Who's Next is not an album lacking for reissues. In addition to a deluxe edition from 2003, there have also been multiple audiophile editions and remasters of the album since its 1971 release. So what could a "super deluxe edition" possibly contain? Quite a bit, as it turns out. As even casual Who fans know, the genesis of Who's Next was as Lifehouse, a multimedia rock opera even more ambitious than Tommy. Pete Townshend had developed a bizarre, dystopian story that somehow merged his devotion to Indian guru Meher Baba, his recent fascination with synthesizers, and the idea that the only thing that could save humanity from a test-tube-bound future was "real rock 'n' roll." Yeah, the aftereffects of the '60s were wild. After some live shows at the Young Vic in London and a series of marathon recording sessions, a 16-song tracklist was finalized, but by this point, it was collectively decided—both creatively and commercially—that perhaps another concept-dense double album might not be the best studio follow-up to Tommy. So, eight Lifehouse songs were re-cut and one new song ("My Wife") was recorded and the leaner, meaner Who's Next was released in August 1971. The album was both an instant success and has become an undisputed part of the classic rock canon, thanks to the inclusion of absolutely iconic tracks like "Won't Get Fooled Again," "Baba O'Riley," and "Behind Blue Eyes."While one could make an argument that the taut and focused power of Who's Next inadvertently proved the point of the Lifehouse story (namely, that rock 'n' roll is most effective when it's at its most primal), it's important to remember that Who's Next was also a giant artistic leap forward for the Who, as it found them at the peak of their powers as a pummeling rock band and as a band willing to be experimental and artful in their approach to being a pummeling rock band. (If any evidence is needed of the group's unrivaled power, check out take 13 of "Won't Get Fooled Again" on this set, which is so immediate and electric that it could easily be mistaken for a concert performance.) While several Lifehouse tracks found their way to other Who and Townshend records, getting a sense of the contours of the project has been difficult. But this massive, 155-track set creates those lines thanks to the inclusion of multiple Townshend demos as well as recording sessions of Life House tracks that occurred both before and after the release of Who's Next, and, most notably, two freshly mixed live shows from 1971 (including one of the Young Vic shows) that provided both the energy and, in some cases the basic tracks, for the album versions. While nothing on this bursting-at-the-seams edition overrides the all-killer-no-filler approach of Who's Next, it does provide plenty of long-desired context and documentation for what made that record so powerful. © Jason Ferguson/Qobuz

For what we are told is his 74th solo studio longplayer (well, who's counting?), the absolute force of nature that is Willie Nelson has chosen to revisit some of the best songs from his own catalog—including "On the Road Again," "Yesterday's Wine," "A Good Hearted Woman," and "Bloody Mary Morning"—and record them in a bluegrass vein. This infectious, high keening sound, bluegrass, coined and minted in the 1950s by Bill Monroe and friends in the hills of Kentucky, has always been more of a subtle influence on Nelson's own sound; his obvious earliest influence was the Western swing perfected by Bob Willis and his Texas Playboys. Monroe did perform at Live Aid in 1990 and once recorded a duet with Nelson, but this entire project seemed a bit out of left field upon its announcement. Thankfully, Bluegrass is nothing aside from a delightful surprise.With crisp production duties overseen by longtime producer Buddy Cannon, the band assembled here is a who's who of modern bluegrass: Ron Block (banjo), Josh Martin (acoustic guitar), Rob Ickes (dobro), Barry Bales (upright bass), Aubrey Haynie (fiddle), Dan Tyminski (mandolin), Seth Taylor (mandolin) and Bobby Terry (acoustic guitar, gut string guitar). Curiously, Nelson made the album without one of his nearest and dearest companions. The record could be seen in part as a tribute to Nelson's longtime sideman, guitarist Jody Payne, who played with Nelson from 1973 until his death in 2013. He told AARP that it's the first album where he "didn't play 'Trigger' since I've had him," referring to the busted-up Martin N-20 acoustic guitar Nelson first got in 1969—as much a part of Willie Nelson's entire vibe as his long hair and wide smile. Because Nelson was reared on Western swing, one assumes that it would take more practice to shoehorn his jazzy, laconic style into these reworkings.What might be the sappy equivalent of those truckstop knockoff bluegrass tributes to individual artist records turns out to be a wonderful addition to Nelson's catalog. Bluegrass interpretations by well-known country stars continue to be successful, for as diverse an array as Dwight Yoakam, Dolly Parton, and Sturgill Simpson. And the music's resurgence sees no signs of slowing, thanks to such stalwarts as Molly Tuttle, Billy Strings, and Railroad Earth. Nelson's entry, recorded just before his 90th birthday, will age well. As with Tony Bennett or Miles Davis at the end of their own careers, Nelson is clearly kept alive, and buoyantly so, by the power of his music, and his fans' devotion for it. © Mike McGonigal/Qobuz

