Few albums can say that they have defined a generation, but (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? is undoubtedly among that elite crowd. Recorded over the course of just 15 days in 1995, the album catapulted Oasis from crossover indie act to worldwide pop phenomenon, flooding the charts with retro-rock riffs and unforgettable hooks. To say that its impact was titanic would be an understatement. It became the fastest-selling album in the UK since Michael Jackson’s Bad. It has sold over 22 million copies worldwide, making it one of the best-selling albums of all time. And it was the knockout blow in the battle of Britpop, being twice as successful as their rival Blur’s contemporaneous album The Great Escape.Following up from the incredibly popular Definitely Maybe was no mean feat, but Oasis pulled it off without a hitch. The idealistic hope-against-the-odds message from their beginnings was replaced with realism and reflection. In an interview with Rolling Stone, Noel Gallagher commented that while their first album “was all about dreaming of being a pop star in a band, the second album is about actually being a pop star in a band”. They had reached where they wanted to be, and were wondering what lay beyond fame and fortune. The Mancunians had clearly enjoyed enough sex, drugs and rock’n’roll to yield four sides of vinyl, though they never limited themselves purely to counter-culture clichés. Noel Gallagher’s songwriting took on a notably more introspective tone, nestled in amongst jauntier tracks like She’s Electric and Roll With It. His philosophising shone through perhaps most obviously on Cast No Shadow, a song which was dedicated to The Verve’s frontman Richard Ashcroft and details the struggle that songwriters (and more universally, all of us) face when they desperately try to say the right thing and it keeps coming out wrong. Elsewhere, we find the attitude and aloofness that Oasis do so well. The cocaine anthem Morning Glory rides along a continuous wave of stadium-filling guitars as Liam Gallagher sings “All your dreams are made / When you’re chained to the mirror and the razor blade”. And then of course, there are Oasis’ biggest hits: Don’t Look Back In Anger, which urges the listener to live regret-free; Champagne Supernova, which despite its famously nonsensical lyrics (Slowly walking down the hall / Faster than a cannonball we’re looking at you) resonates with people the world over; and the often-imitated-never-replicated Wonderwall, where you’d be hard-pressed to find any Brit who doesn’t know all the words. Being more than just wedding dancefloor fillers and karaoke classics, the three tracks brilliantly capture the band’s skill for drawing complexity from simplicity. Ultimately, this album marked the beginning of the long-drawn-out end for Oasis and the albums that followed never quite lived up to the glorious rock and carefree euphoria found here. But then that’s another story… © Abi Church/Qobuz

With the hypnotic and bright Grammy-nominated track "Levels," Swedish EDM DJ/producer Tim Bergling aka Avicii unleashed a global dance hit the size of "Beachball," "Blue Monday," "Starships," and maybe even "The Hokey Pokey." If the masses leave the dancefloor, "Levels" brings them back with sunshine and light, but Avicii's debut album is a sharp left turn, kicking off with the acoustic guitar strum of "Wake Me Up," a pleasant, well-written heritage pop track where "I Need a Dollar" vocalist Aloe Blacc gets thrown in a synthetic Mumford & Sons surrounding for something very non-"Levels." It's a strange jumble that works, but even more surprising is the seductive "Addicted to You," where Oklahoma singer/songwriter Audra Mae gets sultry on a song co-written by country and pop legend Mac Davis, and don't wonder long about how the results ended up sounding so Nina Simone, because the curve balls keep coming. Adam Lambert reins in his glam tactics on the Nile Rodgers-assisted "Lay Me Down" for a disco and Daft Punk swerve, while the kinetic down-on-the-farm "Shame on Me" offers a knee-slapping, EDM-meets-country rave-up that threatens to go hambone with a solo on the spoons. Country music and bluegrass keep winding their way into the album, and while it rarely smacks of a gimmick, these rustic numbers often evolve into EDM around their drum machine-introducing choruses, as if True was a remix album commission Avicii picked up while vacationing in Appalachia. In the end, it's an admirable and interesting effort where the highs offset the lows, but those with molly in hand and dancing shoes on feet should just cool their jets and get ready to sit a spell.© David Jeffries /TiVo

Few albums can say that they have defined a generation, but (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? is undoubtedly among that elite crowd. Recorded over the course of just 15 days in 1995, the album catapulted Oasis from crossover indie act to worldwide pop phenomenon, flooding the charts with retro-rock riffs and unforgettable hooks. To say that its impact was titanic would be an understatement. It became the fastest-selling album in the UK since Michael Jackson’s Bad. It has sold over 22 million copies worldwide, making it one of the best-selling albums of all time. And it was the knockout blow in the battle of Britpop, being twice as successful as their rival Blur’s contemporaneous album The Great Escape.Following up from the incredibly popular Definitely Maybe was no mean feat, but Oasis pulled it off without a hitch. The idealistic hope-against-the-odds message from their beginnings was replaced with realism and reflection. In an interview with Rolling Stone, Noel Gallagher commented that while their first album “was all about dreaming of being a pop star in a band, the second album is about actually being a pop star in a band”. They had reached where they wanted to be, and were wondering what lay beyond fame and fortune. The Mancunians had clearly enjoyed enough sex, drugs and rock’n’roll to yield four sides of vinyl, though they never limited themselves purely to counter-culture clichés. Noel Gallagher’s songwriting took on a notably more introspective tone, nestled in amongst jauntier tracks like She’s Electric and Roll With It. His philosophising shone through perhaps most obviously on Cast No Shadow, a song which was dedicated to The Verve’s frontman Richard Ashcroft and details the struggle that songwriters (and more universally, all of us) face when they desperately try to say the right thing and it keeps coming out wrong. Elsewhere, we find the attitude and aloofness that Oasis do so well. The cocaine anthem Morning Glory rides along a continuous wave of stadium-filling guitars as Liam Gallagher sings “All your dreams are made / When you’re chained to the mirror and the razor blade”. And then of course, there are Oasis’ biggest hits: Don’t Look Back In Anger, which urges the listener to live regret-free; Champagne Supernova, which despite its famously nonsensical lyrics (Slowly walking down the hall / Faster than a cannonball we’re looking at you) resonates with people the world over; and the often-imitated-never-replicated Wonderwall, where you’d be hard-pressed to find any Brit who doesn’t know all the words. Being more than just wedding dancefloor fillers and karaoke classics, the three tracks brilliantly capture the band’s skill for drawing complexity from simplicity. Ultimately, this album marked the beginning of the long-drawn-out end for Oasis and the albums that followed never quite lived up to the glorious rock and carefree euphoria found here. But then that’s another story… © Abi Church/Qobuz

As Mehldau explains in his liner note for the album, "Although it totals around 300 minutes, the order of songs is not arbitrary, and I have tried to tell a story from beginning to end in the way I've sequenced it." He continues, "There is a theme and character given to each four-side set."Of the Dark/Light theme, he says, "In concerts, I find that I contrast dark and light emotional energies and highlight the way they depend on each other. Sides 1–4 focus on this dichotomy in pairs, beginning with the dark energy of Jeff Buckley's 'Dream Brother,' which is followed by the grace of Lennon/McCartney's 'Blackbird.'" He further says, "Although the songs on Sides 5–8 (The Concert) come from different concerts, on this set, I arranged them in a sequence similar to that I would perform in a single concert in 2010–11," he continues."The third set could be thought of as Intermezzo and Rückblick–like in character. I'm thinking of the penultimate movement of Brahms's Third Piano Sonata with that title. Rückblick means a look backward, perhaps a reappraisal. Brahms's Intermezzo movement was a look back at what had taken place in his Sonata before moving to the final movement. Here, the listener is invited to look back to music that was recorded 10 or more years ago, in 2004 and 2005." Mehldau explains that his approach to the sequence of the fourth set "is to focus on the rub between the keys of E minor and E major. I return to the theme of dark and light from the first set, now allowing the listener to focus on how 'dark' and 'light' might manifest in tonality."Brad Mehldau played in a number of different ensembles, including label mate Joshua Redman's quartet, before becoming a bandleader himself in the 1990s. The Brad Mehldau Trio made eight recordings for Warner Bros., including the five Art of the Trio albums with former drummer Jorge Rossy (released as a boxed set by Nonesuch in 2011). The pianist's years with Nonesuch have been equally productive, beginning in 2004 with the solo disc Live in Tokyo and including five trio records— Day is Done, House on Hill, Live, Ode, and Where Do You Start—as well as a collaboration with soprano Renée Fleming, Love Sublime; a chamber ensemble album, Highway Rider; two collaborations with label mate Pat Metheny, Metheny Mehldau and Quartet; a CD/DVD set of live solo performances, Live in Marciac; and collaborations with Kevin Hays and Patrick Zimmerli on Modern Music. Last year, Nonesuch released the debut from Mehldau's electric duo with Mark Guiliana, Mehliana: Taming the Dragon. He also produced Redman's 2013 release Walking Shadows.Mehldau has performed around the world at a steady pace for 25 years, with his trio, with other collaborators, and as a solo pianist, building a large and loyal audience. "It is actually strange, this whole business of performance. It is a direct, intense kind of empathy with a group of total strangers that lasts around 90 minutes. And then, it's over, and everyone goes home. I go back to a hotel room and go to bed," the pianist says in his 10 Years Solo Live note. "Something happened, but what was most vital about it can't really be put in words. It is sweet, kind of bittersweet. In any case, it is not enough to say that the different audiences were important for the creation of this music. They were absolutely necessary; they were pivotal. Without those audiences, this music would not exist in the way it does."

With the hypnotic and bright Grammy-nominated track "Levels," Swedish EDM DJ/producer Tim Bergling aka Avicii unleashed a global dance hit the size of "Beachball," "Blue Monday," "Starships," and maybe even "The Hokey Pokey." If the masses leave the dancefloor, "Levels" brings them back with sunshine and light, but Avicii's debut album is a sharp left turn, kicking off with the acoustic guitar strum of "Wake Me Up," a pleasant, well-written heritage pop track where "I Need a Dollar" vocalist Aloe Blacc gets thrown in a synthetic Mumford & Sons surrounding for something very non-"Levels." It's a strange jumble that works, but even more surprising is the seductive "Addicted to You," where Oklahoma singer/songwriter Audra Mae gets sultry on a song co-written by country and pop legend Mac Davis, and don't wonder long about how the results ended up sounding so Nina Simone, because the curve balls keep coming. Adam Lambert reins in his glam tactics on the Nile Rodgers-assisted "Lay Me Down" for a disco and Daft Punk swerve, while the kinetic down-on-the-farm "Shame on Me" offers a knee-slapping, EDM-meets-country rave-up that threatens to go hambone with a solo on the spoons. Country music and bluegrass keep winding their way into the album, and while it rarely smacks of a gimmick, these rustic numbers often evolve into EDM around their drum machine-introducing choruses, as if True was a remix album commission Avicii picked up while vacationing in Appalachia. In the end, it's an admirable and interesting effort where the highs offset the lows, but those with molly in hand and dancing shoes on feet should just cool their jets and get ready to sit a spell.© David Jeffries /TiVo

All the promise of his debut comes true on Aloe Blacc’s sophomore release, Good Things, a vintage sound meets modern problems release with a way too modest title. Right from the opening “I Need a Dollar” -- which could be passed off as unreleased Bill Withers, no problem -- the album offers grand things, providing listeners with that solid, but not polarizing, style of social commentary Withers perfected. On the following cut, positivity is pushed (“Something special happened today/I got green lights all the way”) in a manner that’s far from sugary, but this singer who offers such warmth and humility on his smooth soul tracks is well aware of sin, and can get slinky in a Al Green style when warning against loose women on “Hey Brother.” An even better example of this is his cover of the Velvet Underground’s “Femme Fatale,” which becomes much more than a clever choice, thanks to a convincing performance that suggests he’s been there. The organic production, real horns and all, is left up entirely to the Truth & Soul Productions crew (Jeff Dynamite and Leon Michels) but Blacc’s delivery is less traditional with phrasing and some slang left over from when he was a 24-7 rapper. Anyone with a taste for neo-soul should try Good Things unique flavor. It comes on familiar and comfortable and becomes more rich and rewarding with every return visit. © David Jeffries /TiVo

The performances from which this album is comprised must have been an embarrassment of riches. That's one way of explaining how this live double-LP set came to be released -- that and the fact that Rare Earth's peak years coincided with the commercial heyday of the live album. Whatever the reason, In Concert was the most expansive live recording ever issued by Motown Records. What's more, it all works in terms of being an honest representation of this band -- not that they compromised much in the studio, where their rendition of "Get Ready" ran 20 minutes, but playing to an audience was what they'd been about from the start, and everything here resonates with the joy of that process. And in addition to capturing the band in top form, the recording itself provided a beautifully vivid sound picture, every instrument and voice captured spot-on, all the more amazing considering the size of this band and the complexities of their sound -- flutes, guitars (acoustic and electric), keyboards, saxes, percussion, and more are all here in close detail, but nothing more solid in the mix than John Persh's lead bass work in the middle section of the 23-and-a-half-minute "Get Ready." Their reshaping of "What'd I Say" also works well as a concert number, and pretty much everything here is a joyous celebration of what this band and their era were about -- the group-credited jam "Thoughts" isn't the most interesting moment here, but it does avoid the pitfalls of the most excessive work of its period and can sustain its ten-minute length without trouble. The passage of time has also allowed one to appreciate the full technical range of this record -- by 1971, live recording had become so sophisticated that the producers were even able to give an expansive stereo sound picture, which came out well on the vinyl and is even better on digital reissues.© Bruce Eder /TiVo

