Co-directed by Roger Waters and David Gilmour, The Wall, Pink Floyd's eleventh studio album, was released in the UK on November 30, 1979 on the Harvest record label and in the United States on December 8, 1979 on Columbia. It is the last studio album with the line-up of David Gilmour (guitar), Roger Waters (bass guitar and lyricist), Richard Wright (keyboards) and Nick Mason (drums). In 1977, Roger Waters — singer, bassist, lyricist, composer and arranger of Pink Floyd — sketched on a sheet of paper a wall separating audience and musicians. Based on this projection, he calls on Bob Ezrin (producer of Lou Reed, Alice Cooper, Kiss, etc.) to help him realize his project. A double album with a strong concept was released and was a massive success — more than thirty million copies sold. A real introspection of Waters' life, the album combines fiction and reality through the story of Pink, a young rock star (who in fact symbolizes Waters himself) prey to his demons and who, little by little, builds a chimerical wall around him to cut himself off from the world. This particularly ambitious rock opera essentially bears the emotional mark of Roger Waters (evocation of his absent father, his abusive mother and the rigidity of a school system that traumatized him for life). The Wall was first remastered in 1994 in the UK by EMI. Then in 1997 the Columbia firm remastered the album, with better sound quality than EMI's, to be released in the United States, Canada, Australia, South America and Japan. Shortly after the album's twentieth anniversary, Capitol relaunched the 1997 edition in the United States in 2000 taking over the European remastering, and EMI did the same in Canada, Australia, South America and the United States, Japan. In 2011, the album was painstakingly remastered by James Guthrie (the sound engineer and co-producer of the original album) and Joel Plante, at das boot recording studio located in Lake Tahoe, California. © Qobuz (GG) 

Murder Ballads brought Nick Cave's morbidity to near-parodic levels, which makes the disarmingly frank and introspective songs of The Boatman's Call all the more startling. A song cycle equally inspired by Cave's failed romantic affairs and religious doubts, The Boatman's Call captures him at his most honest and despairing -- while he retains a fascination for gothic, Biblical imagery, it has little of the grand theatricality and self-conscious poetics that made his albums emotionally distant in the past. This time, there's no posturing, either from Cave or the Bad Seeds. The music is direct, yet it has many textures, from blues to jazz, which offer a revealing and sympathetic bed for Cave's best, most affecting songs. The Boatman's Call is one of his finest albums and arguably the masterpiece he has been promising throughout his career.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

Four years separate this album from its predecessor The Wall which placed Pink Floyd at the height of its success. A well named Final Cut (a requiem for the post war dream), which will be the last disc with Roger Waters, solitary author of this concept-album which he interprets in its almost entirety — and the only one where keyboardist Richard Wright does not appear. Like a first solo opus? No doubt... His grandiloquence, put at the service of a frenzied anti-militarism (England and Argentina then clashed in the Falklands), is reminiscent of The Wall of which he reworked certain compositions that were discarded at the time. The result is an essay, lyrical at will.

With a title that sums up their admirable refusal to pander to English-speaking audiences, MADE IN GERMANY: 1995-2011 celebrates the 16-year career of Neue Deutsche Härte outfit Rammstein, one of the few European rock bands to make any impression in both the U.K. and U.S. Spanning their six studio albums, from the synth-heavy theatrics of "Du Riechst So Gut" (from 1995 debut HERZELEID) to the glam-tinged vaudeville of "Haifisch" (from 2009's LIEBE IST FÜR ALLE DA ), alongside a brand new recording ("Mein Land"), the 16-track collection certainly justifies their rather provocative reputation. "Links 2-3-4" is an aggressive statement of defiance against the allegations of fascism and Nazism that had followed them around ever since they burst onto the scene, the brooding symphonics of "Mutter" soundtracks a dark tale of a neglected son murdering his mother, while the suitably unsettling "Mein Teil" is inspired by the disturbing true story of a cannibal victim that made headlines across the band's homeland in the early noughties. However, with only the satirical take on U.S. culture of "Amerika" and their sole German number one single, the sexually charged "Pussy," making any allowances for those unfamiliar with their native tongue, the band's unique brand of industrial metal has obviously still managed to translate to audiences worldwide without relying on the shock factor. Elsewhere, the Brothers Grimm-inspired grunge of "Rosenrot," the anthemic "Sonne" (originally penned as the entrance music for boxer Vitali Klitschko), and the proggy "Keine Lust" all help to satisfy the mosh pit-inducing quota, but as evident on the Italo house leanings of "Du Hast," the Rage Against the Machine-goes-pop of "Engel," and the string-soaked power ballad "Ohne Dich," the band has never been afraid to court a more mainstream following either. The bulk of MADE IN GERMANY is undoubtedly still an acquired taste, but as an overview of the country's biggest rock export, it's a fairly representative collection and showcases them at their best.© Jon O'Brien /TiVo

When John Williams received his 29th Academy Award nomination for Schindler's List, he had already won Oscars for Fiddler on the Roof, Jaws, Star Wars, and E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial. He had long been an automatic nominee, but as Hollywood's most honored working composer it was generally believed that it would take an extraordinary addition to his legacy for the Academy to award Williams a fifth trophy. Schindler's List would prove to be that extraordinary work -- and not just because of the enormous historical and social import of the film and it's subject, though those factors could only have strengthened Williams appeal to Academy voters. Schindler's List feels like his attempt at a magnum opus. Though even simpler in its melodies and themes than some of his famous sweeping popcorn movie scores, it carries the ambition of a major symphonic composition. This is especially true in the segments that are graced with exquisitely rich and evocative violin solos by world famous violinist Itzhak Perlman. Perlman's masterful performances give Williams' compositions an authenticity and grounding that offsets the composer's predilection for sentimentality and bombast. "Restraint" was the word that appeared most frequently in discussions of Steven Spielberg's Holocaust epic. The critical consensus was that the director had managed to depict the horrors of the greatest tragedy in world history without giving in to his customary urges to tug transparently at the heart strings of his audiences. In truth, Spielberg was only able to exercise restraint through the first two and a half hours of the film; he ended up throwing it out the window in the maudlin conclusion. Williams, too, is guilty of indulging in emotional excess. Which isn't surprising when you consider that his music has always been one of Spielberg's most effective heart-tugging tools. Like the film itself, his score is best at its simplest, deriving its emotional power from the events it depicts and bearing in mind that audiences do not need help from filmmakers and composers in order to be emotionally affected by the Holocaust.© Evan Cater /TiVo

It is no great surprise that a group designed as a concept would eventually specialize in concept albums, so when Gorillaz abandoned the giddiness that fueled their 2001 debut in favor of dense dystopian dance-rock operas, it seemed logical and the transition was eased by Albarn’s cunning knack for sharp crossover singles. Released in 2011, The Singles Collection 2001-2011 rounds up 15 of those singles -- including remixes of early hits “Clint Eastwood” and “19/2000” and “Doncamatic,” which was added to later pressings of 2010’s Plastic Beach, but nothing from their iPad-recorded 2010 detour The Fall -- and they make for an impressively consistent body of work, with Gorillaz finding many variations within their blend of Brit-pop, hip-hop, dance, and rock. In this context, it is clear that the three singles pulled from Plastic Beach -- “Stylo,” “Superfast Jellyfish,” “On Melancholy Hill” -- didn’t reach the same heights as those from Gorillaz and Demon Days because they were cobbled by a certain dourness -- a quality lacking from the singles from the similarly pessimistic Demon Days and from “Doncamatic” -- yet they don’t offer a sour coda on this Singles Collection; instead, they indicate the complexity of this cartoon pop group, which means this compilation isn’t merely a good collection of hits, it’s a fine introduction to the multifaceted pleasures of Gorillaz. [The Deluxe Edition contains a bonus DVD with the group’s videos (essential to the understanding of the group), a documentary called Charts of Darkness, two BRIT Award performances, and three trailers.]© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

With a title that sums up their admirable refusal to pander to English-speaking audiences, MADE IN GERMANY: 1995-2011 celebrates the 16-year career of Neue Deutsche Härte outfit Rammstein, one of the few European rock bands to make any impression in both the U.K. and U.S. Spanning their six studio albums, from the synth-heavy theatrics of "Du Riechst So Gut" (from 1995 debut HERZELEID) to the glam-tinged vaudeville of "Haifisch" (from 2009's LIEBE IST FÜR ALLE DA ), alongside a brand new recording ("Mein Land"), the 16-track collection certainly justifies their rather provocative reputation. "Links 2-3-4" is an aggressive statement of defiance against the allegations of fascism and Nazism that had followed them around ever since they burst onto the scene, the brooding symphonics of "Mutter" soundtracks a dark tale of a neglected son murdering his mother, while the suitably unsettling "Mein Teil" is inspired by the disturbing true story of a cannibal victim that made headlines across the band's homeland in the early noughties. However, with only the satirical take on U.S. culture of "Amerika" and their sole German number one single, the sexually charged "Pussy," making any allowances for those unfamiliar with their native tongue, the band's unique brand of industrial metal has obviously still managed to translate to audiences worldwide without relying on the shock factor. Elsewhere, the Brothers Grimm-inspired grunge of "Rosenrot," the anthemic "Sonne" (originally penned as the entrance music for boxer Vitali Klitschko), and the proggy "Keine Lust" all help to satisfy the mosh pit-inducing quota, but as evident on the Italo house leanings of "Du Hast," the Rage Against the Machine-goes-pop of "Engel," and the string-soaked power ballad "Ohne Dich," the band has never been afraid to court a more mainstream following either. The bulk of MADE IN GERMANY is undoubtedly still an acquired taste, but as an overview of the country's biggest rock export, it's a fairly representative collection and showcases them at their best.© Jon O'Brien /TiVo

The Cure could be found in a mix of holding pattern and seemingly constant activity in 2011, with an irregular series of world-wide performances of the band's first three albums and a slew of guest appearances and one-offs by Robert Smith on his own and with other performers standing in for either new or reissued albums. But there was also a one-off headlining performance at the Bestival in the U.K. that summer, resulting in the band's first official live album since the Show and Paris releases of 1993. Feeling more like a souvenir than anything else, it's above all a portrait of a band that has the knack of handling a career-spanning catalog down cold, something with both positive and negative sides to it. On the one hand, besides a thankfully clear mix that feels like a brisk soundboard recording, there's the treat of hearing a then-unique quartet lineup of Smith, Simon Gallup, and Jason Cooper matched with the then-recently returned Roger O'Donnell adding keyboards for the first time in some years. If it's not quite Seventeen Seconds all over again, performances of "Play for Today" and the inevitable "A Forest" do happily nod in that direction. Smith himself still sounds in astonishingly well-preserved voice, only occasionally stepping aside from some high notes while sounding as moodily powerful as ever on guitar -- not to mention as half-understandable as ever on his occasional song introductions. On the other hand, Smith and company have been playing this kind of set for years upon years when it comes to general or festival audiences, emphasizing the big hits of the first 15 years of their career. Out of 32 songs, literally only three of them couldn't have appeared on either Show or Paris -- happily one of them being the underrated "The Hungry Ghost" from 4:13 Dream -- while the remainder of the selections leans much more toward the hits and singles than the album cuts, stalwarts like "Plainsong," "Push," and "Disintegration" aside. (Though the appearance of "The Caterpillar" is a fun surprise, having never been played for a full-on show by the band once since 1984.) Bestival Live 2011 is an understandably honest reflection of the Cure in the popular mind as their commercial high point recedes further into the past, but given Smith and the band's other contemporaneous activities, it's an incomplete portrait.© Ned Raggett /TiVo

Unlike its companion, Complete Rarities: IRS 1982-1987, the music collected on the 2014 digital-only Complete Warner Bros. Rarities 1988-2011 hasn't been anthologized often. Bits and pieces have been rounded up in singles boxes, and there was a "Rarities and B-sides" bonus disc added to the 2003 compilation In Time: The Best of R.E.M. 1988-2003, but there was no Warner-era equivalent of Dead Letter Office, and the expanded editions of the albums often skimped on bonus tracks. So this mammoth collection -- 131 tracks, all instrumentals, alternate, and singles, mixes, covers, and live tracks that never appeared on albums -- is noteworthy for providing a service for dedicated fans who nevertheless stopped buying all those multi-part CD singles somewhere around New Adventures in Hi-Fi or Up. The eagle-eyed will notice there are a few songs missing -- usually, these are alternate versions from the early '90s -- but there are also a couple of live cover versions M.I.A., along with instrumental B-sides from Automatic for the People -- but the sheer heft of the set guarantees that almost all will take its title claim of "Complete" as factual; it's close enough to complete for most intents and purposes. Also, as it's a digital clearinghouse and not a sequenced compilation, it's designed to be cherry-picked and not listened to straight through (after all, it'd take many hours to finish). Unlike its I.R.S. cousin, there aren't many major songs tucked away here -- only the Automatic-era "It's a Free World Baby" and "Fretless" count, with the Accelerate flips "Redhead Walking" and "Airliner" also coming close -- which in itself suggests the shifting dynamics within the band and in the industry in the '90s and 2000s. Once Bill Berry left after 1996's New Adventures, R.E.M. worked harder to complete records, so there weren't as many rarities lying around, and that explains the lack of originals, but the real key to this absurdly large set is that the band was required to churn out B-sides for multi-part singles in every market in the world. The easiest way to do this was through live versions, covers and, for a brief moment, remixes (R.E.M.'s music never lent itself to dance mixes but 808 State did overhaul "King of Comedy"). It's flotsam and jetsam, and although it sometimes sounds like filler, there's enough enjoyable music here to make it worthwhile for those dedicated fans wishing to round out their collection.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

3 stars out of 5 -- "It's ironic that music made around 30 years ago, purporting to represent the future with sonic technology, is now one of the most popular strains of nostalgia worship."© TiVo

"The result is a brain-bending musical journey built around the singer's gonzoid onstage persona. It's hugely ambitious but he pulls it of in consummately dizzying style."© TiVo

Barely causing a ripple upon its 1988 release, Sunshine on Leith, the second album by Edinburgh's the Proclaimers, received new life five years down the road when the infectious "I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)" became a fluke hit following its inclusion on the soundtrack to Benny & Joon. Although nothing else on the album quite matches that Top Ten's energy or quirky charm, the duo's (twin brothers Charlie and Craig Reid) sophomore effort still manages to be a highly listenable and thoroughly engaging blend of folk and pop with several nods to their Scottish heritage. Many of the lyrics touch upon the subject of domestic and familial bliss as on "Then I Met You"; the jaunty, wide-eyed wonder of "Sean"; and the lovely, waltz-like title track (featuring some gorgeous harmonies). There's a thread of optimism that runs through most of the album only broken on the few occasions when the two stray from the comforts of home and hearth (as on "What Do You Do"). Other standout tracks include the upbeat swagger of "I'm On My Way" and the steel-guitar twang of their cover of Steve Earle's "My Old Friend the Blues."© Tom Demalon /TiVo