The Linkin Park phenomenon in the year 2000 confirmed the rise of nu-metal in the mainstream. Their debut album, Hybrid Theory, opened up new musical and commercial avenues, selling what’s now approaching 30 million copies. Three years after their lead singer Chester Bennington died, the time has come to celebrate. This anniversary box set contains the original album as well as Reanimation (the remixed version released two years later by the band’s guitarist and rapper Mike Shinoda) and the Hybrid Theory EP, the group’s very first album released in 1999. Following these albums we are treated to a B-sides and Rarities, making the box set a particularly interesting release. The album also showcases the band’s love for England (where their music was lapped up) with live BBC broadcasts of tracks like In the End and Papercut on which Bennington holds back on his usually-hoarse voice for a softer take. The same can’t be said for the live performances at London’s Docklands Arena where the tracks A Place In My Head and Points of Authority end up sounding like a gigantic wall of sound. Then there are the LPU Rarities, the fifth part of the box set. Composed of studio scraps and demos, it shows how Linkin Park evolved and includes Mike Shinoda’s work on drum machines and synthesizers. The group’s electronic side is emphasised here, forecasting the band’s sonic evolution and their leader’s solo career. Finally, to bring things to a close, the Forgotten Demos bring twelve unreleased tracks together from a time when Linkin Park were still called Xero. They were operating anonymously and did not yet have Chester Bennington in their ranks but rather singer Mike Wakefield. The sound was much more raw and simplistic. It’s in this final part that we find the origin of one of the most important groups of the last twenty years. © Brice Miclet/Qobuz

Gone is the fedora hat and long hair, it’s a new look for James Bay, both musically and visually. After his debut album, Chaos And The Calm (2015), which included the Grammy nominated Hold Back The River, Bay has returned with his sophomore LP, titled Electric Light. However, this time around, Bay is creating something for a “bigger audience”, having been inspired by Florence & The Machine smashing the Glastonbury pyramid stage way back in 2015. The inspiration for this record does not stop there however, as the 27 year old began listening more to Prince, David Bowie, Lorde and Frank Ocean before going into the studio and creating something he could hang his fedora on. And it shows, with some more electronica influenced tracks (In My Head, Wild Love) and a hell of a lot more soul (I Found You). The lead single Pink Lemonade’s scratchy and rough guitar reminds you of a record from The Strokes, while heartfelt tracks like Us and Slide  embody the James Bay that many fans fell in love with, as his novel voice pours onto the melody. Wasted On Each Other is a dynamic pop rock number and Stand Up contains auto tuned vocals that Bon Iver would be proud of. Overall, it’s an impressively diverse second effort from Bay, who has developed his sound and evolved. © Aidan Nickerson/ Qobuz 

Advance hype fueled by the Little Bit EP had Lykke Li pegged as the next in a growing string of cool-kid-approved pop stars to leak out from Sweden's endless supply, but Youth Novels doesn't entirely play out as expected, emphasizing neither Robyn's electronic dance-pop precision nor the affable strumming of Jens Lekman or Peter Björn and John (whose Björn Yttling handles production duties here, and also co-writes every track). Although it does bear some traces of those musicians, as well as El Perro Del Mar's earnest melancholia, the album is decidedly odder and harder to pin down, proffering an idiosyncratic, stripped-down vision of pop that foregrounds repetition and simplicity over familiarity or even melody (though rest assured, there is ample catchiness to be had here). The graceful symphonic layering of the beat-less, spoken-word opener "Melodies and Desires" starts things off on a deceptively lush note, but much of the album is about as instrumentally sparse as pop can get, often sounding as though it were cobbled together from a scrap yard of barely functioning instruments and non-instruments. The painfully introverted hip-shaker of "Dance Dance Dance" ("my hips they lie/cause in reality I'm shy shy shy") lilts atop an aptly minimalist groove consisting of nothing but two insistently bowed bass notes, some found-sounding percussion, and a brief sax solo, while even the assertive standout "I'm Good, I'm Gone" gets by on little more than hand claps, driving drums, a bit of vibraphone doubling, and a simple bass line pounded out on a piano's lower register. These and the similarly skeletal arrangements that make up much of the album are deployed inventively enough that they rarely feel incomplete, but they're effective mainly because they keep the focus squarely on Lykke Li's understated yet captivating vocals. It's a daringly direct approach that emphasizes Li's marked emotionality (which runs the range from tenderness to bitterness), and allows songs to succeed -- or, rarely, flounder -- on their merits. When the songwriting ideas are strong (the aforementioned pair, the sparsely funky "Let It Fall" and especially the naggingly effective "Little Bit"), stripped-down arrangements and repetitive simplicity do nothing to stem their appeal, while "Hanging High" mostly plods and even the relative fullness of "My Love," with its strings and weirdly bleating group vocal, can't do much to make up for its dud chorus. A couple of curveballs come late in the running order -- the inexplicable Spanish guitar fantasia "This Trumpet In My Head," the jittery, mostly electronic kiss-off "Complaint Department" (which is cuter than it probably ought to be, but enjoyably snarky and faux-menacing nevertheless), and finally the resoundingly poppy "Breaking It Up," which is easily the album's biggest-sounding moment, complete with strings, chunky piano and exuberantly ramshackle group vocals. Brimming with ideas but understated, even tentative in executing them, and big on hooks but nervously intimate in presentation, Youth Novels is a curious, decidedly unorthodox but endearing record. Both youthful and novel -- Li was twenty-one upon its release, which may explain both her occasional goofy vocal affectations and the hesitant freshness of her sound -- it's hard to pigeonhole but refreshingly easy to enjoy.© K. Ross Hoffman /TiVo

Originally released on the independent label Republic, the Bloodhound Gang's second album, One Fierce Beer Coaster, was picked up by DGC about two months after its release, allegedly because it had great word-of-mouth. And, listening to the single, "Fire Water Burn," it's possible to hear why -- the group's smarmy, smirky alternative funk-metal, complete with junk culture references and "ironic" musical allusions, fits into the one-hit wonder cycle that dominated modern rock during the mid-'90s. One Fierce Beer Coaster captures the group's sound better than their Columbia debut, but the group has neither the dexterity nor the grit to pull off their hip-hop and rock fusions; they awkwardly stumble through their frat-party alternative rock. But what really sinks the album is the revolting, sophomoric humor that passes for lyrics. The liner notes might dismiss any complaints as indication that you don't get the joke, but it's hard to be comfortable with an album that believes smutty puns about oral sex ("Kiss Me Where It Smells Funny") and fart jokes (just about every track on the album) are what punk and alternative rock were all about.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo