When Tom DeLonge, always the more emo half of Blink-182, launched Angels and Airwaves in 2005, he sacrificed all the small things for jumbo themes, important-band bombast and Eighties-sounding synths. The group’s fourth studio disc soars ever closer to the sun, with defiant nonsense about bombs falling at dancing kids' feet (lead single "Surrender") and one track inexplicably inspired by the Book of Revelation (the punchy "Behold a Pale Horse"). Want fun? Repeat lines like "The ice is really cold/The streetlights, really old" out loud. Slow builds and sly, Edge-style guitar prod these dark songs into vaguely exultant shapes. The only problem: There's nothing here to be triumphant about.  

Listen to "One Last Thing":

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“IRM”

Fashioned to mimic the sound of a magnetic resonance imaging or MRI, "IRM" (the French designation for the brain scan) grew out of Gainsbourg’s love of the sound of the clickety-clack of medical machinery. The IRM album project also marked the fulfillment of two goals for the singer: to document a traumatic experience, and to record an album with Beck. Though her co-creator and producer didn’t necessarily know the details of her water-skiing accident and resulting cerebral hemorrhage (which lead to the IRM of the song's title), he somehow knew how to handle the material. "Beck had a way of guessing what I was thinking and feeling without me telling him," said Gainsbourg. "We never discussed these things explicitly."