Arriving with the force of a hurricane, Oasis' third album, Be Here Now, is a bright, bold, colorful tour de force that simply steamrolls over any criticism. The key to Oasis' sound is its inevitability -- they are unwavering in their confidence, which means that even the hardest rockers are slow, steady, and heavy, not fast. And that self-possessed confidence, that belief in their greatness, makes Be Here Now intensely enjoyable, even though it offers no real songwriting breakthroughs. Noel Gallagher remains a remarkably talented synthesist, bringing together disparate strands -- "D'You Know What I Mean" has an N.W.A drum loop, a Zeppelin-esque wall of guitars, electronica gurgles, and lyrical allusions to the Beatles and Dylan -- to create impossibly catchy songs that sound fresh, no matter how many older songs he references. He may be working familiar territory throughout Be Here Now, but it doesn't matter because the craftsmanship is good. "The Girl in the Dirty Shirt" is irresistible pop, and epics like "Magic Pie" and "All Around the World" simply soar, while the rockers "My Big Mouth," "It's Getting Better (Man!!)," and "Be Here Now" attack with a bone-crunching force. Noel is smart enough to balance his classicist tendencies with spacious, open production, filling the album with found sounds, layers of guitars, keyboards, and strings, giving the record its humongous, immediate feel. The sprawling sound and huge melodic hooks would be enough to make Be Here Now a winner, but Liam Gallagher's vocals give the album emotional resonance. Singing better than ever, Liam injects venom into the rockers, but he also delivers the nakedly emotional lyrics of "Don't Go Away" with affecting vulnerability. That combination of violence and sensitivity gives Oasis an emotional core and makes Be Here Now a triumphant album.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

For American audiences, the phenomenal worldwide success of Oasis was a little puzzling. That's because they only had part of the picture -- unless they were hardcore fans, they didn't hear nearly three albums of material released on B-sides and non-LP singles. Critics and fans alike claimed that the best of these B-sides were as strong as the best moments on the albums, and they were right. None of the albums had a song that rocked as hard as "Fade Away" (cleverly built on a stolen melody from Wham!'s "Freedom"), "Headshrinker," or "Acquiesce." There was nothing as charming as the lite psychedelic pastiche "Underneath the Sky" or the Bacharach tribute "Going Nowhere"; there was nothing as affecting as Noel Gallagher's acoustic plea "Talk Tonight" or the minor-key, McCartney-esque "Rockin' Chair," nothing as epic as "The Masterplan." Most bands wouldn't throw songs of this caliber away on B-sides, but Noel Gallagher followed the example of his heroes the Jam and the Smiths, who released singles where the B-sides rivaled the A-sides. This meant many American fans missed these songs, so to remedy this situation, Oasis released the B-sides compilation The Masterplan. Oasis unfortunately chose to opt for a single disc of highlights instead of a complete double-disc set, which means a wealth of great songs -- "Take Me Away," "Whatever," "D'Yer Wanna Be a Spaceman?," "Round Are Way," "It's Better People," "Step Out," a raging cover of "Cum on Feel the Noize" -- are missing. But The Masterplan winds up quite enjoyable anyway. Apart from the sludgy instrumental "The Swamp Song," there isn't a weak track here, and the brilliant moments are essential not only for Oasis fans, but any casual follower of Britpop or post-grunge rock & roll.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

Released in September 2002, Forty Licks was the first compilation to bring together tracks from all of the Stones' different eras, and from all of the different labels they recorded for. The icing on these abundant forty tracks are four previously unreleased tracks: Don't Stop, Keys to Your Love, Stealing My Heart and Losing My Touch. There isn’t much to add beyond the tracklist, so many masterpieces follow one after the other: Street Fighting Man, Gimme Shelter, (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction, The Last Time, Jumpin' Jack Flash, Sympathy for the Devil, Wild Horses, Paint It, Black, Honky Tonk Women, Let's Spend the Night Together, Start Me Up, Brown Sugar, Miss You, Beast of Burden, Happy, Angie, It's Only Rock 'n Roll (But I Like It), and so on. The whole history of rock'n'roll (especially from the 60s and 70s) flashes before our ears. A magic trick lasting over two hours and forty minutes, during which the brilliant tandem Mick Jagger/Keith Richards invent a music nourished by blues, soul, country, gospel and funk. Vital! © Marc Zisman/Qobuz

Divinely Uninspired to a Hellish Extent is the debut studio LP from Scottish singer/songwriter Lewis Capaldi. Composed of heartwarming lyrics, huge singalong choruses, and crystalline pop production, the effort features the singles "Grace" and "Hold Me While You Wait."© Rob Wacey /TiVo

Blondie turned to British pop producer Mike Chapman for their third album, on which they abandoned any pretensions to new wave legitimacy (just in time, given the decline of the new wave) and emerged as a pure pop band. But it wasn't just Chapman that made Parallel Lines Blondie's best album; it was the band's own songwriting, including Deborah Harry, Chris Stein, and James Destri's "Picture This," and Harry and Stein's "Heart of Glass," and Harry and new bass player Nigel Harrison's "One Way or Another," plus two contributions from nonbandmember Jack Lee, "Will Anything Happen?" and "Hanging on the Telephone." That was enough to give Blondie a number one on both sides of the Atlantic with "Heart of Glass" and three more U.K. hits, but what impresses is the album's depth and consistency -- album tracks like "Fade Away and Radiate" and "Just Go Away" are as impressive as the songs pulled for singles. The result is state-of-the-art pop/rock circa 1978, with Harry's tough-girl glamour setting the pattern that would be exploited over the next decade by a host of successors led by Madonna.© William Ruhlmann /TiVo

Thanks to the fluke hit "Fade Into You" -- one of the better beneficiaries of alt-rock's radio prominence in the early '90s, a gentle descent of a lead melody accompanied by piano, a steady beat, and above all else, Hope Sandoval's lovely lead vocal -- Mazzy Star's second album became something of a commercial success. All without changing much at all from where the band was before -- David Roback oversaw all the production, the core emphasis remained a nexus point between country, folk, psych, and classic rock all shrouded in mystery, and Sandoval's trademark drowsy drawl remained swathed in echo. But grand as She Hangs Brightly was, So Tonight That I Might See remains the group's undisputed high point, mixing in plenty of variety among its tracks without losing sight of what made the group so special to begin with. Though many songs work with full arrangements like "Fade Into You," a thick but never once overpowering combination, two heavily stripped-down songs demonstrate in different ways how Mazzy Star makes a virtue out of simplicity. "Mary of Silence" is an organ-led slow shuffle that easily ranks with the best of the Doors, strung-out and captivating all at once, Sandoval's singing and Roback's careful acid soloing perfect foils. "Wasted," meanwhile, revisits a classic blues riff slowed down to near-soporific levels, but the snarling crunch of Roback's guitar works wonders against Sandoval's vocals, a careful balance that holds. If there's a left-field standout, then unquestionably it's "Five String Serenade." A cover of an Arthur Lee song -- for once not a Love-era number, but a then-recent effort -- Roback's delicate acoustic guitar effortlessly brings out its simple beauty. Tambourine and violin add just enough to the arrangement here and there, and Sandoval's calm singing makes for the icing on the cake.© Ned Raggett /TiVo

