The soul music of the 21st century has sometimes had the unfortunate tendency to prioritise analog production techniques in order to bring about a revival, losing sight of making beautiful music. Jalen Ngonda, on the other hand, isn’t faking it. His first album, released on Daptone Records and entitled Come Around and Love Me, presents itself as a magnificent time machine. A contemporary dive into authentic Motown sound, we hear the formulae that brought in the golden age of the genre in the 70s, the bright congas that gave rhythm to Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On,” the guitar riffs that Isaac Hayes refines terrifically, and that high voice singing about love and its torments, crooning about pleas of the heart, the album’s main theme. Come Around and Love Me is a superb record, where the musicians seem to fade into the background in order to completely lend themselves to the lead performer, who takes up the space and shines. © Brice Miclet/Qobuz

This Is What We Do is the fifth album from the Neil Barnes' Leftfield project and comes some seven years after 2015's Alternative Light Source. The album sees Barnes bringing a fresh take to the dub-propelled breaks and bass of Leftfield’s past. Guest vocals come from reggae legend Earl 16, Fontaines D.C.'s Grian Chatten, and poet Lemn Sissay.© Rich Wilson /TiVo

The basic Blondie sextet was augmented, or replaced, by numerous session musicians (including lots of uncredited horn and string players) for the group's fifth album, Autoamerican, on which they continued to expand their stylistic range, with greater success, at least on certain tracks, than they had on Eat to the Beat. A cover of Jamaican group the Paragons' "The Tide Is High," released in advance of the album, became a gold-selling number one single, as did the rap pastiche "Rapture," but, despite their presence, the album stalled in the lower half of the Top Ten and spent fewer weeks in the charts than either of its predecessors. One reason for that, admittedly, was that Chrysalis Records pulled promotion of the disc in favor of pushing lead singer Debbie Harry's debut solo album, KooKoo, not even bothering to release a third single after scoring two chart-topping hits. But then, it's hard to imagine what that third single could have been on an album that leads off with a pretentious string-filled instrumental ("Europa"), and also finds Harry crooning ersatz '20s pop on "Here's Looking at You" and tackling Broadway show music in a cover of "Follow Me" from Camelot. Though more characteristic, the rest of the tracks are weak compositions indifferently executed. Thus Autoamerican was memorable only for its hits, which would be better heard when placed on a hits compilation.© William Ruhlmann /TiVo

Though Anita Baker got some airplay out of The Songstress, that promising solo debut didn't bring her financial security. In fact, Baker was earning her living as a legal secretary in her native Detroit when she signed with Elektra in the mid-'80s. Elektra gave her a strong promotional push, and the equally superb Rapture became the megahit that The Songstress should have been. To its credit, Elektra made her a major star by focusing on Baker's strong point -- romantic but gospel-influenced R&B/pop ballads and "slow jams," sometimes with jazz overtones -- and letting her be true to herself. Rapture gave Baker one moving hit after another, including "Sweet Love," "Caught up in the Rapture," "Same Ole Love," and "No One in This World." Praising Baker in a 1986 interview, veteran R&B critic Steve Ivory asserted, "To me, singers like Anita Baker and Frankie Beverly define what R&B or soul music is all about." Indeed, Rapture's tremendous success made it clear that there was still a sizeable market for adult-oriented, more traditional R&B singing.© Alex Henderson /TiVo

Considering that Sonic Youth lost Jim O'Rourke and found the custom-tweaked, irreplaceable guitars that were stolen in 1999 before heading into the studio to make Rather Ripped, it seemed that the album could be a big departure from what they'd been doing on Murray Street and Sonic Nurse -- possibly a return to the kind of music they could only make with those instruments, or perhaps an entirely different approach that reflected their revamped, old-is-new-again lineup. Rather Ripped ends up being of a piece with their previous two albums, and often plays like a stripped-down, slightly less-inspired Sonic Nurse. Once again, Kim Gordon contributes some of the best tracks here; "Reena" and "Jams Run Free" are equal parts dreamy and driving, while "The Neutral" is a sweet, low-key love song. Thurston Moore contributes a gently but powerfully political track à la Sonic Nurse's "Peace Attack" with "Do You Believe in Rapture?," a reflection on peace and apocalypse that's mostly serene, even if the guitar harmonics throughout the song add shivers of doubt and tension. "Rats" is a standard-issue Lee Ranaldo song, freewheeling and poetic (and with lines like "Let me place you in my past/With other precious toys," it has the sharpest lyrics on Rather Ripped), even if it's not quite as amazing as the previous album's "New Hampshire." Rather Ripped's rock songs are solid, but not amazing -- the interplay of Moore's and Ranaldo's guitars and Steve Shelley's drumming are the best things about "Sleepin' Around" and "What a Waste." Actually, the more atmospheric songs end up being some of the most compelling. "Lights Out" reeks of whispery, late-night cool, and the closing track, "Or," is one of the sparest and most oddly unsettling songs Sonic Youth has done in a while (not to mention a reminder that quiet doesn't always mean peaceful in this band's world). Rather Ripped is also surprisingly lean, with the songs on its first half feeling so tightly structured that they seem like radio edits. Only "Turquoise Boy" and "Pink Steam" really open up and deliver Sonic Youth's famously sprawling, jam-based sound. If Rather Ripped is a tiny bit disappointing, it's only because the band's playing outpaces their songwriting ever so slightly. It's a solidly good album, and if taken as part of a trio of albums with Sonic Nurse and Murray Street, it shows that Sonic Youth is still in a comfortable yet creative groove, not a rut. © Heather Phares /TiVo

Covenant started to bring Morbid Angel up out of the underground, as MTV gave them wider exposure on its late Headbanger's Ball. Guitarist Trey Azagthoth plays complicated, heavily detuned riffs, some with a lightning-fast picking style and others in a slower groove. Drummer Pete Sandoval is one of the genre's fastest, and his jackhammer style helps complete Morbid Angel's core sound. Their incredible chops and nonstop intensity may be exactly what you've been looking for, or you may find the lack of variation wearisome. © Steve Huey /TiVo

Maturity always seemed an alien concept to Oasis. The brothers Gallagher may have worshiped music made before their birth but there was no respect to their love: they stormed the rock & roll kingdom with no regard for anyone outside themselves, a narcissism that made perfect sense when they were young punks, as youth wears rebellion well, but the group's trump card was how their snottiness was leveled by their foundation in classic pop. This delicate balance was thrown out of whack after the phenomenal success of 1995's (What's the Story) Morning Glory?, when the group sunk into a pit of excess that they couldn't completely escape for almost a full decade. When Oasis did begin to re-emerge on 2005's Don't Believe the Truth they sounded like journeymen, purveyors of no-frills rock & roll. All this makes the wallop of 2008's Dig Out Your Soul all the more bracing. Colorful and dense where Don't Believe the Truth was straightforward, Dig Out Your Soul finds Oasis reconnecting to the churning psychedelic undercurrents in their music, sounds that derive equally from mid-period Beatles and early Verve. This is heavy, murky music, as dense, brutal, and loud as Oasis has ever been, building upon the swagger of Don't Believe and containing not a hint of the hazy drift of their late-'90s records: it's what Be Here Now would have sounded like without the blizzard of cocaine and electronica paranoia. Dig Out Your Soul doesn't have much arrogance, either, as Oasis' strut has mellowed into an off-hand confidence, just like how Noel Gallagher's hero worship has turned into a distinct signature of his own, as his Beatlesque songs sound like nobody else's, not even the Beatles. His only real rival at this thick, surging pop is his brother Liam, who has proven a sturdy, if not especially flashy songwriter with a knack for candied Lennonesque ballads like "I'm Outta Time." To appreciate what Liam does, turn to Gem Archer's "To Be Where There's Life" and Andy Bell's "The Nature of Reality," which are enjoyable enough Oasis-by-numbers, but Liam's numbers resonate, getting stronger with repeated plays, as the best Oasis songs always do. But, as it always does, Oasis belongs to Noel Gallagher, who pens six of the 11 songs on Dig Out Your Soul, almost every one of them possessing the same sense of inevitability that marked his best early work. Best among these are the titanic stomp of "Waiting for the Rapture" and the quicksilver kaleidoscope of "The Shock of the Lightning," a pair of songs that rank among his best, but the grinding blues-psych of "Bag It Up" and gently cascading "The Turning" aren't far behind, either. These have the large, enveloping melodies so characteristic of this work and what impresses is that he can still make music that sounds not written, but unearthed. These six tunes are Noel's strongest since Morning Glory -- so strong it's hard not to wish he wrote the whole LP himself -- but what's striking about Dig Out Your Soul is how its relentless onslaught of sound proves as enduring as the tunes. This is the sound of a mature yet restless rock band: all the brawn comes from the guitars, all the snarl comes from Liam Gallagher's vocals, who no longer sounds like a young punk but an aged, battered brawler who wears his scars proudly, which is a sentiment that can apply to the band itself. They're now survivors, filling out the vintage threads they've always worn with muscle and unapologetic style.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

With Destroy Erase Improve, Meshuggah shattered any preconceived notions about what death, thrash, and prog metal could be with one astoundingly accurate, calculated blow. The Swedish outfit managed to surpass their startlingly original, if relatively immature debut, Contradictions Collapse, with a record so pure in concept and execution, it borders on genius. Lyrical themes visualize the integration of machines with organisms as humanity's next logical evolutionary step, while the music backing it up is mind-bogglingly technical, polyrhythmic math metal -- the work of highly skilled men with powerful instruments. While the idea looks unwieldy on paper, Meshuggah handles it with a balance of raw guts and sheer brainpower, weaving hardcore-style shouts amongst deceptively (and deviously) simple staccato guitar riffs and insanely precise drumming -- often with all three components acting in different time signatures. Guitarist Fredrik Thordendal adds an element of weirdness with Allan Holdsworth-style neo-jazz fusion leads that serve as melodic oases amidst the jackhammer rhythms. While such bold, challenging arrangements could result in a wank-fest or, even worse, a chaotic mess, Meshuggah carefully synchronizes their bludgeoning instrumentation, embracing minimalism without excess and playing to the power of the song so the listener isn't neck-deep in over-composed indulgences. As a result, "Future Breed Machine," "Suffer in Truth," and "Soul Burn" are mind-bogglingly profound, integrating body, mind, and soul into a violently precise attack, the point being that change can be extraordinarily difficult -- if not maddening -- but the results are transcendent. While industrial metallers Fear Factory have attempted to tackle similar themes, Meshuggah outclasses them on all fronts, proved by the stunning brilliance of Destroy Erase Improve. The album is a bona fide '90s classic, a record boasting ideas so well-balanced -- natural yet clinical, guttural yet intelligent, twisted yet concise -- it muscled simplistic subgenres out of the way and confidently pointed toward the future of metal.© John Serba /TiVo

Even as the band was helping to define the basic tenets of the newly born doom/death metal movement, Halifax, England's Paradise Lost was already evolving at a fast clip. The group's second, aptly titled album, Gothic, though a perfectly logical step in retrospect, seemed at the time of its release like something of a departure for the band's earliest fans. This perception was largely enforced by the less deliberate, more energetic arrangements given songs like "Dead Emotion" and "Shattered," not to mention Paradise Lost's slightly cleaner approach to guitar crunch. Further standouts such as the title track, "Eternal," and "The Painless" also made cautious use of keyboards and even female vocals, which together added atmospheric nuances to the group's ultra-depressive power chords. Gaining in confidence, young vocalist Nick Holmes' growling style was still utterly unmusical here, but at least he was making himself heard over the band's monolithic din. His lyrics were also becoming increasingly more mature, and this maturity would help push Paradise Lost ahead of its demon-obsessed competitors with each subsequent album.© Eduardo Rivadavia /TiVo