When Pink Floyd bassist-turned-solo artist Roger Waters announced plans to re-imagine the band's iconic Dark Side Of The Moon, puzzled looks rightly ensued.  He even said to Variety, "We all thought I was mad but the more we considered it, the more we thought 'isn't that the whole point?'" Waters, who wrote much of Dark Side and is no stranger to controversy, has offered that Redux's relation to the original is, "Not to supersede it or to replace it, but to remember it, and as an adjunct to it, and to progress the work of the original concept of the original record and all those original songs."  Opener "Speak to Me" now features spoken text that is actually the lyrics from "Free Four," which appears on Pink Floyd's 1972 album Obscured By Clouds: "The memories of a man in his old age, are the deeds of a man in his prime/ You shuffle in the gloom of the sick room and talk to yourself as you die/ For life is a short, warm moment and death is a long, cold rest." "On The Run" is prefaced with "Today, I awoke from a dream/ It was a revelation, almost Patmosian, whatever that means/ But that's evidently another story/ It began with some standard bullshit fight with evil/ In this case, an apparently all-powerful hooded and cloaked figure," which was something Waters wrote down after waking up from a dream in July, 2021.  A number of talented musicians join Waters, among them: Gus Seyffert on bass, guitar, backing vocals; Joey Waronker on drums; Jonathan Wilson on guitars and synth.  In the case of the original single "Money," once an indictment of capitalism, Waters slows the pace, adds cello accents and a menacing piano part, and switches into a whispery Tom Waits-Leonard Cohen conspiratorial growl. The new lyrics are about a heavyweight boxing match, the devil, and a Faustian deal. One of rock's enduring masterpieces has now become the backdrop for a spoken word piece where Waters imparts the perspective he's gained since the album's original release in 1973. © Robert Baird/Qobuz

After Reprise, which revisited its greatest hits in 2021 with the Budapest Art Orchestra string quartet, Moby is diving back into its archives for this new album with Deutsche Grammophon. It's not just any old music, however: “I made a point of only selecting music that was written or recorded in New York.” Once again, it is a question of taking pieces from his catalogue and transposing them into the orchestral world. It is here that we can see the importance of having a label like Deutsche Grammophon; they sent a chamber ensemble to the studio and managed to include a great cast of guests. In particular we find the American star Gregory Porter on In My Heart, as well as the Australian rocker Dougy Mandagi of The Temper Trap on a very classy version of Extreme Ways, which is taken from his 2002 ‘18’ album and also on the soundtrack to the famous film series Jason Bourne. The version of South Side with Ricky Wilson (Kaiser Chiefs) is noteworthy too; Gwen Stefani featured on the original. A Moby gala! © Smaël Bouaici/Qobuz

Over the past 24 years, Tracey Thorn has released four solo albums and published four books. Ben Watt founded a label, Buzzin' Fly, and made his own solo records. But it's been nearly a quarter century since the married duo produced a record together as Everything but the Girl. Fuse is worth the wait. During that time, and before, the band's influence has remained strong—there's no shortage of singers cooing beautiful misery over drum-and-bass beats. But, as Romy Madley Croft of The xx has said of Thorn: "One of my goals always is to say a lot while saying very little … and I definitely think that Tracey does that." On lush "Nothing Left To Lose," Thorn sounds as smoky and soulful as ever against Watt's sonic reverberations, even as she gives in to submissive desperation. "I'm here at your door/ And I've been here before/ Tell me what to do/ Cause nothing works without you/ I know the hour is late/ And I know you'll make me wait." At one point, the glitch beat drops down, then out, and you hear Thorn take a breath in—and it's as intimately meaningful as any words. She sounds comfortable wearing Dusty Springfield's mantle on stark and spare, deep and dark "Run A Red Light" and "When You Mess Up." The latter doesn't have a traditional ending; instead, it's just Thorn singing "Christ, we all mess up" as the music lingers, unsure if she'll return, then fades—content not to put a bow on it. Watt puts a sort-of AI effect on Thorn's voice for that song and adds an electronic tremor to it for "Caution To The Wind." "We have to fuck up my voice," Thorn has said of the record. "We were desperate to fuck up my voice. It's one of the key signatures of the band, so it was the most fun thing," Thorn has said of the experiment. The duo said they wrote the lyrics for shimmering "Lost" by typing "I lost..." into Google for auto-fill results. "I lost my place/ I lost my bags … I lost my perfect job/ I lost the plot," Thorn sings, before delivering the gut punch: "I lost my faith and my best friend/ I lost my mother." She gets lyrically playful on dreamy "No One Knows We're Dancing" ("First up, this is Fabio/ He drives here from Torino/ Parking tickets litter/ His Fiat Cinquecento") and sunny "Karaoke" (A guy then goofed through Elvis/ Why not, I thought, why not?/ If you want it you can own it/ Just aim, then take a shot"), one setting the scene at a dance club and the other at a karaoke bar. "After so much time apart professionally, there was both a friction and a natural spark in the studio when we began," Thorn has said of musically reuniting with her husband. "And it ended in a kind of coalescence, an emotional fusion. It felt very real and alive." © Shelly Ridenour/Qobuz

