(FORTUNE Magazine) – David Bowie Bowie at the Beeb Virgin On this anthology of rare BBC sessions from 1968 to 1972, you hear Bowie learning how to rock. Early tracks are perilously twee ("London Bye Ta Ta" slides into the Herman's Hermits zone), but dirty, jacked-up cuts of "Suffragette City" and "Queen Bitch" unleash the beast within.

Radiohead Kid A Capitol It's the album of the year, but don't expect to love it right away. Shorn clean of anything resembling a hit single--or even a song-- Radiohead's vast new opus surges and recedes like an art-rock ocean. Best not to swim against the tide; just let it carry you away.

Brad Mehldau Places Warner Bros. This is music about travel: In 13 pointillist piano solos, Mehldau evokes jet-lagged passages through cities like Madrid, Amsterdam, and Paris. Perfect timing, too: In these days of lost luggage and hellish delays, who can't relate to an elegy called "Airport Sadness"?

Spaccanapoli Lost Souls RealWorld Count on the Italians to do everything a little better--even protest songs. Here in America the music of resistance tends to be hectoring and grim, but this percussion-mad Neapolitan troupe turns righteous dissent into a big, rowdy block party.

Badly Drawn Boy The Hour of Bewilderbeast XL Recordings Damon Gough's one-man band is both messy and meticulous: You never know what to expect. There are pretty chamber suites gussied up with cello and French horn, and there are fuzzy-toned reveries that sound as if they'd just rolled out of bed.