His first record sans the Heartbreakers, Full Moon Fever is a career-definer for Petty straight from the opening notes of "Free Fallin." With bright guitar chords, the singer-songwriter's "And I'm free" howl, and backing vocals that crest like a Pacific wave, the song — indeed, the whole album — evokes the underlying melancholy of sunny Los Angeles. Full Moon Fever is also a tribute to Petty’s idols. Producer and co-writer Jeff Lynne of ELO layers on his signature pop polish, while leaving Petty’s raw-nerve vocals exposed. George Harrison’s harmonies give the defiant anthem "I Won’t Back Down" unexpected sweetness. Del Shannon gets a shout-out on the mischievous "Runnin' Down a Dream" — propelled by Heartbreaker Mike Campbell’s hellfire-and-brimstone guitar — and Roy Orbison hams up the chorus for the organ-chugging weirdness that is "Zombie Zoo." There’s even a true-blue cover of the Byrds’ "Feel A Whole Lot Better." But the star here, as ever, is Petty: cracking jokes on the jangling "Yer So Bad", tugging at the heartstrings with lullabye "Alright for Now" or snarling on the spaced-out "Love is a Long Road." © Qobuz

By 1969 the Beatles' universe had become terminally messy: tensions between the four members were at an all-time high and the band was coming apart. As this collection's producer Giles Martin (son of the band's producer and confidante George Martin) says in the liner notes, by that time the foursome had become "a bit like a married couple trying to go on dates again." The personal struggles and financial tangles they'd been through as a band had done its damage and the magic was ebbing away. In an effort to get the foursome back to what it felt like to perform live—and perhaps foster a return of their famous camaraderie—Paul McCartney came up with the idea of filming the band playing an entirely new batch of songs. Launched at Twickenham Film Studios, the production soon moved to the band's own home studio in the basement of the Apple Corps headquarters on Savile Row. The group even reconvened on the building's rooftop for an impromptu concert that was filmed and recorded but also stopped after less than an hour by the police due to noise complaints. The resulting album, Get Back, with Glyn Johns as engineer and co-producer, was eventually shelved in favor of Abbey Road (released in September 1969). In 1970, after Lennon had officially left the band, the remaining trio finished the album, now known as Let It Be, switching out takes, dropping several songs and resequencing it with help from Phil Spector who overdubbed his usual grandiose orchestral arrangements onto four tracks. (In 2003 McCartney's dissatisfaction with Spector's additions—particularly on his tune "The Long and Winding Road"—led to a stripped-down version of the album closer to John's original concept, called Let It Be…Naked.) Now the Giles Martin-led Beatles reissue program which began in 2017 with Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Band has finally reached Let It Be and the results are once again rewarding for Beatles fans and newcomers alike. The five volumes are yet another tantalizing glimpse into the band's storied creative process. Although the reception for the album was largely mixed on release—some reviewers savaged it—the songs in retrospect are nothing short of amazing; this is by no means bottom-of-the-barrel Beatles. Tunes like "Get Back," "Let It Be," and "The Long and Winding Road" are as good as anything the band ever wrote or recorded. The first volume here contains the original album in a fresh 96 kHz/24-bit remix that like the other Giles Martin-directed mixes is sharper and brighter than the original but not fundamentally different. The biggest aural change has Ringo Starr's drums brought up and forward in the mix, like in the previous reissues in the series. Perhaps most important about this edition of Let It Be is that after years of being bootlegged, Glyn Johns' 1969 Get Back mix has finally been officially released in improved sound and can now be fairly compared to the 1970 version. Deliberately jumbled, with lots of studio patter left in, and meant to be a window into the band's loose, humorous way of making music (or what they hoped to project as such), it still feels sloppy and unfinished, which may be why The Beatles—who waffled throughout the process and initially wanted that ambiance—rejected it in en masse. Johns' mix opens with "One After 909" (written by Paul and John as teenagers) and then proceeds through looser versions of "Don't Let Me Down" (with fabulous accompaniment from keyboardist Billy Preston) "Dig A Pony," and "I've Got a Feeling" with Lennon adding his usual silly, sardonic asides throughout. George Harrison's "For You Blue" opens with the sound of ice cubes swirling in a drink. McCartney's much maligned "Teddy Boy," which didn't make the final cut of Let It Be but became part of McCartney's first solo album, is heard here with Lennon's famous mocking "Do-Si-Do" background comment left intact. Volume two features an exuberant rave up of "Maggie Mae" and "Fancy My Chances with You"—a tune John and Paul wrote together in 1958. The overall vibe in these sessions is not nearly as hostile as history would have it as evidenced by a take of "Let It Be" mashed up with "Please Please Me." A jammy take of "One After 909" is good fun, take 19 of "Get Back" features Paul laughing in rhythm with the tune, and George's instrumental jam up of "Wake Up Little Susie" which transitions into his song, "I Me Mine" with a blues break in the middle is a wonderful reminder of his essential but often forgotten part of the group. Early versions of tunes that were soon to appear on Abbey Road or the member's subsequent solo albums are featured on the third volume. A rehearsal shows George's "All Things Must Pass," the title track of his debut solo album, beginning to take shape. A slow take of "She Came in Through the Bathroom Window," that mixes music with studio patter shows them working through an arrangement. Ringo, who is rarely heard, appears in an early piano-and-voice version of "Octopus's Garden" where teacups can be heard clanking in their saucers. In a jam of "Oh! Darling" Paul speaks a verse before he and Lennon go back to raggedly harmonizing, while Preston adds his spot-on, amazingly instinctual keyboard flourishes. In the same song, John announces that Yoko's divorce has gone through. Preston sings a version of "Without a Song," a tune he'd later release on his 1971 album I Wrote a Simple Song. The passionate unreleased 1970 Glyn Johns mix of "Across the Universe" on volume five is a reminder of the utterly unique pop universe that The Beatles had created. That's further confirmed in the same collection by a sparkling new mix of the single version of "Let It Be." Yet another entry—the last?—in Giles Martin's illuminating efforts to expand on the legacy, the new Let It Be provides deeper insight into the essential question around the Fab Four: How the hell did they do it? © Robert Baird/Qobuz

Van Morrison grew up with Skiffle - yes, at 77 years of age that’s still possible! Skiffle is the precursor to pop music which allowed young musicians in England to learn the ropes of traditional American music, folk, jazz and blues in the 50’s and early 60’s. Skiffle bands played makeshift acoustic instruments, guitars, banjos and washboards, with big smiles and hair slicked back behind the ears. Although it was very popular at the time, the genre was soon swept away by the pop explosion (before the Beatles, John Lennon had his skiffle band, the Quarrymen), but it is remembered as a safe haven for musical learning, and a bygone golden age. More than 20 years ago, Van Morrison honoured skiffle on a live album with two of the genre’s heroes: Lonnie Donegan and Chris Barber (The Skiffle Sessions, live in Belfast). He has now returned to the studio and to the band for Moving On Skiffle, which is like an elixir of youth. The album’s 23 tracks are all covers of songs that belong to American folk and blues heritage. Van Morrison doesn’t claim to revolutionise anything here. Using cheerful, acoustic instruments, he celebrates the eternal youth of songs that will still be sung around campfires 50 years from now. Just as Dylan revisited Sinatra’s repertoire on Shadows In The Night and Fallen Angels in the mid-2010’s, Van Morrison flips through the musical album of his youth, bringing it back with a catchy simplicity and joy. © Stéphane Deschamps/Qobuz

Although Eric Clapton has released a bevy of live albums, none of them have ever quite captured the guitarist's raw energy and dazzling virtuosity. The double live album Just One Night may have gotten closer to that elusive goal than most of its predecessors, but it is still lacking in many ways. The most notable difference between Just One Night and Clapton's other live albums is his backing band. Led by guitarist Albert Lee, the group is a collective of accomplished professionals who have managed to keep some grit in their playing. They help push Clapton along, forcing him to spit out crackling solos throughout the album. However, the performances aren't consistent on Just One Night -- there are plenty of dynamic moments like "Double Trouble" and "Rambling on My Mind," but they are weighed down by pedestrian renditions of songs like "All Our Past Times." Nevertheless, more than any other Clapton live album, Just One Night suggests the guitarist's in-concert potential. It's just too bad that the recording didn't occur on a night when he did fulfill all of that potential. © Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