A brilliant updating of the New Orleans R&B sound to include strains of Cajun, rock, and reggae on standards ranging from "Hey Pocky Way" to "The Ten Commandments of Love" and "Sitting in Limbo."© William Ruhlmann /TiVo

With the hypnotic and bright Grammy-nominated track "Levels," Swedish EDM DJ/producer Tim Bergling aka Avicii unleashed a global dance hit the size of "Beachball," "Blue Monday," "Starships," and maybe even "The Hokey Pokey." If the masses leave the dancefloor, "Levels" brings them back with sunshine and light, but Avicii's debut album True was a sharp left turn, kicking off with the acoustic guitar strum of "Wake Me Up," a pleasant, well-written heritage pop track where "I Need a Dollar" vocalist Aloe Blacc gets thrown in a synthetic Mumford & Sons surrounding for something that was very non-"Levels." The rest of the album was equally and shockingly rustic and organic, but here, on this full-album remix of True, "Wake Me Up" is given a "Levels"-styled, synthetic kick and returns to the category of prime-time dancefloor stuff, while "Hey Brother" with vocalist Dan Tyminski trades its bluegrass for dubstep and the bass drops ensue. The original album's "Heart Upon My Sleeve" isn't remixed, although everything else is here and pumped up splendidly, so consider this a worthy alternative to True made for dancing or, seeing as how many Avicii regulars were thrown by the original's acoustic atmosphere, consider this a fan-pleasing release that plays to the producer's strengths.© David Jeffries /TiVo

Not a concept album, but a song cycle depicting life in southern California in the late '60s, Realization is a fine cycle to catch a ride on. It's also a serious surprise -- when psychedelia reared its head in 1967, the results were frequently disastrous for those performers who'd been specializing in straight-ahead rock & roll, and few had rocked harder or more straight-ahead than Johnny Rivers. Instead of jumping on a bandwagon that had nothing to do with where he was musically, he hijacked the sounds of psychedelic rock -- much as the Temptations did at Motown -- and took it where he was going. Acting as his own producer for the first time, Rivers opened up a slightly gentler side to his work that's equally valid and a lot more interesting, if not quite as exciting as his rock & roll classics. After a few sonic digressions as a lead-in, "Hey Joe" gets going, carrying listeners into Rivers' gorgeous rendition of James Hendricks' "Look to Your Soul." His own achingly beautiful "The Way We Live" follows, and then comes Hendricks' "Summer Rain," which turned into Rivers' last big hit of the 1960s. And then he has the temerity to take "A Whiter Shade of Pale" and make it prettier and harder -- but less spacy -- than the Procol Harum original; from there he plunges into blue-eyed soul on "Brother, Where Are You." The surprises continue right through to the rather delicate, introspective reading of "Positively Fourth Street" at the close, Rivers succeeding in evoking a vast array of thoughts and emotions. For his trouble, helped by the two hits, he was rewarded with a Top Five charting album, and one that has continued to find new admirers across the decades.© James Chrispell & Bruce Eder /TiVo

