Poison's debut album took its cues from the big, anthemic pop hooks of Def Leppard and the rebellious street-tough posturing of Mötley Crüe, as well as a raunchy, adolescent obsession with sex. But Poison really carved out their niche as the ultimate glam metal band, using tight-assed boogie and over-the-top visual extravagance -- costumes, makeup, teased hair, and so on -- to an even greater extent than most of their contemporaries. It was derivative and formulaic, to be sure, but Poison wholeheartedly embraced that formula from the beginning with a conviction often missing in their peers, and it's that ridiculous, good-time excess that keeps Look What the Cat Dragged In's catchiest songs, especially the party anthems "Talk Dirty to Me" and "I Want Action," just as much fun today, if not more so.© Steve Huey /TiVo

In the two years since her debut was released, beabadoobee has gone from her teen years to her twenties and grown tremendously—effortlessly transferring her lo-fi bedroom pop to a much bigger sound that's still tingling with life. "Talk" is full of '90s jubilance, pumped up with booming bass and a fuzzed-out chorus. She has said she wrote the song about going out on Tuesday nights: "not too much chaos but just enough to have a good time." But it's also about exploring boundaries as you get older—and, in her case, more famous. "Generally, it’s about doing things that aren’t necessarily healthy or great for you, but you can’t help indulging." See also: "See you Soon," which beabadoobee has said "is meant to make you feel like you’re tripping on shrooms." The guitars on "10:36" explode at the bridge in a fit of sunshine, and it's thrilling after hearing the potential on her first record. beabadoobee also gets more experimental with genres, playing around with café pop and bossa nova on "the perfect pair," which expands during the last minute to become one of her most fully rounded songs yet. Free-floating "Beatopia Cultsong" has jug-band lazy-river vibes, the vocals gaining layers with each line before fading out. "Ripples" employs gentle strings and a McCartney-esque melody, the ambience so intimate you can hear fingers sliding on acoustic guitar strings. There are, as expected, moments of shoegaze goodness, on "Don't get the deal" and pretty "Pictures of Us"—which flips the script by keeping the music clear-headed and washing her vocals in a big blur. With its moments of thumping drums, naif melody and spacey background vocals, "fairy song" could easily be recast as a Flaming Lips track. "Lovesong" flutters with butterfly lightness, "tinkerbell is overrated" is especially energetic and catchy folk pop, and "You're here that's the thing" is a cute little retro ditty, à la Lily Allen, that will no doubt be a live fan favorite (singalong-ready lyrics: "When the lights go down/ don't say I didn't warn you/ I don't think that's legal/ in the state of California"). And while she still fits perfectly alongside peers including Clairo, Jay Som and Snail Mail, like them beabadoobee has expanded her worldview, even adding a neo-soul sheen to the folky pop of "Sunny day." © Shelly Ridenour/Qobuz

By 1997, the "Unplugged" craze, in which nearly every rocker under the sun decided to look back on their songbook with tasteful and unamplified maturity, had just about run its course, but that wasn't about to stop Lou Reed from belatedly trying the same gimmick for his performance at London's 1997 Meltdown Music Festival. Reed's semi-acoustic performance was also prompted by the latest bit of electronic gimmickry to catch his fancy, a special feedback-defeating pickup system that gave his acoustic guitar "the sound of diamonds" (Reed's phrase). While it's difficult to say just what a diamond is supposed to sound like, it is true that his guitar sounds quite good on this set. Reed and his band approach the respectfully quiet arrangements with precision and no small amount of enthusiasm (especially bassist Fernando Saunders), and Lou is in unusually good voice here; one of the traditional failings of his live albums has been that he doesn't always sing and play well at the same time, but here he hit his marks with ease. However, you've got to wonder about the choice of material on Perfect Night; if Reed really intended this to be an overview of the breadth of his career, he wasn't doing himself any favors by throwing in "Vicious," "Original Wrapper," or "Sex With Your Parents," while "Kicks" and "Riptide" aren't especially well-served by stripping them of their electric guitars. There are enough good tracks here ("I'll Be Your Mirror," "Perfect Day," and "New Sensations") to indicate that Reed might have a good acoustic album in him, but before he tries something like Perfect Night again, he ought to sit down with some friends who can edit a better set list for him.© Mark Deming /TiVo

Genius (or at least style) rubs off. Musicians who spend their lives in a band with a strong leader often end up sounding similar when they go solo. The Replacements' Tommy Stinson comes to mind. And so does Mike Campbell—or does he? It's a matter of discerning how much of the Heartbreakers sound actually came not from Petty but Campbell, his friend, longtime collaborator and, sometimes co-writer. On first listen, it's striking as it was on his 2020 Knobs debut Wreckless Abandon how close the timbres are; it's like hearing one part of a single voice. External Combustion also makes clear how much Campbell's songwriting influenced Petty, and vice versa, points writ large here. The album opens with the strongest song, "Wicked Mind" a close cousin of the Heartbreakers' "Running Down a Dream," which aligns the Knobs mindset in a similar space to Petty's chosen vibe: "I'm a sinner with a rebel soul/ Got a wicked mind with a heart of gold." Seasoned and wise from his Heartbreaker years, Campbell's brought back Rick Rubin protege George Drakoulias (who also worked on Wreckless Abandon), to co-produce these sessions. Tracked over three weeks in during the summer of 2021 at Campbell's home studio, Hocus Pocus Recorders in California, Eternal Combustion was recorded, as Drakoulias says, "off the floor" in just a few whole band takes, during which bassist Lance Morrison says Campbell "was showing us the song as we were recording." Guitarist Jason Sinay has said that Campbell "loves it when the band doesn't totally know the songs. Wide-eyed, freaking out, ears open—that's the magic." The sound which emphasizes loud and is certainly a bit squashed, is no worse than any of Drakoulias-produced Heartbreaker records. Drummer Matt Laug, for example, is not overly prominent in the mix. While the spectrum of styles here is wider than the band's debut, the songwriting modes are not surprising or risky. "Brigitte Bardot" is a blues shuffle.  The title track's rapid fire chorus rhythm smooths out into a Heartbreakers-like song story in the verses. The guest list present also marks Campbell as a sage judge of talent. Ian Hunter adds a vocal turn to the second verse of the album's other catchy crash-and-bash single, "Dirty Job." The only other Heartbreaker on the record, keyboardist Benmont Tench, has fun pounding along à la Jerry Lee Lewis on the roots rock, slide guitar workout, "Lightning Boogie." Strings, saxophones and a trombone appear in "State of Mind" Campbell's neo-country duet with Margo Price, his most contemporary guest. While the frontman may be gone, the Heartbreakers' sound and attitude carries on thanks to the other most consequential member of that beloved band.  © Robert Baird/Qobuz

Download not available

Other bands were bigger, other bands were better, but no other group embodied the spirit of late-'80s hair metal as much as Warrant. They were slick and tuneful, cheerfully shallow and gussied up to look prettier than they actually are. It was the era in a nutshell -- proud to be all surface and no depth. That aesthetic is what drives their debut, Dirty Rotten Filthy Stinking Rich, an album where they shake and shimmy like rock stars because that's what they desperately want to be. To achieve that, they distilled the sounds of L.A. at the time, where everybody used Van Halen and Kiss as a template, balancing the former's guitar hero antics and flamboyant sex-god frontman with the latter's big dumb riffs and pop hooks. Warrant surely weren't the first to do it -- Ratt and Poison brought it into the mainstream a few years earlier -- but the glossy package of Dirty Rotten makes it emblematic of its time. It's sleek and clean, built on processed guitars and cavernous drums, never taking more time than it needs, pushing the hooks front and center, along with a mile-wide sentimental streak best heard on the power ballads "Sometimes She Cries" and "Heaven," which sold this album to a wider, largely female audience that was also enamored with frontman Jani Lane's pretty looks. But don't be mistaken -- those are two slow moments on an album that's a party record, the time when the lights dim and the kids sway in a slow dance. The rest of this is good-time pop-metal, all professionally done but leaving little lasting impression, outside of the tremendous "Down Boys," which sounds exactly the same as the rest of the record but has an indelible chorus and is the one time when the band actually sounds powerful instead of preening. But it's hard to criticize an album for not making a lasting impression when it was designed to be in the moment, something to blast at keggers and when cruising through town. It served its purpose in 1989, and years later, it sounds exactly like that year, both for better and worse.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

Download not available

One of the most unheralded and underappreciated CDs of 2001, Bran Van 3000's Discosis perfectly synthesizes the band's equal urges toward dance music, pop melodies, and practical jokes. Where the Montréal-based collective's first album, Glee, had bounced rather erratically from mood to mood depending on which members were featured on which track, Discosis finds everyone on the same page, resulting in a disarmingly cohesive album with something for everyone. As intelligent dance albums go, it's on a par with Deee-Lite's World Clique a decade earlier, though instead of environmental issues, the disc sticks to affairs decidedly more personal and pop cultural in nature. Highlights include Bran Van's unpackaging of a lost Curtis Mayfield gem for the lead single "Astounded," some variations on the girl-responding-to-commodification motif in "Loop Me" and "Loaded," imaginative and humorous essays on young love in "Montréal" and "Love Cliché," and startling awareness of the record business in "Rock Star" (a track troublingly prescient of the ensuing financial troubles of the band's label, Grand Royal: "dreams locked in the record company"). Not many pop melodians can cut a sharp dance groove, not many dance auteurs have a cheeky sense of humor, and not many pranksters harbor smart pop instincts -- yet Discosis exhibits all of the above and then some. The fact that it was buried by poor distribution (Grand Royal folded before the album ever had a proper U.S. release) was one of the great musical tragedies of 2001. © Joseph McCombs /TiVo