The second in a series of catalog re-recordings and revisions, Red [Taylor's Version] finds Taylor Swift revisiting her self-styled pop breakthrough Red. Released nine years after the original album, Red [Taylor's Version] does bear a few signs of maturation, notably on the explicitly pop moments, such as "I Knew You Were Trouble," "22," and "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together," which seem ever so slightly muted when compared to the 2012 versions. Nevertheless, much of the point of the re-recordings is to get these new versions as close to the original versions as possible so they can be easily licensed and to that end, Swift succeeds admirably. The more interesting part of Red [Taylor's Version] arrives in the second half when Swift records songs left in the vault, including "Better Man" -- a song she gave to Little Big Town, who won a Grammy for Best Country/Duo Group Performance in 2018 for their recording -- and duets with Phoebe Bridgers ("Nothing New"), Chris Stapleton ("I Bet You Think About Me"), and Ed Sheeran ("Run"). The highlight of these is a ten-minute version of "All Too Well," a bitter ballad that was already one of the peaks of Red and is now turned into an epic kiss-off. This, along with excavated songs, are reason enough for Swift to revisit Red and they, not the re-recordings, are the reason to return to Red [Taylor's Version].© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

When Meteora landed in 2003, Linkin Park were on top of the rock world with a debut that would go on to become one of the best-selling albums of the 21st century and a mountain of pressure for a follow-up. So when critics got hold of what they considered Hybrid Theory 2.0, it might have seemed like the group couldn't live up to the early hype. However, Meteora was another globe-dominating smash that expanded their sonic boundaries and added a slew of hits to their repertoire, offering a matured, fully realized vision of the Linkin Park sound. That winning collision of alternative metal, electronic production, and old school hip-hop was expanded to epic scope, taking everything that worked on the first pass, amplifying it, and setting the stage for their various forays in the decade to come. In the eye of the storm whipped up by drummer Rob Bourdon, guitarist Brad Delson, bassist Dave Farrell, and producer/artistic mastermind Joe Hahn, the band's heart -- vocalist Chester Bennington and rapper Mike Shinoda -- delivers what are arguably the finest examples of their trademark vocal back-and-forth. On lead single "Somewhere I Belong," Bennington pivots between pensive whispers and anguished cries as Shinoda tries to cleanse himself of the relatable self-doubt and fear that connected the band to a legion of listeners. That inner turmoil was key to making them such a generational voice, and those emotions were pushed to further extremes across tracks like the towering "Lying from You" (home to one of Bennington's bloodiest throat-shredders); the menacing, riff-packed assault "Hit the Floor"; and the soaring "From the Inside," a stadium-sized combo of "Crawling" and "My December." Beyond these familiar moments, the band also made fearless jumps into new territory, dropping an East Asian shakuhachi flute into the Shinoda rap showcase "Nobody's Listening," joining strings and programmed loops on the skittering, near-electronica "Breaking the Habit," and hinting at future soundtrack work with the atmospheric turntable extravaganza "Session." Two tracks in particular have made this a classic in the Linkin Park catalog. From the first notes of the sampled string loop, it was clear that "Faint" was unlike anything they'd done before. Atop galloping riffs and that repeated melody, it energized Meteora with a bright freshness that was smashed by a lurching drop and another one of Bennington's toe-curling death roars. On the other end of the spectrum, "Numb" built upon the desperation and frustration of "In the End," amplified by a melodic keyboard riff, pensive production, a chest-caving guitar-and-drum attack, and one of Bennington's most impassioned deliveries. As every element gels together at the close, he wails, "And I know I may end up failing too/But I know you were just like me with someone disappointed in you," releasing a pain so palpable that the catharsis almost feels good. Selling that pain with a side of hope generated another international hit that cemented the group as one of the top acts of their generation. Although they'd soon switch things up with far different results, Meteora stands tall as the most refined representation of the "classic" Linkin Park sound, an enduring statement that helped the young band capture lightning in a bottle for a second time.© Neil Z. Yeung /TiVo

One would be hard-pressed to name a rock album whose influence has been as broad and pervasive as The Velvet Underground & Nico. While it reportedly took over a decade for the album's sales to crack six figures, glam, punk, new wave, goth, noise, and nearly every other left-of-center rock movement owes an audible debt to this set. While The Velvet Underground had as distinctive a sound as any band, what's most surprising about this album is its diversity. Here, the Velvets dipped their toes into dreamy pop ("Sunday Morning"), tough garage rock ("Waiting for the Man"), stripped-down R&B ("There She Goes Again"), and understated love songs ("I'll Be Your Mirror") when they weren't busy creating sounds without pop precedent. Lou Reed's lyrical exploration of drugs and kinky sex (then risky stuff in film and literature, let alone "teen music") always received the most press attention, but the music Reed, John Cale, Sterling Morrison, and Maureen Tucker played was as radical as the words they accompanied. The bracing discord of "European Son," the troubling beauty of "All Tomorrow's Parties," and the expressive dynamics of "Heroin" all remain as compelling as the day they were recorded. While the significance of Nico's contributions have been debated over the years, she meshes with the band's outlook in that she hardly sounds like a typical rock vocalist, and if Andy Warhol's presence as producer was primarily a matter of signing the checks, his notoriety allowed The Velvet Underground to record their material without compromise, which would have been impossible under most other circumstances. Few rock albums are as important as The Velvet Underground & Nico, and fewer still have lost so little of their power to surprise and intrigue more 50 years after first hitting the racks.© Mark Deming /TiVo

Yusuf is a talented singer and songwriter with an interesting past – in the 1960s and '70s he was the internationally famous pop singer Cat Stevens, whose thoughtful, soulful songs often had a spiritual bent. After the release of his 1978 album Back to Earth, Cat Stevens walked away from his career in music, embracing the Muslim faith and taking the name Yusuf Islam. In 2006, he released the album An Other Cup, credited to Yusuf, that found him gingerly easing back into the folk-influenced pop that made him famous, and since then, Yusuf has been making music that aims to strike a balance between the musical personality of his most famous work and his present-day spiritual focus and his dreams of a more just, peaceful, and generous world. In terms of this match of form and content, 2023's King of a Land may be the best album Yusuf has delivered since returning to popular music (and like his last several releases, it's credited to Yusuf/Cat Stevens, suggesting he's at peace with his musical past while wanting to remind us he's not exactly the man he used to be). Working with Paul Samwell-Smith, who produced the bulk of his 1970s work, on King of a Land Yusuf writes melodies that are more artful than his best-known hits but have a very recognizable warmth, and a mood that finds room for both joy and gravity. The lyrics are open in his devotion to God and our shared need for a more merciful world. The album's artwork features illustrations by Peter H. Reynolds, portraying a young boy in situations that match the stories and themes of the songs, and many of the tunes feel like fables for young and old, songs whose messages are clear but express their lessons with a gentle touch that doesn't feel doctrinaire or judgemental. (Significantly, "Son of Mary" is a compact retelling of the life of Jesus, subtly but firmly affirming that we all worship the same God). King of a Land is not quite pop-folk in the way "Peace Train" or "Moonshadow" were, yet the music is engaging and seems intended to soothe a troubled spirit, and though Yusuf's voice is just a bit sandy around the edges compared to his salad days, his performances are passionate without histrionics and speak of a wisdom he wants to share with all willing to listen. It's a well crafted and often moving album that mixes a bit of Cat Stevens' sound with Yusuf's heart and soul, and it honors both with skill and sincerity.© Mark Deming /TiVo

4 stars out of 5 -- "AVENTINE is a strikingly spare album of great, but frosty, beauty."© TiVo

Drummer Gary Powell and bassist John Hassall provide the Libertines necessary structure and foundation, but it is the wonderfully rococo decorations of terror twins Carl Barât and Pete Doherty that give the band its bloody emotion: the charming devil rascality that lives up to the name. Their first album in nine years finds the foursome cleaner (presumably, in multiple meanings of the word) and tighter than the deliciously dangerous-sounding records that helped define post-Britpop in the aughts, yet it still feels like a natural progression. Single "Run Run Run" is pretty classic Libertines: romantic garage rock, pulled off with an imperious dishevelment that could ignite a dancefloor. Barât delivers the nihilism with a chip on his shoulder, crooning, "It's my party and I'll cry if I want to/ Light the fuse, sing the blues, I can die if I want to/ Tonight we're gonna bring tomorrow's happiness." Sunny "Mustangs" finds the band borrowing from Lou Reed and glam; cowbell, Doherty's falsetto back-up and what sounds like a full choir on the bridge add up to excellent chaos: "Sister Mary shivers—whooo!" Both tracks easily belong on a future Best Of. Doherty steps up with a slightly breathless delivery for the garage-meets-sea-chanty "I Have a Friend"—making room for Barât to unleash a fiery bit of guitar work—and "Merry Old England." The latter is a surprising adventure, packing in Latin percussion and '70s neo-soul, as well as melodramatic strings and fog-moody piano; it's the kind of epic they could not have pulled off in the bad old days. Strings and piano grandiosity also elevate the haunted ballad "Man with the Melody," while "Oh Shit" is bright and bouncy blue-collar pop-punk that sounds like a party in the studio. The same goes for "Be Young"—which marries a pub-singalong chorus, a searing guitar solo and even a Two-Tone breakdown; is it any wonder the whole thing ends in a coughing fit? Murder ballad "Night of the Hunter" injects a romantic Balkan feel into a Gallagher Bros. style melody, switching between a Greek Chorus narrator ("A-C-A-B/ Tattooed on your knuckles/ Does the world know what it means?") and the weary antagonist ("I was calling to tell you, baby/ They're taking me away for a while/ Ah, you can't blame me, it's this world that's made me"). Unvarnished "Baron's Claw" hints at Weimar cabaret mystery with drunken horn and tinkling piano. In the messy past, there was always a danger that things could just fall apart for the Libertines; now, there's a joy in hearing them keep it together. © Shelly Ridenour/Qobuz

With its more ambitious compositions, Help! had made it clear that the Beatles did not intend to stay remain that nice little group from Liverpool much longer. Four months later, Rubber Soul was released in December of 1965, and the Fab Four show that they have indeed grown up artistically. There are more mature texts (written by Bob Dylan, a real influence on the Beatles as confessed by McCartney himself) and more daring harmonies. They even bring their instrumentation to unknown territory as demonstrated by Norwegian Wood or the bass on Think for Yourself. As for ballads like Girl or Michelle, they are beautiful and will remain timeless. Above all, this sixth studio album mixes more musical styles - be it pop (of course) but also R&B, folk, soul and psychedelic. Rubber Soul also marks the point where we see each member of the group affirm their unique personalities, and with the support of producer George Martin, John, Paul, George and Ringo were encouraged to move away from their "youthful" habits. ©MZ/Qobuz, Translation/BM

