If you’d told David Gahan and Martin Gore a year before the release of this latest album (which was still in the making at that time) that its title would be somewhat foreboding, the pair would likely have agreed, but for a rather different reason. Memento Mori roughly translates to ‘remember you’re going to die’—that’s what was on Gahan’s mind having just entered his sixties, whilst also remembering his stepfather, the man who raised and cared for him, who had died at just 61. But fate would prove both twisted and cruel when, without warning, it would take the life of Andy Fletcher on 26th May 2022. Depeche Mode’s third man was just 60 years old.However, this sudden death was not what primarily guided the somber, melancholic content of the record. Most of it was composed during the pandemic, which must have forced the band to ask themselves countless questions about their existence, their future and how these doubts would be manifested within their music (though Fletcher’s death would inevitably alter their approach to these same compositions). This all gives rise to a record which, whilst rejecting any semblance of ‘joie-de-vivre’, is a real return to more gothic, vintage and organic sounds. The album’s quasi-industrial opener, ‘My Cosmos is Mine’, sets the tone for the darker journey to come. The album takes a more stripped-back approach to the melodies, where Gahan’s sobering voice steers clear of all excess.In the midst of this darkness, the emphasis on synthesized sounds from a seemingly bygone era strikes a nostalgic chord without losing its edge (‘Wagging Tongue’, ‘Never Let Me Go’). These textures are accompanied by more saturated tones, taking us right back to their flirtations with rock in the 90s (‘My Favourite Stranger’). Memento Mori sounds like a kind of condensed version of the band’s more delicate songs without becoming a simple reconstruction of them. It has a subtle beauty which surely highlights the expertise of the musicians behind it, despite being somewhat overshadowed by the erratic nature of their discography over the last twenty years. Light filters through the cracks here and there on this album however, like the song ‘People are Good’, reminiscent of the classic ‘People are People’ released almost forty years ago. Remember that you’re meant to enjoy it… © Chief Brody/Qobuz

Refreshing and free, Something to Give Each Other is the sound of a maturing artist taking a bold step into the spotlight. Three years after his last EP and a full half-decade since his previous full-length, Troye Sivan finally does what he came to do, delivering an effervescent dose of pop that is all-at-once endearing, explicit, and exciting. In addition to the horny lead single "Rush" -- one of the most memorable singles of 2023 -- Something... is packed with a wide range of gems that range from club-friendly dance anthems ("Got Me Started," "Silly," and "What's the Time Where You Are?") to romantic, midtempo sweetness ("In My Room," "One of Your Girls"). The young artist responsible for his earlier, more introspective bedroom pop material is still at work here, while that liberated spirit that began to "Bloom" in 2018 has taken the reins and successfully reached a place where he can be himself. As such, Something to Give Each Other succeeds because Sivan has been freed: to be who he wants to be and express that through his most engaging and addictive album to date.© Neil Z. Yeung /TiVo

If 1980's As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls was defined by Pat Metheny's charisma, its less accessible but certainly rewarding successor, Offramp, finds him leaning more toward the abstract. But as cerebral as Metheny gets on such atmospheric pieces as "Are You Going with Me?" and "Au Lait," his playing remains decidedly lyrical and melodic. Clearly influenced by Jim Hall, the thoughtful Metheny makes excellent use of space, choosing his notes wisely and reminding listeners that, while he has heavy-duty chops, he's not one to beat everybody over the head with them. Even when he picks up the tempo for the difficult and angular title song, he shuns empty musical acrobatics. Throughout the CD, Metheny enjoys a powerful rapport with keyboardist Lyle Mays, who also avoids exploiting his technique and opts for meaningful storytelling.© Alex Henderson /TiVo

Now well into its gliding Brazilian-tinged mode, the Pat Metheny Group hits the road, as this two-CD set catches the band live in Dallas, Philadelphia, Hartford, Sacramento, and Nacogdoches, TX. Percussionist Naná Vasconcelos is still listed as a "special guest," but ever since Wichita Falls, he had not only been a part of the group, he was the transforming element in the Metheny "sound," adding his various shakers, effects and ethereal vocals. Sidekick Lyle Mays gets deeper into floating, glistening synthesizer textures, but he is still able to take formidable and touching solos on acoustic grand piano. Still experimenting with new hardware, Metheny's work on a detuned guitar synthesizer gives the live "As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls" an exotic Balinese-like sound. Other highlights are the hard Brazilian grooves on "Straight On Red" and "Song for Bilbao," as well as the trademark Metheny glide of "Are You Going With Me?" -- and the brief title track has a winning, guileless simplicity much like that of Keith Jarrett in a prayerful mood. If you liked the popular Offramp, you'll fall for Travels, too, but get the former album first.© Richard S. Ginell /TiVo

Her mentor Prince said her voice could melt snow. A gift confirmed on The Women Who Raised Me, Kandace Springs' third album, which is quietly earning the artist a place at the heart of the vast family of contemporary jazz'n'soul singers. As the title of her 2020 release suggests, the Nashville native living in New York pays tribute to all those who influenced and inspired her, from Ella Fitzgerald to Roberta Flack, Astrud Gilberto, Lauryn Hill, Billie Holiday, Diana Krall, Carmen McRae, Bonnie Raitt, Sade, Nina Simone, Dusty Springfield and especially Norah Jones, one of her idols, who features on a track (Angel Eyes). Produced, like Soul Eyes, (her first album of 2016) by the expert in ultra-slick sound Larry Klein, The Women Who Raised Me also brings on board the saxophonists David Sanborn (I Put a Spell on You) and Chris Potter (Gentle Rain, Loneliness), trumpeter Avishai Cohen (I Can't Make You Love Me and Pearls), bassist Christian McBride (Devil May Care) and the flautist Elena Pinderhughes (Ex-Factor and Killing Me Softly With His Song). They bring virtuoso refinement to this album's collection of well-chosen covers. Special mention must go to Sade's Pearls, spurred on by a purring Avishai Cohen, and Lauryn Hill's Ex-Factor. This album also confirms the instrumental talents of Kandace Springs, who is just as comfortable at the piano as at the Fender Rhodes. A restrained virtuoso helped by the reserved trio of Steve Cardenas on guitar, Scott Colley on bass and Clarence Penn on drums. It is this ocean of subtlety and finely-measured power that makes these covers, sung with sensuality but above all conviction, very endearing. © Clotilde Maréchal / Qobuz

Pianist Ethan Iverson is an accomplished improviser who also respects tunes. And jazz purists be damned, he's gleefully unafraid of pop music. With his former trio, The Bad Plus, Iverson alternately shocked or delighted audiences with covers of Nirvana and the Pixies. On Technically Acceptable he wades into even deeper waters by contrasting a classical music structure with jazz standards, and with more pop songs done his way. Iverson recorded with two different rhythm sections.  Bassist Thomas Morgan and drummer Kush Abadey support Iverson's ambitious three-part "Piano Sonata," (reputedly the first ever sonata in the immense Blue Note catalog).  There’s a focused determination to prove a work called "Piano Sonata" need not sound stuffy and formal. He imbues the work with flashes of James P. Johnson barrelhouse piano, the romantic sweep of Aaron Copeland, lots of half-quotes from the pop songbook and a lively, overarching sense of fun. (The way Iverson crashes lines with pounded chords in the Rondo is hilarious.) With a second trio of bassist Simón Wilson and drummer Vinnie Sperrazza, Iverson also puts his personal stamp on popular music by lingering over a cover of Roberta Flack's "Killing Me Softly With His Song." He seems ripe to score a film as demonstrated in dramatic, often kinetic changes in the short and aptly named "Conundrum."  Opening with a march beat but containing a number of rhythm changes along the way, "It's Fine to Decline" (with Morgan and Abadey) is a broad canvas for Iverson to scamper across. And a remake of Thelonious Monk's "'Round Midnight"—with Rob Schwimmer's extraordinary theremin performance mimicking a female voice—demonstrates his creativity again in spectacular fashion.   © Robert Baird/Qobuz

Recorded "live" at the Paris Olympia, Live in Paris offers listeners Diana Krall's understanding of the musical techniques of composition, piano, and vocal improvisation on 12 songs from the Great American Songbooks of Cole Porter,Harold Arlen, George and Ira Gershwin, and contemporary artists Joni Mitchell and Billy Joel. Accompanied by the award-winning Anthony Wilson on guitar, John Pisano on acoustic guitar, John Clayton on bass, Jeff Hamilton on drums, and Paulinho Da Costa on percussion as well as the Orchestra Symphonies European on "Let's Fall in Love" and "I've Got You Under My Skin," the lovely vocalist heightens your listening pleasures with distinctive phrasings and tangible pathways to inside the creative imagination by getting inside harmony, the changes, and melodic structures. On Joel's "Just the Way You Are," Krall is accompanied by Christian McBride on bass, Michael Brecker on tenor saxophone, Lewis Nash on drums, and Wilson on guitar, among others. This song also resides on the soundtrack to the film The Guru and is probably one of the best ballads on the set due to the great solo from Brecker. His powerful but sensitive playing adds the ultimate expression and approach to the melody -- one with attitudinal preparation, which is always necessary for a song that has such familiarity and association with another musician. For those who may not have heard Krall perform "live," this recording will give you a firsthand account of the ambience and excitement of a musical evening with her.© Paula Edelstein /TiVo

The Who with Orchestra: Live at Wembley captures the group's return to Wembley on July 6, 2019. It was their first time playing the venue in 40 years and the only show the Who played in the U.K. during their Moving On tour, so it was designed as an event. Some of that spectacle does translate on The Who with Orchestra: Live at Wembley, which came to home media in a variety of formats, including triple-vinyl, double-CD, and audio Blu-ray. The Who integrate the orchestra quite seamlessly throughout the performances, especially during an extended segment focused on Quadrophenia material; the orchestra helps Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey summon a bit of the old Who's flair for bombast. Even so, the moments on the record that cut the deepest are when the band plays without the orchestra. "Substitute" and "The Seeker" sound vigorous delivered by a straight rock combo, while Townshend and Daltrey's acoustic renditions of "Won't Get Fooled Again" and "Behind Blue Eyes" help make these old warhorses sound relatively fresh.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

Produced with the involvement of Nile Rodgers and approval from the estate of partner Bernard Edwards, this box set remasters and recirculates Chic's first three albums and the contemporaneous We Are Family, in essence a Chic LP fronted by labelmates Sister Sledge. Another disc compiles edits and mixes of Chic-headlined singles of the same era. (The Chic Organization's commissioned works for labels other than their Atlantic home base, namely Norma Jean's self-titled album and Sheila & B. Devotion's "Spacer," aren't included.) During this period, the band surfaced and instantly reigned in clubs and on the Billboard dance chart, and with "Le Freak" and "Good Times," took their slick and funky disco-soul hybrid to the top of the Hot 100. The recordings created everlasting aftershocks throughout commercial and underground music, consequently making guitarist Rodgers, bassist Edwards, drummer Tony Thompson, and a team of vocalists led by Alfa Anderson and Luci Martin (with invaluable assistance from Luther Vandross) unwitting instigators of rap, dance-pop, and house music. The albums, all of which went either gold or platinum and have depth beyond the hits (start with the stunning "At Last I Am Free" and heavenly "Thinking of You"), are packaged individually in replica sleeves, joined by a booklet with lengthy essays from Paul Morley and Touré. The vinyl edition adds a reproduction of the 12" debut, "Dance, Dance, Dance (Yowsah, Yowsah, Yowsah)" b/w "São Paulo," issued on Buddah prior to the band's switch to Atlantic, as well as a third essay, written by Ashley Kahn. Regardless of format, the box is a straightforward alternative to the outtakes/remixes-packed The Chic Organization Box Set, Vol. 1: Savoir Faire (2010) and two-disc summary The Chic Organization: Up All Night - The Greatest Hits (2013), both of which are wider in scope but were not distributed in the U.S.© Andy Kellman /TiVo

In 1999, Wilco willingly abdicated their position as one of the leading acts in the alt-country movement to dive head-first into the challenging waters of experimental pop with their album Summerteeth, and moved even further away from their rootsy origins with Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and A Ghost Is Born, winning the group a new and enthusiastic audience along the way. So it might amuse a number of the band's earlier fans that in many respects Wilco's sixth studio album, Sky Blue Sky, sounds like the long-awaited follow-up to 1996's Being There -- while it lacks the ramshackle shape-shifting and broad twang of that earlier album, Sky Blue Sky represents a shift back to an organic sound and approach that suggests the influence of Neil Young's Harvest and the more polished avenues of '70s soft rock. Sky Blue Sky also marks Wilco's first studio recordings since Nels Cline and Pat Sansone joined the group, and they certainly make their presence felt -- with Cline, Wilco has its strongest guitarist to date, and while his interplay with Sansone on numbers like "Impossible Germany" and "Walken" lacks the skronky muscle of his more avant-garde work of the past, it's never less than inspired and he works real wonders with Jeff Tweedy's lovely melodies. Sansone's keyboard work also shines, adding soulful accents to "Side with the Seeds" and Mellotron on "Leave Me (Like You Found Me)," as does Mikael Jorgensen's piano and organ, and overall this is Wilco's strongest album as an ensemble to date. Tweedy's vocals boast a clarity and nuance that reveals he's grown in confidence and skill as a singer, and the songs recall Summerteeth's beautiful but unsettling mix of lovely tunes and lyrics that focus on troubled souls and crumbling relationships. Between the pensive "Be Patient with Me," the lovelorn "Hate It Here," and "On and On and On"'s pledge that "we'll stay together" squared off against the resignation of "Please don't cry/We're designed to die," Sky Blue Sky isn't afraid to go to the dark places, but Tweedy and his bandmates also find plenty of beauty, inspiration, and real joy along the way, and the album's open, natural sound is an ideal match for the material. Sky Blue Sky may find Wilco dipping their toes into roots rock again, but this doesn't feel like a step back so much as another fresh path for one of America's most consistently interesting bands.© Mark Deming /TiVo

I Want You, while it a Top Ten smash for Marvin Gaye in 1976, is not as generally as well-known as its predecessors for several reasons. First, it marked a sharp change in direction, leaving his trademark Motown soul for lush, funky, breezy disco. Secondly, its subject matter is as close to explicit as pop records got in 1976. Third, Gaye hadn't recorded in nearly three years and critics were onto something else -- exactly what, in retrospect is anybody's guess. From the amazing Ernie Barnes cover painting "Back to Sugar Shack" to the Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson string and horn arrangements to Leon Ware's exotic production that relied on keyboards as well as drums and basses as rhythm instruments, I Want You was a giant leap for Gaye. The feel of the album was one of late-night parties in basements and small clubs, and the intimacy of the music evokes the image of people getting closer as every hour of a steamy night wears on. But the most astonishing things about I Want You are its intimacy (it was dedicated to and recorded in front of Gaye's future second wife, Jan), silky elegance, and seamless textures. Gaye worked with producer Leon Ware, who wrote all of the original songs on the album and worked with Gaye to revise them, thus lending Gaye a co-writing credit. The title track is a monster two-step groover with hand percussion playing counterpoint to the strings and horns layered in against a spare electric guitar solo, all before Gaye begins to sing on top of the funky backbeat. It's a party anthem to be sure, and one that evokes the vulnerability that a man in love displays when the object of his affection is in plain sight. Art Stewart's engineering rounds off all the edges and makes Gaye's already sweet crooning instrument into the true grain in the voice of seductive need. "Feel All My Love Inside" and "I Want to Be Where You Are" are anthems to sensuality with strings creeping up under Gaye's voice as the guitars move through a series of chunky changes and drums punctuate his every syllable. In all, the original album is a suite to the bedroom, one in which a man tells his woman all of his sexual aspirations because of his love for her. The entire album has been referenced by everyone from Mary J. Blige to D'Angelo to Chico DeBarge and even Todd Rundgren, who performed the title track live regularly. By the time it is over, the listener should be a blissed-out, brimming container for amorous hunger. I Want You and its companion, Ware's Musical Massage, are the pre-eminent early disco concept albums. They are adult albums about intimacy, sensuality, and commitment, and decades later they still reverberate with class, sincerity, grace, intense focus, and astonishingly good taste. I Want You is as necessary as anything Gaye ever recorded. © Thom Jurek /TiVo