A.C. Newman wanted his band's fifth album to "bridge the gap between Led Zeppelin and [Sixties psych-soul band] the Fifth Dimension." Together doesn't quite pull that off, but it is the Canadian-American group's best since 2000's Mass Romantic, scoring nerdy AM gold with a mix of Anglophile harmonies, string parts and Hollies-ish melodies. The other hero is Neko Case, who gives emotional punch to "Crash Years," where she trains her siren's voice on an elegantly bummed chorus. Like much of Together, it's ornate, idiosyncratic and bittersweet all at once.

“Everyday People”

"Everyday People" managed to trailblaze in two different ways -- it was one of the first pop hits to deal with the subject of racial harmony, and it utilized Larry Graham's "slap" technique on the bass guitar, which would soon be copied by countless other bassists. Graham once said about his pulsating style, "I'd never done that before … that's where the freedom of creativity came in for the band, that we'd be allowed to do that." In 1978, the song's line "Different strokes for different folks" would be borrowed for the title of the hit television show Diff'rent Strokes.