Basically, there are two things that rock bands do: they make an album and they go on tour. Since Paul McCartney fervently wanted to believe Wings was a real rock band, he had the group record an album or two and then took them on the road. In March of 1976 he released Wings at the Speed of Sound and launched a tour of America, following which he released Wings Over America, a triple-album set that re-created an entire concert from various venues. It was a massive set list, running over two hours and featuring 30 songs, and it was well received at the time, partially because he revived some Beatles tunes, partially because it wasn't the disaster some naysayers expected, and mostly because -- like the tour itself -- it was the first chance that millions of Beatles fans had to hear McCartney in concert properly (the Beatles had toured, to be sure, and had played before millions of people between 1963 and 1966, but as a result of the relatively primitive equipment they used and the frenzied, omnipresent screaming of the mid-'60s teen audiences at their shows, few of those present had actually "heard" the group). Wings were never a particularly gifted band, and nowhere is that more evident than on Wings Over America. Matters aren't really helped by the fact that the large set list gives McCartney full opportunity to show off his vast array of affected voices, from crooner to rocker to bluesman. Also, the repertory, in retrospect, is weighted too heavily toward the recent Wings albums Wings at the Speed of Sound and Band on the Run, which weren't really loaded with great tunes. (It's also hard to believe that there were two Denny Laine vocals so early in the program, or that the concert ended with the plodding rocker "Soily," which was never released on any other McCartney album.) In its defense, the album offers bracing renditions of "Maybe I'm Amazed" -- arguably the best of McCartney's post-Beatles songs and possibly his single greatest composition -- and "Band on the Run," as well as nicely distilling the harder side of his repertory, with a few breaks for softer songs such as "My Love" and "Silly Love Songs"; another highlight is the rippling bass sound, showing off that instrument in a manner closer in spirit to, say, a John Entwistle solo LP than to McCartney's more pop-focused studio work. The triple LP, issued two weeks before Christmas of 1976, was priced so low that it was offered by most stores as a "loss leader" to pull customers in; what's more, the Beatles mystique was still very much attached to record and artist alike -- at the time, John Lennon had seemingly burnt out a major chunk of his talent, George Harrison was losing his popular edge and had done a disastrous 1974 American tour, and no one was expecting great things from Ringo Starr -- and it seemed like McCartney represented the part of the group's legacy that came closest to living up to fans' expectations. Thus the album ended up selling in numbers, rivaling the likes of Frampton Comes Alive and other mega-hits of the period, and rode the charts for months. The double-CD reissue offers considerably improved sound, though the combination of workmanlike performances and relatively pedestrian songs diminishes the appeal of such small pleasures as the acoustic Beatles set or the storming "Hi Hi Hi." Wings Over America is most valuable as a souvenir for hardcore fans and also as a reminder of the excitement -- beyond the actual merits of the group's work -- that attended McCartney and Wings' work in the lingering afterglow of the Beatles.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine & Bruce Eder /TiVo

