There is a certain rose-colored magic imparted upon adolescence by those who’ve left it behind. The days of youth are meant to be the best of your life, the days you will look back on and treasure long after they’ve faded into the rearview.

“I liked who we were together / I’m not sure who I’ll be apart,” sings Tracyanne Campbell, and suddenly nine years disappear, and the loss of Carey Lander feels painfully fresh.

Jessica Pratt knows how to keep people waiting. It’s been five long years since the release of Quiet Signs, a record that found her working in the studio for the first time and elevated her quietly mesmerizing songs to a new level of expertise and public awareness.

Released as a four-LP box set for Record Store Day 2024, The Beginning and Then Some collects Dwight Yoakam’s first three records, along with a bonus LP of demos and rarities that leans heavy on the 1981 cuts that ultimately led him to his first album.

Coming off equal parts celebratory and downcast isn’t the easiest of feats to pull off. But the duo of Maya Bon and Ryan Albert, operating as Babehoven, manage to tackle that with an expert level of aplomb.

For Record Store Day, select record stores curated a single LP compilation of tracks from the late ‘60s/early ‘70s Detroit record label that is infamous for launching the careers of both Funkadelic and Ohio Players.

Annie Clark wants to play guitar. That much has been evident since her days at the Berklee College of Music in Boston in the early 2000s, since dropping out and touring with The Polyphonic Spree and, shortly after, with Sufjan Stevens.

It’s recommended you clear some brain space before listening to Forgiveness Is Yours, the fourth album by South London cult band Fat White Family.

A double album carries hard-wired associations, an unavoidable gravity of intent. A self-titled double album adds fuel to the fire; it’s an unequivocal statement, a neon-lit framing of a record as a defining artistic moment.