Music has been described as a way of saving that which has been lost: a simple but strong idea, and one which has influenced Hélène Grimaud's artistic expression.Her new album Memory deals with music's power to bring back to life the images of the past in the present, its ability to vividly and piercingly evoke a specific time and a place. It explores the essence of memory through a series of refined miniatures for piano. The choice of repertoire covers a vast, diverse range, from the reveries of Chopin and Debussy to the timeless, folky melodies of Valentin Silvestrov.  © Universal

Fusion, transcendence: it's what he's always done. At 74, Carlos Santana is still as curious as ever, and his 26th studio album brings together all his current interests, with an unabashedly popularising aim. With this record, the Mexican-born guitarist wanted to "return to radio". And this album has all the ingredients to make its mark on the airwaves in the coming months. First of all, he relaunched his duet with Rob Thomas, which had won a Grammy for Smooth at the time of Supernatural, Santana's 1999 comeback album. And the very groovy track Move looks set to do it again. The cover of Manu Dibango's Soul Fiesta (taken from 1972’s Africadelic), here becomes Santana Celebration, an intro in the form of a percussion and wah-wah jam, is also a noteworthy track.Santana then wanders between Latin music (Rumbalero with Asdru Sierra from the Californian band Ozomatli), pop passages (Break, Breathing Underwater, She's Fire) and high-quality guest appearances, starting with Joy, with country singer Chris Stapleton coming in for a well-oiled reggae/blues double-act, and a cover of Procol Harum's Whiter Shade of Pale featuring Steve Winwood. But the highlight of the album is the encounter with Kirk Hammett, the guitarist of Metallica (+ Mark Osegueda, the singer in Death Angels) on America for Sale, six minutes of rage with a totally unbridled finale featuring these two guitar heroes. Note also that Blessings & Miracles contains Chick Corea's very final recording, on Angel Choir / All Together. The legendary American pianist, who died in February 2021, had sent over a keyboard part, which Santana embellished with his guitar, creating an excellent jazz-rock track, rounded out by the musician’s widow, Gayle Moran Corea, who provided the opening chorus. © Smaël Bouaici/Qobuz

Although it stems from a work that Iyer originally crafted back in 2011, one could hardly imagine a better title for a 2021 album release than Uneasy. As the world wobbles onto its post-pandemic footing and the United States begins to take stock of the social and political toll from years of continued divisiveness, any optimism or forward motion one may feel is almost always tempered by the reality of that which came before. That anger and frustration with the past and the resultant realism about the future is at the core of the pianist's first trio album for ECM since 2015's Break Stuff. Like that outing, Uneasy relies on tight, confident interplay between three highly skilled and unique musicians, but this lineup is all new, featuring double-bassist Linda May Han Oh and drummer Tyshawn Sorey. Iyer's skills as a player, composer, and collaborator have since grown considerably and Uneasy is an excellent showcase for all of them. "Children of Flint" and "Combat Breathing" are stunning compositions, focusing on the human costs of political negligence and malfeasance, forces that have unmistakably driven the uneasiness behind the album's title. "Children of Flint" is the more rigorous of the two, opening the album in a dramatically unfolding manner, but "Combat Breathing" definitely holds its own, finding a sturdy groove that's fueled by fire—not funk—and culminating in a cluster of sonics that evaporates into the ether like so much tear gas. The interplay between the three players is remarkable throughout, most notably on the dramatic "Entrustment," which relies on telepathic communication between the rhythm section and Iyer's piano; likewise, "Retrofit"—a piece written for sextet and appropriately complex—gets handled deftly by these three, giving each plenty of opportunity to shine. Of course, it's Iyer's piano work that holds down the entire affair, and as he wends through the dense, melodic "Touba," he manages to evoke Coltrane's spiritual-era changes, but with a more pensive vibe, while on the solo piece "Augury," his playing is both insistent and introspective. On Uneasy, Iyer continues his unique balancing act of presenting complex and demanding compositional ideas in a framework that's welcoming and accessible, with players who see eye-to-eye and can help execute that vision in a way that's imaginative and invigorating. © Jason Ferguson/Qobuz

For Playboi Carti, red means many things: the colour of the Bloods, the gang with which he is affiliated; the colour of the lean that gives him inspiration; and of blood, because on Whole Lotta Red, his second album, The Atlanta rapper turns into a vampire. This effort, which appeared in the twilight of 2020, just when it was least expected, could wake the dead with its great billows of saturated trap and penetrating bass, and it closed out the year beautifully. All the Atlanta sound is here, condensed into twenty-four tracks, from codeine odes such as Sky or Teen X (featuring the ubiquitous Future), to cries of wild monsters, sometimes so deafening that you might imagine yourself in hell, like on King Vamp, F1lthy, or the unstoppable No Sl33p. "When I go to sleep I dream about murder", he intones on this last, as if to remind us that monsters not only populate this album, but also the streets Playboi Carti ran during his adolescence. As executive producer of the album, we find Kanye West, also a guest on the track Go2DaMoon, which introduces an absolutely monstrous banger called Stop Breathing. Whole Lotta Red is a masterclass in contrasts. Because despite the unity of the productions based on the TR-808, Playboi Carti masters everything: the slow groove of New N3on (a huge favourite from producer Maaly Raw), the bass that drives the crazy Punk Monk, the most melodic productions from beatmaker Art Dealer, or the sensitivity of F33l Lik3 Dyin, which closes this fantastic album. So the rumors were true: Atlanta is indeed home to the one and only vampire of rap. © Brice Miclet/Qobuz

"Desire Lines," the first song on the Cowboy Junkies' 2020 album Ghosts, begins with a big blast of distorted guitar that suggests Neil Young stumbled into the studio after a practice session with Crazy Horse. It's not what one would expect from an opening salvo from this band, but Ghosts was inspired by circumstances different than the Cowboy Junkies have experienced in the past. Three of the four bandmembers are siblings -- vocalist Margo Timmins, guitarist Michael Timmins, and drummer Peter Timmins -- and while they were touring in support of 2018's album All That Reckoning, their mother, Barbara Timmins, died. Losing a parent is a profound experience for nearly everyone, and few groups are faced with this level of personal grief impacting so much of the membership at once. The emotions that come from loss are in the forefront on Ghosts, and while sorrow is a large part of that, anger and confusion play as big a role, and this music feels like a wake as much as a memorial, a mixture of mourning and emotional outburst. Ghosts is not a cry against the dying of the light, but it is nakedly emotional and direct in a way that's unusual for the Cowboy Junkies; it embraces electricity and dissonance as expressive tools, not to the point that they dominate the landscape but as necessary punctuation. Which is to say the tenor of this music isn't entirely out of character for the Junkies -- they'd been including electricity and distortion as far back as 1996's Lay It Down -- but the cumulative impact is, and the Timmins siblings (as well as bassist Alan Anton) pour their hearts into the moody quiet of "Breathing" and the quietly soulful "The Possessed" just as they do into the rootsy barroom shuffle of "Misery" and the crashing guitars and drums of "(You Don't Get To) Do It Again." On Ghosts, the pieces all feel like parts of one larger puzzle, and if concluding the album with a celebration of the free jazz pioneer Ornette Coleman seems like an odd touch at first, it's also an impassioned reminder that loss never entirely goes away, and that we need to acknowledge those important to us while they're still in our lives. At just eight songs, Ghosts doesn't appear to be meant to be a major statement from the Cowboy Junkies, but its emotional impact outweighs its physical scale, and it's a brave and impressive effort that's as effective as it was necessary.© Mark Deming /TiVo

Yellowcard makes its major-label debut with Ocean Avenue. This SoCal punk-pop fivesome slightly softens the edges found on its previous two albums in what is an attempt to win over the TRL crowd. Regardless of the reasons why, Yellowcard works with that familiar formula of spastic, crunchy guitar licks, emo-inspired lyrics, and vocals tailored for that tinny, whiny effect. Some say it's been done before, and by 2003 it surely had, but Yellowcard seems to not give a care about it because Ocean Avenue delivers despite of its catchy recipe. The 13-song set switches in mood and tempo for a layered, dynamic sound, and vocalist Ryan Key could very well chasten Dashboard Confessional's Christopher Carrabba about keeping things short and simple. Songs like "Way Away" and "Empty Apartment" thrive on the basics of rock & roll -- foliated guitars weaved in between high-speed percussion. But that's not all. Yellowcard has a secret component when it comes to crafting its own punk-inspired presentation. Violinist Sean Mackin is impressively skilled, and his talent allows Yellowcard to have a bit of an advantage in making something sound original and fresh. "Believe" and the acoustic guitars of "One Year, Six Months" are proof of that. Ocean Avenue isn't exactly outstanding in the sense that this band has done something outrageously different, but it is a worthy collection of songs with a real heart; that alone shows that Yellowcard is on to something solid.© MacKenzie Wilson /TiVo

When Up! was released in November 2002, Shania Twain revealed in one of many promotional interviews that she writes far more songs than can fit on her records and that she hides any personal, introspective songs she pens, not even playing them for her husband and collaborator Robert John "Mutt" Lange. Now, this is certainly a psychological quirk worth exploring, but it also suggests why Twain's albums are such brilliant pieces of mainstream pop. Anything that doesn't fit the mold is discarded, so the album can hum along on its big, polished, multipurpose hooks and big, sweeping emotions. This is Super-Size pop, as outsized and grandiose as good pop should be. And, unlike the work of most pop divas, where the subject matter is firmly about the singer, none of the songs on Up! are remotely about Shania Twain, the person -- let's face it, she's never faced a situation like "Waiter! Bring Me Water!," where she's afraid her guy is going to be stolen away by their hot waitress. No, these songs have been crafted as universal anthems, so listeners can hear themselves within these tales. Just as cleverly, the songs are open-ended and mutable -- always melodic, but never stuck in any particular style, so they can be subjected to any kind of mix and sound just as good. (Indeed, Up! was initially released in no less than three different mixes -- the "Red" pop mix, the "Green" country mix, and the "Blue" international mix; sometimes the differences in mixes were so slight, it sounded like nothing was changed, but each mix revealed how sturdy and melodic the structure of each of the 19 songs was, and how they were designed to sound good in any setting.) True, the sheer length of the album could be seen as off-putting at first, since these 19 tracks don't necessarily flow as a whole. Then again, part of the genius of Up! is that it's designed as a collection of tracks, so the album is durable enough to withstand years on the charts, producing singles with different textures and moods every few months. Time revealed Come on Over as a stellar pop album, and the same principle works for Up!. Upon the first listen, singles seem indistinct, and it seems like too much to consume at once, but once you know the lay of the land, the hooks become indelible and the gargantuan glossiness of the production is irresistible. In other words, it's a more than worthy follow-up to the great mainstream pop album of the late '90s, and proof that when it comes to shiny, multipurpose pop, nobody does it better than Shania Twain.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

Listening to Katy Perry's litany of belched alphabets, fruity boyfriends, Vegas hangovers, and lesbian lip-locks on her debut, One of the Boys, it's easy to assume she'll do anything for attention, and a close read of her history proves that suspicion true. Prior to her transformation into a teen tart, Perry was a Christian singer operating under the name Katy Hudson -- an appellation a little bit too close to Kate Hudson, so she swapped last names and started working with big-name producer after big-name producer, cutting sessions with Glen Ballard and then the Matrix. That was enough to get buzz touting her as a next big thing in 2004, but not enough to actually get a record into the stores, a nicety that often proves invaluable for wannabe pop stars. Given this long line of botched starts, maybe it makes sense that the 24-year-old starlet is singing with the desperation of a fading burlesque star twice her age, yet Perry's shameless pandering on One of the Boys is startling, particularly as it comes in the form of some ungodly hybrid of Alanis Morissette's caterwauling and the cold calculation of Britney Spears in her prime. This fusion is no accident, as Perry works once again with Ballard, the producer behind Morissette's breakthrough Jagged Little Pill, and Max Martin, the writer/producer of "Baby One More Time" -- and that's just for starters. She also brings aboard Desmond Child to give "Waking Up in Vegas" an anonymous, anthemic pulse, Dave Stewart to give "I'm Still Breathing" a Euro sheen, and Butch Walker to amp up the amplifiers, giving her a different sound for every imaginable demographic.All the pros give One of the Boys a cross-platform appeal, but there's little question that its revolting personality is all down to Perry, who distills every reprehensible thing about the age of The Hills reality show into one pop album. She disses her boyfriend with gay-baiting; she makes out with a girl and she's doesn't even like girls; she brags to a suitor that he can't afford her, parties till she's face-down in the porcelain, drops brands as if they were weapons, curses casually, and trades under-the-table favors. In short, she's styled herself as a Montag monster. Perry is not untalented -- she writes like an ungarbled Morissette and has an eye for details, as when she tells her emo metrosexual boyfriend to hang himself with his H&M scarf on "Ur So Gay" -- but that only accentuates how her vile wild-child persona is artifice designed to get her the stardom she craves. Maybe if the music were as trashy as the style, she could get away with it, as it would have a junky thrill, but that's where all the high-thread-count producers actually work against One of the Boys. They flatten everything out, turning the stomping Gary Glitter beat of "I Kissed a Girl" into a leaden stumble and burying Perry's voice underneath Pro Tools overdubs so it all winds up as a faceless wash of sound designed to be placed in TV shows, movie trailers, and malls -- which is of course part of the plan, as this is music designed to be everywhere after Perry's taboo flirtations break down doors. The problem is not with Perry's gender-bending, it's that her heart isn't in it; she's just using it to get her places, so she sinks to crass, craven depths that turn One of the Boys into a grotesque emblem of all the wretched excesses of this decade.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

On the second part of HEALTH's ambitious collaborative project, the Los Angeles trio works with another wide array of artists. Where Disco4, Pt. 1 found them trading sounds and ideas with primarily indie and electronic acts that included 100 gecs, Xiu Xiu, and Soccer Mommy, DISCO4 :: Pt. II's guest list is dominated by artists from the worlds of metal, industrial, and rap. As in the first part of the project, this collection lets all the parties involved stretch their artistic muscles a bit. While HEALTH have never been a one-trick pony, they've evolved from a noise-rock outfit into something just as cathartic but with more shades in their music. They take listeners on a wild ride as they further explore sounds they might allude to on their own albums, while keeping the themes they do so well -- disgust at the world, heartache, and self-loathing -- front and center. They're also gracious collaborators who easily balance their approach with those of their guests on tracks as different as the brooding Poppy duet "Dead Flowers," or "Cold Blood," a dark and frenzied team-up with Lamb of God. This feeling of creative give and take applies to every track, whether HEALTH's guest stars are famous or deep in the underground. "Isn't Everyone," their seething collab with Nine Inch Nails, balances Trent Reznor's snarl and Jake Duzsik's insistent whispers ably, while "Murder Death Kill" puts the deranged screams of Black Dresses' Ada Rook and the raw-throated delivery of Denzel Curry associate Playthatboizay up front, with Duzsik providing moody backing vocals. DISCO4 :: Pt. II's other forays into rap and hip-hop also work remarkably well and span a number of approaches, from the zombie-like crawl of the Backxwash and Ho99o9-featuring "Gnostic Flesh/Mortal Hell" to the mournful post-punk-meets-hip-hop fusion of "Still Breathing" with EKKSTACY. HEALTH's collaborations with artists closer to their own wheelhouse provide several more of DISCO4 :: Pt. II's highlights. These include the dead-of-night throb of "Excess," which features Perturbator (the only guest artist to appear on both volumes of the Disco4 project), the destroyed majesty of "AD 1000" with the Body, and "The Joy of Sect," a team-up with Street Sects that pushes HEALTH's version of heartbroken synth pop to its prettiest and ugliest extremes. When Duzsik and company finish DISCO4 :: Pt. II with the surging solo track "These Days 2.0.2.1.," they complete an impressive project that brings illuminating new perspectives to their music -- and perhaps some more artists to their listeners' attention.© Heather Phares /TiVo

For ages, these two have been effortlessly immersing themselves in the multicoloured waters of world jazz. These two big names are known for their open-mindedness, their finesse in the art of fusion, and here they join forces. SulaMadiana shows off the French percussionist Mino Cinelu and the Norwegian trumpeter Nils Petter Molvær in their true multi-instrumentalist forms. There’s percussion and trumpet of course. But we also find acoustic and electric guitars, electronic sounds and vocals punctuating this summit meeting that crosses continents (America, Africa, Europe) and eras. Created between Oslo and Brooklyn, the album mixes acoustic and electronic to give the feel of a self-portrait. The essential ports of call made by Mino Cinelu in the last century at Miles Davis and Weather Report have left their mark and they can be heard here and there. The two musicians find a common ground of understanding and communication never seen before in their vast respective careers. The frenetic Cinelu has not lost any of his superb sound and Molvær knows how to play with this power by taming it but never anaesthetising it, like in the captivating Theories of Dreaming and Rose of Jericho. At the heart of SulaMadiana, the tandem has slipped in three beautiful tributes to three recently deceased giants: saxophonist Manu Dibango (SulaMadiana) and drummers Tony Allen (Song for Julle) and Jimmy Cobb (Tambou Madiana). A fluctuating and crazy record that lives fusion to the full and brilliantly plays with the fake antagonism between vigorous percussion and a gliding trumpet. © Marc Zisman/Qobuz

After the commercial breakthrough of their 2009 album Fantasies, it would seem kind of unfair to ask Metric to do anything differently on their next outing. That album perfectly took their usual tuneful blend of hooky new wave and spooky synth pop and blew it up to stadium-huge levels while adding more emotional content than ever before. It was a trick that seemed so improbable in the first place that it would be crazy for the group not to try re-creating it on Synthetica. So they did. The album has the same glossy textures, gigantic sounding arrangements, huge choruses, and open-hearted vocals as Fantasies did, but keeps the instantly memorable songs and exposed emotions intact. It also retains the same balance of super hooky songs and gloomy ballads, hitting you in the gut one minute and sending you off cheerfully singing along the next. (It's the same kind of trick Garbage were able to pull off in their prime, and Metric sound very much like a widescreen Garbage throughout Synthetica.) The success that band has achieved hasn't exactly healed Emily Haines' wounds, and her vocals have the same powerfully aching quality that has always been there -- they cut through the music and right to the heart of the listener. Songs like "Artificial Nocturne" and "Dreams So Real" hit very, very hard thanks to her vocals. Elsewhere, she shows a ton of range on tracks as varied as the dramatic "Speed the Collapse," the creepily cute "Lost Kitten," and the dreamily desolate "Nothing But Time." The band provides capable backing throughout, framing her voice in a soft web of sound and creating modern pop that goes down easily but never bores. Only the unwelcome appearance of Lou Reed on "The Wanderlust" breaks the mood of the record and brings it down to earth a bit. Even with his warbling croak gumming things up, the song is a highlight on an album full of them. That Metric were able to follow up their best record with another just as good is quite an achievement, hopefully something they will do again and again.© Tim Sendra /TiVo

Having announced their "boredom" with the likeable but at times all-too-predictable power metal peddled on their first four albums, Finland's Sonata Arctica brought a notably heavier sound and darker outlook to bear on their fifth opus, Unia, which understandably didn't sit well with many fans, but certainly helped their metal credibility as a band willing to take chances. So, for their sixth studio album (discounting numerous EPs and a few live recordings along the way), The Days of Grays, the Fins decided to keep things interesting by shifting direction yet again -- but this time they reigned in some of their progressive elements and focused their revived melodic tendencies underneath lyrics devoted either to doomed romance ("Juliet," "No Dream Can Heal a Broken Heart") or bouts of clinical depression (see "The Last Amazing Grays," the claustrophobic "Zeroes," and "The Truth Is Out There," which explores psychology as alien abduction). The romantic tracks often boast a mass appeal on par with Sonata's most successful countrymen, Nightwish, but by doing so naturally sacrifice almost every last metallic vestige and will likely further traumatize the band's older fans who still pine for the days when high speed power metal and fanciful fantasies dominated the band's songwriting. As it stands, The Days of Grays offers but two obvious opportunities for those fans to saddle their steeds and don their invisibility cloaks before traipsing off to medieval towns where witchery could severely damage your crops ("Deathaura," featuring guest vocals from Johanna Kurkela), or, failing that, sail away to the New World and pummel Plymouth Rock with the traditional power metal energy of "Flag in the Ground." Actually, the last song also serves up a good metaphor for Sonata Arctica's ongoing journey into uncharted creative territory, and time will tell whether their audience chooses to join them in their quest.© Eduardo Rivadavia /TiVo