Acoustic Album N°8 is an album of acoustic covers of Katie Melua's 2020 album, Album N°8. Moving from a luxurious orchestration to a single instrument is not a problem for the Georgia-born Briton, who is as comfortable with the Georgian Philharmonic Orchestra as she is alone with her guitar. The breadth of the symphony orchestra's strings form a kind of counterpoint to the often intimate and autobiographical character of the songs' lyrics. Here, everything flows: the simple and natural beauty of the acoustic guitar (sometimes enhanced by keyboards played by Mark Edwards) fits perfectly not only with the lyrics, but also with Melua's personality and her incomparably pure voice. The listener will be able to curl up to songs that evoke the end of a love affair (A Love Like That, Airtime) or Katie Melua's father's journey to the Caucasus (Leaving the Mountain). There is also a track co-written with Katie's brother Zurab (Maybe I Dreamt It). This tribute to choreographer Pina Bausch is accompanied here by the sober and sensitive contribution of the violinist Simon Goff. The latter also features in Remind Me To Forget. A pure and peaceful album, with the feel of an intimate concert. © Nicolas Magenham/Qobuz

At 36 years old, the queen of the romantic, sophisticated ballad has released her 8th album, simply named Album no.8. While the title is minimal, the means in which the work was produced are far from it. Here, Katie Melua is joined by the Georgian Philharmonic Orchestra. The collaboration is rather apt considering the British singer’s Georgian origins. The strings serve as a luxurious backdrop to these often-autobiographical songs which cover subjects from the end of a loving relationship (A Love Like That, Airtime), to a journey she took with her father in the Caucasus mountains (Leaving the Mountain). The orchestra is present on each of the tracks but by no means does it squander the delicacy of the songs. Especially when some soloists (sax, piano, guitar…) or even a funky and jazzy rhythmic section occasionally drop in to lighten up the proceedings (Voices in the night). Producer Leo Abrahams did the arrangements on the album which sometimes evoke the finesse of Nick Drake or the contemplative emotion of John Barry. We also find an homage to the choreographer Pina Buasch, cowritten with Zurab, Katie’s brother (Maybe I Dreamt It), a tender evocation of the singer’s childhood (Heading Home), and also the very seductive English Manner, the portrait of a love triangle, unveiling a more colourful aspect to Katie Melua’s art. © Nicolas Magenham/Qobuz

Hubert Parry's Scenes from Shelley's Prometheus Unbound, from 1880, here receives its world-recorded premiere. Perhaps recording companies thought there wouldn't be much of a market for a heavy 19th century choral work with, it must be said, a ponderous text by Percy Bysshe Shelley (Prometheus was a play intended to be read, not performed, just to give an idea). How wrong they were. This release made classical best-seller lists in the summer of 2023, and it is altogether enjoyable. At the time, Parry was under the spell of Wagner, whom he traveled to Bayreuth to meet. That influence certainly shows up in Scenes from Shelley's Prometheus Unbound, with its basically declamatory text, partly through-composed music, wind-and-brass-heavy orchestration, and splashes of chromaticism. Yet what is remarkable is that the music does not come off as an imitation of Wagner at all. Rather, it uses elements of his style to match a specific kind of English literary text. The work gradually disappeared, but it would be surprising if Elgar, whom it clearly prefigures, did not know it well. The performances here are luminous, with William Vann using the lighter-than-expected London Mozart Players to create transparent textures against which he can set the substantial voices of Sarah Fox, Sarah Connolly, and other soloists. Parry did write some shorter pieces that remain in the repertory; one of these, Blest Pair of Sirens, is included here as a finale. However, the Scenes from Shelley's Prometheus Unbound are the main news here, and this performance, showing how this kind of thing should be done, may generate a new life for the work. © James Manheim /TiVo

Bryan Adams has always advocated for more rock in the world, and this time he does so with the help of—would you believe it—John Cleese! The famous member of Monty Python lent his voice to the introduction of Kick Ass, one of 12 songs that feature in the Canadian’s fifteenth album. Parodying a preacher’s sermon, the comedian talks of an angel, dressed in boots and blue jeans, who was sent to earth to spread the good word of rock’n’roll. Humour and guitars go hand in hand on this record, perfectly capturing the tone of the album. The title track, So Happy It Hurts, is a tribute to spontaneity, whilst Never Gonna Rain conveys an almost divine sense of optimism. This release goes to show that Bryan Adams hasn’t strayed far from his status as the prince of happiness. The Run to You singer is still just as captivating too; Just Like Me, Just Like You and I’ve Been Looking For You pay testament to that. The track On the Road sees the 60-something reminisce about his lengthy career, recounting his 45 years of non-stop world tours. The word “Up” appears many times on the album, and this can only mean one thing: the pandemic hasn’t dampened Bryan Adams’ lust for life, and he’s keen to share his positivity with his listeners. ©Nicolas Magenham/Qobuz

