The War on Drugs' debut for Atlantic Records, A Deeper Understanding, is very much a follow-up to the group's critically acclaimed Top 30 breakthrough Lost in the Dream from three years prior. That album's notoriously meticulous blend of heartland rock influences, Bob Dylan, and a swirling dream rock constructed of Wurlitzers, tape effects, analog synths, and 12-string guitar, just to name a few components, is, if anything, even more expansive here. The Drugs recorded it as a six-piece with frontman/songwriter Adam Granduciel, bassist Dave Hartley, who's been in the picture since the band’s debut, keyboardist Robbie Bennett, drummer Charlie Hall, and multi-instrumentalists Jon Natchez and Anthony LaMarca, all but the latter of whom contributed to Lost in the Dream. There's no compromising to be found on their major-label debut, the first of a two-record deal that promises complete creative control to Granduciel. (To underscore that point, the first track released from A Deeper Understanding was the over-11-minute "Thinking of a Place.") The set's ten tracks drift unhurriedly over a course of more than an hour. Included along the way are a few additional timbres, such as the skittering electronic effects and stucco guitar textures of opener "Up All Night," the unexpected glint of glockenspiel on the bass-propelled tune "Holding On," and the saxophone on "Clean Living" with its sound distorted like a reflection. At first, these details hint at a possible redesign -- then just as quickly they don’t, as ears adjust to the broader palette. They weave their way into the hazy reverb, restrained pitch range, and shimmering, engulfing atmosphere that manages to never overpower Granduciel's gentle ruminations on relationships, overcoming, and just coping. Though there's nothing here to grab headlines, A Deeper Understanding reclaims and explores the distinctive soundscapes, vastness, and haunted psyche of Lost in the Dream, and that in itself is significant.© Marcy Donelson /TiVo

As big a hit as it was -- and it was a multi-platinum blockbuster, spinning off several chart-toppers -- it’s not easy to think of Whitney Houston’s 1985 debut as the dawning of a new era, but it was. Arriving in the thick of MTV, when the slick sounds of yacht-soul were fading, Whitney Houston is the foundation of diva-pop, straddling clean, cheery R&B and big ballads designed with the adult contemporary audience in mind. Houston’s background lay in the former -- actually, it was even riskier, encompassing a stint with the experimental Bill Laswell outfit Material -- and her benefactor Clive Davis knew all about selling records to the masses. Appealing as this album is, Davis may never have imagined how Whitney Houston would shift tastes, pushing toward skyscraping ballads where the singer’s affectations, not the songs, were paramount -- a move that later led to hollow records, but on Whitney Houston the songs were as important as the immaculate productions. Certainly, the showstopping “Greatest Love of All” provided the blueprint for decades of divas, but it’s the only overblown moment here, with the rest of the ballads -- notably “Saving All My Love for You” and “You Give Good Love” -- burning slowly and seductively, but what really impresses some 20-plus years on are the lighter tracks, particularly the breakthrough single “How Will I Know” and the unheralded “Thinking About You,” a dance/R&B hit co-written by Kashif that remains one of Whitney’s purest pop pleasures. These joyful, rhythmic moments faded away from Houston’s later work -- and also rarely surfaced on the records of those who followed her -- but their presence on this debut turns this into a fully rounded record, the rare debut that manages to telegraph every aspect of an artist's career in a mere ten songs. [The 2010 25th anniversary edition of Whitney Houston is expanded with five bonus tracks -- remixes of “Thinking About You,” “Someone for Me,” “How Will I Know,” a live version of “Greatest Love of All” from 1990, and a superfluous a cappella mix of “How Will I Know” -- and a bonus DVD containing music videos from the album, new interviews, and -- best of all -- Whitney’s star-making 1983 performance on The Merv Griffin Show.]© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

Perhaps it was inevitable that Bob Dylan would change direction at the end of the '70s, since he had dabbled in everything from full-on repudiation of his legacy to a quiet embrace of it, to dipping his toe into pure showmanship. Nobody really could have expected that he would turn to Christianity on Slow Train Coming, embracing a born-again philosophy with enthusiasm. He has no problem in believing in a vengeful god -- you gotta serve somebody, after all -- and this is pure brimstone and fire throughout the record, even on such lovely testimonials as "I Believe in You." The unexpected side effect of his conversion is that it gave Dylan a focus he hadn't had since Blood on the Tracks, and his concentration carries over to the music, which is lean and direct in a way that he hadn't been since, well, Blood on the Tracks. Focus isn't necessarily the same thing as consistency, and this does suffer from being a bit too dogmatic, not just in its religion, but in its musical approach. Still, it's hard to deny Dylan's revitalized sound here, and the result is a modest success that at least works on its own terms.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

