The first masterpiece of what was only termed trip-hop much later, Blue Lines filtered American hip-hop through the lens of British club culture, a stylish, nocturnal sense of scene that encompassed music from rare groove to dub to dance. The album balances dark, diva-led club jams along the lines of Soul II Soul with some of the best British rap (vocals and production) heard up to that point, occasionally on the same track. The opener "Safe from Harm" is the best example, with diva vocalist Shara Nelson trading off lines with the group's own monotone (yet effective) rapping. Even more than hip-hop or dance, however, dub is the big touchstone on Blue Lines. Most of the productions aren't quite as earthy as you'd expect, but the influence is palpable in the atmospherics of the songs, like the faraway electric piano on "One Love" (with beautiful vocals from the near-legendary Horace Andy). One track, "Five Man Army," makes the dub inspiration explicit, with a clattering percussion line, moderate reverb on the guitar and drums, and Andy's exquisite falsetto flitting over the chorus. Blue Lines isn't all darkness, either -- "Be Thankful for What You've Got" is quite close to the smooth soul tune conjured by its title, and "Unfinished Sympathy" -- the group's first classic production -- is a tremendously moving fusion of up-tempo hip-hop and dancefloor jam with slow-moving, syrupy strings. Flaunting both their range and their tremendously evocative productions, Massive Attack recorded one of the best dance albums of all time. © John Bush /TiVo

A seventh studio album from Chris Martin’s & Co.! So, how does one approach a new album when your name is Coldplay and you’re about to celebrate your twentieth anniversary? The answer comes to us in the form of ‘A Head Full Of Dreams’, and what a response it is! Coldplay may surprise many with what is an exciting, colourful, even festive effort here, with the group leader insisting it's a record apart from attempts. "It’s our seventh thing and the way we look at it it’s like the last Harry Potter book.” He explains to the BBC Radio 1. “That’s not to say there won’t be another thing one day, but this is the completion of something ... I have to think of it as the final thing we’re doing, otherwise we wouldn’t put everything into it.” And indeed they have – featuring Noel Gallagher, Avicii, Merry Clayton, Beyoncé, Gwyneth Paltrow (former Mrs. Martin) and even a certain Barack Obama (sampled on a title), ‘A Head Full Of Dreams’ moves through pop ballads, dancefloor tracks and even almost crosses over into R&B. © CM / Qobuz

On her first full-length Christmas album, pianist/vocalist Diana Krall delivers a smoky, sophisticated, and slightly melancholy album perfectly suited to accompany egg nog cocktails and romantic afterglow holiday affairs. Although there isn't anything unexpected on Christmas Songs -- Irving Berlin's "Count Your Blessings Instead of Sheep" is as close to obscure as it gets -- Krall coos life into such standards as "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," "What Are You Doing New Year's Eve," and "I'll Be Home for Christmas." It also doesn't hurt that she gains top-notch support from the Clayton-Hamilton Orchestra, whose urbane arrangements help bring to mind similar works by such iconic vocalists as Nat King Cole, June Christy, and Frank Sinatra. But it's not all deep sighs and bedroom eyes; on the contrary, Krall keeps things swinging with such uptempo numbers as the joyous "Jingle Bells," "Winter Wonderland," and the Blossom Dearie-inflected "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town." If you like your holiday albums cool and classy, Christmas Songs is a stocking stuffer that's sure to please.© Matt Collar /TiVo

Be Opened by the Wonderful is the 17th album from British rock outfit James and follows 2021's All the Colours of You. The 20-track release sees the band reworking their back catalog with the help of the Andra Vornici lead orchestra Orca 22 and the Manchester Inspirational Voices gospel choir. The album also includes the new track "Love Make a Fool," which was recorded specially for the album.© Rich Wilson /TiVo

As a hugely successful Americana collaborator, guitarist John Leventhal has helped shape the careers of artists including Rosanne Cash and Shawn Colvin, for whom he produced and co-wrote the Record and Song of the Year Grammy-winning "Sunny Came Home" in 1997. For his first solo album, Leventhal goes eclectic. Many of the tracks on Rumble Strip are atmospheric glimpses, sketches tossed off for fun that rely more on textures than a melody: "Marion and Sam," a short transcription of a Bernard Hermann cue from the film Psycho; opener "Floyd Cramer’s Dream." The fully composed title track—enhanced with judicious use of reverb—weaves in and out between chords and single notes. A pleasant surprise is that left alone, Leventhal can sing reasonably well, as he proves in "The Only Ghost," a co-write with Marc Cohn that the pair originally meant to pitch to Dr. John.Which gets to the motivation behind this rare glimpse behind the curtain; this is what Leventhal does for his own pleasure. And in that way, Rumble Strip has an appealing intimacy and a refreshing laid-back approach. Leventhal performed, recorded and mixed everything here, with Cash adding guest vocals on three tracks and horn players Rick Depofi and Donald Sorah each appearing once.  Acoustic guitars are used almost exclusively.  The recording uses a close mic and is very quiet, which overall suits the mood except on "JL’s Hymn #2" when an odd buzzing continues throughout the song.  A soft snapshot of a musical conjurer at home with his guitars.  © Robert Baird/Qobuz

In the six years between And in the Endless Pause There Came the Sound of Bees and Orphée, Jóhann Jóhannsson became a celebrated film composer, earning back-to-back Oscar nominations for his life-affirming score for The Theory of Everything and his ominous, rough-edged music for Sicario. During this time, Jóhannsson continued to work on personal projects including this, his Deustche Grammophon debut. In its own way, Orphée is also a little like a soundtrack: the composer drew inspiration from the story of Orpheus' ill-fated attempt to rescue his wife Eurydice from the underworld, building on Ovid and Jean Cocteau's versions of the tale in his meditations on death, rebirth, and creativity. The Orpheus myth reflected Jóhannsson's life while he worked on the album: his move from Copenhagen to Berlin marked the closing of one chapter in his life and the start of a new one. Like And in the Endless Pause There Came the Sound of Bees, Orphée is both more intimate than some of his larger works, and immediately recognizable as Jóhannsson's. On "Flight from the City," a gentle but insistent piano motif rises and falls like breath, while strings deepen its sweet ache; layers of counterpoint inspire bittersweet wonder on "The Drowned World"; "Orphic Hymn" showcases the composer's flair for choral pieces, with Paul Hillier's Theatre of Voices performing lines from Ovid's text in Renaissance style; and "Fragment II" offers a brief burst of his grander scale with its ever-widening sea of drones and strings. This piece features Orphée's main motif, an ascending harmonic pattern that also appears on the ghostly "A Song for Europa," which introduces the staticky, numbers station-like recordings that flicker through the album, adding another layer of distance and mystery. Orphée's studies in change give equal time time to mourning and hope, whether on the spine-tingling "A Pile of Dust" or the way "A Sparrow Alighted Upon Our Shoulder" and "By the Roes, and by the Hinds of the Field" dance between joy and sorrow. Similarly, Jóhannsson makes the album's chiaroscuro qualities explicit on "De Luce et Umbra," where a shadowy, almost subliminal pulse adds tension to the skyward strings, and on the Emily Dickinson-inspired diptych "Good Morning, Midnight" and "Good Night, Day," where subtle transitions evoke standing between ends and beginnings. On Orphée, Jóhannsson expresses the need to let some things and people go to let new ones in with remarkable nuance, as well as the affecting beauty fans have come to know and love.© Heather Phares /TiVo

When Blixa Bargeld left Nick Cave's Bad Seeds, who would have predicted his departure would result in one of the finest offerings in the band's catalog? Abbatoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus is a double CD or, rather, two completely different albums packaged in one very handsome box with a stylish lyric booklet and subtly colored pastel sleeves. They were recorded in a total of 16 days by producer Nick Launay (Kate Bush, Midnight Oil, Girls Against Boys, Silverchair, INXS, Virgin Prunes, et al.). Abbatoir Blues, the first disc in the set (packaged in pink, of course), is a rock & roll record. Yeah, the same guy who released the Boatman's Call, No More Shall We Part, and Nocturama albums has turned in a pathos-drenched, volume-cranked rocker, full of crunch, punishment -- and taste. Drummer Jim Sclavunos' aggressive, propulsive kit work is the bedrock of this set. It and Mick Harvey's storm-squall guitar playing shake things loose on "Get Ready for Love," which opens the album. As Cave goes right for God in the refrain -- "get ready for love" -- in the maelstrom, a gospel choir roaring "praise Him" responds. His tense, ambivalent obsession with theology is pervasive; he mocks the Western perception of God in the heavens yet seeks the mystery of His nature. That he does so while careening through a wall of noisy rock damage is simply stunning. It leaves the listener revved up and off-center for what comes next. The chorus -- members of the London Community Gospel Choir -- is prevalent on both records; the Bad Seeds' arrangement utilizes them wisely as counterpoint and mirror for Cave's own baritone. "Cannibal's Hymn" begins as a love song musically; it's chocked with Cave's dark wit and irony and ends far more aggressively while retaining its melody. The single, "Nature Boy," finds itself on Scalvunos' big beat. Cave and his piano use love's irony in contrast with cheap innuendo as underlined by the choir in their best soul croon. "Let Them Bells Ring" is a most dignified and emotionally honest tribute to Johnny Cash and the world he witnessed. The Western wrangle of "There She Goes, My Beautiful World" references Morricone's desert cowboy groove against a swirling cacophony of drums, bashing piano, and the chorus swelling on the refrain, while Cave name drops Johnny Thunders and poet Philip Larkin. The pace is fantastic; its drama and musical dynamics are pitched taut, with lulls in all the right places.The Lyre of Orpheus, by contrast, is a much quieter, more elegant affair. It is more consciously restrained, its attention to craft and theatrical flair more prevalent. But that doesn't make it any less satisfying. It is a bit of a shock after Abbatoir Blues, but it isn't meant for playing immediately afterward; it is a separate listening experience. The title track tells the myth's tale in Cave's ironical fashion, where God eventually throws a hammer at the subject and Eurydyce threatens to shove his lyre up his nether orifice. Warren Ellis' swampy bouzouki and Thomas Wydler's more stylized drumming move the band in the tense, skeletal swirl where chorus and Cave meet the music in a loopy dance. But in "Breathless," the bard of the love song emerges unfettered at the top of his poetic gift. On "Babe You Turn Me On," he wraps a bawdy yet tender love song in a country music waltz to great effect. But on this album, along with the gentleness, is experimentation with textures and wider dimensions. The sparser sound is freer, less structured; it lets time slip through the songs rather than govern them -- check the wall of Ellis' strings married to a loping acoustic guitar on the moving "Carry Me" as an example. Cave's nastiness and wit never remains absent for long, however, and on "O Children," the album's closer, it returns with this skin-crawlingly gorgeous ballad of murder and suicide. This set is an aesthetic watermark for Cave, a true high point in a long career that is ever looking forward.© Thom Jurek /TiVo

Thirty years later and the musical talent and inspiration is still as impressive as ever. Dream Theater release not a mere 13th album in a glorious career, but a real rock opera - and in two acts! A mammoth project called The Astonishing comes into being as James LaBrie (vocals), John Petrucci (guitar), Jordan Rudess (keyboards), John Myung (bass) and Mike Mangini (drums and percussion) take up their instruments in this tribute to rock. The score is an impressive masterpiece, with instrumental virtuosity managing. Untouchable masters of progressive metal, the Boston gang recorded these 34 titles in Cove City Sound Studios, Long Island, with Petrucci as producer and the participation of sound engineer Richard Chycki (Aerosmith, Rush) - combine this with the input of legendary arranger, composer and Canadian conductor David Campbell (also Beck's father), and you've got yourself a seriously impressive team. The Astonishing tells the story of a post-apocalyptic retro-futuristic dystopia... need we say more? © CM / Qobuz