In its original form, Let It Be signaled the end of an era, closing the book on the Beatles, as well as literally and figuratively marking the end of the '60s. The 1970 release evolved from friction-filled sessions the band intended to be an organic, bare-bones return to their roots. Instead, the endless hours of tapes were eventually handed over to Phil Spector, since neither the quickly splintering Beatles nor their longtime producer George Martin wanted to sift through the voluminous results. Let It Be... Naked sets the record straight, revisiting the contentious sessions, stripping away the Spectorian orchestrations, reworking the running order, and losing all extemporaneous in-studio banter. On this version of the album, filler tracks ("Dig It," "Maggie Mae") are dropped, while the juicy B-side "Don't Let Me Down" is added. The most obvious revamping is on the songs handled heavily by Spector. Removing the orchestrations from "The Long and Winding Road" and "Across the Universe" gives Paul McCartney's vocals considerably more resonance on the former, doing the same for John Lennon's voice and guitar on the latter. This alternate take on Let It Be enhances the album's power, reclaiming the raw, unadorned quality that was meant to be its calling card from the beginning.© TiVo

There isn't a second of Bruce Hornsby & the Range's The Way It Is that suggests it's a debut album. On the contrary, the record sounds like the culmination of a band's efforts over many years. The group has a distinct sound of its own, often led by Hornsby's bright piano chords and elastic tenor, with cohesive and evocative arrangements; there is new age music here, as well as jazz and country, and the mixture is presented naturally by musicians who seem to have been playing with each other for some time. Similarly, the songwriting has its own flavor. Hornsby wrote seven of the nine songs with his brother John Hornsby, and they create their own world, a working-class environment of longing and loneliness set against the background of the Virginia Tidewater area. (The album cover displays a sepia-toned photograph of the band set over another photograph of the long Chesapeake Bay Bridge.) The lyrics are lightly poetic and restrained, for the most part. The exception is the title song (written by Bruce Hornsby alone), a brave if somewhat clumsily written attack on the heartless right-wing politics of the mid-'80s, as the U.S. suffered through a second Reagan administration determined to roll back civil rights gains. The boldness of the statement and the lovely piano theme more than compensate for the awkward writing, however, making the song one of the album's most memorable. And that's saying a lot when the competition includes the engaging "Mandolin Rain" and the appealingly romantic "Every Little Kiss" (Hornsby's other sole writing credit). Perhaps it shouldn't be a surprise that the music is so accomplished. Hornsby was no teenage neophyte when he made it, having kicked around the music business and gotten into his thirties, and the band includes such veterans as David Mansfield, who may be remembered as a member of Bob Dylan's Rolling Thunder troupe and the Alpha Band, as well as being a film composer. Sometimes a debut album just happens to be the first music most people get to hear by a mature talent, and that's the case here on the debut album of the year. (Bruce Hornsby & the Range went on to win the 1986 Grammy Award for Best New Artist.)© William Ruhlmann /TiVo

If Rum Sodomy & the Lash captured the Pogues on plastic in all their rough-and-tumble glory, If I Should Fall from Grace with God proved they could learn the rudiments of proper record making and still come up with an album that captured all the sharp edges of their musical personality. Producer Steve Lillywhite imposed a more disciplined approach in the studio than Elvis Costello had, but he had the good sense not to squeeze the life out of the band in the process; as a result, the Pogues sound tighter and more precise than ever, while still summoning up the glorious howling fury that made Rum Sodomy & the Lash so powerful. And Shane MacGowan continued to grow as a songwriter, as his lyrics and melodies captured with brilliant detail his obsession with the finer points of Anglo-Irish culture. "Fairytale of New York," a glorious sweet-and-sour duet with Kirsty MacColl, and "The Broad Majestic Shannon" were subtle in a way many of his previous work was not, "Birmingham Six" found him addressing political issues for the first time (and with all the expected venom), and "Fiesta" and "Turkish Song of the Damned" found him adding (respectively) faux-Spanish and Middle Eastern flavors into the Pogues' heady mix. And if you want to hear the Pogues blaze through some fast ones, "Bottle of Smoke" and the title song find them doing just what they've always done best. Brilliantly mixing passion, street smarts, and musical ambition, If I Should Fall from Grace with God is the best album the Pogues would ever make.© Mark Deming /TiVo

At this stage of the game, any new Tom Waits record is an event. Listening through the music of his entire career is daunting, to say the least, but it's a journey no one else, with the possible exception of Bob Dylan, has taken before. If one listens to the official recordings, from 1973's Closing Time, featuring the songs of an itinerant Beat barroom singer (no lounges please), right on through to the frenetic mania of 2004's Real Gone, one becomes aware of not only the twists and turns of a songwriter wrestling and bellowing at and with his muse, but of a journeyman artist barely able to hold on to the lid of his creativity, let alone keep it on. True, there have been many stops along the way: in the seediest lounges (1977's Foreign Affairs, which could have been a twisted inspiration to novelist Phillip Kerr when he wrote the Berlin Noir trilogy); acid-drenched blues scree (1980's Heartattack and Vine); travelogues of the unseen and the unspeakable (1985's Rain Dogs); seething and murderous suburban nightmares (1987's Franks Wild Years); the frighteningly comic tales of plagues and carnivals (1993's Black Rider); the scrape, squeal, and hollowed-out metal crunch of urban junkyards and classically American paranoia (1999's Mule Variations); and through-the-mirror-darkly image nightmares and fairy tale variations (2002's Alice and Blood Money). All of it is contained in the man who takes delight in the bent, quarreling marriage of song and sound with dangerously comic imagery.Orphans is the most unwieldy Tom Waits collection yet. Packaged in a Cibachrome-tinted box are three discs containing 56 songs total. It claims 30 new tunes, but a mere 14 can be found on other records -- six others have to be hunted for while the remainder have shown up in various incarnations. This crazy thing began as a collection of outtakes, rarities, soundtrack tunes, and compilation-only cuts -- some of which survive here in new form, including tracks from the Ramblin' Jack Elliot tribute, the Bridge benefit, and two Ramones covers, to name a few. In other words, the first conception was as a hodgepodge collection of attic material. Waits checked out the tune selection as it was and said something like "nah, bad idea; this would suck." So, he did what any self-respecting artist with a head full of ideas, two stomping, shuffling feet, and itchy fingers -- and time on his hands -- would do: he recorded new songs and re-recorded others, so the thing would have some kind of elasticity yet hold its rickety bone and far-reaching sources together by means of cheap glue, chewed gum, solder, and a visionary recording engineer named Karl Derfler. The end result is this daunting triple disc divided by title and theme: disc one is "Brawlers," Waits' rock and blues record, evoking everyone from T. Rex and Johnny Burnette to Sonny Curtis and Howlin' Wolf. It's a grand thing, since he hasn't released one like this before -- the closest were Heartattack and Vine on one side and Mule Variations on the other. Travel, regret, murder, salvation, guttersnipe meditations on sorrow, and nefarious and broken-down innocent -- and nefarious -- amorous intentions are a few of the themes that run through these tunes like oil and sand. Disc two is "Bawlers," a collection of ballads, raw love songs, weepy wine tunes, wistful yet tentative hope -- in the form of floppy prayers -- and an under-the-table and wishing, bewildered, yet dead-on topical tome on the world's political situation. Disc three, entitled "Bastards," is even edgier; it's Waits hanging out there with his music and muse on the lunatic fringe of experimentation. Think Bone Machine's wilder moments and Waits' loopy standup comedy in the form of six spoken word pieces included here. Thank goodness he finally did this. If you've ever seen the man on a stage, you'll get why these are so important immediately."Brawler" digs deep into the American roots music that has obsessed Waits since the beginning of his long labyrinthine haul. There's the frenetic rockabilly swagger that probably makes Carl Perkins and Gene Vincent shake and shimmy in their graves. One of the movie tunes, a cover of "Sea of Love," recalls its place in the film for those who've seen it. If you haven't, it's a slanted, tarnished jewel freshly liberated from antiquity. The hobo ballad "Bottom of the World" recalls old country gospel, and "Lucinda" can only be described as a gallows dance tune. The slippery hoodoo blues "Road to Peace" is the season's most timely and topical political song. "Bawlers" is the set's bridge, and it's easy to see why: it's the most accessible disc in the box. There are some of the movie tunes here, from flicks like Pollock, Big Bad Love, and Shrek 2. Other cuts, such as "Goodnight Irene," recall "Tom Traubert's Blues (Four Sheets to the Wind in Copenhagen)" from the Small Change album; the singing protagonist here is older and more desperate, almost suicidal. Resignation displaces hope; it's a long reach into the past and expresses the void of the present. The cover of the Ramones' "Danny Says" is completely reinvented; it's one of the loneliest, most sweetly desolate of Waits' many sides. It's not all darkness, however; there are gorgeous songs here too, such as "Never Let Go" and "You Can Never Hold Back Spring," where an indomitable human spirit reins and rings true. Finally, it comes down to "Bastards." The eerie, strange, cabaret-in-a-carnival music that is Weill and Brecht's "What Keeps Mankind Alive" enlists banjos, accordion, tuba, and big bass drum as simply the means to let these twisted words out of the box. Thankfully the cover of "Books of Moses," originally by Skip Spence, is here, as is Daniel Johnston's "King Kong." Neither of these cuts resembles their original version, and Waits brings out the dark underbelly inherent in each. "Bedtime Story" is the first of the Waits monologues here. It is the repressed wish of every parent (with a sense of humor) to have the temerity to tell this kind of tale to their children when they retire. Others include a reading of Charles Bukowski's "Nirvana," the hilarious monologue "The Pontiac," and the live routine "Dog Door." Perhaps the most inviting cut here is the piano-and-horn ballad "Altar Boy," a postmodern saloon song that would make Bobby Short turn red with rage. This disc is the true mixed bag in the set: unruly, uneven, and full of feints and free-for-alls.Ultimately, the epicenter of Orphans is Waits' voice. It's many expressions, nuances, bellows, barks, hollers, open wails, roughshod croons, and midnight whispers carry these songs and monologues to the listener with authority as an open invitation into his sound world, his view of tradition, and his manner of shaping that world as something not ephemeral, but as an extension of musical time itself. As a vocalist, Waits, like Bob Dylan, embodies the entire genealogical line of the blues, jazz, local barroom bards, and traveling minstrels in the very grain of his songs. That wily throat carries not only the songs he and his songwriting partner and wife, Kathleen Brennan, pen, but also the magnet for the sonic atmospheres that frame it. There is adventure, danger, and the sound of the previous, the forgotten, and the wished for in it. And it is that voice that links all three of these discs together and makes them partners. One cannot dismiss that even though some of these songs have appeared elsewhere, Orphans is a major work that goes beyond the origins of the material and drags everything past and present with sound and texture into a present to be presented as something utterly new, beyond anything he has previously issued. To paraphrase Ezra Pound in response to Allen Ginsberg's inquiry about what his poem "The Cantos" meant, these orphans speak for themselves.© Thom Jurek /TiVo

From the outset, Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazelwood were a match made in heaven. Their pop hit These Boots Are Made For Walkin’ (1966) was so huge that it occasionally overshadows their other incredible creations, such as Jackson, Sand, Summer Wine and You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin’ (songs which would later feature on Nancy & Lee, the incredible album that brought together the brilliant Oklahoma producer and Frank Sinatra’s daughter). It was a winning combination: his baritone voice that mixed rock, country, jazz, pop and easy listening, and her sexy, wide-ranging vocals, full of charisma. However, the duo’s momentum was cut short when Hazelwood suddenly moved to Sweden without explanation… When the pair finally returned to the studio in 1972, the world had moved on; nobody was expecting anything from them anymore. The charts were now obsessed with electronic sounds, making Lee Hazelwood’s baroque-esque symphonies seem out of touch, even antiquated. Despite this, Nancy & Lee Again (finally reissued and remastered by the label Light in the Attic) remains a masterpiece that desperately deserves to be (re)discovered. It’s got all the duo’s signature sounds; they’re just more luxurious, more spectacular and more dramatic. This reissue is proof that more really is more! From the opening track Arkansas Coal, Hazlewood creates a stunning cinematographic setting with meticulous and fascinating arrangements. Even the lyrics display real ambition, tackling the suffering of single mothers (the beautiful cover of Dolly Parton’s masterpiece, Down From Dover), and the uneasiness felt by veterans of the Vietnam War, which was still raging at the time of the initial release (Congratulations). With its magnificent orchestral arrangements featuring Larry Muhoberac (a member of Elvis Presley’s band TCB, who also worked with Barbra Streisand, Neil Diamond and Lalo Schifrin) and Clark Gassman (who worked with Hazlewood on the 1970 album Cowboy in Sweden), Nancy & Lee Again will age like fine wine. © Marc Zisman/Qobuz