It's been three years for Mudvayne, three years when metal started to reject its "rap" and "nu" prefixes. At first, Lost and Found reflects that realignment. Vocalist Chad Gray and his mates have nixed the nicknames and makeup for their third Epic full-length, and they try to focus on songs instead of heavy music shtick. However, they equate getting real with the melodramatic plead that interrupts the razor-sharp main part of "Choices," and Gray can't overcome lines like "IMN"'s "No one/No one could ever understand/This life." The song is about suicide, which is very serious. But yelling "F*ck this sh*t!" over thudding rhythms just isn't very powerful anymore. They nail it on opener "Determined" -- one of Mudvayne's all-time strongest tracks, it's a fist-swinging blast of modernized thrash. But Lost and Found soon falls into the familiar, busting no-one-understands-me lyrics and matching moments of refreshing rawness to stretches of stereotypical "corporate metal," a non-genre that's risen up to accept loud rock refugees and the harder side of post-grunge. The energy in "Determined" and "Just" is sapped by the meandering "TV Radio" and "Fall into Sleep," and ultimately Mudvayne gets lost between thrash and diluted Slipknot devotion.© Johnny Loftus /TiVo

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When it was played on modern rock radio stations in 1988, Camouflage had everybody duped with "The Great Commandment." With its chilly synths, robotic percussion, and gloomy vocals, the song was a Depeche Mode doppelganger. Similarly, Camouflage's debut album Voices & Images is the sound of young men who couldn't stop playing Depeche Mode's Black Celebration in their tape decks. However, they are somewhat talented plagiarists. The icy, computerized rhythms in the anti-racism track "Neighbours" and "Helpless Helpless" have toe-tapping appeal, and "Winner Takes Nothing" regurgitates Duran Duran as new romantic cyborgs with Marcus Meyn's Simon Le Bon-esque singing. Meyn enunciates every word in his songs with a heavy seriousness, as if lyrics such as "we had fun while we played/hide and seek" have profound meaning. The dancey synthesizers of keyboardists/programmers Heiko Maile and Oliver Kreyssig Xerox the eerily seductive high-tech boogie of mid-'80s Depeche Mode, but they're nowhere near as inventive or edgy. Voices & Images should've been an EP. Once the sixth track, "Winner Takes Nothing," is finished, Camouflage's Depeche Mode infatuation loses its novelty.© Michael Sutton /TiVo

It had been six years since Tom Jones released his last stateside record, but this one scored big in England and on the Continent, for good reason. Ultra-modern and topical, Reload suggests you can easily ignore Jones' "What's New Pussycat?" past. Not only does Jones deliver one of the more invigorating workings of modern pop here, his selection of material and choice of mates prove that in addition to his routinely extraordinary performances, he's still recording quite potently, thank you. Like 1994's underrated "The Lead and How To Swing It," a lesser seller from the Interscope label, "Reload" finds Tom in collaborative mode. But where The Lead stressed original tunes and producer chops (everyone from Teddy Riley to Flood to Trevor Horn weighed in), Reload focuses on contemporary artists and cover songs. The artists are a motley, and very talented, crew indeed. Jones more than holds his own, turning the tunes into unusually personal and expressive vehicles. Jones launches the disc with Talking Heads' "Burning Down the House," working it brisk and funky with the Cardigans and lending David Byrne's opaque lyrics a fresh vigor. Then, with Stereophonics, he resurrects Randy Newman's "Mama Told Me Not to Come," refreshing the Three Dog Night chestnut with unexpected lasciviousness. The selections are as peculiar as they are successful, spanning "Sometimes We Cry" (a sparsely arranged duet with Van Morrison), a sharp interpretation of Iggy Pop's "Lust for Life" with Chrissie Hynde's Pretenders, and a fruity, truly bizarre take on the George Baker Selection's "Little Green Bag" with Barenaked Ladies. Jones probably doesn't do knee drops anymore, but he sure as hell does vocal swoops; check out "Ain't That a Lot of Love" with Simply Red's Mick Hucknall or his resurrection of Fine Young Cannibals' "She Drives Me Crazy" with Zucchero for throat acrobatics. Jones is in the uncomfortable position of being a retro novelty, and although he may not ignite the U.S. charts anymore (his last notable effort here was his great collaboration with the Art of Noise on the Prince tune "Kiss," in 1988), his music is as contemporary and driving as ever.© Carlo Wolff /TiVo

New World Order is a touching, moving comeback from Curtis Mayfield. As the first new music Mayfield recorded since he was paralyzed in 1990, the album engenders a lot of goodwill -- it's undeniably affecting to hear him sing again, especially with the knowledge that his performances had to be recorded line by line, due to his paralysis. The joy of hearing him sing makes the inconsistency of the album forgivable, especially since he is in good voice. Narada Michael Walden, Daryl Simmons, and Organized Noize all contributed productions that are sensitive but strong, which gives the album added weight. The songs are hit-and-miss, but the main strength of the record is that it illustrates that Mayfield can make music that is still vital.© Leo Stanley /TiVo

Encouraging Words was about as fine an album as Apple Records ever issued by anyone who wasn't a member of the Beatles, and it's also better than many of the Apple albums issued by the ex-bandmembers; but it's also among the most obscure of any album that the label ever issued by a major artist -- without a hit single to drive its sales, the LP never did more than brush the very bottom of the charts, and it was quickly lost amid the financial collapse of the label and the implosion of the Beatles' business ventures; even many Billy Preston fans never had a chance to find out it was there, obscured as it was by his subsequent chart success with "Outta Space" on the A&M label. A bold and searing effort mixing gospel, soul, and rock sounds about as well as any record cut that year, Encouraging Words lived up its killer musical pedigree, partly an offshoot of the evolution of the Let It Be and All Things Must Pass albums, and of sessions that Preston and George Harrison had produced for Doris Troy; but it also picked up where Preston's playing for Ray Charles had left off in 1968. The surging, soaring blues "The Same Thing Again," and the driving rocker "You've Been Acting Strange," both Preston originals, were worth the price of the album, but for those requiring familiar fare, Preston's renditions of "My Sweet Lord," "All Things (Must) Pass," and "I've Got a Feeling" are here too, the first two as stunning gospel numbers (the second with some gorgeous jazz and classical embellishments) that make the Harrison versions seem pallid; and the latter a delightfully funky rendition that makes the Beatles' recording sound like a classy demo; and for truly, delightfully strange sound amalgams, "Sing One for the Lord" manages to couple soaring gospel with some loud lead guitar and a piano part derived from Tchaikovsky (at least according to the annotator -- this reviewer would have said Grieg). [The 2010 reissue of Encouraging Words was remastered by the same Abbey Road team who remastered the acclaimed 2009 Beatles reissues and was expanded by three bonus tracks: the previously uneleased “How Long Has the Train Been Gone,” the scrapped B-side “As Long As I’ve Got My Baby” and “All That I’ve Got (I’m Gonna Give To You),” cowritten by Doris Troy.]© Bruce Eder /TiVo

Joe Pass achieved extraordinary balance in his career. Because he remained grounded in bop and swing, his guitar work was more conservative than many fusion and post-bop players, but his solo guitar work also ventured into unexplored territory, combining the single-note dexterity of Charlie Christian with the block chords of Carl Kress. Meditation: Solo Guitar offers a fresh release from Pass, recorded live at Yoshi's in 1992, two years before his death. As Ken Dryden points out in the liner notes, the release isn't just "a case of posthumously cleaning out the vaults." Like the critically acclaimed Virtuoso series, Meditation exhibits a number of intricate interpretations of classic pieces by one man and his guitar. The title also captures the intimacy of Pass' work on "Everything Happens to Me" and "Mood Indigo." He seems so absorbed in his work, so alone, that it comes as a shock when the audience applauds at the end of each piece. Pass also covers Cole Porter's "It's All Right With Me," Irving Berlin's "How Deep Is the Ocean?," and the Gershwin brothers' "They Can't Take That Away From Me." Pass' technique manages to follow his own muse, changing tempos at will without ever losing the rhythm of the tune. Meditation is a fine album and a superior addition to the guitarist's catalog.© Ronnie D. Lankford, Jr. /TiVo

Eric Bibb has been generally categorized as an acoustic blues player, but like Keb' Mo', the contemporary artist he most resembles, Bibb actually only uses blues forms on occasion, and it no doubt helps to get the listener in the door, but what is really on display here is a smooth-as-velvet singer/songwriter. It's curious that he dedicates A Ship Called Love to the great Curtis Mayfield, because Bibb is really much closer to Mayfield in tone and approach than he is to a Blind Lemon Jefferson, say, and the title cut here, which leads off the album, owes more than a little to Mayfield's faux gospel classic "People Get Ready." It also gets things underway nicely here, but as love song after gentle love song rolls by, all meticulously arranged, recorded, and sung with perfectly nuanced emotional presence, A Ship Called Love begins to drift from shore in its own studied smoothness. Not that there aren't high points, like the autobiographical "Troubadour," a fine duet with Ruthie Foster that arrives at about midpoint in the set, and the engaging, gentle reggae lilt of "Turning World," but by the time Bibb gets around to actually playing a blues, the micro-analytic "More o' That," it seems downright radical after so much gentle elegance. The closer, "Praise 'n' Thanksgiving," flirts with folk-gospel, and is so grateful and reverent that it is impossible to resist, even as one wishes that a little of that reverence had been replaced with pure, wild joy. That, in the end, is what this album needs to make it more than a pleasant rumination on the sea of love. It needs a touch of wildness to temper the calm surface of these songs, because love, more so than all the other emotions, benefits from occasional changes in wind direction.© Steve Leggett /TiVo

One has to wonder at the motivation behind Tindersticks' Across Six Leap Years. This look back celebrates their 21st anniversary. That said, after their hiatus in 2006, they returned as a trio instead of a sextet, with guest musicians augmenting each record beginning with The Hungry Saw. These ten tracks were recorded at Abbey Road. Half of them date from the previous century; two more are pre-split, and only one, the closer "What Are You Fighting For," is post; it appeared as a Record Store Day single. It allegedly receives a revisioning here, though one would have to A-B the versions to tell. This highlights the problem with ASLY. The two openers, "Friday Night" and "Marseilles Sunshine," are pre-split cuts, but they first appeared on Stuart Staples' 2005 debut solo effort, Lucky Dog Recordings. Their placement here reveals the often bland nature of these re-recordings -- they remain so close to the original arrangements they merely retread the floorboards with slightly more polish and greater fidelity. The same goes for "A Night In," which originally appeared on the band's second album in 1995. Since Tindersticks is literally half the size of the group that first cut it, it would stand to reason that this leaner machine would compensate with a different chart. Three tracks are marked exceptions. "If You're Looking for a Way Out," a cover of Tindersticks' cover of an Odyssey track that appeared on Simple Pleasure, is looser, more fluid, and more transparent in its connection to '70s-era, East Coast -- i.e. Philly -- soul. "Sleepy Song," whose first version is also from their second album, is performed here with far more tension and drama. The spirit of restraint in its original gives way, and the roiling menace underneath is allowed to surface and breathe as the song's dynamic expands. "Say Goodbye to the City," from Waiting for the Moon, is louder and marginally more uptempo, but the increased drama via the bleating trumpet fills and solo, and the strident female backing chorus coming from the pocket, elevate it. There isn't anything inherently "wrong" with the music on Across Six Leap Years. But given the triumphant The Something Rain from 2012, the retrospective box of Clair Denis film scores issued later that year, and the release of the Salauds score earlier in 2013, this feels more like a shoulder shrug than an anniversary celebration. Perhaps "for hardcore fans only" should be printed on a sticker on the sleeve -- if not stamped on the cover.© Thom Jurek /TiVo

At 36 years old, the queen of the romantic, sophisticated ballad has released her 8th album, simply named Album no.8. While the title is minimal, the means in which the work was produced are far from it. Here, Katie Melua is joined by the Georgian Philharmonic Orchestra. The collaboration is rather apt considering the British singer’s Georgian origins. The strings serve as a luxurious backdrop to these often-autobiographical songs which cover subjects from the end of a loving relationship (A Love Like That, Airtime), to a journey she took with her father in the Caucasus mountains (Leaving the Mountain). The orchestra is present on each of the tracks but by no means does it squander the delicacy of the songs. Especially when some soloists (sax, piano, guitar…) or even a funky and jazzy rhythmic section occasionally drop in to lighten up the proceedings (Voices in the night). Producer Leo Abrahams did the arrangements on the album which sometimes evoke the finesse of Nick Drake or the contemplative emotion of John Barry. We also find an homage to the choreographer Pina Buasch, cowritten with Zurab, Katie’s brother (Maybe I Dreamt It), a tender evocation of the singer’s childhood (Heading Home), and also the very seductive English Manner, the portrait of a love triangle, unveiling a more colourful aspect to Katie Melua’s art. © Nicolas Magenham/Qobuz

Recorded at the same engagement as his best-selling But Not for Me, this outing by pianist Ahmad Jamal (with bassist Israel Crosby and drummer Vernell Fournier) is just as successful musically, even if its sales figures were not on the same level. Jamal and his sidemen had a magical chemistry during this era, and the pianist's close attention to dynamics gave the group its own sound. Among the highlights of the 11 standards are "Too Late Now," "Cherokee," "Gone with the Wind" and a remake of "Billy Boy." A superior LP that deserves to be reissued in full on CD.© Scott Yanow /TiVo