What an album cover! The beautiful black and white photo by Robert Freeman is already a kind of must-have... Recorded only four months after their first album Please Please Me, the album With The Beatles, released in November 1963, is like a little extension. This second studio album brings together seven songs by the duo of Lennon/McCartney (notable mention: All My Loving), a George Harrison (Don't Bother Me), as well as six cover songs, and is mostly vintage rock'n'roll, soul and Motown rhythm’n’blues. Introducing new instruments, dubbed voices and sound eclecticism, With The Beatles depicts a young group that gradually extricate themselves from the influences of their elders in order to create their own unique musical universe. The original songs on this album, although certainly at the level that they would go on to achieve in subsequent years, show that The Beatles were already ahead of their time. ©MZ/Qobuz, Translation/BM

We’ve been waiting four years for this. After the brilliant Reflektor in 2013, Arcade Fire have returned with Everything Now - their fifth album packed with explosive contrasts. For the occasion, the Canadian-American band surrounded themselves with musical geniuses: Thomas Bengalter from Daft Punk, Steve Mackey from Pulp and Geff Barrow from Portishead. The resulting album is transfigured and multifaceted. The synths are fired up and raring to go, the beats stable and assured. Everything Now is the kind of track that’s made to be performed in a stadium. Signs of Life follows in the footsteps of Blondie, the Cure and the Pet Shop Boys, while Electric Blue crosses over into to the Talking Heads’ territory. Recorded for the first time outside of Montreal, Paris and New Orleans, this 12-track album goes deeper than it’s perceptive and melancholic lyrics - it’s orchestrated by a powerful mix of synth-pop, new wave eighties, disco and even americana (such as in the song Put Your Money on Me). We Don’t Deserve Love provides us with a smooth landing to the journey at the end of the album, in which we find Daniel Lanois on the pedal steel guitar. We know one thing for sure - summer this year will be spent indoors, on the dance floor.

The atmosphere of a live gig is never as fresh as when you sweat in the pit. But in these times of lockdown, it is through live albums that we have to let off steam, and relive the vibrant ambiance of gigs past. And so it is good news that Alex Turner's gang have chosen this moment to release one. In 2018, the Arctic Monkeys begin a long tour to promote the spring release of Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino, a fabulous swerve towards French kinetic sensuality, and away from rock anthems hammered by Matt Helders' drums. This live performance was filmed at the Royal Albert Hall in London, and the profits were donated to War Child UK, as are the proceeds from the release of the album. The concert looks back over the band's entire discography: the classics from their period of greatest success – the first three albums – but also darker sounds with Humbug, pop with Suck It and See and their return to grace, with AM. But Alex Turner is never as good a crooner as he is when it comes to new material. If RU Mine?, which closes these twenty tracks, is worth its weight in gold, Star Treatment and One Point Perspective remain Arctic diamonds in the rough, and have yet to lose their sheen. Salutary. © Charlotte Saintoin/Qobuz

The debut album from the foursome from Pennsylvania. It featured the ferocious single "Play That Funky Music." Robert Parissi's animated vocals were complemented by the soulful chimes of the guitar, a smokin' bassline, and some hyped backing vocals. It peaked on the Billboard R&B and pop charts at number one. They received rave reviews considering that the band was all white conveying such a funky message. (The arrangement and lyrical phrasing are very similar to that of Stevie Wonder's "You Haven't Done Nothing" found on his Fulfillingness' First Finale album that was released two years prior.) No other singles came from this album. However, there were funk jams and smokin' numbers including remakes of "No Where to Run" and "99 1/2." Still, nothing compares to the featured single.© Craig Lytle /TiVo

As Blur commenced recording on Think Tank, their seventh album, things got a little weird. Tensions between vocalist/songwriter Damon Albarn and guitarist Graham Coxon reached a boiling point following Albarn's success with his dance-oriented side project, Gorillaz, leading him to assert dominance over the band, all of which was at odds with a newly sober and somber Coxon, whose solo records were doggedly designed to appeal to small audiences. According to most press reports, the breaking point was Albarn bringing Fatboy Slim in for production work in Morocco (it's hard to write those words without believing them to be parody), leading toward Coxon's acrimonious departure and the turgid mess that is Think Tank. Given the Gorillaz and Fatboy Slim (who, after all the brouhaha, only produced two tracks) connections, it's easy to assume that Albarn is pushing Blur toward a heavy, heavy dance album, which isn't strictly true, partially because the band always have traded in alternative dance. Still, there's been a shift in approach. Where they used to use disco and house beats as a foundation (see "Girls and Boys" or "Entertain Me"), Blur now borrow modern dance's fondness, even reliance, on atmosphere over song and structure -- which is kind of ironic, of course, since the group have always excelled at song and structure in the past. In the post-Coxon era, all that's tossed aside as Albarn turns his attention to electronic art-rock as thin as a dime. Make no mistake, even if bassist Alex James and Dave Rowntree are along for the ride, this is the sound of Albarn run amuck, a (perhaps inevitable) development that even voracious Blur supporters secretly feared could ruin the band -- and it has. Why? Because Albarn's talents cry out for a collaborator. He has great ideas but he needs help not just in the execution, but sorting out what ideas are good. The problem is, he's charismatic enough to coast by on his book smarts and good looks, until somebody -- Coxon, Stephen Street, Dan the Automator -- calls him into check, and now that he's had enough success, he's convinced he can do it on his own. So, Think Tank is the Damon Show, and it reveals that the emperor has no clothes or sense. Apart from the fine, deliberate opening gambit of "Ambulance" and "Out of Time" -- the first a perfectly arranged, ominously lush mood piece; the other a hushed, melancholic elegy in the same vein as "To the End" and "Tender," though not as good as either -- Think Tank sounds for all the world exactly like Blur B-sides from Parklife to Blur, complete with the hiccupping analog synths and meandering instrumentals, but without the sense of songcraft and with less imaginative arrangements (remember, elastic codas with a noodling saxophone line do not equal experimental; it's lazy focus). Those songs that do sound more substantial than B-sides are severely hurt by Coxon's absence: Witness the pleasantly sweet "Good Song," built on a Pro-Tools acoustic guitar loop which drains the song of emotion, when Graham would have let the song breathe, or how the creepy crawl of "Battery in Your Leg" winds up eating its own tail through its hermetically sealed arrangement. These problems all derive from one simple thing -- since Albarn has nobody to challenge him, he's unwittingly pawning off an album of half-baked demos and unfinished B-sides. And this isn't the result of a musical departure, unless you count the departure of songwriting -- this is the sound of Blur without the hooks, smarts, tunes, or even the sense of adventure. Sure, it might be easier to accept if it was called a Damon Albarn solo album, but that's splitting hairs. A lousy album is a lousy album, no matter who gets credit.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

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Skrillex, Eminem, Justin Bieber, YEBBA … Those are only a few of the names on the star-studded guest-list for No.6 Collaborations Project, the continuation to No.5, Sheeran’s grime collaboration album from 2011. Meanwhile, the redhead hurtled up to the front of the charts across the world. It was clearly time for him to try the exercise again. On the menu, a wide variety of sounds, from rap (with 50 cent & Eminem) on Remember the Name, a romantic ballad with Cardi B and Camila Cabello, called South of the Border, and a hard rock duo with Bruno Mars, BLOW, that soundsl like Lenny Kravitz at a glance. Groovy and catchy! The collaborative mindset on display lets Sheeran’s talent as a songwriter shine through – how can he write so many hits, so easily, without ever losing his humility and candor? The recipe to his music – rap, hip-hop rhythms and acoustic guitars, is still as effective. ©Alexis Renaudat/Qobuz

Five albums by Al Jarreau are bundled together for this U.K.-issued release in the Original Album Series. There's We Got By (1975), Glow (1976), All Fly Home (1978), This Time (1980), and Breakin' Away (1981). Each disc is packaged individually within a thin cardboard pouch that replicates the front and back sleeve design of the original release. Some casual fans might be disappointed that the compact box leaves out the double-live album Look to the Rainbow, but this is a rather affordable way to obtain the singer's first five studio albums for the Warner Bros. label.© Andy Kellman /TiVo

Recorded at Sydney’s Opera House in October 2010 during Simply Red's farewell tour of 2009-2010, the aptly named Farewell is a CD/DVD set that captures Mick Hucknall in fine nostalgic form. There are no surprises, either in song selection or in his band’s impeccably smooth approach, but comfort is the point of the whole affair: it’s one last chance for fans to hear those songs again. For anybody who isn’t a fan -- or got off board somewhere around the time when Stars turned Simply Red into sensations everywhere but the U.S. -- this will hardly be cause for re-evaluation, but Farewell does celebrate everything that made Mick Hucknall into an international superstar.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

The session work with other players here isn't quite as good as the material on the first anthology, but An Anthology, Vol. 2 does feature a live cut by Delaney & Bonnie, plus a pair of what were then previously unissued Allman Brothers Band live tracks (among them "Midnight Rider" from the Fillmore East in June 1971). There's another good Duane Allman solo number and a good Hour Glass track ("Been Gone Too Long"), more session work with Aretha Franklin and King Curtis, Ronnie Hawkins ("Matchbox"), Wilson Pickett ("Born to Be Wild"), Johnny Jenkins, Boz Scaggs, Sam Samudio, and Otis Rush. The annotation here isn't as thorough as it was on the first volume, but anyone who owns the first double-CD set will almost certainly have to own this one as well, and for a mid-priced set there's a lot of very good music.© Bruce Eder /TiVo

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Like fellow '40s and '50s revivalists the Puppini Sisters and the Baseballs, French seven-piece vocal group Pink Turtle perform swing/jazz interpretations of contemporary pop songs. Their 2008 debut, Pop in Swing, focuses mainly on the sounds of the '70s as they tackle prog rock (Yes' "Owner of a Lonely Heart"), heavy metal (AC/DC's "Highway to Hell") and disco-pop (Bee Gees' "How Deep Is Your Love"), alongside reworkings of tracks by Deep Purple, Supertramp, and the Eagles.© Jon O'Brien /TiVo

As 2006 nears its end, no one can argue that the world of country music isn't, at this moment, the most adventurous in the mainstream pop music industry and that Nash Vegas is taking more chances on its acts as the rest of the biz relies more on narrowing things into smaller and smaller niches that can easily be hyped and digested. Sure, as always, artist's images and many recordings are calculated to score big as in any pop industry. The difference is in approach. The country-listening audience/demographic has widened considerably; therefore, there is a need -- as well as an opportunity -- for experimentation to see what sticks. This is the most exciting the music's been since Willie and Waylon hit the charts in the '70s, or perhaps to be a bit more fair, when Garth Brooks turned them upside down in the early '90s. Country music's fan base is growing because it still relies largely on radio, and video channels like CMT and GAC, both of which are very supportive of directors and artists taking artistic chances in the way they choose to dramatize, animate, and portray songs -- check the work of the brilliant director Trey Fanjoy just for starters. Country's latest audience grew up on rock & roll, MTV (when it still played videos), soul, blues, funk, early rap, and in some cases even punk. And while the marketing approach is still singles-driven, country music artists and producers, as well as the labels that house them, are still concerned with the "album" either as a whole, or as a completely crafted collection of varying singles (in this case meaning "good songs"). What's more, these folks still buy CDs (titles are readily available at the local in mega-marts and department stores) and don't rely on the internet as much as pop and rock fans do for information. Given the long run of the Dixie Chicks' Taking the Long Way at number one on the country and Billboard charts, one can't simply dismiss the music as being the religious right's stronghold or pop culture front for "traditional family values" anymore, either, though admittedly there's plenty of that around. In the 21st century it's country music and hip hop -- not rock -- that have been taking on the topics of race, class, basic human dignity and diversity, more than any other popular (chart measured) American musics. This current mindset in both the Nash Vegas offices and in the fan base is what makes Vince Gill's These Days, a 43-song, four-disc set, possible. Gill had been planning on making a standard single-disc record in 2006. He wanted it to be musically diverse. Given his long career as songwriter, picker, producer, singer, recording and performing artist, he had a right to expect his label MCA Nashville to go along with his choices. What he didn't count on was recording 31 songs with various groups of musicians and not knowing what to do with them. He approached Luke Lewis, the label's president, with an idea he got from the Beatles multi-release-per-year tactic (the same one everybody used in the '60s), which was to issue three albums approximately three months apart in a single calendar year. Lewis, visionary that he is, went one better. He encouraged Gill to go back into the studio and cut enough quality material for a fourth disc and release them all as a box set. Unlike most boxes on the shelf, this one retails for a fairly modest $29.98 -- less than eight dollars a disc -- an attractive package in time for the holidays.However, adventurous Nashville music industry or not, it all eventually comes down to the quality of the music after all, right? Yes. These four discs are thematically arranged: there's an acoustic bluegrass-flavored record called "Little Brother" (disc four), a rock record called "Workin' on a Big Chill" (disc one), a trad country & western album called "Some Things Never Get Old" (disc three), and a modern soul and jazz-inflected disc of ballads and more gentle pieces called "The Reason Why" (disc two). What's more, though Gill wrote or co-wrote everything here, he called in numerous guests to help him out. These include Gretchen Wilson, his wife Amy Grant, daugher Jenny Gill, Bonnie Raitt, Rodney Crowell, Sheryl Crow, Diana Krall, pedal steel guitar boss Buddy Emmons, Phil Everly, Rebecca Lynn Howard, the Del McCoury Band, Patty Loveless, Emmylou Harris, John Anderson, Katrina Elam, Lee Ann Womack, LeAnn Rimes, Guy Clark, Trisha Yearwood, Bekka Bramlett, and Michael McDonald. The end result is a magical mystery tour through Gill's own wildly varying aesthetic interests and his uncanny ability to pull off his diverse ideas on tape. These Days is not only a showcase of Gill's multidimensional musical persona, but a virtual treatise on the expansive, open-minded, under the umbrella viewpoint that has taken over Nashville in the current era."Workin' on a Big Chill" lives up to its name as a rock record as reflected in the tunes, the beats, and the instrumentation. The title track alone, with Gill's own considerable bluesed-out guitar-slinging skills burning down the house, punches a hole in expectations; the track also includes a Wurlitzer, a B-3 and Bramlett's killer backing vocals. "Love's Standin'" was written with co-producer John Hobbs (Justin Niebank and Gill, of course, also inhabit these chairs), and the wonderfully iconoclastic songwriter and producer Joe Henry (it could have been a smash for Fleetwood Mac), and showcases the sheer white soul backing chorus of Bramlett (who was a member of the latter day Fleetwood Mac), Gene Miller, and Gill. Wilson guests on "Cowboy Up," is more an upscale blues tune than a country song and proves Wilson can sing anything she wants and belongs where she is -- at the top. While there isn't a weak moment on this set, some of the other standouts include the popping "Sweet Thing," with a full-on horn section, the Jerry Lee Lewis-inspired "Nothin for a Broken Heart," with Crowell, and the utterly sexy and soulful country rocker "The Rhythm of the Pourin' Rain," with Bramlett. The only complaint here is that there isn't more of this material: four CDs of rock & roll tracks would have been welcome, and if rock radio were worth a damn Gill would easily crossover with a couple of these songs.With its subdued tone, and generally slicker productions that include strings, some muted synthesizers, jazzy arrangements, and pop music stylistic tropes, one might think that "The Reason Why: The Groovy Record" would be the least desirable here. Not so. From the opening cut, "What You Don't Say," with Rimes and a full-on string section with ringing pedal steel, Gill proves he is an American pop songwriter par excellence. If all the music on the charts was done this well, with this much passion and soul and pomp, radio would never have lost its appeal. This is the album in the set that reveals the depth of Gill's craft as a songwriter. The early rock & roll waltz trappings and vibes, as well as distorted piano on the title cut with Krauss, is a gorgeous love song with some of Gill's finest vocals on tape. Period. "Rock of Your Love" could have been featured on any of Raitt's latter recordings, and that's a compliment. The slow, dirty guitar line and Raitt's R&B slow burning voice carry it home. Where Gill uses guest vocalists -- female vocalists have always provided a wise counterpoint to his own husky tenor -- the tunes work so well most could be singles. Check "What You Give Away," with Crow, and "The Memory of You," with Yearwood. They're solid; full of honest emotion and pop brilliance. The beautiful love song and gospel tune, "Tell Me One Time About Jesus," with Grant, and "Time To Carry On," with Jenny Gill, are excellent album tracks and give depth, dimension and warmth to this set and are indispensable to it. The duet with Krall is the greatest chance Gill could take. He works in her idiom -- and, of course, she plays that wonderful piano of hers -- and pulls it off with grace and aplomb in the same way Tom Waits pulled off his duets with Crystal Gayle on the soundtrack for One from the Heart."Some Things Never Get Old" is subtitled "The Country & Western Record." This is an important distinction because what Gill has assembled here is nothing short of a honky tonk set. Though Gill's voice is a little smooth and high, it hardly matters because he's got the two things that count most on an old-school C&W set: the songs and the band. With Emmons on pedal steel (he's one of the great sonic and stylistic innovators on the instrument) guitarist Billy Joe Walker, Jr., fiddle boss Stuart Duncan, and a slew of backing vocalists who include Dawn Sears, Liana Manis, Jon Randall, Andrea Zonn, and Wes Hightower, as well as his core band, he's in the pocket. The music here collects styles from hardcore honky tonk, countrypolitan, late-night loving and torch songs done as only country singers can, and of course, hillbilly anthems. Some of the top-notch tracks here include "Out of My Mind," with Patty Loveless, the title cut, "Sweet Little Corrina" with Everly (which harks back to those classic Warner Brothers Everly sides), "If I Can Make Mississippi" with Womack, the rowdy good ole boy outlaw anthem, "Take This Country Back," a duet with the truly incomparable John Anderson.This leaves, finally, "Little Brother, The Acoustic Record." True; some fans of country -- especially modern country, may have a harder time with this disc because it is both a bluegrass record full of banjos, dobros, mandolins, white Southern gospel, and mountain music -- and simply recorded country ballads. Fans of Gill's shouldn't be surprised; his membership in the Grand Ole Opry, his deep reverence for this tradition, and his ability to write, play, and sing in it like an old master, -- and his previous recordings featuring these qualities -- qualify him to indulge that Muse. But Gill's approach, as old-school in thinking as it may be, uses both the music's early reliance on blues and folk styles of the British Isles as a way of expressing the mountain tradition and also the modern scholarship and musical innovations informing it. He is accompanied by the Del McCoury Band on a couple of selections here -- "Cold Gray Light of Gone," "A River Like You," with Jenny Gill, "Ace Up Your Pretty Sleeve," co-written with the great and criminally under-noticed Mark Germino, and "Give Me the Highway" -- but his own takes on country are actually quite creative in his interpretation on the form. But the chiller here is "Girl" with Rebecca Lynn Howard. Here, the deep, high lonesome sound is informed by all of the early folk musics that came before it, and Gill gives them all free reign as this tune wafts from the Appalachian mountain country to Celtic, Irish, and Scottish meadows and coastlines. And although the set's final cut, "Almost Home," with Guy Clark, has no commercial potential, it's a fitting way to close an album; it's a storyteller's tune, one where Clark speaks in that age-old wizened rogue manner of his, and helps to create a myth of near-epic proportion.What it all adds up to is that this is Gill's masterwork. It's an exhaustive, profound, fun and fulfilling set that not only gives fans something to delight in, but goes wide and if given half a chance could and would attract many new ones. It is one of the major recordings not only of 2006, but of the decade so far -- in any genre. This is the treatment a seasoned artist like Gill deserves, and along with the benefit and support of being able to indulge in such a project, it lives up to the responsibility of delivering the goods in abundance. This is yet another example that the new media-savvy form of country music introduced by Brooks in the '90s has yielded something far more interesting and exciting than some folks are willing to accept, and yet still others are able to believe.© Thom Jurek /TiVo

Dwele, first heard on the cool, relaxed chorus of Slum Village's "Tainted," isn't a leather-lunged shouter or, the likely guess, a silky-smooth crooner. Blessed with a fine, sensitive voice, he's a Marvin Gaye disciple, and like his influence, he has his own ideas about production and performance. That stubbornness makes him a difficult artist to pigeon-hole but an easy one to enjoy, especially for listeners tired of hearing constant repetition in R&B. Mostly self-produced and recorded at his home in Detroit, Subject favors the gauzy beats-and-bliss production style of Slum Village auteur Jay Dee. Though it's a familiar format, it's one that works well as a bed for his vocal style, which uses odd cadences, extended phrasing, multiple layers of vocals, and often his own whispered responses to his main lines. Halfway between R. Kelly and Madlib, Dwele writes toward R&B stereotypes but really makes the songs his own. On the title track, unsurprisingly a self-production, he accomplishes a rare feat, pulling off an inspirational song that truly sounds inspired. Dwele doesn't sound quite as interesting when he's not producing himself; a pair of outside productions, the single "Find a Way" and "Money Don't Mean a Thing," are intelligent, sensitive jams, but they make it clear that Dwele's talents don't tend to the anthemic. Like Gaye before him, he sounds more content and more inspired when the reins are in his hands.© John Bush /TiVo

While this is not nearly as essential as some other Stax wax, it has a loose, raffish appeal and never falls into the murk of a boring super-session chopsfest. These guys were simply havin' fun with some standard soul/R&B covers (e.g. "What'd I Say," "Baby What You Want Me To Do") and some wide-open originals, kickin' back with some serious riffin'. Cropper proffers his usual intense, simplistic soloing, while King swoops and dives in a stringbending fury. The added plus is the silky smooth near-falsetto of Pop Staples, whose vocal on "Tupelo" is suitably eerie...© John Dougan, Option 20_88 /TiVo