The musical world owes a debt of gratitude to French conductor Christophe Rousset not only for the vital, exquisite performances he delivers with the ensembles Les Talens Lyriques and Choeur de Chambre de Namur, but for his work in bringing to light neglected masterpieces of Baroque opera. Lully's Bellérophon, premiered in 1679, was a huge success in its time, with an initial run of nine months. Part of its popularity was doubtless due to the parallels that could be drawn between its plot and certain recent exploits of Louis XV, but even the earliest critics recognized the score's uniqueness and exceptional quality within Lully's oeuvre, so it's perhaps surprising that it has never been recorded before. The distinctiveness of the music was likely a result at least in part of the fact that Lully's preferred librettist Philippe Quinault was out of favor at the court of Louis XV at the time, so the composer turned to Thomas Corneille for the libretto, and Corneille's literary and dramatic styles were so different from Quinault's that Lully was nudged out of his comfort zone and had to develop new solutions to questions of structure and the marrying of music to text. It is the first opera for which Lully composed fully accompanied recitatives, and that alone gives it a textural richness that surpasses his earlier works. The composer also allows soloists to sing together, something that was still a rarity in Baroque opera. There are several duets and larger ensembles; the love duet, "Que tout parle à l'envie de notre amour extreme!," is a ravishing expression of passion and happiness, as rhapsodic as anything in 19th century Italian opera. The level of musical inventiveness throughout is exceptional even for Lully; the expressiveness of the recitatives, the charm of the instrumental interludes, the originality of the choruses, and the limpid loveliness of the airs make this an opera that demands attention. Rousset and his forces give an outstanding performance that's exuberantly spirited, musically polished, rhythmically springy, and charged with dramatic urgency. The soloists are consistently of the highest order. Cyril Auvity brings a large, virile, passionate tenor to the title role and Céline Scheen is warmly lyrical as his lover Philonoë. Ingrid Perruche is fiercely powerful as the villain, Stéenobée, and Jean Teitgen is a secure, authoritative Apollo. Soloists, chorus, and orchestra are fluent in the subtle inflections of French middle Baroque ornamentation. The sound of the live recording is very fine, with a clean, immediate, realistic ambience. This is a release that fans of Baroque opera will not want to miss. Highly recommended. © TiVo

Instant-classic debut from the English rock band that introduced the world to the Gallagher brothers.© TiVo

The "difficult second album" is one of the perennial rock & roll clichés, but few second albums ever were as difficult as Use Your Illusion. Not really conceived as a double album but impossible to separate as individual works, Use Your Illusion is a shining example of a suddenly successful band getting it all wrong and letting its ambitions run wild. Taking nearly three years to complete, the recording of the album was clearly difficult, and tensions between Slash, Izzy Stradlin, and Axl Rose are evident from the start. The two guitarists, particularly Stradlin, are trying to keep the group closer to its hard rock roots, but Rose has pretensions of being Queen and Elton John, which is particularly odd for a notoriously homophobic Midwestern boy. Conceivably, the two aspirations could have been divided between the two records, but instead they are just thrown into the blender -- it's just a coincidence that Use Your Illusion I is a harder-rocking record than II. Stradlin has a stronger presence on I, contributing three of the best songs -- "Dust n' Bones," "You Ain't the First," and "Double Talkin' Jive" -- which help keep the album in Stonesy Aerosmith territory. On the whole, the album is stronger than II, even though there's a fair amount of filler, including a dippy psychedelic collaboration with Alice Cooper and a song that takes its title from the Osmonds' biggest hit. But it also has two ambitious set pieces, "November Rain" and "Coma," which find Rose fulfilling his ambitions, as well as the ferocious, metallic "Perfect Crime" and the original version of the power ballad "Don't Cry." Still, it can be a chore to find the highlights on the record amid the overblown production and endless amounts of filler.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

It's hard to imagine today but Atlanta used to very much be a musical backwater. Before the early '90s—when the city became the epicenter of American R&B and hip-hop thanks to the work done by L.A. Reid, Babyface, Jermaine Dupri, and many others—Atlanta was pretty much just a huge Southern city more known as a requisite tour stop (it's where the Sex Pistols kicked off their U.S. tour!) than for its homegrown talent. There had always been a vibrant music scene, but despite its creative breadth, it was mostly appreciated at the local level. Occasionally, artists would break through, but the idea of an "Atlanta scene" was laughable, a situation made even more embarrassing by the fact that tiny Athens—just an hour north —boasted a far more critically appreciated stable of bands. So when, in 1990, a band called the Black Crowes began dominating rock radio with their debut album, even some Atlanta music fans were surprised to discover that this was, in fact, a local act. Previously known as Mr. Crowe’s Garden, the band achieved moderate regional success with their punkish and somewhat shambolic take on classic rock tropes, but the focused, muscular, and surgically precise sound of Shake Your Money Maker was an altogether different beast. While fellow Atlantans Georgia Satellites had hit paydirt a few years earlier with a similar—albeit more barroom-focused—formula, the Crowes approach was far more studious. While they would later become renowned for their loose, jammy live shows (and even their follow-up would reveal a far more interesting spectrum of southern musical influences), Shake Your Money Maker found the Black Crowes reading the catechism from The Holy Book of Rock & Roll like the most true-believing evangelists. And while the album didn't score a whole lot of points for originality, it more than made up for that with its confidence, swagger, and sheer skill. Of course, Chris Robinson's vocal style—equal parts Mick Jagger and Faces-era Rod Stewart with a measure of gravelly Stax soul for flavor—was a highly effective delivery mechanism, but the twin guitars of his brother Rich Robinson and Jeff Cease (who would be the first of many "former members" of the band) were both beefy and melodic, and the highly underrated rhythm section of Johnny Colt and Steve Gorman managed to be both locked in tight and fiercely swinging. The combination was irresistible, providing a powerful reminder of the instinctive strengths of rock 'n' roll (which, you must remember, was kind of on the ropes in those post-spandex, pre-grunge years). Sure, scoring a hit with a cover of a hit ("Hard to Handle") may not be the best way to establish your creative abona fides, but being able to follow that up with more interesting singles like "Jealous Again" and "Twice As Hard" proved that the band was capable of more than just xeroxing the greats. This fleshed-out 30th anniversary reissue does a marvelous job of putting the work into perspective, unearthing early Mr. Crowe’s Garden demos, a few studio outtakes ("Charming Mess" being the best), and an absolutely barnstorming hometown concert recorded around the time of the album's release. © Jason Ferguson/Qobuz

Hubert Parry's Scenes from Shelley's Prometheus Unbound, from 1880, here receives its world-recorded premiere. Perhaps recording companies thought there wouldn't be much of a market for a heavy 19th century choral work with, it must be said, a ponderous text by Percy Bysshe Shelley (Prometheus was a play intended to be read, not performed, just to give an idea). How wrong they were. This release made classical best-seller lists in the summer of 2023, and it is altogether enjoyable. At the time, Parry was under the spell of Wagner, whom he traveled to Bayreuth to meet. That influence certainly shows up in Scenes from Shelley's Prometheus Unbound, with its basically declamatory text, partly through-composed music, wind-and-brass-heavy orchestration, and splashes of chromaticism. Yet what is remarkable is that the music does not come off as an imitation of Wagner at all. Rather, it uses elements of his style to match a specific kind of English literary text. The work gradually disappeared, but it would be surprising if Elgar, whom it clearly prefigures, did not know it well. The performances here are luminous, with William Vann using the lighter-than-expected London Mozart Players to create transparent textures against which he can set the substantial voices of Sarah Fox, Sarah Connolly, and other soloists. Parry did write some shorter pieces that remain in the repertory; one of these, Blest Pair of Sirens, is included here as a finale. However, the Scenes from Shelley's Prometheus Unbound are the main news here, and this performance, showing how this kind of thing should be done, may generate a new life for the work. © James Manheim /TiVo

When this two-LP set was initially released in January 1971, Canned Heat was back to its R&B roots, sporting slightly revised personnel. In the spring of the previous year, Larry "The Mole" Taylor (bass) and Harvey Mandel (guitar) simultaneously accepted invitations to join John Mayall's concurrent incarnation of the Bluesbreakers. This marked the return of Henry "Sunflower" Vestine (guitar) and the incorporation of Antonio "Tony" de la Barreda (bass), a highly skilled constituent of Aldolfo de la Parra (drums). Sadly, it would also be the final effort to include co-founder Alan "Blind Owl" Wilson, who passed away in September 1970. Hooker 'n Heat (1971) is a low-key affair split between unaccompanied solo John Lee Hooker (guitar/vocals) tunes, collaborations between Hooker and Wilson (piano/guitar/harmonica), as well as five full-blown confabs between Hooker and Heat. The first platter focuses on Hooker's looser entries that vacillate from the relatively uninspired ramblings of "Send Me Your Pillow" and "Drifter" to the essential and guttural "Feelin' Is Gone" or spirited "Bottle Up and Go." The latter being among those with Wilson on piano. Perhaps the best of the batch is the lengthy seven-minute-plus "World Today," which is languid and poignant talking blues, with Hooker lamenting the concurrent state of affairs around the globe. "I Got My Eyes on You" is an unabashed derivative of Hooker's classic "Dimples," with the title changed for what were most likely legal rather than artistic concerns. That said, the readings of the seminal "Burning Hell" and "Bottle Up and Go" kept their familiar monikers intact. The full-fledged collaborations shine as both parties unleash some of their finest respective work. While Canned Heat get top bill -- probably as it was the group's record company that sprung for Hooker 'n Heat -- make no mistake, as Hooker steers the combo with the same gritty and percussive guitar leads that have become his trademark. The epic "Boogie Chillen No. 2" stretches over 11 and a half minutes and is full of the same swagger as the original, with the support of Canned Heat igniting the verses and simmering on the subsequent instrumental breaks with all killer and no filler. The 2002 two-CD pressing by the French Magic Records label is augmented with "It's All Right," with a single edit of "Whiskey and Wimmen."© Lindsay Planer /TiVo

Fauré's Requiem, “funeral lullaby” written for enjoyment as the composer put it, has a unique place in history. It's soft, simple and modest poetry conveys moments of gentle contemplation and moving expressiveness which are entrusted to both the choir and the two soloists. With his Ensemble Aedes and the orchestra Les Siècles, Mathieu Romano is committed to render a Requiem faithful to its first performance. We hear thus the score in its original 1893 orchestration, where the organ plays a great role, and where Latin is pronounced in the French way as it used to be. The clearest articulation of the Ensemble Aedes then perfectly fits Éluard’s Figure humaine set to music by Francis Poulenc. We have never heard these sublime poems sung with such intelligibility before! Finally, the three Songs by Debussy elegantly close the album. Here again, the quality and clarity of the voices are stunning. Artistic director and founder of Ensemble Aedes has established himself as a magician of voices in a cappella scores. And voices ideally melt with the strings of Les Siècles under his baton. A 100% French cast in a 100% French music disc for a triple rediscovery. Essential! © Aparté

Extreme's brand of hard rock balanced ambitious, progressive tendencies with catchy melodies owing more to the Beatles than anthemic arena rock; on III Sides to Every Story, the former tends to dominate. The album is divided into three "sides of the story" -- roughly speaking, "Yours" concentrates on politically oriented rockers showing off Nuno Bettencourt's virtuosity; "Mine" leans toward pop songs with warmly romantic sensibilities, plus an occasional philosophical lament; and "The Truth" tries to wrap things up into a coherent whole but dissolves into indigestible prog-rock excess. Thus, the thematic material can be likened to a less focused version of Pornograffitti. The album is wildly uneven, but amidst the indulgences there are some fine songs to be found: "Rest in Peace" displays both Bettencourt's technique and melodicism as a soloist, while "Seven Sundays" continues in their occasional lounge ballad vein, and "Tragic Comic" and "Stop the World" are two more intelligent, wounded-romantic pop gems.© Steve Huey /TiVo

Given how they've always harbored inclinations to try any fad that passes across their radar, perhaps it was inevitable that Fall Out Boy would dive headfirst into EDM. What was not inevitable was the fallout FOB would sustain in this eminently logical move. "Young and Menace," the clanking and garish single built around an extended allusion to Britney Spears' "Oops...I Did It Again," killed whatever momentum FOB built up with "Uma Thurman," sending the group back into the studio to rejigger the album that would become known as M A N I A. Stung by the negative reaction to "Young and Menace" -- it missed all the Billboard rock charts -- Fall Out Boy scaled back their electronic aspirations but didn't quite abandon them entirely when it came to finalizing the ten tracks featured on their seventh studio album. "Young and Menace" not only still exists, it opens up the album's digital edition and the group occasionally returns to its cavernous clang, funneling it into the frenzied stomp of "Stay Frosty Royal Milk Tea," having it power "The Last of the Real Ones," and letting it add echoing texture to the closing ballad, "Bishops Knife Trick." Instead of making Fall Out Boy seem fresh, these electronic inflections wind up hinting at the group's age, as this frenetic music never seems to come as easily as the familiar amped-up blue-eyed soul and heady punk-pop. That transparent sense of labor does indeed make M A N I A seem manic, with Fall Out Boy not so much chasing trends as demonstrating that they know something is happening, they just don't know what it is. All this feverish digital desperation makes the already clamorous M A N I A feel positively cacophonic: it may only be 39 minutes but it's one long ride.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

Marking saxophonist Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis' centennial, the 2023 anthology Cookin' with Jaws and the Queen: The Legendary Prestige Cookbook Albums spotlights the ebulliently earthy collaborations between the tenor icon and organist Shirley Scott. As a key member of the Count Basie band of the 1950's, Davis established his authoritative style as one that could be throaty and gruff one minute and velvet-soft the next. However, it was his work with Scott -- an effusively gifted player steeped in gospel and blues -- from about 1955 to 1960 that cemented their legacies and helped to popularize the soulful, hard-swinging organ trio sound. Culled from several 1958 sessions, Cookbook, Vol. 1, Cookbook, Vol. 2, Cookbook, Vol. 3, and Smokin' (all featured here) remain some of the most potent and memorable of their recordings. They are joined by Scott's band of the time, including drummer Arthur Edgehill, reed player/flautist Jerome Richardson, and bassist George Duvivier. Together, they dig into a mix of standards and some originals that strike a warm balance between Basie-esque swing, bop, groove-oriented R&B, and slow-burning blues. Of the latter, the group's 12-minute take on Johnny Hodges' "In the Kitchen" on Vol. 1 is a standout, as is the steamy, gospel-inflected "The Rev" off Vol. 2. Equally engaging originals pop up along the way, including Davis' frenetic "Have Horn, Will Blow," the sparkling "The Chef", and the trio of food-themed cuts on Vol. 3: "Heat 'n' Serve," "The Goose Hangs High," and "Simmerin'." The standards are just as delicious, with Davis and Scott cutting deep into ballads like "My Old Flame" and "Stardust."© Matt Collar /TiVo

I Love Rock-n-Roll, Joan Jett's first record with the Blackhearts, was a tougher, louder album than Bad Reputation, primarily because her new backing band gave her a more coherent sound. That dynamic, hard rock crunch is what made the title track into an international hit, but it also gives the album dimension -- not only can Jett & the Blackhearts tear up heavy glam rockers, but they also pull off the mock psychedelia of Tommy James & the Shondells' "Crimson and Clover" with aplomb. On the whole, I Love Rock-n-Roll doesn't have as many strong songs as its predecessor, but the band's muscular, gritty sound makes the album just as good as Bad Reputation.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

Fresh expands and brightens the slow grooves of There's a Riot Goin' On, turning them, for the most part, into friendly, welcoming rhythms. There are still traces of the narcotic haze of Riot, particularly on the brilliant, crawling inversion of "Que Sera, Sera," yet this never feels like an invitation into a junkie's lair. Still, this isn't necessarily lighter than Riot -- in fact, his social commentary is more explicit, and while the music doesn't telegraph his resignation the way Riot did, it comes from the same source. So, Fresh winds up more varied, musically and lyrically, which may not make it as unified, but it does result in more traditional funk that certainly is appealing in its own right. Besides, this isn't conventional funk -- it's eccentric, where even concise catchy tunes like "If You Want Me to Stay" seem as elastic as the opener, "In Time." That's the album's ultimate charm -- it finds Sly precisely at the point where he's balancing funk and pop, about to fall into the brink, but creating an utterly individual album that wound up being his last masterwork and one of the great funk albums of its era.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo