September 15th
album anniversaries

Concrete and Gold paired Foo Fighters with Greg Kurstin, bringing rich vocal harmonies into the band’s heavy guitar sound. “Run” moves from a quiet opening into shouted vocals and dense riffs; “The Sky Is a Neighborhood” builds around a broad, deliberate chorus.

Paul McCartney plays drums on “Sunday Rain,” sung by Taylor Hawkins. That change of voice and feel helps open up an album whose larger arrangements still depend on the band’s direct physical attack.

Sports makes Huey Lewis and the News’s mix of bar-band rock, rhythm and blues, and pop hooks unusually clear. “The Heart of Rock & Roll” opens with a pulse and a roll call of musical cities, while “I Want a New Drug” locks onto a repeating riff.

“If This Is It” slows the pace without losing the group’s vocal interplay. The arrangements leave room for Lewis’s harmonica and the band’s familiar, tightly organized backing parts.

True Stories presents Talking Heads performing songs connected to David Byrne’s film, rather than simply reproducing the film’s cast soundtrack. “Wild Wild Life” supplies the brisk pop center, with the band leaning into a direct, brightly arranged performance.

Country and gospel colors broaden the setting on songs such as “People Like Us” and “City of Dreams.” Those changes suit the film’s interest in everyday American habits and the peculiar stories people tell about them.

Rocky Mountain High places John Denver’s mountain imagery beside songs by other writers, including “For Baby (For Bobbie)” and “Darcy Farrow.” Milton Okun’s production keeps the acoustic instruments and Denver’s clear vocal at the center.

The second side ends with the five-part “Season Suite.” Moving from summer through spring, it gives the record a longer shape than a collection built only around the familiar title song.

Dedicated to Bobby Jameson takes its name from a Los Angeles musician whose story resurfaced online after years away from public view. Ariel Pink uses that dedication as the frame for a record filled with crooked pop melodies, shifting voices and sounds that seem to arrive from different decades.

“Another Weekend” is one of the clearest entrances, balancing an easy melody with a lonely mood. Elsewhere, abrupt changes and odd production details keep familiar song shapes unsettled. The record moves between affection for old pop forms and the unease that can linger inside them.

Savage imagines a world damaged by environmental collapse, giving Gary Numan's electronic rock a stark setting. Heavy programmed rhythms and dark synthesizer textures support songs about survival, belief and the people left to live with the consequences.

“My Name Is Ruin” makes that setting particularly vivid through its insistent rhythm and overlapping vocal lines. Across the album, Numan holds onto clear melodies even when the arrangements become dense and forceful. That combination gives the fictional landscape a personal scale: the songs are concerned with individual voices as much as the larger catastrophe.