Though the Fugees had been wildly successful, and Lauryn Hill had been widely recognized as a key to their popularity, few were prepared for her stunning debut. The social heart of the group and its most talented performer, she tailored The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill not as a crossover record but as a collection of overtly personal and political statements; nevertheless, it rocketed to the top of the album charts and made her a superstar. Also, and most importantly, it introduced to the wider pop world an astonishingly broad talent. Hill's verses were intelligent and hardcore, with the talent to rank up there with Method Man. And for the choruses she could move from tough to smooth in a flash, with a vocal prowess that allowed her to be her own chanteuse (à la Mariah Carey). Hill, of Haitian heritage, rhymed in a tough Caribbean patois on the opener, "Lost Ones," wasting little time to excoriate her former bandmates and/or record-label executives for caving in to commercial success. She used a feature for Carlos Santana ("To Zion") to explain how her child comes before her career and found a hit single with "Doo Wop (That Thing)," an intelligent dissection of the sex game that saw it from both angles. "Superstar" took to task musicians with more emphasis on the bottom line than making great music (perhaps another Fugees nod), while her collaborations with a pair of sympathetic R&B superstars (D'Angelo and Mary J. Blige) also paid major dividends. And if her performing talents, vocal range, and songwriting smarts weren't enough, Hill also produced much of the record, ranging from stun-gun hip-hop to smoother R&B with little trouble. Though it certainly didn't sound like a crossover record, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill affected so many widely varying audiences that it's no surprise the record became a commercial hit as well as a musical epoch-maker.© John Bush /TiVo

Don't be deterred by the rather misleading title. Not a rock opera in the sense of Tommy or Jesus Christ Superstar, this sprawling double disc is more akin to a song cycle about Southern rock, in particular Lynyrd Skynyrd. Almost six years in the making, the Drive-By Truckers have created a startlingly intelligent work that proudly stands with the best music of their obvious inspiration. Largely written and conceived by lead trucker Patterson Hood (son of famed Muscle Shoals bassist David Hood), who sings the majority of the songs in a torn, ragged, but emotionally charged twangy voice somewhere between Tom Petty and Rod Stewart, these 20 literate tracks encapsulate a remarkably objective look at what Hood calls "the duality of the South." Rocking with a lean hardness, the story unfolds over 90 minutes, but the savvy lyrical observations never overburden the songs' clenched grip. While bands like the similarly styled Bottle Rockets have worked this territory before, never has a group created an opus that's thematically tied to this genre while objectively exploring its conceptual limitations. The two discs are divided into Acts I and II; the first sets the stage by exploring aspects of an unnamed Southern teen's background growing up as a music fan in an environment where sports stars, not rock stars, were idolized. The second follows him as he joins his Skynyrd-styled dream band, tours the world, and eventually crashes to his death in the same sort of airplane accident that claimed his heroes. The Drive-By Truckers proudly charge through these songs with their three guitars, grinding and soloing with a swampy intensity recalling a grittier, less commercially viable early version of Skynyrd. A potentially dodgy concept that's redeemed by magnificent songwriting, passionate singing, and ruggedly confident but far from over-the-top playing, Southern Rock Opera should be required listening not only for fans of the genre, but anyone interested in the history of '70s rock, or even the history of the South in that decade. More the story of Hood than Skynyrd, this is thought-provoking music that also slashes, burns, and kicks out the jams. Its narrative comes to life through these songs of alienation, excess, and, ultimately, salvation, as seen through the eyes of someone who lived and understands it better than most.© Hal Horowitz /TiVo

