The set employs a “Get Back”-style approach to several of the songs, where listeners can hear the evolution of “Yellow Submarine” from a depressing lament to the familiar jaunty children’s anthem, that “And Your Bird Can Sing” once had a flagrant Byrds reference, and “Tomorrow Never Knows” was originally much slower — and even trippier. ... What’s really special here are the aforementioned book and especially the outtakes, many of which have eluded bootleggers over the half-century-plus since illicit Beatles releases began hitting the market.

Lizzy are in explosive form on each of the gigs presented here, bringing a vibrancy and fluidity that was sometimes missing from the studio versions of these songs. The band’s all-time best lineup is in top form. ... Yes, seven concerts by anyone is a lot, and not surprisingly for shows recorded across just 18 months, there’s a lot of repetition. But this is the best kind of boxed set: one you can keep coming back to. Nearly 50 years later, Lizzy has never sounded better.

The new mix is just part of the reason to pick up the four-CD “Let It Bleed” edition, if probably the most crucial one. .... And the disc of alternate versions and outtakes, most previously unreleased, makes for a great listen by itself, as well as satisfying some historical curiosity about things like how some early Alex Chilton-produced demos compare with the finished album.

In short, it’s a die-hard fan’s fantasy come to life — and like the deluxe edition of “1999” released last year, goes a long way toward satiating appetites only made stronger by decades of bootlegs. (And, remarkably, the compilers left out a lot.)

The remixed album itself holds hundreds of small and large musical pleasures. ... So for anyone on the fence, maybe the best advice is to buy this edition for the deliriously detailed historical book, if nothing else — then decide whether to warm up to the new spatial separation on John, Paul and George’s turn-taking guitar solos on “The End,” among other modest tweaks.

“Fetch the Bolt Cutters” sounds as fresh as something that crossed Apple’s fertile mind 10 minutes ago. It may be way early to say it’s the most satisfying album of the year, but if there are any more to come along this good, 2020 is not going to feel like such a waste of time after all.

There’s one element that will probably sway any die-hard fan still on the fence: The Band’s 11-song, previously unreleased Woodstock set in full. ... You can feel The Band testing itself, stretching its legs, figuring out what it is and what it’s going to become. And 50 years later, you’re there with them.

It’s hard to imagine most people needing to hear some of the titles here more than once. But this sprawling deluxe edition of “The Who Sell Out” is like a living museum of a group beginning to realize its greatness, and the thrill of their discovery — in 1967, no less — remains vivid 53 years later.

Some artists play by the rules, others revel in breaking them — and with “Fountain Baby,” Amaraae leaves no question to which category is hers, all while demonstrating how wide the umbrella of African pop can be.

“Déjà Vu: 50th Anniversary Edition” is again like those aforementioned Beatles boxed sets in that we can see how close some of those songs came to not being classics, quite, without the final bit of vocal arrangement or an extra melodic element that sent them over the top.

Now, as on that pivotal work [2001’s “Love and Theft”], it makes for songs that can be as confounding as they are thrilling. What an accomplishment it is to be 79 and achieving new levels of elusiveness — riveting elusiveness — as his mystery train rolls closer to the station.

With fascinating oral-history annotation for all 70 tracks in the “super-deluxe” edition, the augmented “Wildflowers” is the best and most justified boxed set of this kind since the Beatles’ White Album compendium. It’s one of the ones you’d load under your arm in a fire. Petty was on fire during this period, as the presence of 32 distinct compositions in the big box attests.

Listening to this gargantuan boxed set, it’s hard not to get the sense that if Lambert had been healthy, he might have been able to focus Townshend’s brilliant, beautiful, exciting songs into a concept as coherent as “Tommy.” “Who’s Next/ Life House” shows how tantalizingly close they came.

For the fanatic, there is nothing quite like this sound-bath and its accompanying eye candy. If the full monty is out of reach price-wise for the Clark aficionado, the two-CD hardbound edition, which includes nine of the alternates, is a magnificent alternative, containing generous excerpts (including Rogan’s complete essay, song lyrics and band bios) from the box’s book. Even if you choose the least expensive option of the basic LP or single CD, you are in for a revelation if you have never heard “No Other.” As its title suggests, it remains a one-of-a-kind listening experience.

An album that not only marks Rosalia’s true arrival, it moves her toward the front line of today’s musical innovators.

“Desire” is clearly her vision all the way, a forceful and determined effort that vaults her to the front of adventurous pop music.

The fact that Sault seduces listeners, drawing them in with beautiful sounds, and then hits them with uncompromisingly direct lyrics and messages that startle them into thinking about things they might not normally think about, especially when grooving to music, is perhaps the greatest triumph. Sault’s music is definitively 2020, by, for and about these times.

Needless to say, this gorgeous cacophony sounds more amazing than ever in this revamped sonic edition. ... There are 47 demos and outtakes, most of them previously unreleased — none is a Holy Grail, but several are fascinating. Most interesting are the demos. ... Some may argue, not without reason, that McCartney’s “Band on the Run” or Lennon’s “Plastic Ono Band” or “Imagine” is actually the best Beatles solo album, but this lovingly rendered 50th anniversary edition makes the case for “All Things Must Pass” in vivid detail.

It’s a remarkable time that is documented in superfan-satisfying detail in the 4-CD collection “A Divine Symmetry,” the latest in the long and beautifully compiled series of reissues from the Bowie estate (the vinyl will be available in February).

Titanic Rising is a new peak for a rapidly maturing and utterly distinctive artist.

“Act II” feels a lot like a 27-course meal, difficult to describe in whole, but endlessly easy to digest, serving by serving. .... As a whole, “Cowboy Carter” is a masterpiece of sophisticated vocal arranging, laid out on top of mostly fairly stark band tracks.

As one might expect from the title, “Set My Heart on Fire Immediately” is elaborate, dramatic and demanding, and is not the kind of art that one comes to lightly — although, in yet another of the album’s counterintuitions, it works just as well as background listening as it does in intense focus. Expect this challenging and ever-changing artist’s most definitive statement to date to top many album-of-the-year lists.

A collection of [new-to-us] songs that doesn’t have a real dud in the bunch.

“Cheap Trick Live at the Whisky 1977” actually is one of those astonishing releases.

“Renaissance” (volume one of three) is sticky, sweaty, hedonistic art — flanked by a pastiche of genres that never lingers on long enough for the listener to get too comfortable. It’s what makes the collection its own kind of masterpiece: beauty in the chaos.

A refreshingly concise distillation of the best outtakes from the weeks of sessions, which were essentially rehearsals. ... Even half a century later, the group’s sterling quality control remains, and if this lavish, multi-part treatment of the Beatles’ swan song is truly the last dance, they’ve made the most of it. ... [Paraphrasing] Paul McCartney’s response to criticism of the “White Album” in the 1990s “Beatles Anthology” series: “It was great, it sold, it’s the bloody Beatles — shut up!”

As clever as the album consistently is, it still maintains the aura she’s established of transmitting real-talk teen vérité right into the grooves. Wherever her 20s take her from here, may it turn out to be just as affectionate, cheeky and brash.

Although there are hummable potential singles that stick out, such as “Shirt,” and singularly contagious tracks such as “Conceited,” “SOS” is a record meant to be heard in its entirety. It would have been entrancing, surely, at double the length.

He did it to make a point, and to make an impact. And as personal as the album may be at times, it’s also an uplifting and universal take for anyone who’s experienced life with a troubled loved one.

One of the year’s best.

If not nearly as cocky and confident as the seasoned soul who wrote an album as lyrically clever as “Midnights.” You still get a good dose of her seminal earnestness in these tracks, but there’s a lot more of the woman who knew somebody was trouble when he walked in, and went for it anyway.

McPherson’s album is so far ahead of the rest of the 2018 pack, everyone else is having to eat his Christmas dust. All tracks are originals, every one of them a keeper.

Listening to the concert material is an experience not unlike auditioning the exhaustive 36-disc 2016 set of Dylan’s shows on his tumultuous 1966 world tour. ... What’s there is pretty spectacular. Dylan’s Revue crew was the biggest group he ever performed with, and certainly it was the loudest and hottest, with as many as five guitars being flexed simultaneously.

Even absent a lone alternate of “Idiot Wind” that somehow fell between the cracks, it’s a profound look into the difficult birthing of an acknowledged masterwork in Dylan’s canon.

As strong and revealing as the bare-bones collection is, it’s hard to imagine a Coltrane freak who won’t want to plunk for the deluxe version. It affords one of the deepest looks available at the way Trane addressed creative choices in the studio. No less than three more versions of “Impressions” are heard on the second disc, and they are the best advertisement for the two-disc package. ... Is its belated arrival a godsend? Absolutely.

It’s like summer arrived three months early. And like one of the best albums of 2023 arrived right on time.

“Græ” is a magnificent, multi-genre mess in a dress of many colors — the greyness of its monochrome title notwithstanding — and not just possibly 2020’s literally biggest album, across its double-album sprawl, but also one of the year’s boldest and best.

The complete “Inconcerated” alone is worth the price of admission. Five of the 29 tracks appeared on a promo CD of that name at the time, and it was worth staying alive for an additional 30 years just to find out that the rest of the show was as grandly played and recorded. ... Chances are that the “Wallace mix” will be the version you put on in the future — although, truth be told, there are some elements of the Lord-Alge mix that work and might even be preferable, maligned as it is.

Above all, “RTJ4” is a triumph of all sorts of unexpected syntheses, seamlessly uniting disparate moods, styles and eras. ... If Killer Mike and El-P haven’t yet fully ascended to that most rarefied plane of telepathically attuned hip-hop partnerships — Q-Tip and Phife, Prodigy and Havoc, Erick and Parrish — they’ve come extraordinarily close.

Throughout, the EP is marked by Letissier’s vocal and songwriting cool — even when the tempos are faster and the energy level is high, there’s a certain effortless ease to her singing and the music.

The end result is this towering, tempestuous album, where nearly every song has calms and storms matching Olsen’s soaring voice and intricate melodies.

On first listen, Golden Hour might be disappointing for a Musgraves fan who assumed that certain wry or retro traits were immutable. ... But on second or third review, it feels like she’s making exactly the right move by painting herself out of a corner, as lovable as that corner was. ... Maybe she’ll get back someday to her vintage Loretta Lynn fetish, but damn if she isn’t just as appealing as a folky Sade.

Minor deviations aside, “Tigers Blood” functions as a seamless extension and advancement of the aesthetic Crutchfield perfected on “Saint Cloud,” her Americana masterpiece that stands as one of the few artifacts worth revisiting from March 2020.

“When I Get Home” is a challenging and satisfying follow-up to “A Seat at the Table,” one that will probably baffle some fans but intrigue and engage even more.

“All Born Screaming” is focused and of a piece and all over the place at the same time. It’s a tribute to St. Vincent’s vision and skill that an album bursting with so many ideas is such a coherent whole.

Obviously, this isn’t a standard Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers concert — see above for plenty of those — but for people who love the sound of a band stretching, showing off, challenging each other and having fun, it’s hard to think of many better albums. ... The album captures what is arguably the best lineup of the band since its original one, with stellar backing vocals from bassist Howie Epstein and auxiliary Heartbreaker Scott Thurston.

A fully rounded collection of songs that sounds like it was years in the interactive making, not the product of a quarter-year’s worth of file-sharing from splendid isolation.

It’s an impeccably crafted, gleefully executed half-hour-plus of pop perfection that does meet the moment, maybe, in just reminding you how good it feels to be human. And to be in love. And to be in Studio 54.

An album that meets the breach with enough wrenching, life-and-death drama to leave you completely spent by the time its hour is up, then ready to immediately reinvest. Because, besides being that exhausting, it’s also that good.

It’s a cohesive and extremely well-curated compilation, but several of the songs will be unfamiliar even to serious followers, and at the end of the day, it’s a collection of recordings that Prince never intended for the world to hear. Regardless, there’s plenty to get excited about.

For listeners up for an adventure — for an album that reveals itself gradually, continues to surprise after several listens and takes you places you didn’t necessarily know you wanted to go — there are many rewards in store.

No apology necessary: “Only God Was Above Us” is an essential chapter in the band’s still-evolving sound and career.

You can say he’s written more consistently great albums this century, but the crispness of the recording as well as the performances ensures that “Letter to You” is the best-sounding album he’s made since the 1980s.

It takes all the things that have always served Japanese Breakfast well — Zauner’s awareness of her voice and how best to deploy it, her knack for narrative and story as well as great hooks — and offers them fresh soil in which to grow.

Delivering powerful, confrontational lyrics and messaging in the context of angular, innovative R&B.

“After Hours” has resonated for nearly two years after its release, and in the face of another phase of a daunting pandemic, it seems that “Dawn FM” — possibly the Weeknd’s best and most fully realized album to date — will help carry fans through this one as well.

Throughout this adventurous new double-album, Big Thief dives into both the natural and otherworldly, paving new sounds and textures while uncovering new mysteries.

Noah doesn’t belt, and shows a sensitivity and vulnerability on these songs that belies her age. With 10 songs over just 33 minutes, it’s a wide-ranging, emotional ride that leaves the listener wanting more.

“Homegrown” is an essential addition to the Young catalog and the best of his many archival releases since the equally essential “Live at the Fillmore East” (which was recorded in 1970 and finally released 36 years later).

Are the songs treasures? By and large, yes — although I’m not nearly enough of an inveterate audiophile or compulsive A/B tester to really want to compare two or three versions of each of them.

None of this would matter much if the songs didn’t deliver, and at its best, “Dirty Computer” entwines racial and gender politics into a double-helix of liberated lyrics and skillfully askew musicianship.

Carlile effortlessly glides between octaves while, somehow, still sounding completely conversational — the everyday diva we didn’t know we needed until she showed up at the door. Fans of the singer-songwriter sensibilities of the 1970s will especially find a lot to love in the rich variety of material in “In These Silent Days,” which, under the expert co-production of Dave Cobb and Shooter Jennings, certainly sounds analog-era, however it was recorded.

Her writing registers with crisp clarity, cutting to the bone of the themes she is excavating. What might be cheap and exhausting in the hands of a lesser artist feels frequently cathartic, an exorcism that is honest about its central challenges but hopeful about our ability to transcend them.

Above all, “Wet Leg” delivers on the infectious pleasure of music that was made by friends trying to make each other laugh — and we’re all in on it.

While “Norman F—ing Rockwell” may not win over too many of the unconverted, also like a Tarantino film, it finds Del Rey placing new sounds, ideas and scenery into her fairly monochromatic framework, while still remaining completely on-message.

The song’s beginning will be breathtaking for fans: It opens with a familiar Beatles count-in, following by classic Lennonesque piano chords and a strummed acoustic guitar, and then — that voice, pristine, singing “I know it’s true, it’s all because of you,” and following an unmistakably Lennon melody. .... In the end, “Now and Then” is not a lost Beatles classic. But to paraphrase McCartney’s famous quote regarding criticism of the “White Album,” “It’s a bloody new Beatles song, shut up!”

Sophie combines sweet pop melodies and sounds with absolutely hideous noise--grinding, clanking, blaring, burbling, blurting, unpleasant and jarring sounds, wildly autotuned voices--to create a form of pop music that, if not entirely new, may never before have been presented in such extreme fashion.

All of this is captured in pristine sound quality — that’s Richards’ guitar in the right channel and Wood in the left — even the weak, historic-interest-only songs from night one that are tacked onto the end. ... The concert captured here was the first day of the rest of the Stones’ lives — and 45 years later, you’re in that sweaty club with them.

While it sounds different from anything Van Etten has ever done, it also never sounds like anyone but her: Her big, sweeping choruses and singer-songwritery melodies adapt surprisingly well to their new context, with heavy, synthetic basslines and sparkling electronic embellishments accenting her echo-laden, multi-tracked vocals.

Thank U, Next stands as what promises to be one of the best pop releases this year.

After delivering a record of such unrestrained joy and fun, my only quibble is with “Tension’s” title, though maybe what she’s referring to is not just that great second single but the challenge she issues for the rest of the industry keep up with what continues to be an impeccable run.

With 2021 not yet at the halfway point, it’s hard to imagine many other albums coming along that could match the combination of emotional potency, melodic fluency, social significance and heartrending beauty in Russell’s retelling of a lifetime’s worth of debasement and self-reclamation.

Valuable as it is to be getting near-soundalike versions of so many of these tracks that strip away the ‘80s gloss, that’s only the smaller part of why “Springtime in New York” is a treasure trove.

Their melodic sensibilities have translated remarkably well to more traditional songwriting. ... Most importantly, despite the complexity of the production, like its predecessors this album flows with a remarkable sense of fluidity and fun — it doesn’t sound labored-over, even though it obviously was. ... Twenty-plus years and three albums into their career, “We Will Always Love You” opens up a whole new chapter for the Avalanches.

It’s an album that feels more intimate than the first one, and the first one was pretty intimate. ... It’s a fabulous headphones record.

It’s the sound of one of America’s foremost poets offering an all-access visit to the darker corners of his mind, unconcerned with whether anyone would choose to take that trip again. “Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers” may not be a masterpiece, and it may not always be pleasant, but it’s clearly the work of a genius, accountable to no one but himself, intent on showing you all the scars that he acquired on his way to becoming the defining rapper of his generation, and plenty that came after that, too.

Maybe more on this album than others, because she’s turned down the volume — as much as you might miss something as thrilling as the “Pills”-popping of the previous album — it’s easier to hear the heart that’s long been there at the center of the slightly chilly guises.

“Midnights” doesn’t venture as far into other fields as some of her more openly ambitious albums have. This seems like a feature, not a flaw, even if “Folklore” and “Evermore” still feel like her masterpieces to date. The new album benefits from its relative modesty, length-wise and streamlining-wise. ... She’s able to maintain a tighter focus on alternately dark and light nights of the soul, in matters of love, redemption and minor vengeance.

Girl Going Nowhere, her unprophetically titled debut, is rife with autobiographical detail, rowdiness and sensitivity.

While the album vaults Bedouine’s songwriting and singing into a whole new realm, credit is especially due to Seyfert, who’s done a beautiful job of creating an unobtrusively lush musical frame for her gentle, almost deadpan vocals and melodies (props are also due to string arranger Trey Pollard, and Thom Monahan for a pristine mix).

On “Outside” and other uncluttered tracks, Megan pulls off something tart, true and real, while maintaining all that is best about her hard exterior. One wishes there was more of that sound on her debut album, but overall, “Good News” finds Megan moving confidently to the next level.

Powerful. ... Each song is filled with vividly observed memories and vignettes.

It shouldn’t come as any huge surprise that in a year when Ashley McBryde and Kacey Musgraves have been responsible for the genre’s finest records, a strength-in-female-numbers Pistol Annies collection would turn out to be 2018’s best country album. As an alternately droll and affecting wallow in and cure for the blues, it beats the hell out of a recreational Percocet.

Nearly 40 years into their career as a band, with “This Stupid World,” Yo La Tengo have reached another peak. Without overstating the case, that’s something not many artists who aren’t named Neil or Bob can say.

You get the feeling that Hayley Williams and the rest of Paramore are still looking more outwardly than inwardly — that the wisdom of age has left them wanting for more, and questioning all. And that’s a great look for Paramore.

At 17 tracks, Astroworld is not without filler--the 21 Savage feature “NC-17” is tiresomely sophomoric, while “Can’t Say” and “Houstonfornication” never really take shape--but rarely does the album feel lazy or uninspired.

At its best when he gives us a glimpse of the man behind the memes. ... For an artist that has conquered the rap world, Nas proves to be surprisingly adept at pop.

What “Evermore” is full of is narratives that, like the music that accompanies them, really come into focus on second or third listen, usually because of a detail or two that turns her sometimes impressionistic modes completely vivid. ... It’s an embarrassment of stunning albums-ending-in-“ore” that she’s mined out of a locked-down muse.

The final result on display in On the Line--from the somber waltz of “Do Si Do” to the swell of strings at the climax of “Taffy”--is a new high watermark for a musician who’s never been willing to let a little rain get the best of her.

It is certainly her purest and least sonically complicated, which is great when considering her warmly warbling voice. And like her bigger, broader sounding albums, she gives as good as she gets, quietly, while sounding as grand as if she had a studio band’s excess at work. This time, however, it only took a couple of fellow Texans and an empty room down in Marfa to bring the best out of Lambert.

He’s at his most realized and forthcoming: a pop singer with something to say, one who does so frankly with a self-assurance that only comes with age.

The kind of album you can put on and leave on: vividly atmospheric, melodically beguiling, and seductive enough to keep you coming back over and over.

While we’ll never know where Kim Shattuck and the Muffs could’ve gone from here, “No Holiday” is a lovely, fresh and progressive look at where she stood.

Despite its subject matter and context, The Hex is by no means a grim listen. It’s very much a continuation and, inevitably, a conclusion of the fine solo work Richard Swift did in the past, and a fitting and self-aware cap on a career that ended far too early.

Tyla never abandons her sound in her debut. Instead, she makes her boldest stylistic choices as subtle as possible, cementing her growing status as a pop star.

It’s a lush, lavish, luscious hot tub of an album, conjuring visions of plush feather beds, fluffy pillows and bubble baths, although the lyrics will occasionally jolt the listener out of their chill.

Casual fans may even enjoy it more than his other so-called solo records, like “Devils & Dust” and “The Ghost of Tom Joad.” The writing here isn’t as consistently strong as on those projects, but the overall feel is less dour. ... His genius for filling in particulars returns the more he gets to characters who know they’re stuck.

It’ll clearly be her fourth consecutive record to be nominated for a Grammy for best jazz vocal album… and maybe her third in a row to win. If there were such a thing as a Grammy for best jazz piano album, The Window should rightfully be up for that, too, because keyboardist Sullivan Fortner is an equal--and equally spectacular--partner through all 17 tracks, regardless of whether he gets cover billing.