Named in honor of the location of its recording, Indochine's live album Hanoi was released in this digital-download format in 2008 for the French digital market. Featuring 20 tracks by this legendary (and long-running) French new wave/alternative rock outfit, fans of the band will not be disappointed. A fine companion to the DVD of the same show, it features such tracks as "Trois Nuits par Semaine" and "L'aventurier."© Chris True /TiVo

Download not available

Collecting up the seven albums recorded for the Atlantic label between October 1973 and December 1978 by the double bassist and composer Charles Mingus, as well as an entire album of previously unreleased alternative pieces, this magnificent box set captures the legendary jazz musician’s last major creative period before Charcot's disease would take his life prematurely in January 1979, at the age of just 56. While some of the records in this set have been enshrined in Mingus' discography’s pantheon since their release, others, for years, have been the victims of ignorance and carried less favourable reputations. Everyone respects the twin albums Changes One and Changes Two, recorded by the double bassist in 1974 at the head of a brand new quintet, during the same exact session. Propelled by the drums of the faithful Dannie Richmond, and featuring two newcomers to his galaxy, saxophonist George Coleman and pianist Don Pullen, these are traditionally recognised as his ultimate masterpieces. One of the great virtues of this compilation is that it allows us to appreciate the entire period with the benefit of hindsight, and appreciate the rest of his oeuvre. A few tracks deserve to be singled out: the freshness and bluesy charisma of Three or Four Shades of Blues, recorded by Mingus in 1977 at the head of an expanded band, features the talents of three young guitarists destined for greatness: Larry Coryell, Philip Catherine and John Scofield. The baroque luxuriance of the two long orchestral suites on the album Cumbia & Jazz Fusion, conveys subliminal dialogue between Duke Ellington and Nino Rota in a dreamy Latin context. The musician's last recording, the very moving Me Myself An Eye written and whilst confined to a wheelchair and obliged to accept the dual role of composer and supervisor of the session which, despite the conditions, vibrates throughout with an inextinguishable power of life. © Stéphane Ollivier/Qobuz

It was designed to be a blockbuster and it was. Prior to Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, Elton John had hits -- his second album, Elton John, went Top 10 in the U.S. and U.K., and he had smash singles in "Crocodile Rock" and "Daniel" -- but this 1973 album was a statement of purpose spilling over two LPs, which was all the better to showcase every element of John's spangled personality. Opening with the 11-minute melodramatic exercise "Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding" -- as prog as Elton ever got -- Goodbye Yellow Brick Road immediately embraces excess but also tunefulness, as John immediately switches over to "Candle in the Wind" and "Bennie & the Jets," two songs that form the core of his canon and go a long way toward explaining the over-stuffed appeal of Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. This was truly the debut of Elton John the entertainer, the pro who knows how to satisfy every segment of his audience, and this eagerness to please means the record is giddy but also overwhelming, a rush of too much muchness. Still, taken a side at a time, or even a song a time, it is a thing of wonder, serving up such perfectly sculpted pop songs as "Grey Seal," full-bore rockers as "Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting" and "Your Sister Can't Twist (But She Can Rock & Roll)," cinematic ballads like "I've Seen That Movie Too," throwbacks to the dusty conceptual sweep of Tumbleweed Connection in the form of "The Ballad of Danny Bailey (1909-34)," and preposterous glam novelties, like "Jamaica Jerk-Off." This touched on everything John did before, and suggested ways he'd move in the near-future, and that sprawl is always messy but usually delightful, a testament to Elton's '70s power as a star and a musician.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

A “roadhouse” is a kind of roadside bar located in the middle of nowhere for drinking and listening to music. Thanks in part to David Lynch’s Twin Peaks, roadhouses have acquired a unique reputation and irremediably generate an image that is at once strange, comforting, and melancholic. For the conception of their sixth album, the members of the Australian group The Paper Kites have certainly had a Lynchian ambiance in mind, as the record’s sleeve proves. The photo taken by Dara Munnis represents an actual roadhouse where the group played every night for a month. All of the album’s songs are taken from the concerts performed during this unique residency in the small town of Campbells Creek. Sam Bentley, the leader of the group, explains that Roadhouse is the fruit of a “collective dream”. “We wanted it to be a combination of all the greatest dive bars you’ve ever been to, late-night watering holes, smoky taverns, biker bars”, he adds. The overall color of the album is country and folk, found in the ballads dominated by the banjo, the harmonica, or even the steel guitar (“Rolling On Easy”, “The Sweet Sound of You” and “Hurts So Good”). Others, like “Marietta”, “Mercy” and “I Don’t Want to Go That Way” can instead be put away in the syrupy romanticism aisle, which is emphasized by the singer’s beautifully mournful voice. As for the tracks “Black & Thunder” and “June’s Stolen Car”, they stray a bit from the original folk trajectory and swing toward a more bluesy rock flavor. It’s an atmospheric album that feels like a comforting pause in the middle of a long trip on the desert roads of Australia. ©Nicolas Magenham/Qobuz

There are aficionados and champions of Alice Cooper's many albums and eras. Some fans insist that Easy Action is one of the most criminally underappreciated records of the rock era, while others feel that Killer is the most rockin' album in the band's entire catalog; heck, there are folks out there who vociferously advocate for the wild charms and unexpected pleasures of Cooper's solo "blackout era" of the early '80s (and those folks are not wrong!). However, one thing that is widely agreed upon is that Billion Dollar Babies is Alice Cooper (the band) at the peak of its powers. The commercial sheen—and success—of its predecessor, School's Out, is seamlessly fused here with relentless, riff-fueled propulsion, decadent arrangements (brass band on "Elected"? Sure!), some of Cooper's most wittily deranged lyrics to date, and, of course, fantastic production from Bob Ezrin, who masterfully balanced all of the band's disparate elements. Babies is where commercial, creative, and critical success convene, and the result is not just a '70s rock masterpiece, but also that rarest of things: a '70s rock masterpiece that still manages to yield surprises. While packed with radio staples—the title track, "Elected," "No More Mr. Nice Guy"—and canonical classics ("Raped and Freezin'," "I Love the Dead"), there are also eyebrow-raising numbers like "Unfinished Sweet" (spaghetti western meets fuzzbox freakout meets rock opera) and "Mary Ann" (a sweet piano ballad that turns on an unexpected plot twist) that reiterate that, despite their success on the charts, Alice Cooper was still a delightfully transgressive band. The track lineup on this 50th anniversary "Trillion Dollar" deluxe edition slightly expands on 2001’s reissue. A 1973 Texas show featured earlier is rounded out with two additional, non-BDB songs from the concert, and the selection of outtakes is now accompanied by four single edits of album tracks. This edition also brings with it a warm, dynamic remastering that delivers on the original mix's maximalistic approach, making this the definitive rendition of a classic. © Jason Ferguson/Qobuz

Nearly 40 years after their excellent and hugely influential Psychocandy, The Jesus and Mary Chain are putting their love of grimy synth-punk pioneers Suicide front and center (not that they've ever really hidden it). You can hear it in moody, dreamlike "Mediterranean X Film," with its whispered chant, and in the cinematic paranoia of "Silver Strings." "Venal Joy" is almost camp with space-age veneer. It’s also there in the angular, sideways "Discotheque" and its stilted rhythm. But brothers Jim and William Reid are also wrestling with their own past, and doing it in the cantankerous way the Scottish siblings have become notorious for. "American Born" combines a pretty, twinkly melody with sleazy guitar and grotesque vocals—with lyrics that, you have to wonder, might be a mockery of older sibling William, who lives in the US: "I drink with Americans/ I live with Americans/ I look like Americans/ I talk like Americans." In any case, it’s certainly not complimentary. "When we first went to America it was both wonderfully exciting and hugely disappointing all at once … all little guys with backwards baseball caps and shorts on and all that, 'Whooo! Hey man!'. It was like, 'Fuck, this is not the kind of America that we that we were into,'" Jim has said. The States, of course, were also where the band broke up in 1998, when William walked off stage during a Los Angeles show—which inspired the muscular new song "jamcod," with its brittle metallic beats and laser-blast synth. "The monkey’s organ grinder isn't grinding anymore … Best notify the other brother, there's no place to go," Jim sings, before comparing the whole thing to an overdose: "A recently deceased/ A House of Blues blue/ A cocaine and disabled/ J-A-M-C-O-D." Jim also reflects on his own past with substances ("I fill myself with chemicals/ To hide the dark shit I don't show”) on "Chemical Animal," a classic JAMC drone with shimmering sequencer. "Pure Poor" delves into druggy sludge and atonal guitar. But the band is having fun, too. "The Eagles and the Beatles" kicks in with a riff that sounds like "I Love Rock 'n Roll" run through a sarcasm filter, then goes on to namecheck the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, the Beach Boys, the Sex Pistols and the Faces, not that it sounds like any of them. "Hey Lou Reid" is a super groovy lark that, yes, has a certain Velvets feel, at least until it drifts into a totally different song, spacing out like Spiritualized. "Second of June," meanwhile, is pretty classic JAMC—and knows it: "Face the sky/ Take cover before you die/ Jesus and Mary Chain." © Shelly Ridenour/Qobuz