Legend has it that by the late 1980s Emmylou Harris was growing tired of singing over an electric band, which she'd been doing since the early '70s. She dissolved her crack electric outfit, collectively known as The Hot Band (which initially included the likes of guitarist James Burton and pianist Glen Hardin—both from Elvis Presley's TCB band—and Rodney Crowell), and formed the acoustic backing band the Nash Ramblers (Sam Bush, Jon Randall Stewart, Roy Huskey, Jr., Al Perkins, Larry Atamanuik). In 1991, Harris and her new band recorded At the Ryman, at the historic, original home of the Grand Ole Opry, which hadn't hosted a public performance since 1974. Released in 1992, the live album captured their evolution into a supremely tight and musical unit and also led to the Ryman's much needed renovation. Turns out an even earlier show, at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center, was captured, too. Both are well-recorded, with the Ryman set flatter and closer-miked and The Lost Concert incorporating more of the sound of the room. The biggest difference between the two sets—but what also makes them a matched set of sorts—is that while the Ryman show concentrated on material that had not appeared on any Harris studio records, Ramble in Music City: The Lost Concert is a stroll down memory lane for both Harris and longtime fans alike as she digs into familiar repertoire from her time on Reprise and Warner Bros records (1975-1990). She and the Ramblers—who even this early have obviously gelled—run through classic Harris covers like "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues," "Amarillo," "Blue Kentucky Girl," "Leaving Louisiana in the Broad Daylight" and the closer, "Boulder to Birmingham" from her still potent Reprise debut, Pieces of the Sky. A rhythmic, chunka chunk version of Delbert McClinton's "Two More Bottles of Wine" (from her Quarter Moon in a Ten Cent Town album) equals or exceeds the studio version. And Harris again shows her special way with Paul Simon's "The Boxer." Having Jon Randall Stewart and his high tenor on harmony vocals was hugely key to the Nash Ramblers success, along with the fleet string skills of Bush, Randall and the late Roy Huskey, Jr. The group's musical camaraderie is most obvious on a version of "Mystery Train" whose pace is pure rock 'n' roll. The band stretches out on the instrumental jam, "Remington Ride" and benefitting from the lower volumes, Harris gives a particularly tender and feathery version of the Jesse Winchester ballad, "My Songbird." Best of all, the band seem to be enjoying themselves throughout. Superb from start to finish, The Lost Concert is a wonderful surprise from the inestimable James Austin who rediscovered the tapes, unheard for 30 years, of a terrific show by Harris' other hot band. © Robert Baird/Qobuz

After releasing the '90s rock masterpiece To Bring You My Love, Polly Jean Harvey deflected the immense pressure of a follow-up by teaming with guitarist John Parish for this 1996 collaboration. Often mistakenly credited as an appearance on Parish's record (an artist who had never released a major-label solo record during his long career as a sideman, writer, and producer), Harvey's contribution to Dance Hall at Louse Point is at least equal to Parish's. Not only did the singer co-produce the record, she wrote all the record's lyrics and her vocal performances figure very prominently on Dance Hall at Louse Point, which was released in America on the singer's label home, Island. Artists always struggle with follow-ups to monumental records that can become bigger than the performers themselves. Harvey dealt with the pressure by releasing a record that wouldn't be recognized as her own, while she spent the customary multi-year absence after what will be remembered as her best recording. That's not to suggest that this is strictly Harvey's record either. Besides writing all the music and playing virtually every instrument, Parish displays a knack for sonic texturing that echoes Harvey's 1995 classic on tracks like "Civil War Correspondent," with its dark organ pads providing the perfect stage for Harvey's bold theatrics. Fans and critics heaping praise on To Bring You My Love producer Flood might be surprised how the Parish- and Harvey-produced "Heela" heads into its own grating, layered guitar crescendo that matches "Long Snake Moan" with its groaning vocals and relentless slide guitars. Dance Hall at Louse Point is in no way a strict duplication of Parish and Harvey's prior work together on To Bring You My Love. Listeners more appreciative of Harvey's earlier work will relish the songstress' squeals, whispers, and howls over jangling atonal guitar figures and blues motifs that recall Dry and Rid of Me. Fellow members of the Bristol music "tribe," Parish and Harvey share more than studio experience and art rock influences; they possess uncommon instinct and a genius-level connection to rock's bluesy, isolated, threatening soul. This collaboration records the artists during a time when their portal to that strange entity was at its most dilated.© Vincent Jeffries /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

