Probably the most pop-accessible of Laurie Anderson's recorded work, Mister Heartbreak features a number of stunning luminaries on the cutting edge of popular music at the time. Striking guitar work by King Crimson guitarist Adrian Belew permeates this disc – notably on "Sharkey's Day" – punchy and angular. The production and bass work from Bill Laswell is superb. Peter Gabriel – at the time still coming off the buzz of his departure from Genesis – is featured in a duet with Anderson on "Excellent Birds." There is a heavy reliance on early-'80s synthesizers which would normally be very off-putting, but here they are executed well. Nowhere does the music slip into irreparable '80s cliché; it is still an entertaining listen. Lyrics are typical of Anderson' work – complex, literate, provocative, difficult to fully comprehend. Haunting "Gravity's Angel" borrows imagery from Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow. Spoken word delivery on "Sharkey's Night" is given by the legendary William S. Burroughs. This is a very satisfying listen and a great intro for those unfamiliar with Anderson's work.

The Fray is an American rock band from Denver, Colorado. Formed in 2002 by schoolmates Isaac Slade and Joe King, they achieved success with the release of their debut album, How to Save a Life in 2005, which was certified double platinum by the RIAA and platinum in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the UK. A collection includes all the studio albums by The Fray at the moment, also 1 Live, 1 EP and 3 singles.

Lucinda Williams is incapable of sounding anything less than 100-percent engaged and sincere. Whatever she has to say, she clearly means it, and that more than anything else is the thread that runs through 2020's Good Souls Better Angels, her fourth album since she launched her own record label and took full control of her process of recording and releasing music. Cut mostly live in the studio with her road band – Stuart Mathis on guitar, David Sutton on bass, and Butch Norton on drums – these 12 songs play like a long stream-of consciousness journey, with Williams writing in blues structures that repeat certain lines like a mantra while her band either sneak up on the music like a ghost or howl with elemental, bluesy skronk (the raw, gritty tone of Mathis' guitar matches Williams' vocals for sheer ferocity on numbers like "Down Past the Bottom," "Bone of Contention," and "Wakin' Up" like he's roots rock's answer to Ron Asheton).

The Last Exit is the fifth studio album from Still Corners, released on Wrecking Light Records. With the shimmering desert noir sound the band has become known for, The Last Exit takes you on a hypnotic journey, one filled with dilapidated towns, mysterious shapes on the horizon, and long trips that blur the line between what’s there and not there. Greg says, “We found something out there in the desert – something in the vast landscapes that went on forever." The Last Exit consists of eleven beautifully crafted songs with organic instrumentation, clean-toned guitar, spacious drums and the smoky croon of Tessa Murray. Album highlights include The Last Exit, White Sands and Shifting Dunes all of which evoke the vast space of the desert and rolling unconcerned skies.

Most soundtracks simply feature the film's incidental music or songs that were heard in the background throughout the movie. Not Natural Born Killers. Assembled by Trent Reznor (Nine Inch Nails), the soundtrack to Oliver Stone's brutally warped serial killer saga recreates the hallucinatory feeling of the film…

Crowded House's greatest hit, "Don't Dream It's Over," cemented them firmly into the collective American consciousness as a mere highlight of a John Hughes soundtrack or momentary inhabitants of the mid-'80s college rock ghetto. Though they rose to highest U.S. acclaim with that song and its follow-up, "Something So Strong," Crowded House charted consistently in their homeland of Australia and were widely popular outside of the States for the second half of their initial run. Songs like "Better Be Home Soon" and "Weather with You" charted massively in the U.K., Canada, and New Zealand, but never brought the group more than a cult following stateside. Including a variety of singles and highlights from albums Woodface, Temple of Low Men, and their self-titled debut, Essential provides a comprehensive overview of Crowded House's wistful songwriting style and bouncy pop productions, all of which predated the rise of alternative, but didn't quite fit any mainstream mold.

Doves release their fifth long player The Universal Want on Virgin EMI. On lead track Prisoners Doves forces attention upon itself, not least with the poignancy of Goodwin’s repeated greeting to ‘old friends’, but as an unstoppable, driving tale of caution in a world of unending desire. Produced by Doves with Dan Austin and recorded at the band’s own Frank Bough Sound III studios in North West England, the high heat of its Northern Soul beat is fanned by wiry guitar breaks and cuts of ethereal noise contorting beneath layers of stacked vocals. A statuesque musical statement, Prisoners guides Doves’ second chapter to a peak now within touching distance, the lyrics contrasting to express unease with modern ills.

The world of pop music was hardly ready for The Velvet Underground's first album when it appeared in the spring of 1967, but while The Velvet Underground and Nico sounded like an open challenge to conventional notions of what rock music could sound like (or what it could discuss), 1968's White Light/White Heat was a no-holds-barred frontal assault on cultural and aesthetic propriety…

Nucleus were a pioneering jazz-rock band from Britain who continued in different forms from 1969 to 1989. They were led by Ian Carr, who had been in the Rendell–Carr Quintet during the mid and late 1960s, and was a respected figure in British jazz for more than forty years. Their jazz-based music evolved from an early sound incorporating elements of progressive and psychedelic rock toward combination with a funkier sound in the mid and late 1970s. Elastic Rock is Nucleus' first album. Recorded in January 1970, it was a pioneering work in emerging genre of jazz-rock fusion.

Citing the likes of Debussy, Captain Beefheart, and Nina Simone as her main influences, it's clear from the outset that Anna Calvi isn't your average, run-of-the-mill singer/songwriter. She may have been tipped for success by everyone from the broadsheet music press to Brian Eno, but her blend of sultry blues-rock and dark, mysterious flamenco is a million miles away from the chart-friendly output of her fellow Sound of 2011 nominees. Her self-titled debut, therefore, is unlikely to reap the same commercial rewards as the likes of Jessie J and Clare Maguire, its uncompromising, gothic, David Lynch-esque nature certainly won't spawn any bite-size TV ad soundtracks or airplay favorites your mom can sing along to. But in a music scene dominated by female solo artists, Calvi's romantic but often sinister ten songs certainly helps her to stand out from the crowd. Opening track "Rider to the Sea," sets the scene immediately, a brooding instrumental whose atmospheric twanging guitars would provide the perfect score should Quentin Tarantino's much rumored Kill Bill 3 ever come to fruition.

The Long Ryders kicked off their major label debut, State of Our Union, with one of their most anthemic and most explicitly political songs, "Looking for Lewis and Clark," and that tune set the tone for the rest of the album – State of Our Union found the Long Ryders reaching for a larger audience at the same time that they were using their music to say a great deal more than they had in the past. Musically, plenty of roadwork had tightened the band's interplay to an even finer point than on Native Sons (Sid Griffin and Stephen McCarthy were both in superb voice, and their guitar work meshed perfectly), and Will Birch's production gave the songs a poppier sheen that still allowed the band's roots-conscious sound to shine through. Lyrically, State of Our Union took a long look at Reagan-era America as the gulf between the rich and the poor began to divide the nation, with "You Can't Ride the Boxcars Anymore," "Two Kinds of Love," and "Good Times Tomorrow, Hard Times Today" all exploring issues of economic injustice, and even the less obvious political songs often having a progressive subtext ("WDIA," a tribute to the great Memphis R&B radio station, deals with how the love of music brought together black and white listeners in the 1960s).