Goodbye sadness, hello sensuality – it’s a brand-new Balthazar! The Belgian band is going off the beaten track and leaving their last three lethargic albums behind them. The new album begins with the thick, groovy bass-line powered by percussion and choirs in the leading single Fever and follows on with the stripped-down synth in Changes, the beat in Grapefruit, the wavering strings in Roller Coaster and the sax solo in Wrong Faces. Even Jinte Deprez’s tone has changed, his voice is weightier. During recording, producer Jasper Maekelberg shaped this ensemble of eleven tracks equipped with a lavish and well-polished orchestration into a well-arranged mix of pop with hints of bossa nova and jazz. The result is an album somewhere between the dandyism of Baxter Dury, the summery funk of Parcels and tropical vibes of Claire Laffut. An awesome come-back. © Charlotte Saintoin/Qobuz

If ever there was a year to release a political punk album it was 2008, when the U.S. was consumed by the wildest presidential campaign in modern history. It seems like the perfect backdrop for Rise Against to release Appeal to Reason, their third major-label record, and in a way it is -- certainly, the group rages against the moral decay rotting the core of the U.S. on the opening "Collapse (Post-Amerika)," just as they strike out against the slow dumbing down of America on "Re-Education (Of Labor)" and tell Iraqi soldier stories on "Hero of War." The latter showcases the acoustic guitars that helped goose 2006's The Sufferer & the Witness into the Billboard Top Ten but the rest boast the manic rapid-fire hardcore delivery that hearkens back to Rise Against's politically minded forefathers Bad Religion. This balance of plaintive modern folk and carefully traditional protest punk is offset by Rise Against's increasingly strong fondness for heavy, slick production, the kind where the rhythms are too tight and the guitars overdriven and clean, the kind where it sounds more like '80s metal than '80s punk. Rise Against is hardly the only modern punk band to be weighed down by this contradiction -- it's entirely too devoted on chops and gear, Guitar Center punk -- but it stings a little more with them as their ambitions, smarts, and skills are higher than their peers. They seem like they shouldn't have such a beefy, big sound, particularly as it obscures their message, giving the group a weird dichotomy: they are clean, accomplished musicians and sincere, socially conscious rockers but those two halves don't complement each other well, at least not on the well-intentioned Appeal to Reason.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

Interlocking the cold with the heat (or maybe it’s the opposite) is Gang of Four’s specialty. In Leeds’ northern gloominess, singer Jon King, guitarist Andy Gill, bassist Dave Allen and drummer Hugo Bumham launch their post-punk revolution by means of disjointed guitars and sharp grooves. Entertainment !, their first album released in September 1979, imposes the singularity of this climatic yin and yang. Very very cold then in the melodies that Gill’s six-string clips through stridency and whittling away. But very very hot in its elastic and funky rhythms like the Talking Heads from that era. The pile-up is all the more violent that the texts from this Entertainment! aren’t really entertainment but rather small Molotov cocktails made using situationism, feminism, alienation, North-Irish conflict, Maoist guerrilla in South America and many other festive considerations… With their colleagues from The Fall, Père Ubu, Au Pairs or PIL, Gang of Four rattles the harmonies, the choruses, the solos and the melodies like no other. Their radicalism will influence years later bands like The Rapture, Radio 4, Editors, Bloc Party and Franz Ferdinand… © Marc Zisman/Qobuz

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Somewhat sneakily, as they honed their blend of new wave, synth pop, soft rock, and all things '80s for the better part of a decade, Phoenix became one of the most influential acts of the 2000s and 2010s. When they married that distinctive style to some of their strongest songs on 2009's Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, that album's mainstream success felt like a well-earned reward for their years of defining a sound that had permeated a lot of pop culture. Its follow-up, Bankrupt!, isn't nearly as devoid of new ideas as its title suggests, but it doesn't feel like quite the leap forward Wolfgang was compared to what came before it. Not that it necessarily needs to be; Phoenix sound more comfortable and confident than ever on songs like the lead single, "Entertainment," which defines almost everything that they do on the rest of the album with its galloping beats, earnest vocals, and Asian-tinged keyboard melodies. "Trying to Be Cool," "Don't," and "Oblique City" also carry over the bouncy irresistibility of the band's breakthrough, and even if they don't have the star-making power that "1901" and "Lisztomania" did, they reveal Phoenix's deep love and even deeper knowledge of '80s pop magic in their deft major-to-minor key changes and strategically placed buildups and breakdowns. These little touches help the band stand out among its like-minded contemporaries, and it helps that Phoenix have been drawing inspiration from the '80s longer than that decade actually existed (the fact that they mixed Bankrupt! on the console used in the making of Michael Jackson's Thriller might have contributed some good '80s karma as well). Elsewhere, they pay lip service to another of that decade's icons with "Drakkar Noir," and the way Thomas Mars pronounces it almost makes the overbearing cologne cool again. Here and on "The Real Thing," the band ponders and crosses the line between real and fake, taking it to new levels on "S.O.S. in Bel Air," which could reignite the debate between Strokes and Phoenix fans over who copied who first (and who does it better). Later on, things get interesting -- particularly for longtime fans -- when the band indulges its experimental side on songs like the seven-minute title track, which prefaces Mars' vocals with a lengthy stretch of baroque keyboards, and the expansive melancholy of "Chloroform" and "Bourgeois." Even if moments like these aren't exactly in keeping with the sound that broke Phoenix, they're a reminder that the bandmembers ultimately became popular by being themselves. Bankrupt! lets them celebrate with a victory lap that's enjoyable for all concerned.© Heather Phares /TiVo