Since 1992, Germany’s Bohren & der Club of Gore have made their own brand of dark, slow, jazz balladry for those who like their music "uneventful." Though its musicians came from various hardcore punk bands, their coming together resulted in the collective decision to explore a noir-ish, late-night lounge-jazz quartet sound, wrapped in spooky ambient music and doomy atmospherics. The band has been stubborn in its development on nine previous albums and three EPs. Bohren for Beginners is not a "best-of," but a carefully curated introductory selection -- and an exhaustive one. Its 17 selections are spread over two discs totaling nearly two-and-a-half hours. While one can't credit "minimalism" proper in the Bohren sound, its snail-like pace and completely repetitive harmonic and rhythmic structures deliver the same deceptive notion of stasis. It's so slow that it seems oppressive at first. It's difficult to comprehend where one tune ends and another begins. But as the individual tunes develop, everything falls into place; the listener is gradually opens to the group's carefully and seductively articulated modal ideas and then gets bound by them as if they were spells. One gets completely absorbed in the beauty of their darkness, loneliness, and isolation. Like the first Black Sabbath record, Bohren & der Club of Gore's sound is its own universe; the incessant bleakness delivers a twisted bliss not unlike the one Charles Baudelaire expressed in Les Fleur Du Mal. Melodies are sickly sweet and sad, their beauty wrought via spare saxophone melodies, elegiac Rhodes piano, plodding, minimal basslines, and eerie Mellotrons and synths. Rhythm exists not to move things along, but to maintain the funereal stillness. The album sequence offers three non-consecutive tracks from 2008's Dolores, and two each from 2000's Sunset Mission, 2014's Piano Nights, 2005's Geisterfaust, and 2011's Beileid. For some reason, the two selections from 2002's Black Earth (they're classic) are placed next to one another. In this suffocating soundworld, it's almost impossible to choose one selection over another, but the haunted lyricism in "Maximum Black," "Zombies Never Die," "Catch My Heart" (the only vocal track with Mike Patton guesting), and set-closer "Dandy's Lungern Durch die Nacht" (from 1994's Gore Motel), all manage to score individually. Disc two also features "Mitlied Lady" from the 2006 EP of the same name, as well as "Titel 2" from 1995's Midnight Radio. In addition to providing an aural portrait of 20-plus years, Bohren for Beginners is also a historical document signifying the end of an era. Drummer Thorsten Benning left the band a trio; pianist/saxophonist Christoph Closer, keyboardist/guitarist Morten Gass and bassist Robin Rodenberg will alternately fill the percussion role from here on, both in the studio and on the stage. Bohren for Beginners more than suffices as an introduction -- for most it will be enough. For fans it will be another exercise in total submission to the world of shadows. © Thom Jurek /TiVo

Innovations in hip-hop have a long history of tending toward abrasive sounds, from the call-to-arms sirens of Bomb Squad's production on early Public Enemy albums to the pseudo-industrial squall of Kanye West's controversially caustic Yeezus album. L.A. trio clipping takes this fondness for harsh sounds to the next level with CLPPNG, a strange hybrid of noise frequencies, brutally dark beats, and MC Daveed Diggs' unhinged, often ugly lyrical flow. The group began as a recording project between producers Jonathan Snipes and William Hutson, reworking commercial hip-hop songs by laying a cappella vocal tracks over new beats of their own creation made up of punishing power electronics and other gruesome noise tones -- an unexpected juxtaposition, and one that runs through a wide range of lawless sounds on the 14 sinister tracks that make up CLPPNG. A minute-long introduction track sounds like little more than Diggs rapping over a beatless din of Merzbow-like feedback, which runs immediately into the horror-rap lyrics and distorted bass monotony of "Body & Blood." Ex-Three 6 Mafia member Gangsta Boo shows up for a cameo verse on "Tonight," a minimal, electro-tinged beat serving as a backdrop for Diggs' portrait of last-call desperation. It's one of the most successful of the album's many experiments, at times so spare that little more than vocals and a cold keyboard loop occupy any space. "Get Up" is based around the easily recognizable buzz of an early-morning alarm clock, growing instantly grating despite the lyrics and musical accompaniment that show up. Much of the album can't be saved by Diggs' lyrical talent, which sounds like it could have been extracted from more traditional street hip-hop tracks and pasted on top of these antagonistic, sometimes unlistenable beats. Clipping clearly grows out of a shared love of hip-hop, with smart, sometimes cheeky references to greats of the genre as well as more obscure artists popping up every other song. The calculated glitchiness, raw noise, and unfinished composition of much of the music, however, does little to further innovations in hip-hop production or even cultivate interesting noise textures or add much to the "difficult music" conversation. Instead, the production on CLPPNG sounds all too often mismatched or disconnected with Diggs' lyrical performances. At its worst, the album feels amateurish and like a half-finished bedroom experiment that should have remained unshared, as with the tired skipping-CD noise experiments and uninspired sound collage moments that end the album. Even when the songs sound coherent and have some interesting moments, the jarring beats still come on as incessantly aggressive with no actual power, inspiration, or deeper statement driving the noise.© Fred Thomas /TiVo

Paul McCartney's fourth live album in four years (including Tripping the Live Fantastic: The Highlights) is arguably his weakest yet, full of competent but utterly unnecessary versions of Beatles classics and recent McCartney numbers. Really, does anyone need to hear a live version of "Biker Like an Icon"? And after putting out two separate live albums from his previous tour, it smacks of overkill to release this record, which has the exact same band and tone as Tripping the Live Fantastic. © Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

The most remarkable thing about the 12-year wait between Billy Idol's fifth album, Cyberpunk, and his sixth, Devil's Playground, isn't the enormity of the gap between records, it's that almost nobody noticed that he was gone. Such was the magnitude of Cyberpunk's failure -- it erased him from popular consciousness, shaming Billy into an ignoble exile where he barely seemed to register outside of a cameo in Adam Sandler's The Wedding Singer. Frankly, the muddled William Gibson-inspired techno-rock mess did carry a rancid stench that would take over a decade to shake, but the odd thing about Devil's Playground isn't that Billy pretends Cyberpunk doesn't exist -- frankly, any artist with sense would do that -- it's that he now pretends that he's always been a metalhead, as if his posturing in the '80s was more than an affectation. With his trusty sidekick guitarist Steve Stevens in tow, Idol cranks up the volume and never lets it slide, even on the infrequent ballads. Occasionally, they lighten things up a touch and wind up with some killer tunes -- in particular, "Sherri" is a terrific pop song, while the lively, acoustic-driven "Cherie" is a deft delight (is it a coincidence that the titles are nearly identical?). On this pair of hooky, catchy tunes named after girls, Devil's Playground points toward an interesting, fruitful direction for Idol -- one that acknowledges his veteran status without sounding aged -- that he hopefully may wind up taking next time out.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

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To say that any Divine Comedy album feels overly calculated is somewhat pointless, given that Neil Hannon's cheeky musical alter ego is a nostalgic figure caught in a 1930s time warp to begin with. It's all about affection, as it were. But Victory for the Comic Muse is almost mathematical in its calculation: open with a jaunty number to get the audience excited; slow it down for four consecutive reflective ballads to suggest maturity; split the album in half with a throwaway piano instrumental like an old movie intermission; inject some life into the proceedings with four sprightly, comic selections; and close with a tearjerker. Such a structure means the album feels like two separate entities, almost like two EP collections jammed together representing two distinctly different phases of Hannon's career. As such, its highlights are more satisfying on their own than in the context of an LP. The ELO-like opener, "To Die a Virgin," seems to be another stab at "Generation Sex" territory, right down to its Fellini-esque opening samples. The slower numbers that follow are pleasant enough, with some alternately witty and touching lyrics, but Hannon's voice is so subdued as to be positively inoffensive and his back-to-basics production is weak. The second half starts with some welcome drive, as Hannon tackles the Associates song "Party Fears Two" with whimsical aplomb. "Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World" presents the early Hannon eye twinkle and is reminiscent of previous creations like "Bernice Bobs Her Hair." Here Hannon suggests he needs a TV investigation just to understand his girlfriend. Yes, Victory for the Comic Muse has its funny moments, its sad asides, and some of the now standard Nyman minimalist moments, but in the Divine Comedy's overall discography it's a rather slight and often flat affair with unfortunate suggestions that Hannon might have milked the comic cow dry.© Tim DiGravina /TiVo

The veteran Canadian rockers' tenth studio album and the sequel to the 2000 concept LP of the same name, Spiritual Machines 2 picks right up where its high-minded predecessor left off. Based on author and futurist Ray Kurzweil's AI-themed 1999 book The Age of Spiritual Machines, the set commences with the first of several cursory tracks of spoken dialog from the author before launching into the ebullient lead single "Stop Making Stupid People Famous." Featuring a guest spot from Pussy Riot's Nadya Tolokonnikova, it's built around an elliptical disco backbeat and an equally dynamic vocal from frontman Raine Maida. It's a far cry from the late-'90s guitar-heavy esthetic that dominated 2018's Somethingness and is more or less indicative of what lies ahead. Having joyfully crucified vapid reality TV stars being allotted a platform to influence cultural and political change, Our Lady Peace follow up Kurzweil's prediction that the developed world will have a UBI (universal basic income) by the end of the 2030s with another bouncy, beat-driven number, "Future Disease." Even the more traditional-sounding cuts like "Holes" and "Good Die Young" largely abandon the arena-ready sound of past efforts in favor of something that hews closer to dystopian dance-rock. Some of that sonic attrition can be attributed to the involvement of producer Dave Sitek, whose punchy engineering helped TV on the Radio achieve such a distinctive sound. Despite the predilection toward rhythmic dynamism, the songs can sometimes feel melodically inert, relying too much on groove and repetition. Did Spiritual Machines really need a second act? Sure, why not. OLP has had two decades to recalibrate their world view, and the current zeitgeist is plenty ripe for commentary. It's not subtle, but there's more than enough joyful energy behind all of the armchair philosophizing and utopian world-building to recommend another trip into the future.© James Christopher Monger /TiVo

The title-track is still one of the most beguiling (if casually sexist) hits of its era, but the other 14 songs are even more interesting: Jesse Fuller-influenced jug band ("San Francisco Bay Blues," "See Me") and Tampa Red-style kazoo blues ("Maggie"), as well as the influence of Piano Red ("Mighty Man") and credible instrumental blues-rock ("Mother Fucker Boogie"). The hit "Johnny B. Badde" is here, and the band also covers rock & roll standards like "Baby Let's Play House," done in a surprisingly authentic manner for 1970. One of the CD reissue's two bonus tracks, "Tramp," busts up the mood a bit, with its fiddle accompaniment and a decidedly mournful tone, but the other, the hard-driving Howlin' Wolf-style "Mungo's Blues," which offers a tastefully lean Hubert Sumlin-influenced guitar solo, fits in perfectly with the existing album. The transfers are clean and bright, and the annotation is extensive.© Bruce Eder /TiVo

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For Cheers, his debut album, Obie Trice had some tough acts to follow. Less than a year earlier, fellow Shady Records signee 50 Cent had released the year's best-selling rap album, and before that, Eminem's burgeoning label had a pair of other multi-platinum, hit-filled releases: his own The Eminem Show and the 8 Mile soundtrack. Chances were, no matter how remarkable his album debut, Trice wasn't going to match the success of his predecessors -- not by a long shot. Perhaps that's why he begins his album with "Average Man," a standoffish statement-of-purpose that showcases his humble persona. Trice is certainly no "P.I.M.P." like 50, nor is he so self-important that he lashes out at "White America" like Eminem. He's just an "Average Man," a long-struggling rapper from Detroit who "rose from zero to hope." This theme of urban actualization informs the majority of Cheers: the evolution from nickel-and-dime hustling to big-time rapping ("Here's a toast to never looking back again...this is it, my niggas/This what we boast about," he raps on the title track). Discounting his affiliations, Trice is just another poor dude from the hood with nothing to lose, through and through, and that in itself is novel circa 2003, when innumerable ghetto-fabulous, Pinocchio-nosed rappers made a business of telling tall tales and gloating ad infinitum. Of course, it helps that Trice gets top-shelf productions from Eminem, Dr. Dre, and Timbaland, as well as high-profile features from Em, Dre, 50, Nate Dogg, and Busta Rhymes. Like 50's Get Rich or Die Tryin', which was similarly conceived by the Shady collective, Cheers is such a well-crafted album that it's a worthwhile listen regardless of whether or not you care much for the protagonist himself. Trice is a fine rapper -- thoughtful, sincere, gruff, and quick -- but perhaps a bit too "average" for casual rap listeners. In fact, you could call him middle-of-the-road: hardcore but not gangsta; swaggering but not big-pimpin'; witty but not hysterical; smart but not brilliant. That's okay, though. It's his persona -- he's the Everyman rapper. And besides, his producers more than compensate for his plainness, as does the solidness of his album. Cheers boasts 74 straight minutes of inventive production, original ideas, thought-out lyrics, and straight-up MCing -- even if it lacks outright hits à la "In da Club" or "Lose Yourself." So cheers, indeed -- to Trice, that is -- because his debut is quite an accomplishment and deserves accolade, even if it's not a commercial juggernaut like its fellow Shady releases.© Jason Birchmeier /TiVo

Melodramatic ham that he is, Kenneth Branagh seldom lets a minute go by in his screen adaptations of Shakespeare without some kind of musical accompaniment. Patrick Doyle is a shameless enabler for Branagh's music addiction, dealing out 24 tracks worth of sticky sweet orchestrations to satisfy the director's jones. Much Ado About Nothing was Branagh's second Shakespeare film, and at the time of its release his ebullient directorial style seemed radiant and charming. The film was widely regarded as a magnificently robust Hollywood popularization of one of the Bard's cheekiest comedies. But Branagh's unwinking earnestness began to wear thin in later efforts like Hamlet and Love's Labours Lost, making Much Ado seem somewhat light weight in retrospect. Doyle's contribution is nevertheless suitably sweeping and frothy, even if it does borrow rather too liberally from his previous (and superior) compositions for Henry V. As usual, Doyle's greatest work comes in classical vocal tracks like the dirge-like choral passage "Pardon Goddess of the Night" and the winsome musical setting for Shakespeare's poem "Sigh No More Ladies," which receives a beautiful reading in the opening credits by the incomparable Emma Thompson. These help to compensate for the egregiously swollen romantic pieces that underscore ridiculous shots of a lovestruck Branagh splashing around in Venetian fountains.© Evan Cater /TiVo

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To say that any Divine Comedy album feels overly calculated is somewhat pointless, given that Neil Hannon's cheeky musical alter ego is a nostalgic figure caught in a 1930s time warp to begin with. It's all about affection, as it were. But Victory for the Comic Muse is almost mathematical in its calculation: open with a jaunty number to get the audience excited; slow it down for four consecutive reflective ballads to suggest maturity; split the album in half with a throwaway piano instrumental like an old movie intermission; inject some life into the proceedings with four sprightly, comic selections; and close with a tearjerker. Such a structure means the album feels like two separate entities, almost like two EP collections jammed together representing two distinctly different phases of Hannon's career. As such, its highlights are more satisfying on their own than in the context of an LP. The ELO-like opener, "To Die a Virgin," seems to be another stab at "Generation Sex" territory, right down to its Fellini-esque opening samples. The slower numbers that follow are pleasant enough, with some alternately witty and touching lyrics, but Hannon's voice is so subdued as to be positively inoffensive and his back-to-basics production is weak. The second half starts with some welcome drive, as Hannon tackles the Associates song "Party Fears Two" with whimsical aplomb. "Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World" presents the early Hannon eye twinkle and is reminiscent of previous creations like "Bernice Bobs Her Hair." Here Hannon suggests he needs a TV investigation just to understand his girlfriend. Yes, Victory for the Comic Muse has its funny moments, its sad asides, and some of the now standard Nyman minimalist moments, but in the Divine Comedy's overall discography it's a rather slight and often flat affair with unfortunate suggestions that Hannon might have milked the comic cow dry.© Tim DiGravina /TiVo