The follow-up to 2022's excellent, Grammy-winning album Crooked Tree, Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway's latest continues the youthful, feminine-but-not-girly bluegrass thread woven by Alison Krauss and Sara Watkin; it would be wrong to call Tuttle's femininity incidental. It's fascinating to hear a woman's point of view about the butch and burly California gold rush, as on "El Dorado." "I'm Gold Rush Kate from the Golden State/ With a nugget around my neck/ I keep the red lights burning bright/ from here to Hell and back," she sings against fleet banjo, clear-as-a-bell dobro and her own spirited guitar; it's true-blue mountain music recast for dusty goldfields. Tuttle also celebrates her home state on "San Joaquin," a spritely number about riding the rails out west written with Old Crow Medicine Show's Ketch Secor, a frequent collaborator on City of Gold. Loose and meandering in a comfortable way, "Yosemite" is inspired by Tuttle's true story of taking a cross-country road trip with her partner and breaking up along the way: "When all that remains is the gas in the tank/ The tread on the tires/ What's left in the bank," she sings alongside duet partner Dave Matthews. There's what Tuttle calls "a love song about death" (ballad "When My Race Is Run") about wanting a romance so big it carries over to the afterlife and one about falling in love with yourself: the Jerry Jeff Walker-esque "The First Time I Fell in Love," which finds Tuttle delivering a quick tongue-twister ("topsy-turvy wild and whirly in a hurry full of worry roller coaster ride"). "Next Rodeo'' is a cowgirl romp, "Down Home Dispensary"—a plea to Tennessee legislators to legalize marijuana—turns on the boogie-woogie charm, and "More Like a River" flirts with a gentle jug-band melody. Stomper "Alice in the Bluegrass" reorients Alice in Wonderland in a backwoods country setting. Erie, swampy-sounding "Stranger Things" showcases band member Bronwyn Keith-Hynes' keening fiddle alongside hummingbird dobro by bluegrass legend Jerry Douglas, who also produced the record. And it's a bracingly cold creekwater shock to hear Tuttle spin the gothic tale of "Goodbye Mary," a ballad about a man encouraging his girl to cause a miscarriage she doesn't want. It all leads to her death which, viewed through a modern lens and told by a woman, feels like a frightening survey of a post-Dobbs world. © Shelly Ridenour/Qobuz

Having re-established his reputation with the musically varied, lyrically enraged Freedom, Neil Young returned to being the lead guitarist of Crazy Horse for the musically homogenous, lyrically hopeful Ragged Glory. The album's dominant sound was made by Young's noisy guitar, which bordered on and sometimes slipped over into distortion, while Crazy Horse kept up the songs' bright tempos. Despite the volume, the tunes were catchy, with strong melodies and good choruses, and they were given over to love, humor, and warm reminiscence. They were also platforms for often extended guitar excursions: "Love to Burn" and "Love and Only Love" ran over ten minutes each, and the album as a whole lasted nearly 63 minutes with only ten songs. Much about the record had a retrospective feel -- the first two tracks, "Country Home" and "White Line," were newly recorded versions of songs Young had played with Crazy Horse but never released in the '70s; "Mansion on the Hill," the album's most accessible track, celebrated a place where "psychedelic music fills the air" and "peace and love live there still"; there was a cover of the Premiers' garage rock oldie "Farmer John"; and "Days That Used to Be," in addition to its backward-looking theme, borrowed the melody from Bob Dylan's "My Back Pages" (by way of the Byrds' arrangement), while "Mother Earth (Natural Anthem)" was the folk standard "The Water Is Wide" with new, environmentally aware lyrics. Young was not generally known as an artist who evoked the past this much, but if he could extend his creative rebirth with music this exhilarating, no one was likely to complain.© William Ruhlmann /TiVo

With Aventine, Agnes Obel gives a little more depth to the intimate, atmospheric and dreamlike world of her first album, the grandiose Philharmonics. Behind a stripped-down piano borrowed from Erik Satie, the Berlin-based Danish artist has added even more grandeur to her miniatures. Her reverberating voice magnifies these immense sonic spaces and  we are left to float along in this sublime sonic material. This waking dream is even more subtle than its predecessor: speckled with a few violins here or a cello there. This record confirms the talent of a timeless musician. © MD/Qobuz

Picking up on the ‘60s soul undercurrent of Brothers, the Black Keys smartly capitalize on their 2010 breakthrough by plunging headfirst into retro-soul on El Camino. Savvy operators that they are, the Black Keys don’t opt for authenticity à la Sharon Jones or Eli “Paperboy” Reed: they bring Danger Mouse back into the fold, the producer adding texture and glitter to the duo’s clean, lean songwriting. Apart from “Little Black Submarines,” an acoustic number that crashes into Zeppelin heaviosity as it reaches its coda, every one of the 11 songs here clocks in under four minutes, adding up to a lean 38-minute rock & roll rush, an album that’s the polar opposite of the Black Keys’ previous collaboration with Danger Mouse, the hazy 2008 platter Attack & Release. That purposely drifted into detours, whereas El Camino never takes its eye off the main road: it barrels down the highway, a modern motor in its vintage body. Danger Mouse adds glam flair that doesn’t distract from the songs, all so sturdily built they easily accommodate the shellacked layers of cheap organs, fuzz guitars, talk boxes, backing girls, tambourines, foot stomps, and handclaps. Each element harks back to something from the past -- there are Motown beats and glam rock guitars -- but everything is fractured through a modern prism: the rhythms have swing, but they’re tight enough to illustrate the duo’s allegiance to hip-hop; the gleaming surfaces are postmodern collages, hinting at collective aural memories. All this blurring of eras is in the service of having a hell of a good time. More than any other Black Keys album, El Camino is an outright party, playing like a collection of 11 lost 45 singles, each one having a bigger beat or dirtier hook than the previous side. What’s being said doesn’t matter as much as how it’s said: El Camino is all trash and flash and it’s highly addictive.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

In the liner notes to his volume of Columbia's Essential series, Bruce Springsteen immediately lays out the problem with hits collections: "In any body of work there are obvious high points. The rest depends on who's doing the listening. Where you were, when it was, who you were with when a particular song or album cut the deepest." All artists have this problem, but Springsteen has it more than most, since he not only has a deep and varied body of work, but he has a passionate, dedicated fan base. Within that following, there are listeners who prefer his big-hearted, sprawling early work, those who love the cinematic grandeur of Born to Run, those who love his stark, intimate acoustic ballads, and those who adore his pile-driving rockers. He's had hits in all of these styles, and he's had concert and album rock radio staples in all those styles -- all of these tunes for his basic canon, the "obvious high points" -- but he's such a strong songwriter and record-maker that this leaves behind songs that many other artists would be thrilled to call their best work, whether it's the epic street poetry of "It's Hard to Be a Saint in the City" or the old-time rock & roll throwaway of "Pink Cadillac." Neither of those tunes are on the double-disc, 30-track Essential Bruce Springsteen, but any two-disc set can't hold all of Springsteen's great songs. It can only offer a representative sampling, which means there will be lots of terrific tracks and fan favorites absent -- Springsteen admits this, citing "Growin' Up," "Racing in the Street," "Backstreets," and "My City of Ruins" as MIA, while others could make just as convincing an argument for "My Hometown," "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out," "Fade Away," "I'm on Fire," "Prove It All Night," "Adam Raised a Cain," and the list goes on. The strength of The Essential is that you never notice these songs are missing. Unlike the previous Bruce compilation, the misguided, haphazardly selected Greatest Hits, The Essential contains all the big songs -- not just the obvious hits of "Hungry Heart," "Born to Run," "Born in the U.S.A.," and "Glory Days," but selections from his first two albums that were ignored completely the previous time out -- and it also contains just the right amount of latter-day material from the acclaimed The Rising, plus "American Skin (41 Shots)" and "Land of Hope and Dreams," two songs previously only available on Live in New York City. It adds up to an ideal introduction to Springsteen's music, capturing all sides of his musical output while being a hell of a good listen. While the two main discs are for neophytes and casual fans, the third "bonus" disc is for the hardcore -- the kind of fans who will argue about the song selection on the previous two discs, and would be more interested in unreleased material than hits. This third disc is a clearing-house for items that should have made it to his previous rarities collection, Tracks, but didn't. This includes previously unreleased cuts, B-sides, contributions to soundtracks and benefit albums, covers, and an alternate, "country-blues" acoustic version of "Countin' on a Miracle" from The Rising. The disc follows a roughly chronological sequence and basically divides into early-'80s material and mid-'90s material. The '80s material has the edge due to the variety and strength of the material: the rampaging rocker "From Small Things (Big Things One Day Come)," a song Bruce gave to Dave Edmunds and has never released before now; the spare, tough "The Big Payback," a B-side; the searching "None but the Brave," cut during the Born in the U.S.A. sessions; the evocative "County Fair," cut after Nebraska; a cover of Jimmy Cliff's "Trapped," cut on the River tour; a wonderfully raucous live "Held Up Without a Gun," a variation on "You Can Look but You Better Not Touch" with topical lyrics previously released as a B-side. These are fantastic performances, and while there are also very good cuts of a more recent vintage -- such as the Joe Grushecky collaboration "Code of Silence," his title song from Tim Robbins' Dead Man Walking, and a fun version of "Viva Las Vegas" -- these '80s songs are the heart of the collection. It's an unexpected gift to have them officially released as a bonus disc to a hits collection, and for the hardcore, it's worth buying two discs of songs you already have just get these rarities. And it helps make The Essential Bruce Springsteen really live up to its title.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

Band on the Run is generally considered to be Paul McCartney's strongest solo effort. The album was also his most commercially successful, selling well and spawning two hit singles, the multi-part pop suite of the title track and the roaring rocker "Jet." On these cuts and elsewhere, McCartney's penchant for sophisticated, nuanced arrangements and irrepressibly catchy melodic hooks is up to the caliber he displayed in the Beatles, far surpassing the first two Wings releases, Wild Life and Red Rose Speedway. The focus found in Band on the Run may have to do with the circumstances of its creation: two former members quit the band prior to recording, leaving McCartney, wife Linda, and guitarist Denny Laine to complete the album alone (with Paul writing, producing, and playing most of the instruments himself). The album has the majestic, orchestral sweep of McCartney's Abbey Road-era ambition, with a wide range of style-dabbling, from the swaying, acoustic jazz-pop of "Bluebird" and the appealing, straightforward rock of "Helen Wheels" to the wiry blues of "Let Me Roll It" and the swaying, one-off pub sing-along "Picasso's Last Words (Drink to Me)." Though it lacks the emotional resonance of contemporaneous releases by John Lennon and George Harrison, McCartney's infallible instinct for popcraft overflows on this excellent release.© Al Campbell /TiVo

Dark and glistening. Like a cave on the French Riviera. That’s where Jagger and Richards' band – living as tax exiles - recorded the immense Exile on Main Street, a musical feast with dishes served as country (Sweet Black Angel, Sweet Virginia), gospel (Shine a Light), blues (Shake Your Hips) and visceral rock'n'roll (the opening of Rocks Off and the cult track Happy with Keith Richards on vocals). The Rolling Stones may have been at the height of fame, but this masterpiece came from the heart and soul, with a dark and dirty sound and a sincere and raw style. American roots music (country, blues, folk) had rarely sounded so original. Jagger sings like an inspired old sage. Richards unleashes sharp, sublime guitar riffs. After all these years, we still can’t find the slightest flaw in this double album which many consider to be The Rolling Stones’ best... © Marc Zisman/Qobuz