Generator demonstrates an improved sense of melody from Greg Graffin, which doesn't mean Bad Religion have abandoned their blistering hardcore inclinations. Instead, the band has managed to incorporate melody within the framework, adding an increased depth to their already provocative songs.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

Unhappy with the slicker approach of Setting Sons, the Jam got back to basics, using the direct, economic playing of All Mod Cons and "Going Underground," the simply brilliant single which preceded Sound Affects by a few months. Thematically, though, Paul Weller explored a more indirect path, leaving behind (for the most part) the story-song narratives in favor of more abstract dealings in spirituality and perception -- the approach stemming from his recent readings of Blake and Shelley (who was quoted on the sleeve), but more specifically Geoffrey Ash, whose Camelot and the Vision of Albion made a strong impression. Musically, Weller drew upon Revolver-era Beatles as a primary source (the bassline on "Start," which comes directly from "Taxman," being the most obvious occurrence), incorporating the occasional odd sound and echoed vocal, which implied psychedelia without succumbing to its excesses. From beginning to end, the songs are pure, clever, infectious pop -- probably their catchiest -- with "That's Entertainment" and the should-have-been-a-single "Man in the Corner Shop" standing out.© Chris Woodstra /TiVo

Recorded and released in 1961, Judy at Carnegie Hall is one of the greatest live albums of all time, and the greatest of Garland's career. There's true electricity in each song, and her renditions of "That's Entertainment," "The Man That Got Away," and "Come Rain or Come Shine" will give you goose bumps, they're so loaded with emotion. With relentless verve, Garland takes on her entire musical catalogue with astonishing aplomb. There is little sign of the decades of self-abuse which had left her frail by the early '60s. But what we are fortunate enough to have is the magic and youth of her voice. Especially poignant are "You Go to My Head," "Just You, Just Me," and her reading of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow."© Lindsay Planer /TiVo

Unhappy with the slicker approach of Setting Sons, the Jam got back to basics, using the direct, economic playing of All Mod Cons and "Going Underground," the simply brilliant single which preceded Sound Affects by a few months. Thematically, though, Paul Weller explored a more indirect path, leaving behind (for the most part) the story-song narratives in favor of more abstract dealings in spirituality and perception -- the approach stemming from his recent readings of Blake and Shelley (who was quoted on the sleeve), but more specifically Geoffrey Ash, whose Camelot and the Vision of Albion made a strong impression. Musically, Weller drew upon Revolver-era Beatles as a primary source (the bassline on "Start," which comes directly from "Taxman," being the most obvious occurrence), incorporating the occasional odd sound and echoed vocal, which implied psychedelia without succumbing to its excesses. From beginning to end, the songs are pure, clever, infectious pop -- probably their catchiest -- with "That's Entertainment" and the should-have-been-a-single "Man in the Corner Shop" standing out.© Chris Woodstra /TiVo

Teenage rock & rollers often don't last. Certainly, they rarely keep performing into middle age, but Paul Weller has never been ordinary. From the outset, Weller was different -- too tense, too difficult to fit into the crowd even when he was the most popular musician in Britain, as he was when he led the Jam at the turn of the '80s. That ornery side gave his music an edge and also gave it a riveting humanity that earned him a passionate, devoted audience who stuck with him through a roller coaster of ups and downs in his career, from his abrupt disbandment of the Jam to form the slick, soulful Style Council to his comeback as the trad-rocking Modfather in the '90s. It's one of the great careers of the post-punk era, and the four-disc 2006 box set Hit Parade is the first attempt to tell it in its entirety, from the bright, brilliant early years of the Jam to his role as an elder statesman in the new millennium. Given the great wealth of music that Weller made during these three decades, the compilers picked the simplest and best solution to whittling down his rich, complicated career to the basics: they picked the A-sides of all of his British singles. This means that there are great songs left behind -- whether it's the Jam B-side "Tales from the Riverbank" or the soulful "Can You Heal Us (Holy Man)" from Wild Wood -- but that's the nature of hits compilations: great songs get left behind. What's impressive with Hit Parade is not what's absent but what's present, which is not only enough to make a case for Weller's strengths as a songwriter and restless rocker, but which helps explain the transitions in his career in a way that may be revelatory even for longtime fans. For instance, in this context the stylized café-soul of the Style Council seems like a natural outgrowth of the high-octane Motown-pop of the last Jam singles, and while it's hard to argue that the Style Council didn't drift in its latter years, it's easier to hear how revitalized Weller was as a solo artist when "Into Tomorrow" follows the fallow final gasps of the Council. Then again, by trimming his career down to the singles, the weak patches in his career aren't as evident: even when Weller's albums were patchy, the singles were often strong, and when they're taken together they aren't just an enjoyable, exciting listen, they tell one of the greatest stories in rock history, one that provides revelations even to those who have been with him since the beginning. And that's what makes Hit Parade a truly great box set.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo