The Rise And Fall of a Midwest Princess

Borrowing heavily from Marc Bolan's glam rock and the future shock of A Clockwork Orange, David Bowie reached back to the heavy rock of The Man Who Sold the World for The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. Constructed as a loose concept album about an androgynous alien rock star named Ziggy Stardust, the story falls apart quickly, yet Bowie's fractured, paranoid lyrics are evocative of a decadent, decaying future, and the music echoes an apocalyptic, nuclear dread…

Ambitious, smart, and magnetically retro, The Rise and Fall of American Kitsch will charm you with dazzlingly quirky storytelling, stellar performances, and an adventurous Americana soundscape. It's nuanced enough that you'll want to soak it in with front-to-back listens, and fun enough for a road trip soundtrack. With American Kitsch, Karen Jonas is clearly on the rise.

It's hard to fill a music documentary with the same energy that ignited the movement, but Live Forever succeeds in charting the rise and decline of the Britpop genre with ease. Looking back on the 1990s phenomenon, it removes the rose-tinted spectacles that are so often donned for such retrospectives and looks at the trend and hype through a refreshing political perspective hinging around the New Labour government. It's fascinating to see how the spin doctors went to work on this new youth culture to increase popularity with voters. It was a time of political change, when, after long Conservative rule, people were looking forward to the future, and Cool Britannia filled a cultural hole.

The Kinks‘ 1969 album Arthur (Or The Decline And Fall Of The British Empire) is to be reissued as a 50th anniversary super deluxe edition box set in October.