With the hypnotic and bright Grammy-nominated track "Levels," Swedish EDM DJ/producer Tim Bergling aka Avicii unleashed a global dance hit the size of "Beachball," "Blue Monday," "Starships," and maybe even "The Hokey Pokey." If the masses leave the dancefloor, "Levels" brings them back with sunshine and light, but Avicii's debut album is a sharp left turn, kicking off with the acoustic guitar strum of "Wake Me Up," a pleasant, well-written heritage pop track where "I Need a Dollar" vocalist Aloe Blacc gets thrown in a synthetic Mumford & Sons surrounding for something very non-"Levels." It's a strange jumble that works, but even more surprising is the seductive "Addicted to You," where Oklahoma singer/songwriter Audra Mae gets sultry on a song co-written by country and pop legend Mac Davis, and don't wonder long about how the results ended up sounding so Nina Simone, because the curve balls keep coming. Adam Lambert reins in his glam tactics on the Nile Rodgers-assisted "Lay Me Down" for a disco and Daft Punk swerve, while the kinetic down-on-the-farm "Shame on Me" offers a knee-slapping, EDM-meets-country rave-up that threatens to go hambone with a solo on the spoons. Country music and bluegrass keep winding their way into the album, and while it rarely smacks of a gimmick, these rustic numbers often evolve into EDM around their drum machine-introducing choruses, as if True was a remix album commission Avicii picked up while vacationing in Appalachia. In the end, it's an admirable and interesting effort where the highs offset the lows, but those with molly in hand and dancing shoes on feet should just cool their jets and get ready to sit a spell.© David Jeffries /TiVo

Probably the most prog of Kansas' albums, this one spotlights long, orchestrated songs and unusual time signatures. There is an extended nine/eight instrumental break in the middle of the title track. "Lamplight Symphony" offers long, orchestrated passages. When the energy is there, it is intense energy, such as "Down the Road" and "The Devil Game." The longer songs unfortunately can lose a passive listener. But all in all, this is a good (if not adolescent) recording for a group of this genre.© Mark W. B. Allender /TiVo

Make no mistake, Willy & the Poor Boys is a fun record, perhaps the breeziest album CCR ever made. Apart from the eerie minor-key closer "Effigy" (one of John Fogerty's most haunting numbers), there is little of the doom that colored Green River. Fogerty's rage remains, blazing to the forefront on "Fortunate Son," a working-class protest song that cuts harder than any of the explicit Vietnam protest songs of the era, which is one of the reasons that it hasn't aged where its peers have. Also, there's that unbridled vocal from Fogerty and the ferocious playing on CCR, which both sound fresh as they did upon release. "Fortunate Son" is one of the greatest, hardest rock & rollers ever cut, so it might seem to be out of step with an album that is pretty laid-back and friendly, but there's that elemental joy that by late '69 was one of CCR's main trademarks. That joy runs throughout the album, from the gleeful single "Down on the Corner" and the lazy jugband blues of "Poorboy Shuffle" through the great slow blues jam "Feelin' Blue" to the great rockabilly spiritual "Don't Look Now," one of Fogerty's overlooked gems. The covers don't feel like throwaways, either, since both "Cotton Fields" and "The Midnight Special" have been overhauled to feel like genuine CCR songs. It all adds up to one of the greatest pure rock & roll records ever cut.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

Walls and Bridges was recorded during John Lennon's infamous "lost weekend," as he exiled himself in California during a separation from Yoko Ono. Lennon's personal life was scattered, so it isn't surprising that Walls and Bridges is a mess itself, containing equal amounts of brilliance and nonsense. Falling between the two extremes was the bouncy Elton John duet "Whatever Gets You Thru the Night," which was Lennon's first solo number one hit. Its bright, sunny surface was replicated throughout the record, particularly on middling rockers like "What You Got" but also on enjoyable pop songs like "Old Dirt Road." However, the best moments on Walls and Bridges come when Lennon is more open with his emotions, like on "Going Down on Love," "Steel and Glass," and the beautiful, soaring "No. 9 Dream." Even with such fine moments, the album is decidedly uneven, containing too much mediocre material like "Beef Jerky" and "Ya Ya," which are weighed down by weak melodies and heavy over-production. It wasn't a particularly graceful way to enter retirement.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo