From the beginning of the first track "Dark & Long," Underworld's focus on production is clear, with songwriting coming in a distant second. The best tracks ("MMM Skyscraper I Love You," "Cowgirl") mesh Hyde's sultry songwriting with Emerson's beat-driven production, an innovative blend of classic acid house, techno, and dub that sounds different from much that preceded it. In a decade awash with stale fusion, Underworld are truly a multi-genre group.© John Bush /TiVo

The three-disc 1992-2012 anthology replaces the two-disc 1992-2002 as a generous overview of Underworld's lengthy second act. It was issued simultaneously with A Collection, a single-disc release featuring space-saving edits of the group's lengthier highlights. Bizarrely, this lacks some of the cuts included on A Collection -- namely "Beebop Hurry," "Downpipe," "The First Note Is Silent," and "King of Snake" -- and reserves the third disc for rarities, including B-sides, Japan-only bonus tracks, and compilation contributions. The cardboard foldout package is sturdy and holds a glossy, photo-packed booklet. Track information is minimal -- there's no release information whatsoever -- yet most of the photos have dates and locations. Like a lot of career overviews, this is somewhere between an introduction and a collector's item, but it initially retailed for the price of a single disc and holds an edge over the marginally less expensive A Collection.© Andy Kellman /TiVo

From the beginning of the first track "Dark & Long," Underworld's focus on production is clear, with songwriting coming in a distant second. The best tracks ("MMM Skyscraper I Love You," "Cowgirl") mesh Hyde's sultry songwriting with Emerson's beat-driven production, an innovative blend of classic acid house, techno, and dub that sounds different from much that preceded it. In a decade awash with stale fusion, Underworld are truly a multi-genre group.© John Bush /TiVo

From the beginning of the first track "Dark & Long," Underworld's focus on production is clear, with songwriting coming in a distant second. The best tracks ("MMM Skyscraper I Love You," "Cowgirl") mesh Hyde's sultry songwriting with Emerson's beat-driven production, an innovative blend of classic acid house, techno, and dub that sounds different from much that preceded it. In a decade awash with stale fusion, Underworld are truly a multi-genre group.© John Bush /TiVo

Accessibility and exclusivity are by turns peddled as a measure of value when the agenda dictates. Often, when Laurie Anderson's music finds favor with critics, it's the former they praise. Arguably, her work has always been approachable. It may not adhere to common structures, and often employs innovative resources for achieving original sounds. But at its core, her music has always been so warm, so human, and often so very funny that it never feels exclusive. Now in her fourth decade as a recording artist, she presents the album of a lifetime -- well, of one of them. Landfall pairs nicely with Big Science and Homeland as a concluding work in a trilogy of indefatigable imagination and compassion. Always adept at conjuring past, present, and future as if time flexes at her touch, those records share an underlying sense of doom, tempered by a healthy dose of the absurd and nods to the tragi-comic nature of collective existential dread.Her chief inspiration this time around was Hurricane Sandy and the things she lost in the flood. And this record sees her collaborate with the inimitable Kronos Quartet, who lend their exquisite string work to an album epic in scale and reach. Musically, the record navigates an uneven terrain with a fluid combination of acoustic instrumentation and electronic flashes that conjure a landscape both devastating and curiously fascinating. At this part of her career, Anderson remains as intrepid a sonic adventurer as ever. "Never What You Think It Will Be" embraces the very best of what electronic music can do, and it's electrifying in a way that most artists half her age can't muster. "Dawn of the World" is as much an experiment in agitation and anxiety as it is a song, and tracks like "We Head Out" feed into the record's sustained suspense, built on the metronomic ticks that pervade it, often scarcely detectable but quietly building tension nonetheless. Since her first single, "O Superman," and subsequent decades of innovation and experimentation, she has emitted a calm and measured air. It's not that the compositions aren't often thrilling and full of drama, it's just that her response is anything but histrionic. This is particularly true of her trademark spoken-word delivery. It's most curious, powerful, and affecting toward the end of the record where she recalls her flooded basement and ruined belongings and remembers, "I thought how beautiful/how magic/and how catastrophic."It's impossible to know whether some of the loss evoked on the record is a response to the death of her husband Lou Reed in 2013, but one suspects the elegiac reflections extend beyond ruined keyboards and props: while it may be inspired by Sandy's fallout, Landfall's reach runs to a sea of loss, chaos, and confusion. It's an elemental mystery of quietly epic proportions made exceptional through clarity of thought and feeling.© Bekki Bemrose /TiVo

Riding high on the back-to-back Top Five, platinum hits Damn the Torpedoes and Hard Promises, Tom Petty quickly returned to the studio to record the Heartbreakers' fifth album, Long After Dark. Truth be told, there was about as long a gap between Dark and Promises as there was between Promises and Torpedoes, but there was a difference this time around -- Petty & the Heartbreakers sounded tired. Even if there are a few new wave flourishes here and there, the band hasn't really changed its style at all -- it's still Stonesy, Byrds-ian heartland rock. As their first four albums illustrated, that isn't a problem in itself, since they've found numerous variations within their signature sound, providing they have the right songs. Unfortunately, Petty had a dry spell on Long After Dark. With its swirling, minor key guitars, "You Got Lucky" is a classic and "Change of Heart" comes close to matching those peaks, but the remaining songs rarely rise above agreeable filler. Since the Heartbreakers are a very good band, it means the record sounds pretty good as it's playing, but apart from those few highlights, nothing much is memorable once the album has finished. And coming on the heels of two excellent records, that's quite a disappointment.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

Unable to tour with Pearl Jam due to the pandemic, Eddie Vedder took advantage of this forced break to record a new solo album, eleven years after his acoustic Ukulele Songs. Earthling returns to more electric sounds (to the point where some songs could (and perhaps should) really have ended up on a new album by the Seattle band which Vedder fronts so well). The artist has surrounded himself with a stellar group of people for this record. His backing band is a real dream team: Chad Smith (Red Hot Chili Peppers), Josh Klingoffer (ex-Red Hot Chili Peppers and current live guitarist for Pearl Jam), Chris Chaney (Jane's Addiction), Glen Hansard (the Frames) and producer-guitarist Andrew Watt. Together, they’ve created a rock album that effortlessly surfs between accessible pop melodies and powerful riffs.Earthling is an assortment of songs that, by their very nature, make the album feel like a classic rock collection, pulling Vedder away from the sound that brought him success and bringing him closer to artists like Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty, and John Mellencamp. A rather commendable comparison, even if some of the compositions lack the depth that would make them absolute classics. Eddie Vedder’s voice is his real superpower —you could listen to it all night long, even if it were only reciting the Yellow Pages. Long Way is nothing short of mesmerising with its pop feel, and there’s a cheeky wink to the Pearl Jam fans with Brother the Cloud and The Haves. At its core, Earthling is an album with an undeniably rocky sound. An elegant offering from this exceptional artist who has, yet again, proved just how wide his stylistic palette really is. This album is guaranteed to appeal to a wide audience without needing to fall back on fancy production or effects. © Chief Brody/Qobuz

For Terrence Malick's THE NEW WORLD, veteran composer/conductor James Horner crafted a gorgeous score that perfectly echoes the renowned director's highly visual, atmospheric style of filmmaking. To accentuate Malick's love of natural beauty--revealed in lingering shots of wildlife and unspoiled landscapes--Horner utilizes subtly swelling horn lines, nuanced string passages, and even the delicate sounds of birdsong. Acclaimed singer Hayley Westenra provides vocals on a number of tracks, most notably the closing song "Listen to the Wind," which was written and produced by Horner and pop guru Glen Ballard. Aside from that final number, though, the soundtrack is predominantly understated, almost to the point of being ambient, marking it as a rarity in the often bombastic realm of Hollywood film scores.© TiVo