Billy Preston spent most of the 1960s as a working musician, playing important roles in the bands of Little Richard and, later, Ray Charles, and getting some exposure on television shows like Shindig, but he was hardly a household name. Then he crossed paths with the Beatles, whom he'd known from their early days, and one rooftop concert and the "Get Back" single later, he was among the most famous musicians ever to work with them on a recording. Preston was also the first artist that Apple Records pulled away from another label to sign, buying out his existing contract and four finished songs for an upcoming LP from Capitol Records. Preston finished what became That's the Way God Planned It, named for the U.K. hit single issued ahead of it, with George Harrison producing and, among others, Eric Clapton playing guitar, Keith Richards on bass, and Ginger Baker on drums. Apple ended up getting a surging, powerful soul record by a young music veteran who they caught just as he was ready ascend to the top of his game. The record reached into a lot of different directions, encompassing songs by Bob Dylan ("She Belongs to Me") and W.C. Handy ("Morning Star") amid its brace of Preston-authored originals, and delving into gospel ("Let Us All Get Together," co-authored with Doris Troy) as well as some funky soul sounds ("What About You?"), much of it soaring passionately ("This Is It") and all of it pretty striking, coming out of the orbit of the Beatles. Some of it was a little derivative, much of "Hey Brother" (one of the existing Capitol tracks) being a topical rewrite of "Hey Joe," but that was balanced out by the album's title track, one of the best production jobs that Harrison ever delivered; aglow in a swelling gospel-style organ and rippling with bluesy electric guitar, a chorus soaring high over all of that, and Preston's career-defining vocal performance at its center, the song was irresistible. The 1991 CD reissue is augmented by "Through All Times," a very quiet, bluesy leftover from the Capitol sessions, the pounding Ray Charles-produced instrumental B-side "As I Get Older" (co-authored by Preston and Sylvester Stewart), and an earlier, shorter, more traditionally devotional rendition of "That's the Way God Planned It" (which this reviewer prefers) -- they're worth the equivalent of a half-step higher rating. Sadly, the LP never sold the way Apple's management had hoped, although Preston's subsequent appearance at the Concert for Bangladesh and on the resulting album and movie doing "That's the Way God Planned It" reintroduced the song and should have led to resumed promotion and marketing of the original LP; chances are, with any other label, it would have, but by 1971 Apple was turning into a shambles, and so not nearly as many people got to hear this album as might well have cared to. [The 2010 reissue of That’s The Way God Planned It was remastered by the same Abbey Road team who remastered the acclaimed 2009 Beatles reissues and retains the three bonus tracks from the 91 CD and adds the previously unreleased “Something’s Got to Change.”]© Bruce Eder /TiVo

3 Feet High and Rising was almost universally acclaimed, but De La Soul still felt a bit misunderstood—and even a bit defensive about it. So while the title De La Soul is Dead is just as much a hyperbolic "wouldn't this be a funny title for a second album" gag as it is an actual mission statement, it's also a way of reining in the debut's we-can-do-anything sprawl to focus a bit more on some of the things people didn't necessarily expect of them. De La Soul is Dead refines the known quantities of their style: Pos and Dave are still every bit the kind of MCs who will sound approachably conversational and unpredictably complex in their flows, Maseo and Prince Paul's DJ/production flourishes are still hilariously tongue-in-cheek and filled with inspired post-genre juxtapositions (the first bassline on the album, in "Oodles of O's," comes from an early Tom Waits song), and the humor is still frenetic and idiosyncratic and crammed with elaborate inside jokes. But the mood's soured noticeably, and in ways that add a quickly-earned cynicism to the mix. That's clear from the framing skits where a bunch of teens roast the album for not being "hardcore" enough, the fame-fatigued stories of getting into fistfights on tour ("Pease Porridge") and dealing with people fiending for a co-sign foot in the door ("Ring Ring Ring (Ha Ha Hey)"), and a handful of highlights that draw on the bleaker moments of their real-world experience—molestation victim revenge story "Millie Pulled a Pistol on Santa" chief amongst them. But that these moments are expertly mixed in with some of their most upbeat material—the comedic dozens in "Bitties in the BK Lounge," the euphoric roller-disco nostalgia of "A Roller Skating Jam Named 'Saturdays,'" a three-song run at the end ("Shwingalokate," "Fanatic of the B Word," and "Keepin' the Faith") which leaves an outwardly bitter album on a glorious high note of funky boom-bap party jams—that leave an unspoken long live De La Soul lingering at the end of that title. De La Soul is Dead might've cast a pall on the day-glo rep burnished by their debut but another facet to the group was revealed that would not only sustain them but gave them even more freedom to be who they wanted. © Nate Patrin/Qobuz

The Wild Tchoupitoulas -- a group of Mardi Gras Indians headed by George "Big Chief Jolly" Landry -- only released one album, but that one record caused a sensation upon its initial 1976 release. It was one of the first records of the album-oriented rock generation that captured the heady gumbo of New Orleans R&B and funk. Landry may have fronted the Wild Tchoupitoulas, but the key to the record's success was his nephews, Charles and Cyril Neville, who headed the rhythm section. They drafted in their brothers, Art and Aaron, to harmonize, and thereby unwittingly gave birth to the band that became the Neville Brothers. Still, the fact that The Wild Tchoupitoulas ranks among the great New Orleans albums isn't because of the Nevillles themselves, but the way the Wild Tchoupitoulas lock into an extraordinary hybrid that marries several indigenous New Orleans musics, with swampy, dirty funk taking its place in the forefront. There are only eight songs, and they are all strung together as if they're variations on the same themes and rhythms. That's a compliment, by the way, since the organic, flowing groove is the key to the album's success.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo