Finally! The Strokes never stood taller in their Conversed feet than they did at their début 20 years ago. That's quite a while to be in the wilderness. In 2001, Is This It revitalised a moribund rock. Influenced by Velvet Underground and Television but also, more surprisingly, by Pearl Jam and Nirvana according to Albert Hammond Jr., the five boys headed by Julian Casablancas, son of the boss of Elite and Miss Denmark 1965, had the perfect lo-fi, minimalist rock sound and the nonchalant punk attitude to go with it. Naturally, everything had been well thought-out. "Make it sound old but like it’s from 2001", Casablancas once said. Back to sloppy guitars, bass and drums for fucked-up-sounding tracks. Down with electronics. The first album's miracle formula eroded under the weight of subsequent releases, ego duels, experiments with kidnapped synths, and it ended with the pale Comedown Machine (2013), relegating the New Yorkers to has-been status. But The New Abnormal and its prophetic title are inspired. With its visual portrayal of Bird On Money, Basquiat's exquisite tribute to Charlie Parker, The Strokes walked that thin line between underground and popular, the salt of the 80s. In the Big Apple, with Blondie. But also in Elizabeth's Kingdom. Impossible not to think of Human League's Don’t You Want Me when hearing Brooklyn Bridge to Chorus. Or Billy Idol's sharp lyricism and Morrissey's vocals on Bad Decisions. From the opening and for 45 minutes thereafter, everything will be moving. From the relentless gimmickry of The Adults Are Talking with Casablancas' busted falsetto, to the groovy Eternal Summer that calls up shades of Roger Waters on Pigs, to a plaintive Selfless with a Chris Martin tinge: Casablanca's voice is amazing, and he finally has something to say. To put some freshness back into their maturity, and oil into the sputtering engine, the quintet called upon their "saviour" Rick Rubin, founder of Def Jam. And they struck gold. Calculated melodies that feel spontaneous, synthetic textures with old-fashioned charm, economical guitars and broken-down tempos, everything works beautifully. A work with a chipped but refined beauty, both solar and lunar, that will stand the test of time. © Charlotte Saintoin / Qobuz

Discovered at the turn of the 90s through his active participation in the avant-garde improvisation group Supersilent, then as a sideman for the greatest names in Scandinavian jazz (from Jan Balke (Kyanos, Statements) to Arild Andersen (Electra), as well as Trygve Seim (Different Rivers, Sangam) and Christian Wallumrod (No Birch, Sofienberg Variations, A Year From Easter, The Zoo Is Far)), Norwegian trumpet player Arve Henriksen has since embarked on a prolific and delightfully digressive solo career. Most notably, he has recorded two major albums for ECM: Cartography in 2008 and Atmosphères in 2016, in association with Tigran Hamasyan, Eivind Aarset and Jan Bang.Connecting the ethereal poetry of Jon Hassell and the cultural nomadism of Don Cherry, while also bringing in touches of his country’s folkloric music (cf. his collaborations with singer Sinikka Langeland), the classical music world (cf. the vocal ensemble Trio Mediæval), electronic music, and his love for East Asian traditions (often leading his trumpet to take on a shakuhachi-like accent), little by little, Henriksen has imposed the paradoxical force of his ghostly musicality onto an album that sounds like absolutely enchanting nocturnal poetry. It’s as a duo that he now returns to the label ECM with Touch of Time, accompanied by Dutch pianist Harmen Fraanje, who has been very active in the field of European avant-garde jazz for over twenty years. Through a repertoire of original melodies defined by an extreme delicacy and a great lyrical softness, the two musicians come together to offer us music that is extremely fluid, made up of micro-reflections, breaths held over immensely wide stretches, and subliminal beats of a highly dreamlike quality. An excellent acoustic ambient record. © Stéphane Ollivier/Qobuz

After experimenting with synthesizers and a pop sound on his solo debut, Don Henley hits the mark on his sophomore release, Building the Perfect Beast. This album established Henley as an artist in his own right after many successful years with the Eagles, as it spawned numerous hits. While the songs seem crafted for pop radio, it's hard to fault him for choosing arrangements that would get his messages to the masses. Unlike most pop in the 1980s, however, Henley had deep intellectual themes layered beneath the synthesizer sounds and crisp production. In the opening song "Boys of Summer," he talks about trying to recapture the past while knowing that things will never be the same. Henley has a gift for writing about the heart and soul of America and for mixing his love for the country and small-town life ("Sunset Grill") with cynicism about government ("All She Wants to Do Is Dance") and modernization ("Month of Sundays"). Although the politics and the sound of the album make the decade of release easy to place, Henley's earnest delivery and universal messages give many of the tracks a timeless feel, which is no small feat. This is Henley's most consistent album, and it is the place to start for those wanting to sample his solo work.© Vik Iyengar /TiVo

Extreme's brand of hard rock balanced ambitious, progressive tendencies with catchy melodies owing more to the Beatles than anthemic arena rock; on III Sides to Every Story, the former tends to dominate. The album is divided into three "sides of the story" -- roughly speaking, "Yours" concentrates on politically oriented rockers showing off Nuno Bettencourt's virtuosity; "Mine" leans toward pop songs with warmly romantic sensibilities, plus an occasional philosophical lament; and "The Truth" tries to wrap things up into a coherent whole but dissolves into indigestible prog-rock excess. Thus, the thematic material can be likened to a less focused version of Pornograffitti. The album is wildly uneven, but amidst the indulgences there are some fine songs to be found: "Rest in Peace" displays both Bettencourt's technique and melodicism as a soloist, while "Seven Sundays" continues in their occasional lounge ballad vein, and "Tragic Comic" and "Stop the World" are two more intelligent, wounded-romantic pop gems.© Steve Huey /TiVo

The Sundays' debut album builds on the layered, ringing guitar hooks and unconventional pop melodies of the Smiths, adding more ethereal vocals and a stronger backbeat. As evidenced by the lilting, melancholy single "Here's Where the Story Ends," it's a winning combination, making Reading, Writing and Arithmetic a thoroughly engaging debut.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

It took the Sundays five years to deliver their third album, Static & Silence. Five years is a long time, especially in the quicksilver world of pop music, but the Sundays sound totally unbothered by their absence on Static & Silence. Instead of sounding labored and forced, the album is gentle and effortless, as if it were recorded five months after Blind instead of five years. In some ways, that's a disappointment -- it would have been nice for the duo to show some progression, considering all of their time off -- but the record delivers the pleasant, endearing jangle pop that is the Sundays' signature sound. There's certainly nothing as catchy as "Here's Where the Story Ends" on Static & Silence, and there aren't many songs that are instantly memorable, yet the album has a quiet charm that should satisfy most longtime fans.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

"On their second project, the group’s hazy R&B sounds pristine and precise, but the care and craft stop short of their lyrics."© TiVo

Featuring gentle, folk-based guitars and pop melodies, the Sundays' second album isn't much of a sonic departure from their first album. While it does have several fine numbers, it doesn't have as many outstanding songs as Reading, Writing and Arithmetic; nevertheless, Blind will please most fans of the group.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

Given the critical and commercial success of The English Riviera, Metronomy could have easily spent another album or two expanding on its polished, erudite pop. However, they're too mercurial a band to do the obvious thing. On Love Letters, they abandon their previous album's sleek precision for fuzzy analog charm. Metronomy recorded the album at London's Toe Rag studio, a fixture of British indie rock, and Joe Mount and company imbue these songs with the room's warmth and intimacy. Musically and emotionally, Love Letters is rawer than what came before it, trading breezy synth pop for insistent psych-rock and soul influences. The main carryover from The English Riviera is the increasing sophistication, and melancholy, in Mount's songwriting. Previously, his best songs were playful and ever so slightly emotional; on Love Letters, he flips this formula, penning songs filled with lost love, regrets, and just enough wit to sting. The album opens with three striking portraits of heartbreak: "The Upsetter" equals its distance with its urgency, capping it all with an achingly gorgeous guitar solo. "I'm Aquarius" traces the fallout of a star-crossed relationship impressionistically, with girl group-style "shoop doop"s almost overpowering Mount's reasons why it didn't work ("you're a novice/I'm a tourist"), as if memories of his ex crowd out everything else. "Monstrous" turns Metronomy's signature jaunty keyboards Baroque and paranoid, with a doomy organ that closes in when Mount sings "hold on tight to everything you love," and a counterpoint that captures the way loneliness and heartbreak circle each other. These songs set the stage perfectly for the desperate romance of "Love Letters" itself, which updates punchy, late-'60s Motown drama so well that it's easy to imagine the Four Tops singing it. Here and on "Month of Sundays"'s acid rock vistas, Metronomy's nods to the past feel more like footnotes than following too closely in anyone's footsteps. However, they sound more comfortable with their own quirks as well, giving more muscle to "Boy Racers" than their previous instrumentals, and more depth to "Reservoir," which is the closest it gets to a typical Metronomy song (if there is such a thing anymore). Confessional and insular, Love Letters is the work of a band willing to take pop success on their own terms and reveal a different -- but just as appealing -- side of their artistry in the process.© Heather Phares /TiVo

The Waterboys' departure from the self-described "big music" of the early to mid-'80s into the more pastoral Celtic folk-rock landscapes of Fisherman's Blues frustrated many longtime fans who thought that the group belonged in the same arenas as contemporaries like U2 or the Alarm, but it also brought in a new set of listeners who were looking for a young Fairport Convention or Steeleye Span. Taking its name from a passage in Scottish author, poet, and minister George MacDonald' fantasy novel Phantastes: A Faerie Romance for Men and Women, Room to Roam extends the scope of the group's previous effort by integrating that album's Irish and Scottish folk elements further into the rock and pop nether regions. If anything, Room to Roam captures head (and soon to be only) Waterboy Mike Scott at his most unabashedly Beatlesque, stringing together whispery interludes, pub-style jam sessions (of the traditional folk variety), sound effects, and genre-defying forays into soul ("Something That Is Gone"), country ("How Long Will I Love You?"), traditional folk ("Raggle Taggle Gypsy"), and full-on rock & roll ("Life of Sundays") -- the latter cut even dissolves into a group singalong of the Fab Four classic "Yellow Submarine." Of the two albums, Room to Roam balances these two worlds the most effectively, and while the more focused and nuanced Fisherman's Blues is the superior record, it lacks Roam's amiable, schizophrenic, and pioneering spirit. © James Christopher Monger /TiVo

The Sundays' debut album builds on the layered, ringing guitar hooks and unconventional pop melodies of the Smiths, adding more ethereal vocals and a stronger backbeat. As evidenced by the lilting, melancholy single "Here's Where the Story Ends," it's a winning combination, making Reading, Writing and Arithmetic a thoroughly engaging debut. © Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

As guitarist and frequent songwriter with the Jayhawks, Gary Louris was on hand from the group's atmospheric country-influenced early recordings to their later grand-scale pop productions, so it shouldn't be much of a surprise that Louris' first solo album should embrace both ends of this musical spectrum. Vagabonds manages to sound grand and organic at once, with the arrangements and production capturing a sense of the wide open spaces of Hollywood Town Hall and Rainy Day Music, especially on the beautifully heart-tugging "She Only Calls Me on Sundays," while also encompassing the more ambitious melodic conceits of Smile and Sound of Lies on tracks like "Black Grass" and "Omaha Nights." There's also quite a bit of stylistic cross-talk between these two poles, and Louris' lyrics reach for a more personal and philosophical tone than he's offered in the past. There's a poignant search for answers in "Omaha Nights" and a longing for the solace of love in "To Die a Happy Man" that digs deeper into the psyche than he's been willing to go in the past, and even simpler compositions such as "We'll Get By" and "I Wanna Get High" reveal a new level of maturity and a willingness to experiment. Louris has rarely if ever been in better form as a singer than he is on Vagabonds, delivering his lyrics with a passion and sincerity that serve their emotional power well, and his guitar work is as strong and forceful as ever. Chris Robinson of the Black Crowes produced the sessions (with Thom Monahan engineering), and the pairing is an inspired one; the result is an album that sounds full-bodied but natural and uncluttered, and gives Louris' fine songs plenty of room to reveal their virtues. Anyone who has followed the Jayhawks' career knows that Gary Louris is a major talent, and Vagabonds demonstrates he's still capable of making remarkable music outside the framework of the band.© Mark Deming /TiVo

Sixteen months after he made his proper debut with "Caroline," a frisky and sweeping track that eventually peaked at number 11 on the Hot 100 and went multi-platinum, Aminé followed up with Good for You, his first album. This features the big hit, along with a few of the subsequent singles. The Portland native tends to keep it lighthearted, but there's plenty of depth beneath the humor, as on the Charlie Wilson-assisted "Turf," colored with plain-spoken rhymes about the struggles of young adulthood and fame with a quick jab at gentrification. Additional guest appearances are made by Ty Dolla $ign, Nelly, and Offset.© TiVo

In the '90s, things became complicated for the Crusaders fans. Keyboardist Joe Sample, and tenor saxman Wilton Felder, recorded 1991's Healing the Wounds as the Crusaders for GRP, and the mid- to late-'90s found Felder and trombonist Wayne Henderson recording for various indie labels as the Jazz Crusaders (despite Sample's objections to their use of that name). Then, in 2002, Sample, Felder and drummer Stix Hooper reunited as the Crusaders -- not the Jazz Crusaders -- and recorded Rural Renewal for Verve. Henderson is the only original member who is absent on this CD, which is surprisingly solid. Because the Crusaders/Jazz Crusaders have been in a state of uncertainly since the '80s and recorded their share of uneven, disappointing albums, one greets Rural Renewal with a certain amount of trepidation. But this release is a pleasant surprise -- in fact, it is arguably the most consistent album that the improvisers have recorded in at least 20 years. And one man who can take some of the credit for that is producer Stewart Levine, who the group worked with extensively back in the '70s. Levine is obviously a positive influence on Rural Renewal, which finds Sample, Felder, and Hooper offering an inspired dose of fusion and jazz-funk. Thankfully, Levine lets the soloists have plenty of room to stretch out. Improvisation is a big no-no on smooth jazz/NAC stations, but this 2002 edition of the Crusaders doesn't pander to radio -- instead, spontaneity prevails for Sample, Felder, and Hooper, as well as trombonist Steve Baxter, Ray Parker Jr. (guitar) and special guest Eric Clapton (who plays guitar on two tracks). Rural Renewal falls short of essential, but it's still a welcome addition to their catalog.© Alex Henderson /TiVo