OMD haven’t changed much in five decades but the pioneers of synthpop have warned that this 14th album – the fourth since coming back together in 2006 – would undoubtedly be their last. Well into their sixties, Andy McCluskey and Paul Humphreys plan to hang up the hat after one final tour with this Bauhaus Staircase in order to enjoy a well-deserved retirement. For this final studio project, OMD does what they do best, with a dozen unadulterated synth pop tracks, bringing everything full circle. Echoing their worldwide 1980 hit “Enola Gay,” which spoke out against the horror of the atomic bomb, their desire to protest can be felt in what they consider to be their “most political album to date".It’s true that they seem to be more inspired when they’re speaking out against something, as on “Kleptocracy,” addressed to Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and Boris Johnson. The Englishmen also seem very concerned about the future of the human race, as on “Anthropocene,” which would’ve ignited Ibiza at the end of the 80s with its Balearic melody, or the excellent “Evolution of Species,” a clear homage to Kraftwerk, a key group in Andy McCluskey’s imaginary since he saw them in 1975 at the age of 16 in Liverpool - “the concert that changed his life.” OMD then finishes off with “Healing,” a magnificent synth ballad that sublimely brings to an end the adventure of this key international pop group. © Smaël Bouaici/Qobuz

More than three decades on from the release of Tuesday Night Music Club, Sheryl Crow is as relevant as ever. Earlier this year, boygenius won a Grammy for their Sheryl-referencing "Not Strong Enough." Olivia Rodrigo helped induct Crow into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame in 2023, and you can hear the latter's influence in the work of Soccer Mommy, Snail Mail, Waxahatchee, Haim, Blondshell and Bethany Cosentino, all of whom have covered her songs in concert. Crow sounds terrific on her 12th studio album, Evolution, which is all the more remarkable since she had previously announced that 2019's Threads would be her last. But songs like "Do It Again" are classic Crow: Route 66 country rock, sonically imbued with the feel of blazing sun and open road and just a little Thelma and Louise righteous outlaw spirit ("Everyone is searching/ For a little peace of mind/ So I brought along some mushrooms/ And I sat with the divine"). "Love Life" melds country, funk and blues—truly, is there a more American formula for Americana?—as Wendy Melvoin's killer guitar summons the ghost of their mutual friend, Prince. No joke, more than half of the five-minute-plus song is Crow & Co. singing "na-na-na-na-na-na" and locking into a slippery Sign O' The Times groove. Melvoin also joins in, as does her old Revolution keyboard partner Lisa Coleman, on a pretty faithful cover of Peter Gabriel's "Digging in the Dirt" that, if anything, amps up the dark, ominous vibe of the original. Gabriel himself is here, too, and Crow has said the song's theme of fearlessly messy self-exploration—and what she has described as a "ridiculous groove driving underneath"—inspired the whole album when she brought it to producer Mike Elizondo, who also worked with her on 2008's Detours. That vulnerability plays out on songs like the ballad "Don't Walk Away," with Crow reaching high and sweet as she sings about couples therapy. Sassy garage rocker "Alarm Clock," meanwhile, is about nothing more than hating to be woken up from a fun dream: "Guy who looks like Chalamet/ Handing me a skinny margarita with a salt rim"). Bill Bottrell, who produced Crow's acclaimed debut, drops in with acoustic guitar for the ballad "Where?" while Rage Against the Machine's Tom Morello whips out a flashy guitar solo on the title track. Peppy "Broken Record" won't end up on any Best Of compilation, with its Kidz Bop feel and corny, if well-intentioned, lyrics such as "I think kind is really cool/ When you're a jerk you only look like a tool" and "We were buds/ But now I'm unfriending." But mid-tempo "You Can't Change the Weather" sounds like a satellite transmission from the Tuesday Night Music Club era—and the singer sounds just as youthful as she did in 1993. © Shelly Ridenour/Qobuz

Sheryl Crow intended to retire from recording after the release of the star-studded purported farewell Threads, but life had other plans. Four years after Threads garnered some attention, Crow became part of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Class of 2023, an induction assisted by the release of the 2022 documentary Sheryl. All this activity was enough to send Crow back into the studio, this time in the company of Mike Elizondo, a producer whose credits run from 50 Cent and Eminem to Fiona Apple, Carrie Underwood, and Lin-Manuel Miranda. Elizondo encouraged Crow to embrace the shinier aspects of her persona, a shift evident from Evolution's ebullient opener "Alarm Clock." Coming across like a deliberate update of the chipper sunshine pop of C'mon C'Mon, "Alarm Clock" is hardly the only moment on Evolution to make a conscious nod to the singer/songwriter's past: "Do It Again" simmers to a slinky ramble reminiscent of "All I Wanna Do" and the pleading "Don't Walk Away" taps into the broken-hearted vein of "Strong Enough." The nifty trick of Evolution is that it never sounds as if Crow is succumbing to nostalgia. Rather, the record feels like she's settling into her skin. Filled with sunny hooks, busy rhymes, and relaxed rhythms, Evolution is a good time whose cheerfulness camouflages its vaguely deeper undercurrents. The vibe is familiar, but the sound is fresh and, better yet, Evolution isn't ponderous: it's brisk and bright, keeping its focus squarely on the gifts that brought Crow into the Hall of Fame.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

