Punk’s rooted, regional, and defiantly local identities made scenes like Louisville punk essential and life-affirming during the violently conformist Reagan years.
If Kate Bush’s The Dreaming is a hellscape of bizarre fragmentation and nightmarish beauty, Hounds of Love teaches pop how to dream and capture those contradictions in sound.
The “gigantic, derelict, empty, silent monolith” sparked Tame Impala’s imagination while composing one of the most memorable albums of the 2010s.
Elliott Smith’s self-titled sophomore album marks the beginning of his solo career in earnest, and it remains one of the finest indie records of the 1990s.
While not a perfect record, Kyuss’ …And the Circus Leaves Town captures the Californian stoner rock juggernauts at a unique moment in time.
Rife with concept albums in the 1970s, Captain Fantastic is one of the most coherent, and it shows Elton John and Bernie Taupin’s creative relationship.
Marie-Paule Belle has been crafting smart, sweet, and tart pop-rock since 1973. It’s time for her profile to be higher outside her native France.
For Crying Out Loud: How Louie Anderson’s televised therapy sessions created the saddest, funniest cartoon of the 1990s.
While their penultimate studio album never garnered significant acclaim, Roxy Music’s Flesh + Blood is a moody, influential gem and vastly underrated.
Twenty years ago, the Hold Steady fused bar rock with beat poetry for a simple tale of redemption that will forever be celebrated for its authenticity.
Okkervil River’s complicated and flawed masterpiece, Black Sheep Boy, found inspiration in an unexpected place, ultimately becoming career-affirming.
While The Talented Mr. Ripley acknowledges that 1950s-era gay men lived in hiding, Ripley uses his perceived status as a privileged male shrewdly.
