It’s important to remember that before becoming a gold-standard pop star, Taylor Swift grew up on Nashville country music. Music City's folklore now seems a long way off for the thirty-year-old singer. However, Taylor Swift has never stopped dipping her pen into the same ink as her cowgirl elders, perfectly handling romance, heartbreak, introspection, sociopolitical commentary and personal experiences, such as when she sang of her mother’s cancer on Soon You’ll Get Better… It was in lockdown, with restricted means and limited casting, that she put together Folklore, released in the heart of summer 2020. The first surprise here is Aaron Dessner on production. By choosing The National’s guitarist, whom she considers one of her idols, Swift has opted for a musician with sure-footed tastes and boosted her credibility among indie music fans. She hammers this home on Exile with Justin ‘Bon Iver’ Vernon (the album’s only duet), a close friend of Dessner's with whom he formed Big Red Machine.This surprising, even unusual album for Swift is by no means a calculated attempt to flirt with the hipsters. And it really is unusual for her! No pop bangers, nor the usual dig aimed at Kanye West; the album is free of supercharged beats and has delicate instrumentation (piano, acoustic guitar, Mellotron, mandolin, slides…). Folklore toes a perfect line between silky neo-folk and dreamy rock. It’s as if the star had tucked herself away in a cabin in the forest to dream up new ideas, much like Bon Iver did in his early days… By laying her music bare and relieving it of its usual chart music elements, Taylor Swift has added more substance to her discography. This is clear on August, which would never have resonated as well if it had been produced by a Max Martin type… Upon announcing the album, Swift wrote online: “Before this year I probably would’ve overthought when to release this music at the ‘perfect’ time, but the times we’re living in keep reminding me that nothing is guaranteed. My gut is telling me that if you make something you love, you should just put it out into the world.” A wise decision for a beautiful and mature record. © Marc Zisman/Qobuz

Faced with some unexpected free time due to a lockdown inspired by a global pandemic, Taylor Swift turned inward. The result of her introspection was folklore, an album whose hushed atmosphere belies the speed of its composition and recording. Once she started the project, Swift turned to her longtime colleague Jack Antonoff for some input, but she also contacted an unexpected new collaborator: Aaron Dessner, the driving force behind the acclaimed indie rock band the National. Dessner's presence is a signal that folklore represents a shift for Taylor Swift, moving her away from the glittering pop mainstream and into gloomier territory. All of this is true, if perhaps a bit overstated. The 16 songs on folklore are recognizably her work, bearing telltale melodic phrases and a reliance on finely honed narratives that turn on exquisitely rendered lyrical details. Still, the vibe of the album is notably different. Sweetness has ripened into bittersweet beauty, regret has mellowed into a wistful sigh, the melodies don't clamor for attention but seep their way into the subconscious. None of these are precisely new tricks for Swift but her writing from the explicit vantage of other characters, as on the epic story-song "the last great american dynasty," is. Combined, the moodier, contemplative tone and the emphasis on songs that can't be parsed as autobiography make folklore feel not like a momentary diversion inspired by isolation but rather the first chapter of Swift's mature second act.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

The beguiling improvisations on Love in Exile unfold at their own pace; they are like songs that have been stretched out yet retain an arc. The album's six tracks range in length from eight to fifteen minutes but seem shorter, and were recorded live in the studio, without any preparation; there was little editing afterwards. The winning results demonstrate that the musicians in this trio—Arooj Aftab on vocals (singing in Urdu), Vijay Iyer on piano and electronics, and Shahzad Ismaily on bass and Moog synthesizer—are strongly connected.  Elements of South Asian music are clearly present—Aftab, Iyer, and Ismaily are all of South Asian descent—but these explorations inhabit their own sonic space. The spare, texturally nuanced instrumental music has an ambient quality that sets the stage for Aftab's vocals. Her voice has a clear, warm tone that can take on a rougher quality in its lower register. A fair amount of time may pass before she makes an entrance; when she does, her every inflection rivets. "To Remain/To Return" opens with drony low tones and shimmering electronics before Iyer adds acoustic piano. Aftab begins to sing three and half minutes into the track. After her lovely statement, she drops out for a while, but eventually returns. In total, she appears on about a third of the piece, and her singing gives shape to everything around it. The first sound we hear on "Sharabi" is the hypnotic buzz of a panning synthesizer. Aftab makes a relatively early entrance here. Higher-pitched electronics come in, quietly coloring the background, and soon Aftab's voice rises. Tinkling electric piano reverberates; later, acoustic piano picks up on those tones. The music eventually reaches a dramatic peak before it fades, ending the album on a mysterious note. © Fred Cisterna/Qobuz

