Pop punk mainstays New Found Glory are open to novelty. They’ve given the world three albums of movie soundtrack covers (the From the Screen to Your Stereo series) and even formed a superhero-themed side project. The band is also confident in its Christmas adoration, proffering numerous Christmas songs over the years. This year, that idolatry manifests in a full-length album of original Christmas tunes, including a holiday version of “It Never Snows In Florida” from their scruffy 1999 debut.

Over 50 years after Emerson, Lake & Palmer performed their second concert at Isle of Wight Festival 1970 before a crowd estimated at roughly 600,000, the 7-CD (or 10-LP) box set Out of this World: Live (1970-1997) takes a look back at the prog-rock giants’ strengths as a performing outfit over multiple decades.

Following the career rebirth of 1994’s The Impossible Bird, 1998’s Dig My Mood firmly established Nick Lowe as a crooner, ballad singer, and adult artist that he’d only hinted at on his previous album. Containing not one upbeat track and dominated by ballads, this fantastic collection is one of Lowe’s career best and contains songs, such as the opener “Faithless Lover,” “You Inspire Me,” “I Must Be Getting Over You,” and “What Lack of Love Has Done,” that have become standards in his back catalog.

In the early ’90s, the future of Nick Lowe’s career was quite uncertain. After 1990’s Party of One, his only album for Reprise, he was without a record contract. Then, miraculously, the royalties from Curtis Stigers’ cover of his Brinsley Schwarz classic “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) “Peace, Love, and Understanding,” which was included on the multi-million selling soundtrack to The Bodyguard (featuring Whitney Houston’s ubiquitous take on Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You”), enabled him to make records on his own terms and his own schedule, and he has followed that template since.

Yep Roc’s fantastic treatment and reissuing of Nick Lowe’s incredible back catalog continues with this, a beautiful pink vinyl repressing of their 2011 reissue of his second “solo” album, Labour of Lust, famously highlighted by Top 20 U.K. and U.S. hit single and opening track “Cruel to Be Kind.” That big hit isn’t the only highlight here.

Though Modern Nature’s Jack Cooper certainly has a musical history that pre-dates the release of his latest project’s Nature EP in 2019, a compelling arc of history and evolution can be traced over the past three years of his latest iteration’s existence. Originally billed as a partnership between Cooper and BEAK>’s Will Young, half of the musicians that appeared on Modern Nature’s debut, Young and Woods’ Aaron Neveu, are no longer on board, or at least not for the outfit’s high water mark to date, Island of Noise.

If you have followed Thrice’s burgeoning second act, you’ll know that the four-piece are in a time of great thriving, and this, their newest album, makes it clear that they have no intention of slowing down.

With the first volume of Joni Mitchell’s Archives series offering material that leads up to her 1968 debut album, Archives Vol. 2 picks up the torch from there and runs up to some late ’70/early ’71 sessions for her classic album Blue. Aside from the rewards to be found in hearing her albums released during these years, the five CDs (also in a 10-LP limited edition) in this set offer a unique embarrassment of riches, with nearly six hours of unreleased home, studio, and live recordings.

The first time I heard “Right On Time,” the opening cut from Birdtalker’s new self-titled record, I was stopped in my tracks. Firstly, it’s a great song with all the elements to be a hit. The chorus asks, “Did anybody ever tell you you were right on time?” and it certainly feels as if this band has come along at the perfect moment.