Staff Picks for September 2025

The NIN side project made its debut in 2010 with this self-titled EP. While not necessarily their "best" release – some might argue Welcome Oblivion is their finest vision – this 6-song burst is certainly their most accessible and immediate. Featuring all the distorted, electro-dystopian noise that defined NIN's late 2000s output, it's elevated by Mariqueen Maandig's vocals, which easily float from ethereal ("The Space In Between") to threatening ("Fur Lined"). It would be unfair to just say this is "NIN with a new vocalist," but to make an overly-simplified connection, think of this as a fresh spin on Reznor's songwriting that could have been found on Year Zero, The Slip, or the saddest parts of The Fragile.
- Neil Z. Yeung

The Dream Syndicate’s third album, released in 1986, broke with the more hazed-over, post-Velvets psychedelia of their earlier work in favor of more driving and slightly twangy hard rock sound. You can take the songwriter out of the Paisley Underground, but you can’t take said Underground out of the songs, as it turns out, with a few reflective moments on par with the college rock dreaminess of the Go-Betweens or Yo La Tengo peeking through the band’s bid for a more mainstream sound. It’s an entirely different experience than The Days of Wine & Roses was just four years earlier, but an interesting and valuable detour in the band’s journey.
- Fred Thomas

A pastiche of polyrhythmic percussion and deftly manipulated 12-string guitar, D.D Dumbo's music dances a neat line between the radiant and the jarring, pairing abstract lyrical imagery with brightly hued art-pop arrangements.
- Timothy Monger

After building a solid core audience through relentless touring and a string of hard-rocking albums, Foghat finally hit the big time in 1975 with Fool for the City, released 50 years ago today. It still stands out as the best album in the group's catalog because it matched their road-tested abilities as hard rockers to a consistent set of tunes that were both well-crafted and ambitious.
- Donald A. Guarisco

Before he spent a decade touring with Underworld, Darren Price signed to NovaMute and released an excellent Detroit-style techno record that wasn't from Detroit. The occasional breakbeats mark Under the Flightpath as something originating from Britain during the late '90s, but the electro and techno elements seem directly inspired by Model 500 and Underground Resistance.
- Paul Simpson

The opening salvo from one of Canada's most enduringly provocative artists, The Teaches of Peaches is funny, sexy, outrageous, and danceable (not to mention endlessly quotable) all at once.
- Heather Phares

Pink Floyd followed the commercial breakthrough of Dark Side of the Moon with Wish You Were Here (released 50 years ago today), a loose concept album about and dedicated to their founding member Syd Barrett. The record unfolds gradually, as the jazzy textures of "Shine on You Crazy Diamond" reveal its melodic motif, and in its leisurely pace, the album shows itself to be a warmer record than its predecessor.
- Stephen Thomas Erlewine

Before he was a César-winning actor, and after he wrote songs for Françoise Hardy, the Parisian took a giant leap toward immortality, delivering one of the greatest albums of French '60s rock at its most creative. Notable is its sheer variety of musical styles, including classic chanson ("Il est cinq heures, Paris s'éveille"), a mixture of vaudeville and near hard rock ("La publicité"), sitar-supported hippie bashing ("Hippie, Hippie, Hourrah"), and a "Hurdy Gurdy Man" avant la letter ("Les méthamorphoses").
- Quint Kik

Culled from shows in Detroit, New Jersey, Iowa, and Cleveland on the Dressed to Kill tour, the record, released 50 years ago today, features producer Eddie Kramer doing a masterful job of capturing the band's live performance on record. The band's youthful energy is contagious, and with positively electric versions of their best early material, it's no mystery why Alive! is widely regarded as one of the greatest live hard rock recordings of all time.
- Greg Prato

Bolstered by the international hit and opening track "Crash," this debut album's retro-teen-pop-inflected vocals and tasteful mix of noisy jangle, psychedelic oddities, and pure pop is lovely indeed. A much bigger hit in the U.K. (where it reached the Top Ten) than in the U.S. (where it stalled in the bottom half of the Billboard 200), it was nevertheless a darling of the MTV/modern rock set and has its place in the annals of early U.K. indie pop, in a sub-category then dubbed "blonde pop."
- Marcy Donelson

In the infancy of what would become a long run of fractured genius, Will Oldham's 1996 set Arise Therefore was an early indicator of just how bleak the songwriter could get. Stark, surreal, and sometimes threatening, the songs were here feature a stripped down trio of Oldham, his brother Ned, David Grubbs on piano, and minimal rhythms from an ancient drum machine. The tones are soft and mellow, but the lyrics can be blunt and even brutally violent, making for an uneasy but fascinating atmosphere of contradictions.
- Fred Thomas

Celebrating its 30th birthday this month, Blur's chart-topping fourth LP might be the best representation of the band's early Britpop sound, balancing irresistible melodies, big choruses, and a biting wit that skewers society with a knowing wink and smirk. There are huge singalong tunes – "Stereotypes," "Charmless Man," and the winner of the "Battle of Britpop" with then-rivals Oasis, "Country House" – as well as beautiful moments like "Best Days" and "The Universal." Standout deep cuts include the bonkers "Mr Robinson's Quango" and the depressing, dirge-like "He Thought of Cars." A deluxe vinyl (including all the b-sides) is set for release this December.
- Neil Z. Yeung

An inspired union between two innovative, understated guitarists, Lost Futures combines Marisa Anderson's textural playing with William Tyler's bucolic melodicism, resulting in a revelatory collaboration.
- Timothy Monger

Minstrel in the Gallery, released 50 years ago this month, was Tull's most artistically successful and elaborately produced album since Thick as a Brick and harked back to that album with the inclusion of a 17-minute extended piece ("Baker Street Muse"). Although English folk elements abound, this is really a hard rock showcase on a par with -- and perhaps even more aggressive than -- anything on Aqualung.
- Bruce Eder

The Midwest indie rock scene lost drummer Jim Kimball recently, and though his stints in Laughing Hyenas and The Jesus Lizard were remarkable, he never felt as purely fierce and menacing as he did on this album. The brainchild of sly backwoods cityboy P.W. Long, Mule was a sonic gut punch fueled by snarling guitar riffs and Long's country drawl, with the rhythm section holding down a heavy flatbed underneath it. The opening growl of "Mississippi Breaks" kicks off the album and it rarely slows after that.
- Zac Johnson

In a city that produced some of the most party-starting music of the 1950s and '60s, Huey "Piano" Smith cut tunes that could spread joy in record time, and hits like "Don't You Just Know It," "High Blood Pressure," and "Rockin' Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu" still delight decades after the fact. This is a superior single-disc collection of his hits and near-misses, boasting 18 New Orleans classics.
- Mark Deming

Expanding on the double-CD singles collection put out by Evidence in the '90s, this triple-CD set is a more definitive selection of Sun Ra's singles, ranging from early doo wop and rhythm & blues tunes to bugged-out Christmas carols and the infamous "Nuclear War." Essential.
- Paul Simpson

Black Fire, Andrew Hill's debut record for Blue Note, was an impressive statement of purpose that retains much of its power six decades after its initial release. Hill's music is quite original, building from a hard bop foundation and moving into uncharted harmonic and rhythmic territory. Hill's complex chording is thoroughly impressive, and Joe Henderson's bold solos are more adventurous than his previous bop outings would have suggested.
- Stephen Thomas Erlewine