Devo are sometimes cited as One Hit Wonders, given the fact that "Whip It," which peaked at number 14 on the Singles Charts in 1980, was their one and only song to crack the Top 40 and unwittingly became their musical signature. (Their cover of Lee Dorsey's "Working in a Coal Mine," issued in 1981, just missed the mark, topping out at number 43.) Add the group's sci-fi costuming, robotic stage moves, and their trademark "Energy Dome" headgear and you get a group that seemed like a prank or a novelty to those not paying close attention. That was probably fitting for a band whose concept was built on the notion of cultural entropy, that as a civilization mankind was slowly but surely moving backward rather than forward without most people noticing, thanks to technology and ignorance. If the masses didn't get it, enough people did that Devo refused to go away, becoming a gateway into alternative music for plenty of listeners and inspiring dozens of left-of-center musicians in a career full of creative troublemaking. As Devo celebrate their golden anniversary, they've chosen to mark the occasion with 50 Years of De-Evolution 1973-2023, a double-disc anthology that serves as a convenient guide to their history in 50 songs. The first half serves as a "Greatest Sorta Hits" collection, featuring 24 of their best known tunes, including, of course, "Whip It." (Significantly, only one track on Disc One was released after 1990). Part Two is devoted to rarities and fan favorites, including a 1974 demo of "I'm a Potato" that suggests they were still working some blues influences out of their system; their early independently released singles; alternate versions of songs that only appeared on singles, and the cover of the Kingston Trio's "It Takes a Worried Man" they recorded for Neil Young's film Human Highway. The first half reveals how Devo were able to shape their sometimes morbid ideas into expressive and unexpectedly accessible forms (especially after electronics and dance beats became a bigger part of their formula), and the the harder-edged material in the second half shows they learned a lot from the electronic artists they most certainly influenced. And "No Place Like Home," from 2010's Something for Everybody, is that rarity in their repertoire: a sincere plea for sanity in a world bent on self-destruction that, in the context of their deeply cynical philosophy, is actually moving. No one interested in the bleeding edge of New Wave should be without 1978's Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! and 1980's Freedom of Choice, but if you're looking for a concise yet thorough summation of one of the smartest and most inventive bands of their time, 50 Years of De-Evolution 1973-2023 will fill the void nicely.© Mark Deming /TiVo

One of the New Thing's extremely few trombonists and a greatly underappreciated composer of tremendous evocative power, Grachan Moncur III got his first major exposure on Jackie McLean's groundbreaking 1963 masterpiece, One Step Beyond. Toward the end of the year, most of the same musicians reconvened for Moncur's debut as a leader, Evolution; McLean, vibist Bobby Hutcherson, and drummer Tony Williams are all back, with Bob Cranshaw on bass and an extra voice in trumpeter Lee Morgan, moonlighting from his usual groovy hard bop style. While Moncur takes a little more solo space here, the main emphasis is on his talent as a composer. The four originals are all extended, multi-sectioned works (the shortest is around eight minutes), all quite ambitious, and all terrifically moody; much of the album sounds sinister and foreboding, and even the brighter material has a twisted, surreal fun-house undercurrent. Part of that is due to the accuracy with which the musicians interpret Moncur's vision. Hutcherson provides his trademark floating chordal accompaniment, which is crucial to the overall texture; what's more, the album features some of McLean's weirdest playing ever, and some of Morgan's most impressively advanced, as he makes the most of a situation he longed to be in more often. Of the pieces, "Monk in Wonderland" is the most memorable; its whimsical, angular theme is offset by Hutcherson's mysterious vibes, which create a trippy effect in keeping with the title. "Air Raid" is alternately ominous and terrifyingly frantic, and the funereal title track keeps time only in the pulse of the horns and the backing, which is based entirely on whole notes. With such an inventive debut, it's a shame Moncur didn't record more as a leader, which makes Evolution an even more important item for fans of Blue Note's avant-garde to track down.© Steve Huey /TiVo

