With Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party, Williams has crafted an album about letting go and finding a way to move forward honestly, and perhaps most importantly on her own terms.

It's that depth of detail, combined with the masterful sequencing, that makes Higher! such a superb box set: it tells a familiar story in a fresh fashion.

Machine Head is still a force in modern heavy metal.

Add it all up and subtract the hype, and this one is still potent enough to rise to the top of the pile.

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.

Live in Europe, 1969 makes obvious that on this tour, Davis' creative vision was holistic and completely assured.

Ultimately, no matter how heated the exchanges between Martyn and his fans could be during concerts, the respect between audience and performer was total and it was loyal--the same punters who would complain the loudest would be at the very next show. It is for these people, those who knew his true worth as an artist who The Island Years was created for and will appeal to most.

While technically a companion work to 2020's A Celebration of Endings, Biffy Clyro's ninth studio album, the emotionally sanguine The Myth of Happily Ever After, stands on its own.

Like its predecessors, Coin Coin Chapter Four: Memphis isn't "easy" to listen to, nor should it be, given the nature of what it explores and explicates. That said, it is a necessary, engaged art that bears repeated listening for its revelation to unfold and hopefully open a gateway to understanding. Arguably, it is the strongest and most compelling of the Coin Coin releases thus far.

This is an essential entry in Coltrane's catalog and a remarkable kick-off to Impulse's "Year of Alice."

That nobody saw fit to release anything from the tapes at the time wasn't too shocking -- it probably wouldn't have had the impact of Budokan. That it has finally come out is cause for rejoicing for Cheap Trick fanatics and lovers of real, rugged, and insanely catchy rock & roll.

77-81 is a brilliant testament to their visionary impact and lasting importance.

While it won’t be able to please everyone, that’s not the point: this is an intensely personal statement about reclamation, belonging, and legacy, celebrating the past with hopes of changing the future. One can only hope Act III finds Bey going full rock.

Offers up one superb song after another.... Even if you don't consider yourself to be much a Latin music fan, do yourself a favor and check out Canto.

The LP is top-to-bottom danceable and sequenced with each track setting up the next, through the ecstatic finale, where Beyoncé most potently mixes sensuality and aggression, claiming her man with nods to Donna Summer, Giorgio Moroder, Patrick Cowley, and Larry Heard.

Although Black Rainbows is a uniquely conceptual work and sticks all the way out from Corinne Bailey Rae, The Sea, and The Heart Speaks in Whispers, it's at least as personal as any of the singer's first three albums.

On Grey Area, it feels as if everything has come together in perfect unison, resulting in one of the strongest rap albums of 2019.

Like its predecessor, Sex, Death, & the Infinite Void treats naval-gazing like a spectator sport, with each death-obsessed narrative resolving into a gang-vocal crescendo ("God can't save us, so let's live like sinners") of stale cigarette smoke and beer-can-crushing outsider solidarity.

Travel is very much a Necks album and lines up seamlessly with the trio's vast catalogue. It blossoms with new ideas, fluid spontaneity and fresh ideas. For newcomers curious about the longstanding trio's music, Travel is a truly excellent place to begin.

Leaving the listener with a sense of sweet melancholia, Amarante wraps up with "The End," a dusty-voiced piano ballad that serves as the closing credits to Drama's captivating journey.

Understanding all this stuff enhances the enjoyment of the album, but it is not required. A few tracks merely push the album along, and a gaudy Of Montreal collaboration is disruptive, but there are numerous highlights that are vastly dissimilar from one another.

Thanks to maturity, Fridmann's mix, and uncanny sequencing, every song fits seamlessly inside each proceeding one, delivering a mercurial yet satisfying whole that makes Gold & Grey the band's finest outing to date, if not their masterpiece.

The Ties That Bind: The River Collection, like a high-profile DVD release of the 2000s, is more about the bonus features than the main feature, but the extras lend an invaluable perspective to one of the most important works in Springsteen's catalog, and this set makes it possible to imagine the many chapters that could have been added or removed from the album while still telling the same powerful story, as well as documenting the thought and effort Springsteen put into the process.

Despite its authoritative command of the languages it speaks, it carefully hews a meditative space for the listener at heart level inside the music; it is both inviting and enveloping.

Though all of the players were experienced professionals on-stage at this point, the collective energy that they created together was still relatively new, and Live at Fillmore East, 1969 offers an unvarnished view of that very specific excitement, along with the humanizing jitters and joviality that came along with it.

It's the kind of big, unabashedly emotional album that people make memories to, and some of Wolf Alice's most confident and fully realized music.

Given its wonderfully crafted and performed material and stellar production, it is the country album of 2010.

GUTS is emphatic proof that Rodrigo isn't just good for a kid -- she's grown into an artist with plenty of things to say, and the confidence and eloquence to say them her way.