Drummer Patrick Carney recently said the goal for the Black Keys' twelfth album was to have "fucking fun." Sounds like mission accomplished. If you've been waiting for Beck to make a sequel to Midnite Vultures, this might be as close as we get. He's pretty much a third member of the band on Ohio Players—co-writing and/or guesting on eight of the 14 songs. His SoCal sunshine (and backing vocals) can be heard on the relaxed fit of "This Is Nowhere" and freak-show single "Beautiful People (Stay Here)," a co-write with Dan the Automator that borrows the groove of "Feeling That Vibe" by Richard Mead. Beck takes the vocal lead on "Paper Crown," a thick slab of greased-up R&B decorated with deep bass, sassy Hammond, Moog, Vocoder and 808—and that's before Three 6 Mafia's Juicy J rolls in and brings the strut down to a cool, slow roll. It's hard to say who's zoomin' who here, but something about the collision of Beck, Carney and Dan Auerbach brings out a wonderfully weird, playful side of the Black Keys. Delightful "Don't Let Me Go" melds Four Seasons-style pomp, mod garage rock and funk horns while "Read Em and Weep" gives Halloween haunted house vibes—with Beck on organ and Auerbach's revved-up surf guitar conjuring the spirit of teen-tragedy splatter platters (á la Jan and Dean's "Dead Man's Curve"). And it's not just Beck along for the ride.  "... It's a big Saturday night party record," Carney has said. "We just had people come through the studio and throw a little bit of special sauce at each song." The band also brought in Memphis horrorcore legend Lil Noid for sleazy-sounding "Candy and Her Friends." And Noel Gallagher—"We were referring to him as 'The Chord Lord' because he's just a perfectionist with it," Carney told NME—leaves his mark on three songs, including "Only Love Matters," a tight stomp meant for cutting a rug. The Oasis songwriter was apparently in a real dance mood; "You'll Pay" is hip-swiveling, Question Mark and the Mysterians cool, with Auerbach perfectly working his falsetto. Gallagher picks up backing vocals on both of those as well as "On the Game," a mellowed-out live take with a Derek and the Dominos feel. "Fever Tree"—another Beck joint—has a psyched-out stomp. Carney's drums are monstrous, and Auerbach's guitar is like a buzzsaw, on dangerous "Please Me (Till I'm Satisfied)." "I Forgot to Be Your Lover," meanwhile, is solid gold soul: Auerbach really sweats the line "And I'm sorry/ I'm so sorry" for the gritty cover of William Bell and Booker T. Jones' silky Stax single. There's apparently even more to look forward to: A rumored Alice Cooper song didn't make the album, but may be out later this year. © Shelly Ridenour/Qobuz

After the catharsis of 2021's Act 1, Imagine Dragons complete the story with Mercury: Act 2, a whopping 18-track journey that examines the time after the shock and grief of loss has begun to settle. While part one processed those messy emotions with some of the rawest and most vulnerable moments in the band's usual radio- and gym-friendly catalog, part two loses focus by biting off more than they can chew. There are plenty of great songs here -- fully expected for a band as hook-savvy as Imagine Dragons -- but there's simply too much going on and not enough editorial trimming to make this as impactful an experience as Act 1. Starting strong with irresistible singles "Bones" and "Sharks," Act 2 soon takes a turn to the pensive and reflective, with frontman Dan Reynolds lamenting his shortcomings on "I Don't Like Myself" and pleading for relief on "Take It Easy." The second half of the album is weighed down by similar moments, snuffing the momentum of the handful of classic stompers peppered throughout. Of this introspective bunch, the country-dusted acoustic gem "Crushed" is on par with "Wrecked" as a tearjerking standout, as "Sirens" merges the group's usual radio-friendly ear with a deep well of emotion. While the buoyant handclaps-and-synths highlight "Younger" and the riffs-and-breakbeats blazer "Blur" come closest to joining their array of mainstream smashes on a future Greatest Hits set, the bulk of Act 2 is truly for the dedicated fans who care to patiently sit with Reynolds and his feelings until everyone's ready to pump out a more focused and immediate set. [Compiling both parts on Mercury: Acts 1 & 2, the band presents the full experience across an expansive 32 tracks, which joins Act 1 and 2 as well as the hit single "Enemy" with JID from the Arcane League of Legends soundtrack.]© Neil Z. Yeung /TiVo

Having re-established his reputation with the musically varied, lyrically enraged Freedom, Neil Young returned to being the lead guitarist of Crazy Horse for the musically homogenous, lyrically hopeful Ragged Glory. The album's dominant sound was made by Young's noisy guitar, which bordered on and sometimes slipped over into distortion, while Crazy Horse kept up the songs' bright tempos. Despite the volume, the tunes were catchy, with strong melodies and good choruses, and they were given over to love, humor, and warm reminiscence. They were also platforms for often extended guitar excursions: "Love to Burn" and "Love and Only Love" ran over ten minutes each, and the album as a whole lasted nearly 63 minutes with only ten songs. Much about the record had a retrospective feel -- the first two tracks, "Country Home" and "White Line," were newly recorded versions of songs Young had played with Crazy Horse but never released in the '70s; "Mansion on the Hill," the album's most accessible track, celebrated a place where "psychedelic music fills the air" and "peace and love live there still"; there was a cover of the Premiers' garage rock oldie "Farmer John"; and "Days That Used to Be," in addition to its backward-looking theme, borrowed the melody from Bob Dylan's "My Back Pages" (by way of the Byrds' arrangement), while "Mother Earth (Natural Anthem)" was the folk standard "The Water Is Wide" with new, environmentally aware lyrics. Young was not generally known as an artist who evoked the past this much, but if he could extend his creative rebirth with music this exhilarating, no one was likely to complain.© William Ruhlmann /TiVo

The reason to mention the "particulars" of this document of informal sessions is because Keith Jarrett went to the trouble of doing so in his liner notes: they came about in the aftermath of he and Charlie Haden playing together during Ramblin' Boy, a documentary film about Haden. The duo, who hadn't played together in over 30 years, got along famously and decided to do some further recording in Jarrett's Cavelight home studio without an end result in mind. The tapes sat -- though were discussed often -- for three years before a decision was made to release some of them. Jasmine is a collection of love songs; most are standards played by two stellar improvisers. Picking out highlights on this eight-song, hour-long set is difficult because the dry warmth of these performances is multiplied by deeply intuitive listening and the near symbiotic, telepathic nature of the playing. The entire proceeding flows seamlessly. The depth of emotion in Peggy Lee's and Victor Young's "Where Can I Go Without You" opens the world of the bereft lover -- and Haden's solo seems to make her/him speak. Jarrett's intro to "I'm Gonna Laugh You Right Out of My Life," by Cy Coleman and Joseph McCarthy, reveals in its lyric just how woefully ironic this tune is. The loss and reverie steeped in false bravado are expressed in Jarrett's arpeggios and underscored by Haden's emphasis on single notes during the changes and a deep woody tone he gets in the combination of skeletal flourishes during Jarrett's solo. On the surface it might seem that the inclusion of Joe Sample's "One Day I'll Fly Away" is an odd inclusion; yet it acts on some level as the hinge piece for the set. Its simplicity and sparseness are offset by the profound lyricism Jarrett imbues it with. Haden asserts, quietly of course, that the complex emotions in the tune go beyond any language -- other than music's -- to express. After a devastatingly sad reading Gordon Jenkins' "Goodbye" with Jarrett at his most poignant and clean, a brief reading of Jerome Kern's and Oscar Hammerstein's "Don't Ever Leave Me" closes the set. The way it's played, this tune is not a plea, but a poetically uttered assertion between lovers. Jasmine is, ultimately, jazz distilled to its most essential; it not only expresses emotion and beauty, but discovers them in every moment of its performance.© Thom Jurek /TiVo

...Famous Last Words... was the last album that Roger Hodgson made with Supertramp before seeking a solo career, and he made sure that radio would take kindly to his last hurrah with the band. Sporting an airy and overly bright pop sheen, ...Famous Last Words... put two singles on the charts, with the poignant "My Kind of Lady" peaking at number 31 and the effervescent smile of "It's Raining Again" going to number 11. The album itself went Top Ten both in the U.S. and in the U.K., eventually going gold in America. The songs are purposely tailored for Top 40 radio, delicately textured and built around overly bland and urbane choruses. Hodgson's abundance of romantically inclined poetry and love song fluff replaces the lyrical keenness that Supertramp had produced in the past, and the instrumental proficiency that they once mastered has vanished. Hodgson's English appeal and fragile vocal manner works well in some places, but the album's glossy sound and breezy feel is too excessive. Hodgson gave his solo album, 1984's In the Eye of the Storm, a mildly progressive feel, quite unlike his last appearance with his former group.© Mike DeGagne /TiVo

More than a quarter-century after Tom Petty's Wildflowers was first released, it can finally be heard the way the singer-songwriter intended. When he turned in 25 songs, hoping for a double album, Warner Bros. asked him to pare it down to one. But just three years past his death, his family and Heartbreakers bandmates Benmont Tench and Mike Campbell (technically a solo release, Wildflowers features most of the band) have restored the record to its original glory and added in a trove of home demos, alternate takes and live tracks—some 70 songs in all. Produced by Rick Rubin while Petty's decades-old marriage was crumbling and he was reportedly battling heroin addiction, the 1994 release remains one of the all-time great break-up records; heard all together, the extended LP (the All The Rest part is produced Petty's longtime engineer Ryan Ulyate) Petty is a deeper devastating beauty. "New" tracks like the Byrds-y "Leave Virginia Alone," tender "Something Could Happen" and psychedelic Beatles-meets-Wall of Sound "Somewhere Under Heaven" are a comfortable coda to classics such as "You Don't Know How It Feels" and "It's Good to Be King." Extra track "Hope You Never" is a gorgeous, direct complement to old favorite "Only a Broken Heart." As perfect as the original album has always played, it's hard to imagine not including the swaying After the Gold Rush-esque "Hung Up & Overdue" (with backing vocals by Beach Boy Carl Wilson) or sunny, jangling "California" (which also shows up in a demo version, with a telling extra verse: "Don’t forgive my past/ I forgive my enemy/ Don’t know if it lasts/ Gotta just wait and see"). Dig into the home recordings, and it's an even bigger mystery why the harmonica-inflected "There Goes Angela" and plaintive "There's a Break in the Rain (Have Love Will Travel)" weren't contenders over, say, the Celtic-flavored "Don't Fade on Me." Chalk part of that first-listen awe up to the intimacy of these solo demos, which also cast a new, revelatory light on the gently folksy title track and "You Don't Know How It Feels." Live non-album favorites "Girl on LSD" and "Drivin' Down to Georgia" are captured here, along with a blistering "Honey Bee" and lovely takes on "You Wreck Me" and "Crawling Back to You." Tench has recalled Petty calling Wildflowers "the best record we ever made." Now it's even better. © Shelly Ridenour/Qobuz

Zappa in New York was recorded in December 1976 at the Palladium and originally intended for release in 1977. It was held up due to arguments between Frank Zappa and his then-record label, Warner Bros. When the two-LP set finally appeared in March 1978, Warner had deleted "Punky's Whips," a song about drummer Terry Bozzio's attraction to Punky Meadows of Angel. The Zappa band, which includes bassist Patrick O'Hearn, percussionist Ruth Underwood, and keyboard player Eddie Jobson, along with a horn section including the two Brecker brothers, was one of the bandleader's most accomplished, which it had to be to play songs like "Black Page," even in the "easy" version presented here. Zappa also was at the height of his comic stagecraft, notably on songs like "Titties & Beer," which is essentially a comedy routine between Zappa and Bozzio, and "The Illinois Enema Bandit," which features TV announcer Don Pardo.© William Ruhlmann /TiVo

On Real Gone, Tom Waits walks a fraying tightrope. By utterly eliminating one of the cornerstone elements of his sound -- keyboards -- he has also removed his safety net. With songwriting and production partner Kathleen Brennan, he strips away almost everything conventional from these songs, taking them down to the essences of skeletal rhythms, blasted and guttural blues, razor-cut rural folk music, and the rusty-edge poetry and craft of songwriting itself. His cast includes guitarists Marc Ribot and Harry Cody, bassist/guitarist Larry Taylor, bassist Les Claypool, and percussionists Brain and Casey Waits (Tom's son), the latter of whom also doubles on turntables. This does present problems, such as on the confrontational opener, "Top of the Hill." Waits uses his growling, grunting vocal atop Ribot's monotonously funky single-line riff and Casey's turntables to become a human beatbox offering ridiculously nonsensical lyrics. It's a throwaway, and the album would have been better had it been left off entirely. But it's also a canard, a sleight-of-hand strategy he's employed before. The jewels shine from the mud immediately after. The mutated swamp tango of "Hoist That Rag" has stuttered clangs and quakes for drums, decorated by distorted Latin power chords and riffs from Ribot, along with thundering deep bass from Claypool. On the ten-plus minute "Sins of My Father," Cody's spooky banjo walks with Taylor's low-strung bass and Waits' shimmering reverbed guitar as he ominously croons, revealing a rigged game of "star-spangled glitter" where "justice wears suspenders and a powdered wig." It's part revelation, part East of Eden, and part backroom political culture framed by the eve of the apocalypse. It's hunted, hypnotic, and spooky. In stripping away convention, Waits occasionally lets his songs go to extremes with absurd simplicity, such as on "Don't Go into That Barn," a musical cousin to his spoken "What's He Building?" from Mule Variations. But there's also the downright riotous squall of "Shake It," which sounds like an insane carny barker jamming with R.L. Burnside, or the riotous raging blues of "Baby Gonna Leave Me." There are "straight" narratives such as "How's It Gonna End," with its slow and brooding beat storyline, and the moving murder ballad "Dead and Lovely," with its drooping, shambolic elegance. There's the spoken word "Circus," with its wispy spindly frame that features Waits on chamberlain. And "Metropolitan Glide" feels like a hell-bent duet between James Brown and Captain Beefheart's Magic Band, followed by the fractured, busted-love, ranting-at-God pain that rips through "Make It Rain." The tender "Green Grass" is among Waits' finest broken love songs; it's movingly rendered by a character who could have resided in one of William Kennedy's novels. The set closes with "Day After Tomorrow," featured on MoveOn.org's Future Soundtrack for America. It is one of the most insightful and understated antiwar songs to have been written in decades. It contains not a hint of banality or sentiment in its folksy articulation. Real Gone is another provocative moment for Waits, one that has problems, but then, all his records do. His excesses, however, do nothing to cloud the stellar achievements of his risk-taking vision and often brilliant execution.© Thom Jurek /TiVo

Croce's debut ABC album was also his commercial breakthrough, topping the charts for five weeks, largely due to the comic, up-tempo title tune, a story song about competing pool hustlers, although Croce also reached the Top 20 with the change-of-pace ballad "Operator (That's Not the Way It Feels)." Just after his death, ABC issued the track "Time in a Bottle," and a newly ironic message propelled it to number one.© William Ruhlmann /TiVo

That album recording of the sold-out tour The Wall Live 2010-2013. This series of concerts by Roger Waters is the first comprehensive interpretation of the concept album by Pink Floyd since 1990. Mixing explosive scenic rock performances with strong message of peace and compassion, The Wall Live attracted more than 4.5 million spectators in more than 200 concerts across four continents! Produced by Nigel Godrich (Radiohead, Beck, Paul McCartney), the disc offers a rather exhilarating listening experience of the masterpiece originally published back in 1979, which was the first narrative concept album of Floyd. Three decades later, this scenic reinterpretation demonstrates the sheer timelessness of these particular songs. Above all, the versions offered here shed new light that all Pink Floyd fans worthy of the name will treasure. © CM/Qobuz

Prefab Sprout was always too good for the radio. Hearing the band's immaculate, gorgeously crafted pop songs alongside disposable, unimaginative records seemed like blasphemy. Perhaps many American radio programmers felt the same way, as most of this best-of compilation is obscure to U.S. listeners. While Two Wheels Good and From Langley Park to Memphis are superior purchases, A Life of Surprises is an engaging introduction to a group that is nowhere near as bizarre as its name. Much has been said about Paddy McAloon's warm, comforting voice, but like Paul Heaton of the Housemartins and the Beautiful South, his soothing croon can sometimes hide some pretty depressing lyrics. "When Love Breaks Down" is classic '80s new wave heartache: teary-eyed synthesizers, downtrodden basslines, and McAloon's whispery talk create a film noir atmosphere of deep sadness. The lyrics are sharpened by his adult observations. "When love breaks down/You join the wrecks/Who leave their hearts for easy sex," McAloon sings. The brutal honesty of those lines easily elevate "When Love Breaks Down" to the top class of breakup songs. Even more powerful is "Goodbye Lucille No. 1 (Johnny Johnny)," sung from the perspective of a man trying to make a close friend get over a girl who has rejected him. The words are frank and painfully realistic as McAloon doesn't sugarcoat the dialogue. McAloon rips into his buddy's futile romantic fantasies and lets the hard light of reality shine upon him: "Ooh Johnny Johnny Johnny you won't make it any better/Ooh Johnny Johnny Johnny you might well make it worse." If this sounds dreary it should be noted that Prefab Sprout isn't one of those grim British raincoat bands. The group has a number of wonderfully upbeat moments, such as on the exhilarating "Hey Manhattan!" and "Cars and Girls," a clever commentary on Bruce Springsteen's preoccupation with automobiles and women.© Michael Sutton /TiVo

Philly soul staples Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes were in full swing on 1975's Wake Up Everybody. Sporting their trademark lush, string-laden production from Gamble and Huff (who also wrote about half the album's material), the smooth soul outfit delivers a mix of deep soul balladry and uptempo dance tracks. The title track, with its socially relevant messages, is a standout. There is no shortage of fine vocal performances all around, notably from Melvin and from future solo star Teddy Pendergrass.© Anthony Tognazzini /TiVo

The two composers of the soundtrack for the first season of The Witcher are not (yet) stars of the film music genre, but they are certainly on their way there, given the phenomenal success of the series and its music. Giona Ostinelli is a Swiss-Italian composer, known for her work on a televised adaptation of a Stephen King novel (The Mist), whereas Sonya Belousova is a Russian pianist who was recognised in 2015 for the album Player Piano, produced by Stan Lee (Marvel). In 2019, they produced the soundtrack to The Witcher, an eight-episode-long series created by Lauren Schmidt Hissrich and broadcast on Netflix in the same year. The television adaptation is based on the literary saga of the same name, written by ‘Polish Tolkien’ Andrzej Sapkowski. The first season is based on The Last Wish and Sword of Destiny, a series of short stories which precede the main saga of The Witcher. Given the subject matter of The Witcher, it should not come as a surprise to find several pieces with Celtic and medieval connotations, whether they be dances with fiddle or tin whistle solos (They’re Alive, I’m Helping the Idiot), or ethereal voices accompanied by harps (Tomorrow I’ll Leave Blaviken For Good). Rodion Belousov’s expressive oboe solos deserve an honourable mention in Happy Childhoods Make For Dull Company and Rewriting History. As for the action music, even though the powerful rhythms are dominant, the traditional fibre remains running through the music (It’s An Ultimatum). Finally, if the music from The Witcher is so successful, it surely owes a lot of this fame to its songs, especially Toss A Coin To Your Witcher, the tune sung by the bard Jaskier (Joey Batey) and countlessly covered and parodied on social media. Both the songs and the instrumental music from The Witcher possess a poetic and melodic power, rare enough to be worthy of note. To this end, they equally have an intrinsic interest, and you can enjoy listening to it away from the visuals. © Nicolas Magenham/Qobuz

In 1990, Neil Young made a resounding comeback. With the grunge tsunami about to devastate Planet Rock, Mr. buckskin jacket was celebrated more than ever by the entire English-speaking indie scene. From Pearl Jam/Nirvana to Dinosaur Jr. /Sonic Youth, all saw him as a kind of godfather of punk, the almighty God of grunge. It was the perfect moment for the Loner to reactivate his loudest combo, Crazy Horse, and release a magnificent album of dirty, uncompromising rock'n'roll. It’s an album full of raw guitars and spine-tingling feedback. Title: Ragged Glory. Recorded on November 13 that year at the Catalyst in Santa Cruz, the live Way Down in the Rust Bucket (for die-hards and experts, it’s volume 11.5 of the Performance Series from the Neil Young Archives) documents preparations for the Ragged Glory world tour. It’s an impeccable Cali concert to warm up the new repertoire and revisit some immortal classics (Cinnamon Girl, Don’t Cry No Tears, Sedan Delivery, Like a Hurricane and Cortez the Killer, in a cataclysmic 11-minute version!). Surrounded by drummer Ralph Molina, guitarist Frank Sampedro and bassist Billy Talbot, Neil Young, then 45, was at the top of the raw art form he embodies. This is electric rock’n’roll powered by songs to die for. An essential unreleased archive. © Marc Zisman/Qobuz

The Offspring may have been a product of the Southern California hardcore scene, but their instincts have always been more metal than punk. Their guitars plod along with a heavy backbeat, and even their speedier numbers are weighed down by clumsy riffs, which is evident on Ixnay on the Hombre, the follow-up to the group's unexpected hit Smash. Despite Jello Biafra's opening assertion of the Offspring's punk credentials, Ixnay on the Hombre sounds like a competent hard rock band trying to hitch themselves to the post-grunge bandwagon. The riffs don't have hooks, and Dexter Holland yelps his vocals tunelessly. Of course, much hardcore followed this formula, but it got by on its self-righteousness and visceral forward force. Since the Offspring slow down the tempo of hardcore, it doesn't have either the undiluted rage of hardcore or the four-on-the-floor groove of hard rock. Also, they haven't come up with a ridiculous hook on the level of "Come Out and Play" or "Self Esteem," which leaves Ixnay on the Hombre as a tedious, turgid mess of anemic punk metal. © Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo