats and melody so immediate and addictive the track was actually used for a beer commercial, of all things, and the steady slap and crunch of "Good for My Soul." If there's a danger in Honey's Dead, it's that the near bottomless pit of reworked melodies and lyrics had almost reached its end -- even the final track, "Frequency," combines both "Reverence" itself with the Modern Lovers' "Roadrunner" -- which made the stylistic shift on Stoned & Dethroned a logical follow-up. William and Jim Reid split all the vocals almost evenly, the former especially shining on the nearly gentle "Almost Gold," the closest the record comes to a sweet ballad.© Ned Raggett /TiVo

Considering that soul has been at the foundation of Hall & Oates' sound throughout their career -- even their early folk-rock records had soulful underpinnings -- it only made sense for the duo to eventually cut their own soul tribute album. As the title suggests, that's exactly what 2004's Our Kind of Soul is: Hall & Oates' spin on their favorite soul sounds. This includes, of course, heavy doses of Philly soul and Motown, along with other smooth soul of the '70s. Most of the album is devoted to covers -- usually familiar tunes like "Standing in the Shadows of Love," "I'll Be Around," and "Used to Be My Girl" -- yet there are a couple of more obscure entries and a heavily rewritten "I Can Dream About You" (in his excellent track-by-track liner notes, Daryl Hall reveals that Dan Hartman wrote the song with the duo in mind), but there is a handful of originals that fit into the vibe quite well, such as the lush "Soul Violins" and "Let Love Take Control." All the songs, whether they're covers or originals, are given a clean yet warm production similar to the pair's successful 2003 comeback effort, Do It for Love, but this is a little more laid-back and unassuming. Consequently, it doesn't make as big of an impression, but it's a friendly, mellow affair that finds Hall & Oates in good form. It's not quite as strong as Do It for Love, and its tasteful, relaxed vibe may strike some fans of their '80s hits as being a little sleepy, but for longtime fans who like the folky Atlantic material as much as their blue-eyed soul, this is a nice, enjoyable listen.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

Anyone who encountered his numerous mixtapes can tell you that before his official debut landed, rapper/producer J. Cole had spent some time bringing the whole Drake, Wale, and Big Sean style to a more street level. It’s worth mentioning because Cole World: The Sideline Story has little of that debut desire to cross over, and while the multi-talented Cole is a skilled, interesting beat-maker in his own right, a superstar production would have certainly made this album more approachable. Instead, No I.D. -- the biggest behind-the-boards name here -- turns in a sluggy, druggy construction for “Never Told,” Cole's deep, rich study of father/son confidence. Cole handles most of the rest on his own, turning in B+ stabs at dubstep (“Mr. Nice Watch” with guest and label boss Jay-Z), indie-hop (“Cole World” or “flossin’ with a laptop”), and his own humbler version of the Roc-A-Fella sound (the great single “Lights Please”). Add an “Intro” and then a part III -- the first two parts to be found on earlier mixtapes -- and you’re practically telling the aboveground crowd they’re stale from the start, but the tradeoff is a talent that has matured in the underground and is free of any forced outside influence. Cole’s fantastic style shoots off bold punch lines one minute (“I blow brains, Cobain-style”) and then goes deep the next, with equal skill and all while stringing together eye-level, real-life stories that have that classic flow. The reservation count is high and the flaw count is zero, and in this case, that’s the proper formula for a rich hip-hop album. Take a couple listens, let it sink in, and then discover that Cole World is one hell of a debut.© David Jeffries /TiVo