September 10th
album anniversaries

Before Alive!, KISS had built an audience for their concerts that their studio records had yet to match. The double live album gave those listeners something closer to the show they remembered: familiar songs played with the crowd audible around them. It helped turn the band's stage reputation into a record-buying audience.

The material comes from their first three albums, so the revelation is in the performance rather than a new batch of songs. The live version of ‘Rock and Roll All Nite’ became a hit, while ‘Deuce’ and ‘Strutter’ show how much force those early songs could carry in a concert setting.

Neil Peart took lessons from jazz drummer Freddie Gruber before recording Test for Echo. After years of developing one of rock's most recognizable approaches to the drums, he was still reconsidering how he played. Rush's own account notes that he used traditional grip for much of the record.

That attention to feel sits inside a particularly guitar-heavy album. ‘Driven’ puts the rhythm section under pressure, while ‘Resist’ makes space for a gentler melody. The contrast gives you something more interesting to follow than technical complexity alone: a seasoned trio adjusting the balance between force and restraint.

Star-Crossed takes the intimacy of a breakup and gives it the scale of a three-act drama. Kacey Musgraves returns to collaborators Ian Fitchuk and Daniel Tashian, but the emotional setting is different from Golden Hour. Acoustic sounds sit beside electronic textures as the songs move through separation and the effort of starting again.

The useful contrast is between that big framing and the small, recognizable details of the songs. ‘Camera Roll’ finds a whole relationship stored in a phone; ‘Simple Times’ looks back toward an easier version of life. Those everyday objects and memories keep the album close to home even when the production opens out.

The title announces a change of destination. After becoming associated with downtempo listening, Groove Armada put more weight behind the dance-floor side of their music on Goodbye Country (Hello Nightclub). ‘Superstylin’ makes that shift easy to hear, with a vocal and bass line built to carry across a crowded room.

The album does not abandon the duo's taste for organic sounds or slower passages. That range is what makes the louder moments work: the pace can ease off before another rhythm takes over. Twenty-five years on, it is a reminder that their music was never confined to the chill-out compilation.

On Hey What, the distortion is part of the arrangement, not a layer added to make the songs heavier. Sounds break apart and crowd the space, while Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker's harmonies remain clear enough to follow. The voices give you a steady point inside music that keeps changing shape around them.

This was Low's third album with producer BJ Burton. ‘Days Like These’ makes the contrast especially direct, moving between exposed singing and thick, damaged textures. The record rewards listening for those transitions: a change in the surface of a sound can carry as much emotion as a change in the melody.

Comfort to Me keeps the speed and bluntness of Amyl and the Sniffers' punk songs, but the circumstances behind it were unusually confined. The band worked on the album while sharing a three-bedroom home during lockdown in Melbourne, then co-produced it with Dan Luscombe. Months without touring gave them a different kind of time together.

The result still feels restless. Amy Taylor's delivery cuts through the guitars rather than floating above them, and the band leaves little distance between a riff and its impact. It is worth hearing that urgency alongside the writing conditions: music made in close quarters, with an appetite for getting outside them.