The Eagles took 18 months between their fourth and fifth albums, reportedly spending eight months in the studio recording Hotel California. The album was also their first to be made without Bernie Leadon, who had given the band much of its country flavor, and with rock guitarist Joe Walsh. As a result, the album marks a major leap for the Eagles from their earlier work, as well as a stylistic shift toward mainstream rock. An even more important aspect, however, is the emergence of Don Henley as the band's dominant voice, both as a singer and a lyricist. On the six songs to which he contributes, Henley sketches a thematic statement that begins by using California as a metaphor for a dark, surreal world of dissipation; comments on the ephemeral nature of success and the attraction of excess; branches out into romantic disappointment; and finally sketches a broad, pessimistic history of America that borders on nihilism. Of course, the lyrics kick in some time after one has appreciated the album's music, which marks a peak in the Eagles' playing. Early on, the group couldn't rock convincingly, but the rhythm section of Henley and Meisner has finally solidified, and the electric guitar work of Don Felder and Joe Walsh has arena-rock heft. In the early part of their career, the Eagles never seemed to get a sound big enough for their ambitions; after changes in producer and personnel, as well as a noticeable growth in creativity, Hotel California unveiled what seemed almost like a whole new band. It was a band that could be bombastic, but also one that made music worthy of the later tag of "classic rock," music appropriate for the arenas and stadiums the band was playing. The result was the Eagles' biggest-selling regular album release, and one of the most successful rock albums ever.© William Ruhlmann /TiVo

J.J. Cale was the embodiment of cool blues. With his atypical blend of rock, folk, country, blues and jazz, he was one of the most influential figures in rock'n' roll. Worshipped by Clapton, the Cocaine writer who spent most of his time in a mobile home remains the essence of a laid-back and relaxed musical style. For his fans, Stay Around is a gift from heaven. This posthumous record from April 2019 brings together fifteen unreleased songs mixed and produced by Cale himself and compiled by his widow, Christine Lakeland, and his old collaborator and manager Mike Kappus. "I wanted to find stuff that was completely unheard to max-out the ‘Cale factor'," says Lakeland, "using as much that came from John’s ears and fingers and his choices as I could, so I stuck to John’s mixes. You can make things so sterile that you take the human feel out. But John left a lot of that human feel in. He left so much room for interpretation.” Obviously, all these gems - from the stripped back Oh My My My to the more elaborate Chasing You - do not change anything at all about what we knew and loved about this king of cool. The quality of Stay Around, which never sounds slap-dash, proves that the man took every second of his art seriously. And as always with him, we come out of this posthumous album with the feeling of having fully lived a human and warm encounter. A sincere and engaging experience, connected to the soul and the gut. Marc Zisman/Qobuz

It’s emancipation time for Romy Madley-Croft, guitarist of The xx, with the release of her first solo album, a “party album” that made her step a little outside her comfort zone. Penning for singers like Halsey and Dua Lipa, Romy began by working for others alongside Fred Again.., who has become one of England’s most in-demand producers over the past few years. Their collaboration began as a friendship, and one day, after having written “Loveher,” a story about loving a woman, Romy decided to take credit for it. And thus began the album, an homage to the queer club scene where Romy tells of having come into her own, and which now helps her come into her own as a solo artist. Fred Again.. produced eight tracks on the record, leaving behind his characteristic ethereal footprint, halfway between pop and dance music. On the album, we also find the single “Strong,” a true rave anthem produced by a man who knows how it’s done, Stuart Price, pioneer of the English electronic scene with his 90s project Les Rythmes Digitales. Between euphoria and melancholy, ecstasy and nostalgia, Romy delivers a particularly successful first album, 100% for the dance floor. © Smaël Bouaici/Qobuz

Turning away from the sweet pop of Out of Time, R.E.M. created a haunting, melancholy masterpiece with Automatic for the People. At its core, the album is a collection of folk songs about aging, death, and loss, but the music has a grand, epic sweep provided by layers of lush strings, interweaving acoustic instruments, and shimmering keyboards. Automatic for the People captures the group at a crossroads, as they moved from cult heroes to elder statesmen, and the album is a graceful transition into their new status. It is a reflective album, with frank discussions on mortality, but it is not a despairing record -- "Nightswimming," "Everybody Hurts," and "Sweetness Follows" have a comforting melancholy, while "Find the River" provides a positive sense of closure. R.E.M. have never been as emotionally direct as they are on Automatic for the People, nor have they ever created music quite as rich and timeless, and while the record is not an easy listen, it is the most rewarding record in their oeuvre.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

Released in 1976, this fifth album from the Eagles would remain their greatest success. Opened by the eponymous hit single, Hotel California marked a turning point in the career of the American group. Bernie Leadon, the most country-orientated band member, jumped ship and Joe Walsh came on board. For his part, Don Henley also seemed to take more control the business. The result was a much more mainstream record than the album’s predecessors with truly enveloping sounds at the peak of their tracks. Everything is XXL here! The production, the solos, the melodies… everything! A masterpiece of classic rock, this is above all a work that crosses decades and makes the crowds go wild. Glenn Frey, Don Felder, Joe Walsh, Randy Meisner and Don Henley would never again find again such impressive complicity and efficiency… Published in November 2017, this 40th anniversary edition offers an original remastered album as well as an energetic Californian live session recorded at The Forum in Inglewood, October 1976. © CM/Qobuz

There’s a ‘before and after’ Out Of Time in the life of R.E.M. This ‘before’ for Michael Stipe’s band is mainly found on university campuses where the group gained a cult following in the ‘80s… How then did R.E.M. manage to sell 12 million copies of Out Of Time to the world? The answer is that this record was both sublime and austere. An uncompromising album, like the chamber rock such as Nirvana and the Pixies that you’d blast out without caring about pissing off the neighbours in that year of 1992… Always virtuosic, Peter Buck goes from the mandolin to the acoustic guitar with great ease, John Paul Johns from Led Zeppelin sublimely arranges refined chords and Michael Stipe shines with his melancholic and tortured prose with the candor of a man with self-assured belief. Cinemascope ballads prevail, peaking with Everybody Hurts. It must be said, Automatic For The People is not the most easy-flowing album by R.E.M. but it is one of the most beautiful. Released in 2017, this 25th anniversary edition also offers, alongside the remastered album, a live recording from the 40 Watt Club in Athens on the 19th November 1992 with some cover versions like Funtime by Iggy Pop and Love Is All Around by The Troggs. © MD/Qobuz

War on her mind? Whatever Beth Hart’s mind-set was in Autumn 2019, the Californian tigress has long shown her feisty side without ever getting caught up in the clichés. With the album War in My Mind, she adds the finishing garnish to her classic rock’n'blues’n’soul cocktail by looking inwards and confronting her inner demons. “More than any record I’ve ever made, on 2019’s War In My Mind I’m more open to being myself on these songs”, she explains. “I’ve come a long way with healing, and I’m comfortable with my darknesses, weirdnesses and things that I’m ashamed on – as well as all the things that make me feel good.” On songs such as Bad Woman Blues, Let It Grow and Woman Down, Hart pours her heart out – without being overly gushy - and uses her voice as an irresistible magnet that pulls every word, every sentence, every chorus. The cherry on the cake is that we find Rob Cavallo behind the console, crafting a slick yet never rushed production. © Clotilde Maréchal/Qobuz

Five fallow years. We had to wait until 2016 for MGMT to hit the studio, under the sun of the US West Coast. Little Dark Age marks the glorious return of Andrew VanWyngarden and Ben Goldwasser, heroes of the soundtrack to the 2000s. After an eponymous album which was less impressive than Oracular Spectacular (2007) and Congratulations (2010), this fourth work takes off on a synth-pop tangent. They needed to evolve. All alone, the Brooklyn team started to feel their isolation. On production, we find Dave Fridmann, ex-Mercury Rev, and Chairlift guitarist, Patrick Wimberly, who manages a double triumph. Channelling their genius and opening it out to collaborations: Connan Mockasin, who can be found in the album's title clip, and the main synth freak, Ariel Pink. In a more sombre vein which binds form to content, MGMT draws out nuances in the form of homages to the Cure, Gothic and even pop flavours. If the acid sheen of their youthful works had the character of a bad trip (You die, And words won’t do anything, It’s permanently night), the psychedelic effervescence dries up to give way to a baroque pop sound, the quilted synths of Hand it Over showing that the priority here is levity. The heritage of Robert Smith has replaced the hippy bandanas, without quite filling Andrew's head with post-punk fatalism. On the contrary. Struck by occasional inspirations (TSLAMP, She Works Out Too Much), MGMT are playing on the halcyon days of the Eighties, when new wave unfurled across Europe (the ambiguous Me & Michael). This recipe brings forth Little Dark Age and When You Die, marked by the dark synths and vivid melodies that Ariel writes along with the lyrics. An album like a rough-hewn gem. Frustrating, delightful, but with the allure of a thing incomplete. © CS/Qobuz

RAT WARS appeared just over a year after the conclusion of DISCO 4, the two-part collaborative opus that reinforced how HEALTH fit into the past, present, and future of anguished, confrontational music and the worlds of indie, electronic, industrial, and metal. Though this album is just as multifaceted, it's more cohesive and concise. As on 2019's Vol. 4 :: Slaves of Fear, HEALTH are laser-focused on RAT WARS, this time tracing the vicious circle of trauma and abuse that begins at birth. Hints of DISCO 4's ambitions linger in the album's mammoth production, which melds its complex sounds and moods. On "Demigods," Jake Duzsik sings tenderly about a "loveless child" as a cathedral's worth of reverb shields him from the bludgeoning riffs and double kick drums. Although "Hateful," "DSM-V," and "Crack Metal" -- which could be the tormented great-great-grandchild of Nine Inch Nails' "March of the Pigs" -- are firmly rooted in the band's industrial foundations, HEALTH continue to excel at bending and blending genres. They lean into dance music with "(Of All Else)"'s slamming beats and imbue "Unloved" and "Ashamed" (another showcase for Duzsik's wounded vocals) with enough synth pop catchiness to let the band's angst sink in deeper. Respites like these make RAT WARS' forays into metal all the more forceful: The strafing riffs of Lamb of God's Willie Adler make "Children of Sorrow" a pummeling standout, while "Sicko"'s relentless grind is built on a Godflesh sample. As always, HEALTH are just as powerful when they turn inward, and on the brooding finale "Don't Try," they strike the perfect balance between isolation and intimacy. RAT WARS' abrupt pivots make a visceral impact, but they're never distracting -- they're just more proof that well into their second decade, HEALTH are still discovering formidable expressions of hurting and being hurt.© Heather Phares /TiVo

Keb' Mo's self-titled debut is an edgy, ambitious collection of gritty country blues. Keb' Mo' pushes into new directions, trying to incorporate some of the sensibilites of the slacker revolution without losing touch of the tradition that makes the blues the breathing, vital art form it is. His attempts aren't always successful, but his gutsy guitar playing and impassioned vocals, as well as his surprisingly accomplished songwriting, make Keb' Mo' a debut to cherish.© Thom Owens /TiVo

Set in the 1970s and loosely inspired by Fleetwood Mac, Taylor Jenkins Reid's best-selling novel Daisy Jones & the Six is the fictional account of the rise and fall of a prominent blues-rock band as revealed through interviews. An Amazon Studios miniseries adaptation was already underway by the time the book was published in 2019, with producers enlisting Blake Mills to construct the band's sound. To write the songs (25 in all appear in the series), Mills enlisted help from none other than Jackson Browne as well as figures like Phoebe Bridgers, Marcus Mumford, Madison Cunningham, and Roger Manning, among many others. The emerging 11-song soundtrack album doubles as the group's imagined debut, Aurora. It was performed by the show's band-camp-trained cast, led by Riley Keough as Daisy and Sam Claflin as Billy Dunne. (Suki Waterhouse, Josh Whitehouse, Will Harrison, and Sebastian Chacon round out the group's TV lineup, which diverges slightly from the book in number and by instrument.) Together with Mills' production, the star-studded writing team manage to settle into a dual-vocal-heavy MOR sound that's credible as the output of a single band at the same time that it touches on Laurel Canyon, Nashville, and, if fleetingly, Fleetwood Mac itself, as on the chorus of soft rock standout "Let Me Down Easy," a descendent of "Dreams." Another highlight is the rousing "Regret Me," which almost evokes the Heartbreakers with its efficient hooks, gritty guitar tones, organ, live energy, and slight affectation by Claflin. They let loose again with the bluesy garage rock of the Keough-led "More Fun to Miss," while quasi-acoustic ballads like "Two Against Three" and the trite "No Words" ("There ain't no words for the song I'm trying to write/Oh, I just don't know the words, babe, for what I'm trying to write/Everything I've tried so far, babe, doesn't feel right") can seem more like sentimental, narrative-serving fare -- not that that's necessarily a bad thing, considering their purposes. In the end, while Aurora plays out more like a cast album than unearthed period vinyl, it does hover on the spectrum, and the actor/musicians come to play while songs suggest the intended period Los Angeles music scene, if they rarely stand strong enough on their own to create their own legend.© Marcy Donelson /TiVo

Selah Sue has only released three albums in thirteen years. She first put her career on hold to become a mother, and later took another break due to depression. However, with every release this Belgian soul singer proves she’s not afraid to try new things and that her impressive voice isn’t afraid of experimenting with new ideas. Persona has no shortage of these new ideas, that’s for sure. With the help of her husband and keyboardist Joachim Saerens and producer Matt Parad, she’s delivered an incredible record. It captures all of her worries and intrusive thoughts, as well as the complexity of human emotions: and she does it across an incredible range of genres. Her single Wanted You to Know, featuring fellow Belgian Damso, gives us a taste of her versatility. Selah Sue finds origiality even in the most clichéd of musical tropes, never choosing the easy option. The best example of this is definitely All the Way Down, a huge, poignant soul track that’s so brilliantly executed. It’s as if she turns everything into a playground: the offbeat drums in Catch My Drift, the dancehall vibe reminiscent of her first album in Kingdom, trap sounds in Hurray and even slightly distorted pianos in Pills… Persona is a broad, rich album, and a real credit to its creator. © Brice Miclet/Qobuz