Dark and glistening. Like a cave on the French Riviera. That’s where Jagger and Richards' band – living as tax exiles - recorded the immense Exile on Main Street, a musical feast with dishes served as country (Sweet Black Angel, Sweet Virginia), gospel (Shine a Light), blues (Shake Your Hips) and visceral rock'n'roll (the opening of Rocks Off and the cult track Happy with Keith Richards on vocals). The Rolling Stones may have been at the height of fame, but this masterpiece came from the heart and soul, with a dark and dirty sound and a sincere and raw style. American roots music (country, blues, folk) had rarely sounded so original. Jagger sings like an inspired old sage. Richards unleashes sharp, sublime guitar riffs. After all these years, we still can’t find the slightest flaw in this double album which many consider to be The Rolling Stones’ best... © Marc Zisman/Qobuz

With Your Wilderness, Bruce Soord's the Pineapple Thief shift their musical focus away from their exploration of polished rock so evident on 2012's All the Wars and 2014's Magnolia, and back toward contemporary prog. Drummer Dan Osborne, who made his debut with the band on Magnolia, proved short-lived in his role; he has been replaced by Porcupine Tree/King Crimson kit man Gavin Harrison. Soord also enlisted guests including Supertramp's John Helliwell on clarinet, Caravan's string player/arranger Geoffrey Richardson, Godsticks' guitarist Darran Charles, and a four-voice choir. Harrison's addition can't be overstated. His playing extends the reach of their musicality exponentially. The album title denotes themes of isolation, loneliness, and alienation -- not unfamiliar ones in PT's oeuvre. That said, they've never been explored with such a brooding focus as they are here. The overall textural palette is muted, songs flow in and out of one another without much in the way of dynamic variables, but there's no shortage of excellent music. Opener "In Exile" is haunted by the sound of Steve Kitch's mellotron hovering behind Harrison's popping snare and tom-toms. They're eventually given flight by Charles' blistering guitar breaks. The chorus contains a small but pronounced hook, making it a perfect candidate for a single. It's followed by "No Man's Land." In his best subdued tenor, Soord relates loneliness and separation accompanied by a lovely meld of piano and acoustic guitar. Halfway through, Jon Sykes' massive bassline engages Harrison's rolling tom fills, adding drama that's expanded by electric guitars and keyboards toward a rocking close -- classic Pineapple Thief. "Take Your Shot" commences at midtempo, with gorgeous harmonic guitar layers and drum vamps amid ambient space. A middle-section crescendo fueled by Harrison is reined in by stacked choral voices before spiraling guitars wrestle it all free. The chorale, mellotron, strummed acoustic guitars, and Helliwell's free-floating clarinet fills make "Fend for Yourself" one of the album's high points, and a perfect setup for the nearly ten-minute "The Final Thing on My Mind." Like most things here, it commences sparingly and slowly. The emotional resonance in Soord's delivery and lyrics carry the song's weight. The bass and drums add a platform of tension as strings, choir, and monumental guitar breaks explode it. For all its strength and promise, Your Wilderness isn't perfect. Soord's songs are composed with a deliberately monochromatic dynamic foundation in order to assert the poignant, focused intention in his lyrics. As a result, the instrumental acumen gleams all the brighter. Deliberate or not, the lack of variation creates a series of lovely, sad, but blurry episodes in an extended work rather than strong individual tracks. That said, this is a marked return to form for the Pineapple Thief; it delivers back to fans a sound most have been missing for years.© Thom Jurek /TiVo

Dark and glistening. Like a cave on the French Riviera. That’s where Jagger and Richards' band – living as tax exiles - recorded the immense Exile on Main Street, a musical feast with dishes served as country (Sweet Black Angel, Sweet Virginia), gospel (Shine a Light), blues (Shake Your Hips) and visceral rock'n'roll (the opening of Rocks Off and the cult track Happy with Keith Richards on vocals). The Rolling Stones may have been at the height of fame, but this masterpiece came from the heart and soul, with a dark and dirty sound and a sincere and raw style. American roots music (country, blues, folk) had rarely sounded so original. Jagger sings like an inspired old sage. Richards unleashes sharp, sublime guitar riffs. After all these years, we still can’t find the slightest flaw in this double album which many consider to be The Rolling Stones’ best... © Marc Zisman/Qobuz

After releasing 2018's utterly wonderful Criterion of the Senses, an homage to late-'70s smooth soul, contemporary jazz, and funk, Ed Motta took five years to realize his next direction. The Brazilian multi-instrumentalist, producer, bandleader, composer, arranger, and icon has, for more than three decades, offered kaleidoscopic combinations and reinventions of the sounds, styles, and genres that influenced him. But Motta doesn't merely utilize them, he invents new uses for them as aesthetic touchstones in a vast musical vocabulary and vision. His creative persona is a highly individualized sum total of the music he loves, approaches, composes, and plays. On Behind the Tea Chronicles, Motta brings his lifelong love of movie and television soundtracks under his already large creative umbrella. He hired an all-star cast of Brazilian studio aces including bassist Alberto Continentino, pianist/keyboardist/musical director Michel Limma, and guitarist João Oliveira. Motta recorded backing vocals in Los Angeles, horns in Detroit (directed by Kamau Kenyatta, Gregory Porter's producer), and strings in Prague by the Czech Republic's FILMharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Adam Klemens. A sextet and strings fuel the opener, "Newsroom Customers." Limma threads together Rhodes, grand piano, and funky clavinet buoyed by Motta's xylophone fills. They elasticize the tune's harmonic center and rhythmic flow. Motta's smooth tenor vocal is cultivated, joining together jazzy soul and airy polished funk around a hip lyric that namechecks Philip Marlowe. "Slumberland" is a sweeping midtempo groover introduced by Cristina Braga's crystalline harp, strings, drums, piano, and harpsichord. When horns and guitars enter, the tempo jumps, revealing the seam where 1980s film soundtracks, Joe Jackson's classy pop, and Steely Dan's Aja meet; for his part, Motta transforms them into something wholly other with backing vocals provided by Philip Ingram and Paulette McWilliams. "Safely Far" joins yacht rock, smooth soul, and disco. Governed by a bumping funk bassline, Motta and the backing vocal chorus soar above celebratory horns. The pulsing, carnivalesque "Of Good Strain" finds him accompanied only by Limma's organ, piano, and Rhodes under a noirish lyric. "Shot in the Park" is a slippery, midtempo jazz ballad layered with three lead guitars (Motta is in the right channel), horns, and Ingram and McWilliams. Swinging out of the gate, it features a lovely flute solo from Marcelo Martins and is gently kissed by the influences of Ben Sidran and Michael Franks, though Motta adapts them to more cinematic ends. His own funky clavinet introduces "Deluxe Refuge," an uptempo, elegant samba-jazz groover. Motta and his singers offer syncopated, staggered phrasing in verses and refrains above the cascading trombone section. Furthermore, Limma's killer post-bop Rhodes solo adds heft and dimension. Due to ambitious composition and complex yet audibly uncluttered charts, Behind the Tea Chronicles moves farther afield than any recording in Motta's catalog -- including Poptical, AOR, and Perpetual Gateways. Here he dissects his musical roots, repurposes them, and makes what he needs to create a jazz-pop masterpiece.© Thom Jurek /TiVo

Thanks to its distinct, downright catchy single "Orinoco Flow," which amusingly referenced both her record-company boss Rob Dickins and co-producer Ross Cullum in the lyrics, Enya's second album Watermark established her as the unexpected queen of gentle, Celtic-tinged new age music. To be sure, her success was as much due to marketing a niche audience in later years equally in love with Yanni and Michael Flatley's Irish dancing, but Enya's rarely given a sense of pandering in her work. She does what she does, just as she did before her fame. (Admittedly, avoiding overblown concerts run constantly on PBS hasn't hurt.) Indeed, the subtlety that characterizes her work at her best dominates Watermark, with the lovely title track, her multi-tracked voice gently swooping among the lead piano, and strings like a softly haunting ghost, as fine an example as any. "Orinoco Flow" itself, for all its implicit dramatics, gently charges instead of piling things on, while the organ-led "On Your Shore" feels like a hushed church piece. Elsewhere, meanwhile, Enya lets in a darkness not overly present on The Celts, resulting in work even more appropriate for a moody soundtrack than that album. "Cursum Perficio," with her steady chanting-via-overdub of the title phrase, gets more sweeping and passionate as the song progresses, matched in slightly calmer results with the equally compelling "The Longships." "Storms in Africa," meanwhile, uses drums from Chris Hughes to add to the understated, evocative fire of the song, which certainly lives up to its name. Watermark ends with a fascinating piece, "Na Laetha Geal M'Oige," where fellow Irish modern/traditional fusion artist Davy Spillane adds a gripping, heartbreaking uilleann pipe solo to the otherwise calm synth-based performance. It's a perfect combination of timelessness and technology, an appropriate end to this fine album.© Ned Raggett /TiVo

Despite a long career dedicated to the black death cause that began in 1991, it took time for the Polish band’s tenth album, The Satanist (2014), to be considered a must-have extreme metal album (a genre was born from this music, which sounded as extreme as it did deep, and possessed true melodic darkness). Its successor, I Loved You at Your Darkest (2018), presented a bold Behemoth eager to mark its return by making music that was both better orchestrated and better produced. This was done at the expense of losing some of their signature sound, which cut them off from a portion of their original fanbase, who accused them of betraying their origins… You can't please everyone. Nonetheless, despite this desire for greatness, the band (led by singer and guitarist Nergal) didn’t seem to express everything they wanted to say on this record.Opvs Contra Natvram shares the same passion for excess as its predecessor, but this time, the band push further, determined to reach the goal they set themselves four years earlier. In terms of orchestration and set-up, this album delivers a finely-tuned sound with powerful production, making Behemoth's songs more accessible, even if that means occasionally over-diluting their content with invasive symphonic arrangements. However, this by no means renders the incredible compositional work unenjoyable, especially on tracks such as the imposing ‘The Deathless Sun’ and its stunning twirling guitar, or the brutal ‘Neo-Spartacvs’ that could be the best black death metal the band has produced so far. The same is true of the excellent ‘Once Upon A Pale Horse’, which proves that black metal and groove can come together in one song.The path the band started walking with I Loved You at Your Darkest is still clearly marked out on Opvs Contra Natvram, though some will prefer the rougher side of the first albums. However, there’s very little chance that the band will return to their old sound after producing a work like this one. This evolution and experimentation goes to show how important it is to shake up your habits if you want to keep making progress. Their decision to keep moving onward makes Behemoth a natural leader of the black death scene. And this album was worth the risk. © Chief Brody/Qobuz

Say this for Matchbox Twenty -- they've gotten better the longer they've stuck around. And that's not just their music, either: they've dropped the pretense of spelling their name as matchbox 20, they've gone away from cumbersome album titles, and they've embraced their status as MOR rockers. All of this is evident on Exile on Mainstream, which is not only the first of their albums to bear a simple yet clever title, it's a collection of hits that traces their progression into a good, solid mainstream band and is also buttressed by an EP that finds them livelier than ever. Bolder, too, especially on the rockabilly of "I'll Believe You When" and the slow oldies beat of "Can't Let You Go," which are light and dexterous in a way they've never been before. These are balanced by a few cuts that don't stretch quite as far, but the propulsive pop "If I Fall," charging anthem "How Far We've Come," and earnest ballad "These Hard Times" are smooth, accomplished mainstream pop that are better constructed in every respect than their earliest hits. That much is evident by this EP's juxtaposition with the 11-track greatest-hits disc, which has all their big radio hits presented in chronological order. There are a few minor hits missing -- "Angry," "Last Beautiful Girl," "Downfall," none of which climbed that high on the charts -- so this has everything that a modern rock or adult contemporary radio listener would know, and the striking thing about listening to the disc is to hear how they abandoned the angst-ridden cartwheels that weighed down "Push" and built upon the snappy hooks of "Real World" and "3 AM," developing a sense of melodic craft that flourished in the smooth ballad "If You're Gone" and the arena rocker "Unwell." These were highlights on their respective albums, but when these moments are put together as a hits collection, it makes for a surprisingly entertaining batch of mainstream rock -- but the real story is the bonus disc, which suggests that after this collection is out of the way, Matchbox Twenty may have their first very good studio album on the way.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

Given that most supergroups last little longer than a single album, it was easy to assume that Audioslave -- the pairing of Soundgarden vocalist Chris Cornell and the instrumental trio at the core of Rage Against the Machine -- was a one-off venture. That suspicion was given weight by their eponymous 2002 debut, which sounded as if Cornell wrote melodies and lyrics to tracks RATM wrote after the departure of Zack de la Rocha, but any lingering doubts about Audioslave being a genuine rock band are vanished by their 2005 second album, Out of Exile. Unlike the first record, Out of Exile sounds like the product of a genuine band, where all four members of the band contribute equally to achieve a distinctive, unified personality. It's still possible to hear elements of both Rage and Soundgarden here, but the two parts fuse relatively seamlessly, and there's a confidence to the band that stands in direct contrast to the halting, clumsy attack on the debut. A large part of the success of Out of Exile is due to the songs, which may be credited to the entire group but are clearly under the direction of Cornell, sounding much closer to his past work than anything in Rage's catalog. Even the simple riff-driven rockers are tightly constructed songs with melodies and dramatic tension -- they lead somewhere instead of running in circles -- while the ballads have a moody grace and there's the occasional left-field surprise like the sunny, sweet psych-pop gem "Dandelion"; it's the strongest set of songs Cornell has written in a decade. Which is not to say that Out of Exile is without excesses, but they're almost all from guitarist Tom Morello; his playing can still seem laborious, particularly when he clutters single-string riffs with too many notes (the otherwise fine opener, "Your Time Has Come," suffers from this), and his elastic stomp box excursions verge on self-parody on occasion. Still, these are isolated moments on an album that's otherwise lean, hard, strong, and memorable, a record that finds Audioslave coming into its own as a real rock band.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

It’s important to remember that before becoming a gold-standard pop star, Taylor Swift grew up on Nashville country music. Music City's folklore now seems a long way off for the thirty-year-old singer. However, Taylor Swift has never stopped dipping her pen into the same ink as her cowgirl elders, perfectly handling romance, heartbreak, introspection, sociopolitical commentary and personal experiences, such as when she sang of her mother’s cancer on Soon You’ll Get Better… It was in lockdown, with restricted means and limited casting, that she put together Folklore, released in the heart of summer 2020. The first surprise here is Aaron Dessner on production. By choosing The National’s guitarist, whom she considers one of her idols, Swift has opted for a musician with sure-footed tastes and boosted her credibility among indie music fans. She hammers this home on Exile with Justin ‘Bon Iver’ Vernon (the album’s only duet), a close friend of Dessner's with whom he formed Big Red Machine.This surprising, even unusual album for Swift is by no means a calculated attempt to flirt with the hipsters. And it really is unusual for her! No pop bangers, nor the usual dig aimed at Kanye West; the album is free of supercharged beats and has delicate instrumentation (piano, acoustic guitar, Mellotron, mandolin, slides…). Folklore toes a perfect line between silky neo-folk and dreamy rock. It’s as if the star had tucked herself away in a cabin in the forest to dream up new ideas, much like Bon Iver did in his early days… By laying her music bare and relieving it of its usual chart music elements, Taylor Swift has added more substance to her discography. This is clear on August, which would never have resonated as well if it had been produced by a Max Martin type… Upon announcing the album, Swift wrote online: “Before this year I probably would’ve overthought when to release this music at the ‘perfect’ time, but the times we’re living in keep reminding me that nothing is guaranteed. My gut is telling me that if you make something you love, you should just put it out into the world.” A wise decision for a beautiful and mature record. © Marc Zisman/Qobuz

Zach Condon quickly realized that he wasn’t always going to be able to wander through the subway carriages with his brass band. That even his hardcore fans would eventually grow tired of him and stop handing him their spare change... On his 2015 album No No No, the brain behind Beirut beautifully transformed his experience in the Balkan folk/Mexican scene into brilliant high-flying pop tracks. He sculpted a more artisanal sound and renewed himself while keeping the dreamy, magical singularity of his universe that’s dominated by brass and percussion.Condon is a true citizen of the world: he was born in Albuquerque, lives in Berlin and writes in New York as well as in Puglia, Italy. It is there that one finds Gallipoli, a coastal city that lends its name to this fifth album. Condon has a voice that’s characterised by a wistful lyricism, giving his songs an undeniably melancholic feel. Sat behind his Farfisa organ or his Korg synthesizer, and surrounded by Nick Petree on drums, Paul Collins on bass, Ben Lanz on trombone and Kyle Resnick on trumpet, Condon builds his songs like Russian dolls. There’s a playful side which is largely amplified by the Farfisa. And through his world music and lo-fi melodies, Gallipoli covers the entire range of everything that Beirut has generated in just over ten years. © Marc Zisman/Qobuz