The back story of Kanye West's 2016 release, The Life of Pablo, is nearly impossible to put in a nutshell, but it involves an ever-changing album title, including one that offended Wiz Khalifa so much that a twitter war ensued. Then there was a "Bill Cosby is innocent" tweet, and a consensus among producers and insiders that this was the culmination of his career. There was the Season 3 release of West's fashion line, a coinciding event that seemed just as important to Yeezy as dropping this LP. More important, maybe, since the runway models all made their cues while The Life of Pablo missed its release date, and while the idea that this is Kanye's career in one album can be loosely applied, it's more an angelic-themed LP in the vein of 808s & Heartbreak, with another vicious, trite, spiteful, parasitic release nibbling at its host. The opening masterpiece, "Ultralight Beam," represents the angelic side, offering a complicated emotional ride with the Gospel of Kirk Franklin fueling the song's jaw-dropping climax. Then, on a smaller scale, there's "No More Parties in L.A." with Kendrick Lamar and Madlib as co-producer, plus samples of Junie Morrison and Larry Graham, all supporting a smooth, rolling soul song they never could've imagined -- one about dropping your own shoe line -- plus "sheets still orange from your spray tan." Add the gorgeous "FML" ("I will die for those I love/God, I'm willing to make this my mission"), which comes with the Weeknd, and a marvelous sample of post-punkers Section 25, and the vibrant The Life of Pablo circles the wagons around family and soul mates in a manner that makes this the most holy of endeavors. And yet, when "Real Friends" explores the flipside, the emotions are tweet-sized and click bait, because paying a cousin a quarter million just to get a laptop back, just because of ex-girlfriend nudes, seems like G-Unit bragging or yesterday's bossip. There's the much talked about Taylor Swift diss in "Famous," which is not only callous, trite, and illogical but sits on a sub-Yeezy beat, and yet "Waves" (sounds like Kraftwerk remixing Chris Brown), "Highlights" (Young Thug and Yeezy connect supremely, like Drake and Future), and "Low Lights" (nothing but bass and a woman testifying for pure perfection) are all captivating, and make Pablo a soul-filling, gospel-fueled alternative to West's vicious, industrial-powered LP Yeezus. The bleached anuses that ruin expensive t-shirts in "Father Stretch My Hands, Pt. 1" just don't seem as interesting in this context, but the other way to look at the erratic Pablo is as an "instant" LP, one that was mastered at the last minute and debuted via streaming. On that count, it's a fascinating, magazine-like experience with plenty of reasons to give it a free play, and with "Feedback" adding "name one genius that ain't crazy" to the mix, Pablo excuses itself from the usual criticisms, although it could have been tighter.© David Jeffries /TiVo

After taking his early urban folk tales of cars and girls as far as he could on Born to Run, Bruce Springsteen took a long, hard look at the lives of those same Jersey street kids a few years down the line, now saddled with adult responsibilities and realizing that the American Dream was increasingly out of their grasp, on 1978's Darkness on the Edge of Town, an album that dramatically broadened Springsteen's musical range and lyrical scope. With 1980's The River, Springsteen sought to expand on those themes while also offering more of the tough, bar-band rock that was his trademark (and often conspicuous in its absence on Darkness), and by the time it was released it had swelled into Springsteen's first two-LP set. The River was Springsteen's most ambitious work to date, even as the music sounded leaner and more strongly rooted in rock & roll tradition than anything on Darkness or Born to Run, and though the album wasn't the least bit short on good times, the fun in songs like "Two Hearts," "Out in the Street," and "Cadillac Ranch" is rarely without some weightier subtext. As the romantic rush of "Two Hearts" fades into the final break with family on "Independence Day" and the sentimentality of "I Wanna Marry You" is followed by the grim truths of the title tune, nothing is easy or without consequence in Springsteen's world, and the album's themes of youthful ideals buckling under the weight of crushing reality are neatly summed up as Springsteen asks the essential question of his career, "Is a dream a lie if it don't come true?" Like many double albums, The River doesn't always balance well, and while the first half is consistently strong, part two is full of songs that work individually but don't cohere into a satisfying whole (and "Wreck on the Highway" is beautiful but fails to resolve the album's essential themes). But if the sequencing is somewhat flawed, Springsteen rises to his own challenges as a songwriter, penning a set of tunes that are heartfelt and literate but unpretentious while rocking hard, and the E Street Band were never used to better advantage, capturing the taut, swaggering force of their live shows in the studio with superb accuracy (and if the very '80s snare crack dates this album, Neil Dorfsman's engineering makes this one of Springsteen's best-sounding works). The River wasn't Springsteen's first attempt to make a truly adult rock & roll album, but it's certainly a major step forward from Darkness on the Edge of Town, and he rarely made an album as compelling as this, or one that rewards repeat listening as well.© Mark Deming /TiVo

In 2009, Brian Burton, aka Danger Mouse, was at the top of the pop game. He’d just produced records for Damon Albarn and Beck, made the world go Crazy with Gnarls Barkley and signed on to produce U2's next album... Even so, he still feels the urge to get stuck into a new collaboration. This time, he joins up with James Mercer, the singer of indie rock band The Shins, to create Broken Bells. Despite being rather low profile for Danger Mouse, the project was a success from the very first track: the single ‘The High Road’. The rest of their work has gone down equally well.Since then, the duo has reconnected whenever possible, releasing After the Disco in 2014 and now Into the Blue in 2022. This album resumes their exploration of the American Songbook and comes across like a stylistic exercise, jumping from one era to another: from the 60s to the 80s, be it pop, soul or synthpop. The album opens with a Morricone-style epic (‘Into the Blue') before revisiting acoustic folk (‘Invisible Exit’), Marvin Gaye-style soul (‘Love on the Run’) and 80’s pop (‘One Night and Fade Away’). Burton and Mercer never put a foot wrong, delivering nine immaculate tracks. This is a real lesson in production. © Smaël Bouaici/Qobuz

Human is the debut full-length release from British singer/songwriter and neo-soul/hip-hop artist Rag 'n' Bone Man. Composed of arresting and powerful vocal work anchored in gospel, pulsating hip-hop beats, and sweeping strings, the record features production work from Two-Inch Punch (Jessie Ware, Sam Smith), Mark Crew (the Wombats, Bastille), and Jonny Coffer (Beyoncé, Emeli Sandé). The album's title track leads as its main single.© Rob Wacey /TiVo

The Hurting would have been a daring debut for a pop-oriented band in any era, but it was an unexpected success in England in 1983, mostly by virtue of its makers' ability to package an unpleasant subject -- the psychologically wretched family histories of Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith -- in an attractive and sellable musical format. Not that there weren't a few predecessors, most obviously John Lennon's Plastic Ono Band album -- which was also, not coincidentally, inspired by the work of primal scream pioneer Arthur Janov. (But Lennon had the advantage of being an ex-Beatle when that meant the equivalent to having a box next to God's in the great arena of life, where Tears for Fears were just starting out.) Decades later, "Pale Shelter," "Ideas as Opiates," "Memories Fade," "Suffer the Children," "Watch Me Bleed," "Change," and "Start of the Breakdown" are powerful pieces of music, beautifully executed in an almost minimalist style. "Memories Fade" offers emotional resonances reminiscent of "Working Class Hero," while "Pale Shelter" functions on a wholly different level, an exquisite sonic painting sweeping the listener up in layers of pulsing synthesizers, acoustic guitar arpeggios, and sheets of electronic sound (and anticipating the sonic texture, if not the precise sound of their international breakthrough pop hit "Everybody Wants to Rule the World"). The work is sometimes uncomfortably personal, but musically compelling enough to bring it back across the decades.© Bruce Eder /TiVo

More than a quarter-century after Tom Petty's Wildflowers was first released, it can finally be heard the way the singer-songwriter intended. When he turned in 25 songs, hoping for a double album, Warner Bros. asked him to pare it down to one. But just three years past his death, his family and Heartbreakers bandmates Benmont Tench and Mike Campbell (technically a solo release, Wildflowers features most of the band) have restored the record to its original glory and added in a trove of home demos, alternate takes and live tracks—some 70 songs in all. Produced by Rick Rubin while Petty's decades-old marriage was crumbling and he was reportedly battling heroin addiction, the 1994 release remains one of the all-time great break-up records; heard all together, the extended LP (the All The Rest part is produced Petty's longtime engineer Ryan Ulyate) Petty is a deeper devastating beauty. "New" tracks like the Byrds-y "Leave Virginia Alone," tender "Something Could Happen" and psychedelic Beatles-meets-Wall of Sound "Somewhere Under Heaven" are a comfortable coda to classics such as "You Don't Know How It Feels" and "It's Good to Be King." Extra track "Hope You Never" is a gorgeous, direct complement to old favorite "Only a Broken Heart." As perfect as the original album has always played, it's hard to imagine not including the swaying After the Gold Rush-esque "Hung Up & Overdue" (with backing vocals by Beach Boy Carl Wilson) or sunny, jangling "California" (which also shows up in a demo version, with a telling extra verse: "Don’t forgive my past/ I forgive my enemy/ Don’t know if it lasts/ Gotta just wait and see"). Dig into the home recordings, and it's an even bigger mystery why the harmonica-inflected "There Goes Angela" and plaintive "There's a Break in the Rain (Have Love Will Travel)" weren't contenders over, say, the Celtic-flavored "Don't Fade on Me." Chalk part of that first-listen awe up to the intimacy of these solo demos, which also cast a new, revelatory light on the gently folksy title track and "You Don't Know How It Feels." Live non-album favorites "Girl on LSD" and "Drivin' Down to Georgia" are captured here, along with a blistering "Honey Bee" and lovely takes on "You Wreck Me" and "Crawling Back to You." Tench has recalled Petty calling Wildflowers "the best record we ever made." Now it's even better. © Shelly Ridenour/Qobuz

There's a neat trick that Brooklyn's Beach Fossils pulls off on the band's fourth album, Bunny, in which time seems suspended. For nearly 40 minutes, no matter where you are, the setting morphs into a lazy summer afternoon where nothing else needs to be done. Dustin Payseur's songs bounce like paper boats on water ("Tough Love"; "Dare Me" and it lyrical sighs like "Spinning your wheels/ To the edge of this town/ She said, 'LA's so small/ When you're looking straight down'"), jangle and beam with bright rays of guitars ("Anything is Anything"), and find the rhyme in "easy-going" and "melatonin" ("(Just Like the) Setting Sun"). There are shades of Ride's hazy shoegaze—especially within the humidity-thick layers of "Feel So High," which lives up to its title—and The Cure's sunny guitar tones across the board, but especially on cuts like "Sleeping On My Own." "Run to the Moon" features a great relaxed-fit bassline and a crisp hit of cello and viola to cut through the daydream mist. "Living in New York, it can grind you down," Payseur sings, world weary as ever. "I tell you it will grind you down." With Payseur as the only remaining member of the project he began in 2009, there's a clear thread of melancholy—and being fine with it—through the band's discography. "Don't Fade Away," he has said, is about "missing old friends, being on tour, self-medicating, longing, anxiety, love, being an idiot, having fun, embracing your mistakes and keeping your spark." "Out on tour/ I just finished/ This pack of cigarettes/ And I don't even smoke," he sings on that track, killing time before arriving at the catchy chorus: "She's novocaine/ It's all I need/ To ease the pain." © Shelly Ridenour/Qobuz

Breaking Benjamin's fourth foray into the crowded waters of early 21st century alternative metal/post-grunge feels a lot like their first three. That's good news for longtime fans of the brooding Pennsylvania quartet. Front-loaded with the singles "Fade Away" and "I Will Not Bow" (the latter was featured in the Bruce Willis sci-fi film Surrogates), Dear Agony feels like a well-oiled machine, and producer David Bendeth, whose immaculate touch helped 2006's Phobia sell 131,000 copies in its first week, conjures much of the same magic here.© James Christopher Monger /TiVo