Early in their career, Caroline Rose favored an acoustic-driven sound hewing toward a more folk and Americana direction. But even then, the Long Island-raised songwriter resisted pigeonholing: The bruising "At Midnight," from 2014's I Will Not Be Afraid, cut closer to the scraping blues-rock favored by PJ Harvey or The Kills. When Rose embraced minimalist disco and dreamy electro on 2020's Superstar, the pivot felt completely logical—just another facet of themselves they're peeling away and exploring.Rose's stunning fifth studio album, The Art of Forgetting, arrives as they've settled into a groove that's even more ambitious and impossible to define. The release brims with spectral music where acoustic instruments are a foundation for surging strings, layered vocal arrangements, ornate piano and ethereal synths. "The Doldrums" resembles Kate Bush circa The Dreaming, while standout "The Kiss" is dark, intense synth-pop and "Stockholm Syndrome" is lo-fi folk filtered through what sounds like music from an antique gramophone. At times, these elements are often distorted or manipulated, creating a disorienting atmosphere—as on "Rebirth," where Rose's vocals are impacted by light digital retouching and moments of splintered synths.The Art of Forgetting arose during a time when Rose was weathering a breakup and delving back into themes revolving around family, childhood and memory. "I was writing songs the way that I used to when I was a kid," Rose said in the bio along with the album. "It was more like therapy, just sitting down on my bed and writing about what I was feeling. It sounds so simple but I had really gotten away from that." Understandably, a pervasive sense of melancholy and an awareness of life's fragility permeates The Art of Forgetting. For example, doting voicemails from their grandmother are sprinkled throughout the album, including serving as the foundation for the piano-driven "Better Than Gold," which wavers and shakes like a degrading cassette tape.But in between flashes of grief and loss, Rose is also figuring out how to move forward. "You've got to get through this life somehow!" they sing on "Miami," while on "Kiss," the line "I would do most anything for the kiss of someone new" is repeated as the song grows in intensity, underscoring the desire and urgency behind the wish. And even when Rose leans into more traditional pop arrangements, as on the dynamic "Everywhere I Go I Bring the Rain," the song defies expectations and grasps for something better. Rose switches between their high and low vocal range, and places an echoing bridge at a flashpoint in the song, setting up an ending that explodes like a burst of confetti and celebrates imperfection. © Annie Zaleski/Qobuz

The Black Keys shot to fame in 2010, packing out huge stadiums with their sixth album Brothers. The album artwork paid tribute to a controversial Howlin’ Wolf album (This is Howlin’ Wolf’s New Album. He Doesn’t Like It…) and it was a sign. A sign that all the music they love stems from the blues, even if they also explore other avenues. That’s exactly how they started, playing the blues as a duo in their native industrial Midwest (Akron, Ohio), while dreaming of electric juke joints in Mississippi. The Black Keys have never expressed their love for the blues as much as on Thickfreakness, their second album (and for blues fans, their best). The record where Dan Auerbach carved steaks out of the soft belly of the blues by playing guitar haché with an overpowering sound. The one where drummer Pat Carney seemed to be playing to calm his nerves after a day at the factory. They had faith, rage and hunger in their stomachs, tired and hungry for success. As much inspired by the electric blues of North Mississippi (notably Junior Kimbrough) as by proto-punk (from The Stooges to The Sonics, covering their song Have Love Will Travel), the Black Keys wrote their own legend. Listening to this record on top volume is like sticking your head out of the window of a car speeding down a sun-burned road. Only without all the midges in your face. © Stéphane Deschamps/Qobuz

Zombies or not, Hollywood Undead are a true underground phenomenon. They built their reputation through word of mouth on social networking sites such as MySpace, and it was to the latter's fledgling record label offshoot that the six-member rap-rock troupe signed to in 2005. They later parted company with MySpace Records, preferring to seek another label rather than censor their lyrics, and it's hard to argue with their logic. Presented here in all its unedited glory, there's nothing particularly shocking about any of the lyrics on Swan Song -- in fact, there's very little that's interesting at all. Part of the problem lies in the fact that the group doesn't seem to know what it wants to be. Much of the album is given over to ironic frat-boy party rap: marquee singles "Everywhere I Go" and "No. 5" play fast and loose with misogynist and homophobic slurs, but it's a cheap way to win a laugh, and the jokes become stale long before Hollywood Undead are finished with them. Insufferable though the lyrics are, there are some genuinely good ideas here. "Everywhere I Go" and "No Other Place," in particular, are as danceable as any single in recent memory, and the production value is strong throughout the album. However, their attempts to get serious are about as convincing as their pimp credentials (i.e. not very) and the more intensified the mood, the more interchangeable the rappers become (only Funny Man stands out for his booming baritone). Tracks like "Young" and "This Love, This Hate" represent a low point, as the emcees trade ever-more-exasperated Marshall Mathers impersonations to the backdrop of imposing Wall of Sound guitars and angsty chorus vocals. Clearly, they have talent, but a giant question remains as to whether Hollywood Undead have the self-confidence to drop the gimmicky exterior and deliver something a little more substantial than dated clichés and mildly offensive lyrics.© Dave Donnelly /TiVo

For whatever reason, Willie Nelson's Teatro -- like Emmylou Harris' Wrecking Ball -- seems to exist in a vacuum, completely set apart from his other recordings. It's untrue in either case, but especially in Nelson's. A scant year or so before Teatro was released -- and its recording sessions filmed in an old movie theater in Oxnard, California -- Nelson issued his most brilliant album of the 1990s, Spirit. Island's publicists had no idea what to do with Spirit's subtle, unsentimental, moody, and sparsely arranged and performed songs, but the roots of Teatro lie firmly planted there on its opening instrumental, "Matador." As for Teatro itself, Harris is present on 11 of the 14 tracks. In addition, Daniel Lanois, the same mercurial talent who spearheaded Wrecking Ball, produced this set. The mood is set in an arid space where a forlorn mariachi band meets the Harmonica Man (courtesy of Mickey Raphael) on Ennio Morricone's score for Once Upon a Time in the West. Lyrically, Nelson is as ambitious as he was on Spirit, and rhythmically he's more so, but that doesn't necessarily serve him as well. Teatro is a fine record with its sadness and bitterness in "I Never Cared for You" and the Spanish two-step of "Darkness on the Face of the Earth." But Lanois is one busy guitar picker here, and it stands at odds with Nelson's more spare yet lyrical style. But it's a good tension. It works better on "My Own Peculiar Way," with the percussion floating and evening out the guitars. The touch of Afro-Cuban rhythm in "These Lonely Nights" is sharp in contrast to Nelson's relatively staid and conventional country melody. Here is where Lanois works his magic; he staggers an organ, an electric piano, an accordion, his own electric guitar, a trap kit, and hand percussion all around the beat without anyone playing dead on it. Nelson's voice is the only constant, and it draws the listener right to it. Nelson's cover of Lanois' "The Maker," with Lanois layering thick slaps of sweet, melodic distorted guitar over its intro, is amazing. Harris and Nelson work so well together -- throughout the album but on this track especially -- it's almost a shock they aren't always together. Lyrically, Nelson strides out ahead of all his late-'80s and early-'90s material, continuing the great strides he made with Spirit. Clearly, the slump is over here, and the poetry he spins is accessible, profound, and moving. Teatro is a special album, but it's part two of a story that began with Spirit, and both recordings should be heard in tandem with one another for the full effect. Striking, beautiful, and affecting, Teatro is a sonic film that displays its moving images in the minds and hearts of its listeners.© Thom Jurek /TiVo

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Classical musicians have always recognised the musicality and originality of The Beatles’ songs, Leonard Bernstein declaring the Lennon-McCartney composing team ‘the Schuberts of our time’. This sequel to Peter Breiner’s multi-platinum "Beatles Go Baroque" takes the original concept even further, keeping 18th-century masterpieces such as Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons and Bach’s famously stylish and beautiful Violin Concerto No. 1 largely intact, elegantly combining them with The Beatles’ most enduring melodies to create a joyously genuine 21st-century mashup. © Naxos

Jackson Browne abandoned politics for the war between the sexes on I'm Alive. "I have no problem with this crooked world," he sang; "...My problem is you." The album detailed the ups and downs of a relationship, starting with the defiant post-breakup title track and then doubling back to describe irritation ("My Problem Is You"), devotion ("Everywhere I Go," "I'll Do Anything"), increasing tension ("Miles Away," "Too Many Angels"), separation ("Take This Rain," "Two of Me, Two of You"), forgiveness ("Sky Blue and Black"), and finally acceptance ("All Good Things"). Longtime fans welcomed the album as a return in style to the days of Late for the Sky, but a closer model might have been Hold Out, a complementary album concerned with the flowering of an affair rather than the withering of one, since Browne eschewed the greater philosophical implications of romance and, falling back on stock imagery (angels, rain), failed to achieve an originality of expression. Just as, in Hold Out, one wasn't so much inspired as informed that Browne had found love, on I'm Alive, one wasn't so much moved as told that he'd lost it. While it was good news that he wasn't tilting at windmills anymore, Browne did not make a full comeback with the album, despite a couple of well-constructed songs.© William Ruhlmann /TiVo

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With its sophisticated, jazzy sound, A Night Like This meant a big breakthrough for Rebecka Törnqvist upon its release in 1993. The 29-year-old debutante sounded extraordinarily confident and secure, and the backing consisted of a big part of the Swedish jazz elite, including names like Per "Texas" Johansson, Anders Widmark, Esbjörn Svensson, and Pål Svenre. The latter also produced the album together with Törnqvist. Many of these musicians, like Johansson, would in a few years become known outside jazz circles, but it was Törnqvist and this album in particular that were crucial in starting the '90s wave of female jazz vocalists in Sweden, including names like Viktoria Tolstoy, and were important in vitalizing the interest for the whole genre. Despite what it meant for the general popularity of jazz in Sweden, in itself this album is hard to place as either jazz or pop, and it crosses the borders in each and every song. Overall, the instrumentation and sound are jazzy, while the approach is rather more pop. This is the jazziest of Törnqvist's solo albums. When Swedish jazz-pop had proved itself marketable, much of the scene in the late '90s became quite watered down, but Törnqvist stood out as a skilled songwriter and A Night Like This is, perhaps, the album where her talent for songwriting is most obvious.© Lars Lovén /TiVo