Produced with the involvement of Nile Rodgers and approval from the estate of partner Bernard Edwards, this box set remasters and recirculates Chic's first three albums and the contemporaneous We Are Family, in essence a Chic LP fronted by labelmates Sister Sledge. Another disc compiles edits and mixes of Chic-headlined singles of the same era. (The Chic Organization's commissioned works for labels other than their Atlantic home base, namely Norma Jean's self-titled album and Sheila & B. Devotion's "Spacer," aren't included.) During this period, the band surfaced and instantly reigned in clubs and on the Billboard dance chart, and with "Le Freak" and "Good Times," took their slick and funky disco-soul hybrid to the top of the Hot 100. The recordings created everlasting aftershocks throughout commercial and underground music, consequently making guitarist Rodgers, bassist Edwards, drummer Tony Thompson, and a team of vocalists led by Alfa Anderson and Luci Martin (with invaluable assistance from Luther Vandross) unwitting instigators of rap, dance-pop, and house music. The albums, all of which went either gold or platinum and have depth beyond the hits (start with the stunning "At Last I Am Free" and heavenly "Thinking of You"), are packaged individually in replica sleeves, joined by a booklet with lengthy essays from Paul Morley and Touré. The vinyl edition adds a reproduction of the 12" debut, "Dance, Dance, Dance (Yowsah, Yowsah, Yowsah)" b/w "São Paulo," issued on Buddah prior to the band's switch to Atlantic, as well as a third essay, written by Ashley Kahn. Regardless of format, the box is a straightforward alternative to the outtakes/remixes-packed The Chic Organization Box Set, Vol. 1: Savoir Faire (2010) and two-disc summary The Chic Organization: Up All Night - The Greatest Hits (2013), both of which are wider in scope but were not distributed in the U.S.© Andy Kellman /TiVo

Ever since getting back together (much to everyone’s surprise) in 2014, Simply Red cannot be stopped! After exploring “white reggae”, the legendary group from the 80’s and 90’s have launched into “blue-eyed soul” (in other words, R&B by white guys). Isaac Hayes and James Brown often come to mind when listening to these ten songs, be it due to the sparkling brass (Thinking Of You), funky bass lines (Ring That Bell) or crazy Clavinet compositions (Badbootz). And what better a way to pay tribute to these 70s funk masters than with more laid-back tempos and lazy strings (Sweet Child, Complete Love, Tonight). Mick Hucknall’s voice offers the full range for what fans of this genre should expect. Blue Eyed Soul, which heads down a well-marked path, is above all a testimony to the famous red-haired singer’s genuine and endless admiration for this genre. © Nicolas Magenham/Qobuz

A Perfect Circle is one of those bands that nobody realized was needed until it happened. A grand claim, perhaps, but there's little question that the addicting combination of Keenan's aching voice and Howerdel's accomplished songs and production skills made for one of 2000's best splashes in whatever was left of "modern rock." That the band had in its initial pre-debut album tours performed an audacious, entertaining medley of Ozzy Osbourne's "Diary of a Madman" and the Cure's "Lovesong" -- regularly matching one's words with the other's music and vice versa -- indicates where Mer de Noms ended up. Howerdel's earlier work with Billy Corgan makes perfect sense as a result, since the Pumpkins regularly fused the extreme theatricality of metal and goth just so, but Howerdel's work is no clone. His guitar work operates on setting the mood rather than driving everything before it, balancing sheer power with a textured approach that's quite beautiful. Nine Inch Nails-inspired touches crop up in the distorted percussion of many songs, such as "Rose," but for all the derivations everything becomes its own smart fusion, with Keenan's vocals the killer touch. His abilities in delivering on-the-edge emotional collapse had long been clear thanks to Tool -- here, with a slightly different musical bed to carry things, he often holds back from complete explosiveness, but it's still clearly him, just about to crack. His astonishing call-and-response exchange on the single "Judith" makes another high point in his career. The choice of who else to make up the band was a smart one -- Lenchantin's violin and string arrangements add even further to the air of dark, moody mystery, while Josh Freese's abilities on drums once again come to the fore. Alan Moulder adds in some fine help on mixing, polishing the glowering sheen of Mer de Noms to a hard, sharp edge.© Ned Raggett /TiVo

It's hard not to wonder if Wilco's breakthrough 2002 release, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, would have been such a critical success and so eagerly embraced by the indie rock community if it hadn't become such a cause célèbre thanks to the band being unceremoniously dropped by Reprise Records, and then signed by Nonesuch after the album had become a hot item on the Internet. Much of the critical reaction to the album, while almost uniformly enthusiastic (and rightly so), had an odd undertow that suggested the writers were not especially familiar with Wilco's body of work, registering a frequent sense of surprise that an "alt-country" band would make such an adventurous album while ignoring the creative shape-shifting that had been so much a part of Jeff Tweedy and company's approach on Being There and Summerteeth. The irony is that 2004's A Ghost Is Born, the eagerly awaited follow-up to Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, is also the Wilco album with the strongest stylistic link to its immediate predecessor, as if their new fans are being given a moment to catch up. A Ghost Is Born hardly sounds like a retread of YHF, but the languid, ghostly song structures, the periodic forays into dissonance, and the pained, hesitant vocals from Jeff Tweedy that were so much a part of that album also take center stage here. But while much of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot had a cool and slightly removed feeling, A Ghost Is Born is considerably warmer and more organic; the extended instrumental breaks in several of the songs (two cuts are over ten minutes long) sound more like a group in full flight than the Pro Tools-assembled structures of YHF. And while Wilco's former secret weapon, Jay Bennett, is now out of the picture, the rest of the group (especially multi-instrumentalist Leroy Bach, keyboardist Mikael Jorgensen, and guitarist/co-producer Jim O'Rourke) fill the gaps with admirable grace and strength. If A Ghost Is Born has a flaw, it's in the songwriting; while this album is a "grower" if there ever was one, revealing more of its unexpected complexities with each spin, there are no songs here as immediately engaging as "War on War," "Heavy Metal Drummer," or "I'm the Man Who Loves You" from YHF, and while "Hummingbirds," "Handshake Drugs," and "Wishful Thinking" are tuneful and charming, they lack the resonance and emotional impact of Tweedy's strongest work. And the album's most purely enjoyable tune, the witty "The Late Greats," closes out the disc after the 15-minute drone dirge of "Less Than You Think," dramatically blunting its effectiveness. A Ghost Is Born confirms what old fans and recent converts already know -- that Wilco is one of America's most interesting and imaginative bands -- and it's brave and compelling listening. But if you're expecting another genre-defying masterpiece, well, maybe we'll get one of those next time.© Mark Deming /TiVo

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This "two-fer" from P.O.D. includes the popular alternative/rap-metal outfit's The Fundamental Elements (1999) and Satellite (2001). Of the two, the rousing, hopeful, and surprisingly emotional Satellite is the best, boasting two of the band's biggest songs in "Alive" and "Youth of the Nation." The group's full-length debut, The Fundamental Elements, is decent as well, but lacks the cohesion and heft of its better half.© James Christopher Monger /TiVo

Ocala, FL-based post-hardcore outfit A Day to Remember's third full-length offering opens with the blistering "The Downfall of Us All," a hugely melodic slice of metal-infused punk-pop bliss that's sure to land a second life in countless montages on MTV reality shows and 30-second cola commercials. What follows is a collection of perfectly executed and fairly standard clean vocal post-hardcore emo-pop that both revels in and illuminates the limitations of the genre. While lead singer Jeremy McKinnon fulfills his duty as a clean/screamo switch-hitter throughout Homesick, the incessant group vocals provide the thread from which the album was designed. Exciting at first, the constant "yeahs" and "heys" eventually dissolve into the waves of distortion mid-album, resulting in the audio equivalent of an energy drink crash. The band does its best to juggle both worlds on the pretty, simplistic, and anthemic "Have Faith in Me," and closer "If It Means a Lot to You" provides fans with a fine Bic lighter/cell phone light moment, but there's just not enough here to separate it from the deafening, ultimately forgettable, over-compressed slabs of twentysomething angst that came before it.© James Christopher Monger /TiVo

Mike Skinner has a problem, and from the sound of it, it's life-threatening. He opens his second Streets full-length by moaning "It was supposed to be so easy..." as though he's about to deliver his deathbed confession, the classic tale of a crime gone wrong. Instead, three minutes later, it's clear what the "it" was: walking down to bring back a DVD rental, taking some money out of the machine, and calling his mother, who he'd just left at home, to tell her he wouldn't be back for tea. Believe it or not, but that's just another day in the life of Britain's favorite bedsit producer cum singer/songwriter. Although listeners may not wonder where he finds his material, they'll quickly realize that A Grand Don't Come for Free is just as immediately striking as Skinner's career-making full-length debut, Original Pirate Material. It succeeds, despite a clear lack of comparable singles, because of its paradoxical concept (and yes, it is a concept album) that a record can be tremendously ambitious even though it charts a very unambitious personality. Skinner's urban British youth persona is even more fully drawn than before, and this time he delivers a complete narrative in LP form, with characters, conflicts, themes, and post-modern resolution on the closer. He's sheepish about his utter lack of knowledge about football (and the heavy gambling losses that result from it), unreservedly enthusiastic about his girlfriend early on but later totally disgusted with her (in a blow-up that rivals Dizzee Rascal's "I Luv U"), not so easily dismissive of a gorgeous show-off in front of him at the kebab shop, and willing to confront anyone who criticizes him for drinking at home until he can set up a row of empty Tennent's Super cans. Fortunately, he hasn't reduced the Streets to a comedy act in the process. There is as much tragedy and heartbreak here as there is slapstick comedy. "Blinded by the Lights," driven at half-speed by a shadowy trance line and Skinner's disoriented delivery, transmits perfectly the intense loneliness that can flood you in a club full of people and the utter disenchantment of being stranded in the middle of euphoria. Skinner drives these tracks with a mere skeleton of productions and delivers some cruelly off-key harmonies on the choruses; only the single, a rockabilly buster named "Fit but You Know It," makes any attempt to connect the dots from beats to melody to production. Confronting doubts about his seriousness and squashing whispers about his talent, Skinner has made a sophomore record that expands on what distinguishes the Streets from any other act in music.© John Bush /TiVo

Listening to Katy Perry's litany of belched alphabets, fruity boyfriends, Vegas hangovers, and lesbian lip-locks on her debut, One of the Boys, it's easy to assume she'll do anything for attention, and a close read of her history proves that suspicion true. Prior to her transformation into a teen tart, Perry was a Christian singer operating under the name Katy Hudson -- an appellation a little bit too close to Kate Hudson, so she swapped last names and started working with big-name producer after big-name producer, cutting sessions with Glen Ballard and then the Matrix. That was enough to get buzz touting her as a next big thing in 2004, but not enough to actually get a record into the stores, a nicety that often proves invaluable for wannabe pop stars. Given this long line of botched starts, maybe it makes sense that the 24-year-old starlet is singing with the desperation of a fading burlesque star twice her age, yet Perry's shameless pandering on One of the Boys is startling, particularly as it comes in the form of some ungodly hybrid of Alanis Morissette's caterwauling and the cold calculation of Britney Spears in her prime. This fusion is no accident, as Perry works once again with Ballard, the producer behind Morissette's breakthrough Jagged Little Pill, and Max Martin, the writer/producer of "Baby One More Time" -- and that's just for starters. She also brings aboard Desmond Child to give "Waking Up in Vegas" an anonymous, anthemic pulse, Dave Stewart to give "I'm Still Breathing" a Euro sheen, and Butch Walker to amp up the amplifiers, giving her a different sound for every imaginable demographic.All the pros give One of the Boys a cross-platform appeal, but there's little question that its revolting personality is all down to Perry, who distills every reprehensible thing about the age of The Hills reality show into one pop album. She disses her boyfriend with gay-baiting; she makes out with a girl and she's doesn't even like girls; she brags to a suitor that he can't afford her, parties till she's face-down in the porcelain, drops brands as if they were weapons, curses casually, and trades under-the-table favors. In short, she's styled herself as a Montag monster. Perry is not untalented -- she writes like an ungarbled Morissette and has an eye for details, as when she tells her emo metrosexual boyfriend to hang himself with his H&M scarf on "Ur So Gay" -- but that only accentuates how her vile wild-child persona is artifice designed to get her the stardom she craves. Maybe if the music were as trashy as the style, she could get away with it, as it would have a junky thrill, but that's where all the high-thread-count producers actually work against One of the Boys. They flatten everything out, turning the stomping Gary Glitter beat of "I Kissed a Girl" into a leaden stumble and burying Perry's voice underneath Pro Tools overdubs so it all winds up as a faceless wash of sound designed to be placed in TV shows, movie trailers, and malls -- which is of course part of the plan, as this is music designed to be everywhere after Perry's taboo flirtations break down doors. The problem is not with Perry's gender-bending, it's that her heart isn't in it; she's just using it to get her places, so she sinks to crass, craven depths that turn One of the Boys into a grotesque emblem of all the wretched excesses of this decade.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

Before the great wave of British rap invaded Europe and the world after 2012, there were The Streets. Founded and led by Birmingham born rapper and producer Mike Skinner, this is their eighth album, their first since 2011. This album is proof of the musician’s ability to keep up with the times and modernise his music through embracing a range of genres dear to fellow artists across the pond. On None Of Us Are Getting Out Of This Life Alive, we are treated to an alternative and off-the-rails style of hiphop (on the eponymous track with rockers Idles), dance roots (I Wish You Loved You As Much As You Love Him featuring Donae’O and Greentea Peng), and drill (Eskimo Ice with Kasien). A lot of hard work has gone into these twelve tracks. Mike Skinner never releases music haphazardly despite the occasional dud in his discography. He always has a burning desire to make songs (the assertive I Know Something You Did), while at the same time transforming pop formats into electro sounds. He is, on this album, the image of his country: confident musically and driven by a desire to try something completely new. © Brice Miclet/Qobuz

We haven't heard from Laurie Anderson in eight years -- since her Live at Town Hall NYC recording, cut two weeks after September 11, 2001 -- but that doesn't mean she hasn't been busy. Homeland began as a series of ideas recorded on the road in which she simply sang songs and told various stories about America. Some of them ended up as a concert poem about America that was a logical extension of her United States I-IV project -- and a non-didactic indictment of the Bush administration. The live recordings were combined with basic studio tracks, ending in 25 songs. She eventually ended up with the daunting task of sorting through, editing, and engineering a million audio files. Husband Lou Reed lent fresh ears when they were most needed; he is listed as a co-producer, as is longtime associate Roma Baran. Homeland features appearances from a stellar cast including Tuvan throat singers and igil players of Chirgilchin along with a number of experimental jazz and rock players, including Rob Burger, Omar Hakim, Reed, John Zorn, Kieran Hebden, Shahzad Ismaily, Eyvind Kang, Joey Baron, Peter Scherer, Skuli Sverrisson, Ben Wittman, and Antony Hegarty. Its songs -- whether spoken or sung -- are profoundly musical rather than simply conceptual. They ask questions about what it means to be an American in the 21st century, philosophically and personally, by way of references as diverse as Thomas Paine, Søren Kierkegaard, Aristophanes, and Oprah Winfrey -- and Anderson's wonderful sense of irony. While there isn't a single cut in this dozen that doesn't bear repeated listening, certain ones stand out. The trilogy that begins with "My Right Eye" and continues through "Thinking of You" and "Strange Perfumes" consists of nocturnal, low-key songs haunted by the beauty of Anderson's violin and voice with help from various singers, Kang's viola, Scherer's keyboards, and Burger's various instruments, including accordion. Hegarty assists on the last of these, lending it an ethereal quality. All are lyrical and haunting. "Only an Expert," driven by Hebden's keyboards and Reed's distorted guitar, is a scathing indictment of the rise of focus groups and the nebulous talking heads on television who analyze everything about modern life. The album's true hinge piece, "Another Day in America," employs Anderson's longtime male alter ego Fenway Bergamot. Zorn's bleating alto saxophone adds weight, dimension, and shock value to the lovely "Bodies in Motion." He also appears on "The Beginning of Memory," a song that relates the narrative allegory of a play from Aristophanes. Homeland is literally the most accessible Anderson recording since 1982's Big Science and easily stands among her masterworks.© Thom Jurek /TiVo