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On previous albums, Grammy-winning bassist and vocalist Esperanza Spalding dived into jazz standards, Brazilian rhythms, and sophisticated, harmonically nuanced R&B. But with her 2016 album, Emily's D+Evolution, she takes an entirely different approach. A concept album revolving around a central character named Emily (Spalding's middle name), Emily's D+Evolution is not a jazz album -- though jazz does inform much of the music here. Instead, Spalding -- who also co-produced the album alongside legendary producer Tony Visconti (David Bowie) -- builds the release largely around angular, electric guitar-rich prog rock, kinetic, rhythmically rich jazz fusion, and lyrically poetic pop. Of course, Spalding's version of pop is never predictable, always harmonically inventive, and frequently imbued with as many improvisational moments as possible within the boundaries of a given song. But relative to her previous releases, this is still a significant shift. Helping to bring Emily's D+Evolution to life is a band Spalding put together specifically for this project, including guitarist Matthew Stevens, drummer Karriem Riggins, keyboardist Corey King, and others. Conceptually, the character of Emily represents Spalding as a young girl, and works as a conduit through which she explores and unpacks complex ideas about life, love, sex, race, education, and the creative process. While it would be reductive to call Emily's D+Evolution a retro album, Spalding's harmonic and melodic content and production aesthetics definitely have a '70s quality. Cuts like "Earth to Heaven" and "Noble Nobles" bring to mind the forward-thinking sound of singer/songwriter Joni Mitchell's work with jazz artists like Wayne Shorter and Jaco Pastorius, whose liquid bass style is an obvious antecedent to Spalding's approach here. While Spalding never sounds anything less than original on the album, part of the beauty here is in recognizing her inspirations and reveling in how she has made them her own. "Elevate or Operate" sounds like a serpentine Steely Dan melody, sung with Valkyrian agility over a strident, Dr. Dre-friendly militaristic beat. Similarly, "One" brings to mind Mitchell's soaring vocal style, set against a Greek chorus of harmonized backing vocals and accented by Stevens' cascading guitar lines, like something John McLaughlin would do with Mahavishnu Orchestra. Elsewhere, tracks like "Good Lava" and "Funk the Fear" reveal Spalding's swaggering, inner rock goddess and sound like a fantasy collaboration between Frank Zappa and Jimi Hendrix. While Spalding has long been a virtuoso bassist and commanding, lithe vocalist, she's developed into a gifted songwriter with a poet's sense for imagistic, emotionally resonant lyrics. It's a formidable combination best represented here by the epic "Ebony and Ivy." Bookended with a machine-gun-fire spoken word poem, the song allows Spalding as Emily to explore a mythic childhood netherworld in which she ambitiously juxtaposes the joys of learning from the natural world and the desire for a formal education against historical notions of how science was, ironically, used to justify slavery. She sings, "It's been hard to grow outside/Growin' good and act happy/And pretend that the ivy vines/Didn't weigh our branches down."© Matt Collar /TiVo

Coming off of the enormous success of their brooding cover of Simon & Garfunkel's "Sounds of Silence," Chicago nu-metal veterans Disturbed deliver another slab of commercial grade active rock and montage-ready power balladry on their seventh studio effort, Evolution. Billed as a tribute to deceased contemporaries Chester Bennington of Linkin Park and Vinnie Paul of Pantera, the ten-track set strikes an even balance between meat-and-potatoes stadium shakers ("Are You Ready," "No More") and butane-draining acoustic numbers ("Hold On to Your Memories," "Already Gone"). Working once again with producer Kevin Churko -- bass player and backing vocalist John Moyer, who left in 2011 to tear things up in Adrenaline Mob and Art of Anarchy, has also returned -- the band's penchant for pairing uncompromising sonic heft with mile high hooks remains its greatest asset, with frontman Dave Draiman's powerhouse voice shouldering that weight with Herculean stamina. The electronic elements that began creeping in on 2015's Immortalized are utilized to an even greater degree this time around, but Moyer, guitarist Dan Donegan, and drummer Mike Wengren are always at the forefront, maintaining the road ahead with workmanlike precision. Disturbed play to their strengths, and why shouldn't they? Stringing together five consecutive number one debuts is no small feat, and while it's hard to argue that Evolution lives up to its moniker, the familiarity of the architecture is lent considerable gravitas by the overall execution, which as per usual, leaves nothing but perspiration in its wake -- Draiman did remove his very '90s goatee and signature chin piercings, citing a desire to not look like a "45-year old Hot Topic kid," so there is that.© James Christopher Monger /TiVo

Steve Miller's segue from the late '60s cosmic blues of Sailor and Children of the Future into his new role as a "space cowboy" was a gradual one that took place mostly out of the public eye and over a half dozen albums that would be largely unrecognizable to many of Miller's latest fans. Recall the Beginning...A Journey from Eden, Your Saving Grace, and Rock Love were weedy, ramshackle affairs that sound as unfocused as they do uncommercial but they were also where he worked out the foundational compositional approaches that would define his sound throughout the '70s. You can hear the transformation on this J50 set, and the "early" version of "Mary Lou" may be the very point at which things pivoted. In this studio rehearsal take, the song sounds like a clanking, loose-limbed blues-raver (much like many of the tracks that Miller recorded a couple years previously), with banging percussion, warbly keyboard lines, and vocals that are high on vibe and low on precision. This set immediately sequences the album version of "Mary Lou" after the rehearsal, so you can easily hear that it's the same song. Whereas the rehearsal version wouldn't have been out of place on Rock Love, the album version—with all the same component parts, just rendered in a distinctly more thoughtful manner—is an absolutely new sound for the Steve Miller Band, the one that would make him one of the biggest stars of the decade.Of course, J50 also provides similar revelatory insights into other aspects of this classic album: an acoustic demo, "Travelin'," is subtitled "Looking for a chorus for the Joker" and we also get five (yes, five!) versions of "Shu Ba Da Du Ma Ma Ma Ma." The approach is similar to the one taken on Big Star's Complete Third, where the evolution of the album, rather than the album-plus-some-outtakes, is the focus. The flow of the classic album is substituted for works-in-progress next to their finished versions, live tunes that showed where the band was at before they even started writing the album, and even interstitials of Miller talking. It's a beautifully contrarian way to celebrate a classic album since it has no pretense of replacing The Joker, but instead provides a deep, complementary look at it. © Jason Ferguson/Qobuz

With the platinum triumph of Infinity still ringing in their ears like coins in a slot machine, Journey was now committed to completing their transformation from jazz fusion/prog rock mavens into arena rock superstars with their fifth album, 1979's Evolution. This transition (also clearly illustrated by the futuristic insect gracing each album cover henceforth) would not come without its growing pains, however, and while producer Roy Thomas Baker was back for a second go-round, original drummer Aynsley Dunbar would be the first casualty of the band's new direction. Thankfully, former Ronnie Montrose skin-beater Steve Smith soon brought his college-trained jazz fusion background to the table, and the band was ready to get back to work. If Infinity had defined a new songwriting formula for the act, Evolution only served to develop it and streamlined it further, clearly qualifying as their strongest effort to date and endearing the band to millions of FM rock listeners in the process. With commercial rock hits like "Lovin', Touchin', Squeezin'" (their first single to crack the Top 20), "Too Late" (which reached number 70), and the powerful "Just the Same Way" (which peaked at number 58) leading the way to radio dominance, Journey had never sounded stronger or more determined. And with Steve Perry's tenor pipes now clearly driving the band's engine, and guitarist Neal Schon beginning to relish in his guitar-hero persona, Journey could seemingly do no wrong. Evolution quickly became the band's biggest-selling album (moving over 800,000 units in less than three months), and Perry and co. soon embarked on yet another mammoth tour, which set many an attendance record, and set the stage for even greater triumph with 1980's Departure.© John Franck & Ed Rivadavia /TiVo

When Nirvana and Pearl Jam exploded commercially in the early '90s, there was a real "out with the old, in with the new" attitude in the rock world -- out with pop-metal, hair metal, fantasy metal and '80s-style arena rock -- and in with all things alternative. Some '80s favorites were still considered modern and cutting-edge after that Nirvana/Pearl Jam upheaval -- Metallica, for example -- although many '80s bands suddenly found themselves being described as dated or old-school. Nonetheless, some alt rock albums have longed for that hooky, shiny, big-sounding '80s pop-metal/arena rock gloss; Hole's Celebrity Skin (1999) and Veruca Salt's Eight Arms to Hold You (1997) were alt rock treasures that, in their own way, seemed to be saying, "Hey, let's not forget everything the '70s and '80s stood for." And similarly, singer/guitarist Devin Townsend's Accelerated Evolution is an alt rock disc that successfully draws on different eras. This album isn't flat-out retro; the Canadian rocker provides enough downtuned guitars to put this CD in the alt rock category. And yet Accelerated Evolution has a big sound that suggests the pop-metal, arena rock and hard rock of the '70s and '80s -- big melodies, big harmonies, big guitars, big vocals, big production. Yes, Townsend provides downtuned guitar and chugging guitar, but he also provides a lot of gloss and brightness -- the sort of gloss and brightness that '70s and '80s arena rockers brought to the studio. Another thing about Townsend that recalls those decades is his sense of pop/rock craftsmanship; Accelerated Evolution is extremely listenable. The fact that Townsend's credits includes Steve Vai and Front Line Assembly tells you how far-reaching and eclectic he is, and it also explains how he manages to make a blend of '70s/'80s arena rock/pop-metal and '90s/2000s alt rock sound so logical and coherent on this excellent CD.© Alex Henderson /TiVo