(FORTUNE Magazine) – THE GO Whatcha Doin' (Sub Pop): A garage in Detroit. A cooler of beer on the cement floor. A bunch of guys banging their crania to dumb, trashy riffs. Got a problem with that?

TALKING HEADS Stop Making Sense: Special New Edition (Sire/Warner Bros.): A crisp 15th-anniversary reissue of the Reagan-era watershed, stuffed with seven extra tracks. Giant suit sold separately.

BRAD MEHLDAU Elegiac Cycle (Warner Bros.): Detractors dismiss him as a Gen-X George Winston, but he's a lot better than that. Like a spectral conversation between Thelonious Monk and Chopin, Mehldau's piano suites summon up a lost world of melancholia and memory.

AIR Premiers Symptomes (Astralwerks): Your artsy friends already have the Parisian duo's Moon Safari, the lounge manifesto that made cheesiness cool again in '98. So dazzle them by spinning this foamy-as-meringue collection of Air's rare French singles.

TAJ MAHAL AND TOUMANI DIABATE Kulanjan (Hannibal): It's being sold as a symposium on the links between American blues and the music of Mali, but it sounds like a sundown jam session on a porch in Georgia, complete with cherry blossoms, fireflies, and sun tea.

And one CD to avoid at all costs:

GUANO APES Proud Like a God (RCA): More incontrovertible proof that Germans should stick to making cars and beer.