The finest of Labelle's original albums, Nightbirds was recorded in New Orleans with funkmeister Allen Toussaint handling the production chores and, one assumes, members of the Meters taking care of the session work. Worth the price of admission for the Bob Crewe-written "Lady Marmalade" alone, the album veers between the strutting New Orleans, horn-laden singles and more mainstream pop material.© Rob Bowman /TiVo

Shine On captures Sarah McLachlan at a period of transition, switching labels (she's signed with Verve after decades at Arista) and experiencing the death of her father and divorce from her husband. Some of this turbulence can be heard underneath the surface of Shine On -- explicitly so on "Song for My Father" and "Broken Heart," whose titles give their game away -- but the defining characteristic of this seventh McLachlan studio album is not despair but rather hope. Certainly, there is melancholy here -- a feeling that surfaces in the slower, gentler moments, the kind of sound that is heavily associated with McLachlan's mid-'90s hits -- but there's also a surprising, resilient buoyancy here, manifesting itself in big, ringing adult alternative pop tunes that pepper the album. Surrounding these songs -- the best of which are "In Your Shoes" and "Monsters" -- are those signature McLachlan swoons, the surprisingly soulful "Love Beside Me" and an effective, swinging coda called "The Sound That Love Makes" that's built on a simple ukulele but soon expands. Shine On, as a whole, has a similar trajectory; it starts from simple, sad emotions, then builds out into an embrace of love and life.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

Working Days, John Steinbeck's account of the time he spent writing and researching The Grapes of Wrath, offers an unusual glimpse into the daily labor of creative work. In bank-teller prose, the author of one of the most revered works of 20th century literature details the number of pages he churned out, the mood he was in, the changes he intended to make with subsequent drafts. It is, at best, a tedious read. But it makes a huge point about the unglamorous aspects of craft. As not just inspiration, but business. Like bricklaying. Or landscaping. It requires showing up every day, rolling up the sleeves and trusting that the routines and the effort will lead to something worth sharing. What does this act of showing up every day sound like? One answer comes on the stupendous three-part collection Boots No. 2, which contains song demos from 2002 that were made rapidly by Gillian Welch and her partner David Rawlings to fulfill a publishing contract. After a tornado ripped through their Nashville studio in March, the two began sifting through years of tapes. They assembled (and quickly released) a set of poignant covers, and then began issuing this trove of austere, simply rendered originals recorded after the acclaimed Time (The Revelator). Most of these songs on Vol. 3 are elegant miniatures, compact and sturdy and focused on a single idea expressed in just one or two crystalline verses. Some sound like they might have started out as exercises—there are tunes built on blues form, and an impossibly upbeat ode to long-haul driving ("Turn It Up") and a somber minor-key observation about the latent menace of racial intolerance ("Peace In the Valley") that seems eerily relevant to our present moment. Alongside those are truth-telling songs about the tension within relationships—one standout among several is the bracing "Strangers Again," a sliver of a wisp of a song made profound by Welch's plainspoken phrasing. It's a song Welch fans might wish she'd developed further, with more verses. But that's the nature of this collection, which nearly doubles the amount of songs on Welch's five studio albums: It's a chronicle of inspirations chased and captured, ideas forgotten and then found and finally, years later, released into the wild. © Tom Moon/Qobuz

One of the greatest and most influential artists to rise from the Southern Soul movement of the '60s, Georgia-born Otis Redding was a powerful vocalist, capable of swaggering braggadocio and soul-bearing heartache in equal measure. Redding was also a gifted songwriter who penned many of his most memorable songs, and an unstoppable force as a stage performer, often regarded as James Brown's only real rival as the most exciting soul performer of the '60s. Redding's recording career lasted only seven years before he lost his life in a plane wreck in 1967 at the age of 26, but his catalog remains one of the strongest of any artist from soul's golden age. Pure Southern Soul is epic-scale digital collection of Redding's recordings for the Stax/Volt label, featuring 60 songs that encompass his biggest hits and superb deep cuts. This is a treasure trove of classic soul, and a superb, thorough introduction to a landmark talent. Selections include "(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay," "I've Been Loving You Too Long," "Respect," "Try a Little Tenderness," "Love Man," "These Arms of Mine," "Mr. Pitiful," "Shake," and many, many more.© Mark Deming /TiVo