As he continues to release albums, Mark Lanegan increasingly becomes a lone wolf, always wandering off to experiment with new things or aggressively change gear. After Blues Funeral in 2012, the old singer for Screaming Trees has reentered the solo game no longer content with his years among Queens Of The Stone Age or his (sublime) duos with Isobel Campbell. Straights Songs of Sorrow shows us again how kaleidoscopic his art can be. Here we are met with contemporary grunge, electro rock, austere blues, unusual folk and shamanic ballads. Led as always by his charismatic, baritone voice, his 2020 offering is, for the first time, entirely autobiographical. Fifteen songs inspired by his personal history as told in his memoir, Sing Backwards And Weep, released alongside the album. His youth in the state of Washington during the grunge tsunami, his drug addiction, death, but also hope and humour, all is there in this feast of intimate delights. “Writing the book, I didn’t get catharsis,” explains Lanegan “All I got was a Pandora’s box full of pain and misery. I went way in and remembered shit I’d put away 20 years ago. But I started writing these songs the minute I was done, and I realised there was a depth of emotion because they were all linked to memories from this book. It was a relief to suddenly go back to music. Then I realised that was the gift of the book: these songs.” Finally, Straight Songs of Sorrow merges the writing strengths of Mark Lanegan’s first solo albums like the brilliant Whiskey For The Holy Ghost (1994) with the upfront complexity of his more recent works. An intense fusion that is successful with the help of guests among the likes of his old partner Greg Dulli from Afghan Whigs, the Bad Seeds’ Warren Ellis, Led Zeppelin’s John Paul Jones, Portishead’s Adrian Utley and even Ed Harcourt. A fantastic rock’n’roll offering worthy of being experienced. © Marc Zisman/Qobuz

Like his friend and onetime collaborator Miles Davis, Joe Zawinul was not one to look back on his past and savor the view. Yet as in the case of Miles (his parting concert in Montreux), Zawinul finally took the plunge in central Europe late in life by revisiting his old Weather Report repertoire -- live at his Vienna nightclub, Joe Zawinul's Birdland. The significant difference is that while Miles doubled back to a re-creation of the original Gil Evans charts, Zawinul retrofitted his tunes with new big-band arrangements by Vince Mendoza, read with gusto and heft by the crack visiting WDR Big Band of Cologne, Germany. To this, Zawinul added his own synthesizer virtuosity and some overdubs from his Malibu studio, two distinguished WR alumni who still play with him off and on -- bassist Victor Bailey and percussionist Alex Acuña -- and drummer Nathaniel Townsley. In just about every case, Mendoza's charts replicate and flesh out every twist and turn in the Weather Report originals, paying off big-time with "Brown Street," an overlooked swinger from the WR 8:30 album that gets the remake album off to a percolating start. Occasionally he piles on additional harmonic tissue, as in the Miles-period "In a Silent Way." Some of the writing seems a bit redundant, yet things never become too overloaded thanks to the ceaseless drive of the rhythm section, and there is plenty of room for solos. Only on "Procession" does Zawinul write his own big-band chart; though tied tightly to the original recording, it sounds looser than most of the Mendoza charts as it works out over the drone. A few of the song choices are unexpected: the frantic "Fast City" and the strutting title tune from the Night Passage album; the former features some liquid synth solos by Zawinul and stimulating tenor sax by Paul Heller, and the latter some relaxed flügelhorn from Kenny Rampton. Others aren't from the WR catalog at all; "Silent Way" predates it, of course, though WR did play the tune in concert, and "March of the Lost Children" and the perennial "Carnavalito" are from the post-WR solo years. Unlike most jazz tribute projects -- including a fairly bloodless, multi-artist 1999 salute to Weather Report on Telarc -- this double-CD set isn't burdened with artificial nostalgia, and it benefits a lot from the presence of one of the two founding co-leaders (the other being the absent Wayne Shorter). And Zawinul is the crucial one, because the crusty Austrian keyboardist sees to it that the swing is the thing and that the groove is deep.© Richard S. Ginell /TiVo

Always pining for a rustic American past, Langhorne Slim ups the ante with his old-timey obsessions on Lost at Last, Vol. 1. Often sounding as if it's designed as a respite from the digital clamor of modern living, Lost at Last, Vol. 1 is filled with loose ends and mess. The rhythms rollick; the harmonies sometimes don't quite mesh; and there are hopping squeezeboxes, the occasional saloon piano, and a bunch of front-porch strumming -- all signifiers of a different time and place. As a vibe, it's appealing, enough so that it still sounds good when the songs don't catch hold, which is a little too often for a singer/songwriter deep into his career. Even if Langhorne Slim can't come up with the tunes to suit his sound, that sound is bewitching enough to make Lost at Last, Vol. 1 worth a listen. © Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

The 1977 release of Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope exponentially changed the face of pop culture. Not since the mainland arrival of the Beatles had such an intense level of fanaticism possessed the American people. The film's rousing title sequence is as recognizable -- if not more so -- than the national anthem, and composer John Williams' Oscar-winning score is a marvel of pulp tension, Holst grandeur, and Wagner-inspired motifs. Never before had the general public been given such memorable, accessible, and instantly identifiable character themes. Williams develops these ideas masterfully at the soundtrack's beginning, allowing the lonely horn-driven "Jedi" theme, like Luke Skywalker himself, the time to grow, waiting patiently before unleashing it in full with the bombastic and ceremonial end piece "The Throne Room." Shadows of the composer's finest contribution, "Imperial March," can be heard brewing beneath the ominous cello section during "Imperial Attack." This is perhaps the most important thread on A New Hope, and charting its growth through to its full-blown Empire Strikes Back glory is fascinating. Williams is a true student of cinema, and his love for the works of Henry Mancini -- "Cantina Band," anyone? -- Miklos Rosa, and Bernard Herrmann are in full effect, but like George Lucas, who based his entire concept on old radio and television serials, the results are reverent without having been recycled. A New Hope was the beginning of a grand love affair with science fiction and mythology, and the world embraced every aspect of its astronomical rise to legend, but without Williams' exceptional contributions that affair may have been very short-lived. [In 2004 Sony Classical released double-disc collector's editions of episodes four through six in anticipation of the films' release on DVD. Remastered and sporting 3-D covers, each soundtrack includes the score in its entirety, a poster foldout, and screen savers depicting rare Japanese book covers. In some cases, alternate tracks and extended versions are included. For Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope, the archival bonus track "Binary Sunset" is featured.]© TiVo

Nancy Sinatra and the team at Light in the Attic knocked it out of the park with the 2021 compilation Start Walkin' 1965-1976, an absolutely top-shelf selection of twenty-three of singer's best cuts from her prime era that beautifully showcased her hits as much as it did the wide streak of weird that ran through much of her material during that time. That set was so good that one would be rightfully suspicious that this 2023 companion piece focused on deep cuts, rarities, and unreleased tracks would be a barrel-scraping exercise meant for completists only. Well, the barrel may be getting scraped, but Nancy Sinatra's output from the mid-'60s through the mid-'70s was a delightful combination of high-gloss AM radio perfection and freewheeling experimentation.  These tracks may not have had the same cultural impact as "These Boots Were Made for Walkin'" or "Some Velvet Morning" but are still rewarding in their own way.The collection starts off strong with the evocative pop-noir of "The City Never Sleeps at Night" (the bouncy b-side of "Boots") and "The Last of the Secret Agents," a dazzlingly goofy novelty number that served as the title theme for a 1966 parody of James Bond films starring Sinatra. Although there are a few weaker numbers scattered throughout—"Tony Rome" is atypically apathetic, and an inexplicable cover of the Move's "Flowers in the Rain" shows that baroque psychedelia may not have been Sinatra's forte—Keep Walkin' is more than balanced out by dizzyingly great numbers like the languid and louche "Easy Evil" (a 1972 demo that was previously only available on the 1998 Sheet Music compilation) that show how her willingness to be weird never abated.Sinatra's early '70s material is often overlooked. Not only did the cultural zeitgeist decidedly move on from her style—too square for the cool kids and too quirky to be "easy listening"—but she only released two albums during the decade, both in 1972. She nonetheless had a great run of non-LP singles between 1973 and 1976, and while some of those A-sides made their way onto the Start Walkin' collection, Keep Walkin' rounds out the tracklist by including her phenomenal cover of Lynsey De Paul's "Sugar Me" (as well as the B-side, a somewhat questionable cover of "Ain't No Sunshine") and the stunning "Kinky Love" from 1976. © Jason Ferguson/Qobuz