Although the Crusaders could not have known it at the time, their recording of "Street Life" (which features a memorable vocal by Randy Crawford) was a last hurrah for the 20-year old group. Their recordings of the next few years would decline in interest until the band gradually faded away in the '80s. However this particular set is well worth picking up for the 11-minute title cut and there is good playing by the three original members (Wilton Felder on tenor, soprano and electric bass, keyboardist Joe Sample and drummer Stix Hooper) along with guitarist Barry Finnerty; horn and string sections, plus additional guitarists are utilized on Sample's commercial but listenable arrangements© Scott Yanow /TiVo

In 2015, David Gilmour decided to undertake a series of concerts in the world’s oldest venues. A year later, the guitarist from Pink Floyd becomes the first artist since the gladiators in 79 AD to give a concert before an audience in Pompeii’s amphitheater! It was a trip back to the Italian city for him, as he had already performed there in 1971 during the shooting of Adrian Maben’s movie Pink Floyd: Live At Pompeii… In the shadow of the Vesuvius, David Gilmour plays in the more than legendary venue on July 7th and 8th, 2016 and revisits songs that have always been there his whole life, in solo as well as with Floyd. And let’s not forget the new interpretations of The Great Gig In The Sky from the album Dark Side Of The Moon, rarely performed in solo by Gilmour. © CM/Qobuz

Nils Frahm's Music for Animals is a three-hour work meant to evoke an experience similar to spending time in nature and staring at flora or bodies of water -- something without a specific progression or outcome. Its title riffs on the proliferation of functional playlists on streaming services, and society's insistence on attaching a purpose to music and grouping recordings by certain listening habits. Of course, ambient music is generally used as a soundtrack for sleeping, meditation, or any number of daily activities, and Music for Animals works on those levels as well, but Frahm isn't suggesting how the audience is supposed to engage with the release. He's simply presenting it and saying that it exists, just like mountains, or forests, or rivers. The album's ten compositions are lengthy and minimal, with several coming close to half an hour each. None of them feature acoustic pianos, but it's hard to tell if the sounds are entirely generated by synthesizers or if other instruments are involved -- the fragile, wheezing "Do Dream" was almost certainly created using a harmonium. Like much of Frahm's work, the music embraces the ambiance of his surroundings, with incidental noises present, and his playing is spontaneous, even as everything feels slowed down to a glacial blur. A few pieces make excellent usage of Berlin School-style rippling pulsations, with "Sheep in Black and White" very slowly and subtly evolving and fluctuating in intensity. "Right Right Right" is the only track under ten minutes, and its flickering echoes and melancholy synth shades bring to mind Loscil's more dub-informed work. "World of Squares" is perhaps the coldest and most foreboding piece, going nowhere yet giving the impression of sinking deeper and deeper. Music for Animals might seem daunting due to its length and starkness, but it's actually one of Frahm's most listenable albums, rewarding immersion and half-ignored background placement alike.© Paul Simpson /TiVo

Funny that the much-touted "reunion/comeback" album Steel Wheels followed Dirty Work by just three years, while it took the Stones five years to turn out its sequel, Voodoo Lounge -- a time frame that seems much more appropriate for a "comeback." To pile on the irony, Voodoo Lounge feels more like a return to form than its predecessor, even if it's every bit as calculated and Bill Wyman has flown the coup. With Don Was, a neo-classic rock producer who always attempts to reclaim his artist's original claim to greatness, helming the boards with the Glimmer Twins, the Stones strip their sound back to its spare, hard-rocking basics. The Stones act in kind, turning out a set of songs that are pretty traditionalist. There are no new twists or turns in either the rockers or ballads (apart maybe from the quiet menace of "Thru and Thru," later used to great effect on The Sopranos), even if they revive some of the English folk and acoustic country-blues that was on Beggars Banquet. Still, this approach works because they are turning out songs that may not be classics but are first-rate examples of the value of craft. If this was released ten years, even five years earlier, this would be a near-triumph of classicist rock, but since Voodoo Lounge came out in the CD age, it's padded out to 15 tracks, five of which could have been chopped to make the album much stronger. Instead, it runs on for nearly an hour, an ironically bloated length for an album whose greatest strengths are its lean, concentrated classic sound and songcraft. Still, it makes for a stronger record than its predecessor.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

Just as he had followed his 1980 commercial breakthrough The River with the challenging Nebraska, Bruce Springsteen followed the most popular album of his career, Born in the U.S.A., with another low-key, anguished effort, Tunnel of Love. Especially in their sound, several of the songs, "Cautious Man" and "Two Faces," for example, could have fit seamlessly onto Nebraska, though the arrangements overall were not as stripped-down and acoustic as on the earlier album. While Nebraska was filled with songs of economic desperation, however, Tunnel of Love, as its title suggested, was an album of romantic exploration. But the lovers were just as desperate in their way as Nebraska's small-time criminals. In song after song, Springsteen questioned the trust and honesty on both sides in a romantic relationship, specifically a married relationship. Since Springsteen sounded more autobiographical than ever before ("Ain't Got You" referred to his popular success, while "Walk Like a Man" seemed another explicit message to his father), it was hard not to wonder about the state of his own two-and-a-half-year marriage, and it wasn't surprising when that marriage collapsed the following year. Tunnel of Love was not the album that the ten million fans who had bought Born in the U.S.A. as of 1987 were waiting for, and though it topped the charts, sold three million copies, and spawned three Top 40 hits, much of this was on career momentum. Springsteen was as much at a crossroads with his audience as he seemed to be in his work and in his personal life, though this was not immediately apparent.© William Ruhlmann /TiVo

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

Jack Johnson quietly turned into a star over the course of the 2000s, so it’s only fitting that he inaugurates the second decade of his recording career with To the Sea, an album that feels like the work of a soft rock superstar. Of course, that’s what Johnson is, but he’s avoided sounding that way by performing soft-shuffle acoustic numbers, camouflaging his pop move as a soundtrack to Curious George, then getting mellowly introspective on 2008’s Sleep Through the Static. To the Sea blows away the drowsy cobwebs from Sleep, pushing the acoustic guitar to the background and letting his band groove politely, usually in an amiable, unhurried gait that never breaks a sweat even when the musicians goose the tempo a bit. Call it the signature of a surfer so bleached by the sun that he rushes nothing, but To the Sea substitutes the sunset strum-alongs of his earliest records for a sleek daytime sheen that might glimmer too brightly for hippies but it makes for a better overall pop record, the kind of album that suits Jack Johnson’s stature as surfer turned AAA crooner.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

The basic Blondie sextet was augmented, or replaced, by numerous session musicians (including lots of uncredited horn and string players) for the group's fifth album, Autoamerican, on which they continued to expand their stylistic range, with greater success, at least on certain tracks, than they had on Eat to the Beat. A cover of Jamaican group the Paragons' "The Tide Is High," released in advance of the album, became a gold-selling number one single, as did the rap pastiche "Rapture," but, despite their presence, the album stalled in the lower half of the Top Ten and spent fewer weeks in the charts than either of its predecessors. One reason for that, admittedly, was that Chrysalis Records pulled promotion of the disc in favor of pushing lead singer Debbie Harry's debut solo album, KooKoo, not even bothering to release a third single after scoring two chart-topping hits. But then, it's hard to imagine what that third single could have been on an album that leads off with a pretentious string-filled instrumental ("Europa"), and also finds Harry crooning ersatz '20s pop on "Here's Looking at You" and tackling Broadway show music in a cover of "Follow Me" from Camelot. Though more characteristic, the rest of the tracks are weak compositions indifferently executed. Thus Autoamerican was memorable only for its hits, which would be better heard when placed on a hits compilation.© William Ruhlmann /TiVo

Who is Gnarls Barkley, and how did he ascend to the top of the British charts with a song that brings an eerie clarity to the cloud of mental illness? (Hint: It wasn't just the fact that Britain began factoring download data into its chart equations.) If St. Elsewhere sounds like one of the best rap-based pop productions since the second Gorillaz album, then look no further than the common link, producer Danger Mouse. And if the vocal performances are twisted with the type of unbalanced wisdom not seen in pop music since Sly Stone (or at least OutKast), credit Cee-Lo Green, the former Goodie Mob seer/sage/freak. A pop album straight through, St. Elsewhere is as good as Danger Mouse's two earlier landmarks (Gorillaz's Demon Days and Danger Doom's The Mouse and the Mask), but not because of any inherent similarities in the three records. The reasons for greatness here include DM's uncommon facility for writing (or sampling) simple hooks that stick, his creation of productions that entertain but don't detract from the main action, and his ability to coax a parade of enticing vocal performances from Green. The hit "Crazy" and the title track are perfect examples. Over detached backings, Green croons, growls, scats, and generally delivers fine neo-soul vocals while Danger Mouse blankets the tracks with choruses of disembodied harmonies and a well-placed string section or crackling organ to conjure an appropriately minor chord atmosphere. The focus on instability doesn't end there -- paranoia, suicidal tendencies, and multiple personalities are all in the cards, and there's also "Necromancer": "She was cool when I met her, but I think I like her better dead." Then, just to make sure listeners understand this is a concept album and not a message from a mind playing tricks on itself, they drop "The Boogie Monster" (although even the lyrics here can give pause: "I used to wonder why he looked familiar, and then I realized it was a mirror"). With the help of Danger Mouse's platinum ear and intricate vocal productions, Green is revealed as a top-notch post-millennial soul singer. Even when he's floating another mass of wise, serene gibberish, DM simply drops another production trick to keep things tight. Much like DJ Shadow's Private Press, Danger Mouse relies on samples from the downcast end of obscure '60s pop -- prog, psych, and Italian soundtrack music (his most valuable lieutenant here, Daniele Luppi, has the requisite Italian connection). Although Gnarls Barkley topping the charts was a slight fluke, the excellence of St. Elsewhere could have been seen coming a mile away.© John Bush /TiVo

With guests including David Sylvian, Heaven 17's Glenn Gregory, and Steve Howe, A Secret Wish is synth-rock with an eye toward orchestrated pop as well as a bit of sampler experimentation in the grand ZTT tradition of Art of Noise. There's a distinct lack of songwriting on the album, and though the synth-grooves are tight enough to keep it flowing for most of its length, A Secret Wish occasionally falls flat from its own weight.© Keith Farley /TiVo