In 1982, The Boss amazed everyone with Nebraska. Leaving his powerful rock’n’roll band (the E Street Band) to one side, Springsteen went in the opposite direction; much to everyone's surprise, he released a masterpiece of all-acoustic purity, crafted from a guitar and a harmonica... How would he follow this album up two years later? By bringing out the heavy artillery! Leaving his acoustic guitar and cheap magneto in the basement, The Boss and his E Street Band returned with a bang: lumberjack drums, howling saxophones, bulging guitars and stadium anthems galore. Springsteen found his calling as a spokesman for the marginalised. Tackling themes such as unemployment, poverty, the aftermath of Vietnam and general doom and gloom, the electric poet from New Jersey made new sparks fly with his no-frills rock'n'roll, his relentless melodies and his choruses that packed a punch. There’s nothing chauvinistic on Born In The USA (what a title… and what an album cover!), just a deep instinct to be the voice for the marginalised masses, the neglected proletarians, all the people who make up the starred banner; even when it is rather wrinkled... © Marc Zisman/Qobuz

Perhaps Tom Waits' most cohesive album, Bone Machine is a morbid, sinister nightmare, one that applied the quirks of his experimental '80s classics to stunningly evocative -- and often harrowing -- effect. In keeping with the title's grotesque image of the human body, Bone Machine is obsessed with decay and mortality, the ease with which earthly existence can be destroyed. The arrangements are accordingly stripped of all excess flesh; the very few, often non-traditional instruments float in distinct separation over the clanking junkyard percussion that dominates the record. It's a chilling, primal sound made all the more otherworldly (or, perhaps, underworldly) by Waits' raspy falsetto and often-distorted roars and growls. Matching that evocative power is Waits' songwriting, which is arguably the most consistently focused it's ever been. Rich in strange and extraordinarily vivid imagery, many of Waits' tales and musings are spun against an imposing backdrop of apocalyptic natural fury, underlining the insignificance of his subjects and their universally impending doom. Death is seen as freedom for the spirit, an escape from the dread and suffering of life in this world -- which he paints as hellishly bleak, full of murder, suicide, and corruption. The chugging, oddly bouncy beats of the more uptempo numbers make them even more disturbing -- there's a detached nonchalance beneath the horrific visions. Even the narrator of the catchy, playful "I Don't Wanna Grow Up" seems hopeless in this context, but that song paves the way for the closer "That Feel," an ode to the endurance of the human soul (with ultimate survivor Keith Richards on harmony vocals). The more upbeat ending hardly dispels the cloud of doom hanging over the rest of Bone Machine, but it does give the listener a gentler escape from that terrifying sonic world. All of it adds up to Waits' most affecting and powerful recording, even if it isn't his most accessible.© Steve Huey /TiVo

Following her successful debut on Decca with the cello concertos of Edward Elgar and Elliott Carter, Alisa Weilerstein serves up another touchstone of her repertoire, Dvorák's Cello Concerto in B minor. Even though this album offers a handful of pieces for cello and piano, which Weilerstein and pianist Anna Polonsky play with charm and sentiment, listeners will pay the most attention to the concerto, which is the program's raison d'être. Weilerstein's highly personal and intensely Romantic style of playing is well-suited to this concerto, which is big on emotion and poignant lyricism, and her long lines and rapt expression effectively carry the piece. The accompaniment by Jirí Belohlávek and the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra is vibrant and full of color and presence, though at no point is Weilerstein overwhelmed by the ensemble, thanks to the central microphone placement that is closely directed at the cello. Of course, such tight recording tends to expose the roughness of her multiple stops, and her entrance in the first movement is a bit startling. All the same, her rich timbres and passionate singing tone more than make up for any scratchiness one may encounter.© TiVo

66 years on, Walter Trout has still got the blues - and just as well! Even after a nasty bout of Hepatitis C, the New Jersey guitarist is still shooting at anything that moves, Stratocaster in hand, and representing a genre of which he is one of the most faithful servants of our times. With the well-named We're All In This Together, the old hired gun who had worked with such big names as Percy Mayfield, Deacon Jones, John Lee Hooker or even Joe Tex, and who had been a part of Canned Heat in the 1980s, is having some fun, bringing his orgiastic guitar playing into a furious assembly of close collaborators. He is joined by - do not adjust your set - Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Sonny Landreth, Charlie Musselwhite, Mike Zito, Robben Ford, Warren Haynes, Eric Gales, Edgar Winter, Joe Louis Walker, John Nemeth, Randy Bachman, John Mayall, Joe Bonamassa and his son Jon Trout! The list of co-performers alone should give a good idea of the avalanche of solos that will engulf listeners. Mind-blowing! © CM/Qobuz

An expert in rooting through his archives, Neil Young has now pulled an unreleased studio album recorded in 2001 out of his hat. The album was recorded at Toast Studios in San Francisco with his band Crazy Horse. His fans will have heard him allude to this session, though no one could know for sure if it existed. He said once that 'the music of Toast is about a relationship... there is a time in many relationships that go bad, a time long before the breakup, where it dawns on one of the people, maybe both, that it's over... this was that time.” It was this deep sadness that ultimately pushed the Canadian to bury these tapes which have now finally resurfaced. Two decades later, it’s a treat to experience what had been hidden for so long. Some of the tracks, especially the opening 'Quit', are nothing if not catchy. 'Toast' also further attests to the power of Crazy Horse (featuring Frank "Poncho" Sampedro on guitar, Ralph Molina on drums and Billy Talbot on bass) whose electric guitar causes sparks to fly on 'Standing in the Light of Love'. They know how to pace themselves during electric-fuelled marathons—case in point, the 13-minute long 'Boom Boom Boom'—like no other Neil Young band. While some of these tracks, like 'Standing in the Light of Love', 'Timberline' and 'Gateway of Love', would never have been released, others, such as 'Goin’ Home', would later appear on his 2002 album, Are You Passionate?. It turns out that Toast isn’t just the stuff of dreams. © Marc Zisman/Qobuz

It takes a certain hubris to release a double record for your second album, even if five of your first six singles were chart-toppers. Introducing Morgan Wallen's Dangerous. Outside of country radio, the singer's best known for what many saw as foolishness: His Saturday Night Live debut opportunity was pulled after he was seen on TikTok breaking the show's quarantine rules by partying. Wallen's aware of how he's perceived. "It's funny how some strangers like to size me up...this accent makes me dumb," he sings on "More Surprised Than Me." But he's sure smart enough to work with some of the best songwriters in Nashville right now: Thomas Rhett and his dad, the legendary Rhett Akins, on the full-bodied "Your Bartender"; Hillary Lindsey on the twanged-out swinger "Need a Boat"; and Josh Osborne and Shane McAnally on the fantastic "7 Summers." He also has the good taste to cover Jason Isbell (the dark ballad "Cover Me Up") and Eric Church (the previously unreleased "Quittin' Time"), and duet with Chris Stapleton on my-baby-left-me Southern rocker "Only Thing That's Gone." Even when his songs remind you of someone else—"Blame It On Me" has an Old Dominion jauntiness; Florida Georgia Line should be jealous of "Somethin' Country"—Wallen's scratchy, true-blue redneck (a pejorative he wholeheartedly embraces) voice is uniquely appealing. At just 27, he has carved out a fully-formed identity. He's a party dude, but not a bro; he's retro (complete with Billy Ray Cyrus mullet) but it's more celebration than TikTok irony. If you go by his lyrics, he has an aw-shucks humility; adores the ladies even though they always break his heart; and god, does he love his hometown. The terrific "More Than My Hometown" puts it best: Girl, he can't love you more than his hometown. Wallen comes from Sneedville, a dot-on-the-map of East Tennessee that's viewed as a backwoods cowtown by its bigger-city neighbors. He wears that as a point of pride, and paints the region as the most beautiful place on Earth. "Blue like an East Tennessee June sky," he croons on the canyon-country track "Neon Eyes." It works, in that it feels authentic and heartfelt. He also has a phrasing emphasis that, subject matter aside, is clever on lines like "Think about them tan lines/ And I'm thinking damn I'd/ love to drown in heartbreakin' blue eyes" from the Tim McGraw-ish "Somebody's Problem" and "Buddy tell me I'm a liar/ Still circle up big trucks around a fire/ Still kickin' up some dust behind the tires" on "Still Goin' Down." Elsewhere, "Dangerous," "Beer Don't," "Country A$$ Shit" and "Whatcha Think of Country Now" are Friday night fun. "Sand in My Boots," "Whiskey'd My Way" and "Heartless" (a Diplo collab) are Sunday morning commiserations. Did Dangerous need to be a double album? Probably not. But Wallen backs up his hubris with charm, talent and moments of sheer joy. He's the fuck-up you can't help but root for. © Shelly Ridenour/Qobuz

After his incredible album Bottle It In which was released in 2018 under the label Matador, Kurt Vile has opened a new chapter: one that sees him cross paths with Verve, the iconic jazz label who sought him out. This album harbours a new, creative energy that emerged from the darkness of the recent lockdown, during which Vile had a home studio built. Though this passionate and consciencious artist found it difficult blending his work with his home life to begin with, this ultra-cool forty-something still managed to find the perfect  work/life balance to create his eighth full-length album, half of which is recorded with Rob Schnapf (known for his work with Elliott Smith) in Los Angeles. This album is all about laid-back rock.With 15 tracks (many of which exceed 5 minutes) spread across 1 hour and 13 minutes of listening pleasure, (watch my moves) goes against the grain in an era governed by short formats. Instead, Kurt Vile takes pleasure in the process, letting his love for country-folk ballads pour out of him, free from any kind of restriction. As usual, he’s joined by a number of friends: Cate Le Bon and drummer Stella Mozgawa from Warpaint on Jesus on a Wire and Chastity Belt on Chazzy Don’t Mind and (shiny things). Saxophonist James Stewart from Sun Ra Arkestra even features on the piano in Goin on a Plane Today and in a few understated solos on the cosmic track Like Exploding Stones. The midtempo melodies and lunar lyrics are wrapped up with dreamy folk, gentle country (in particular on his cover of Wages of Sin by Bruce Springsteen), and soft lo-fi guitars and pastel synths (in the magical Mount Airy Hill (Way Gone)). The lyrics are often very contemplative (Stuffed Leopard) and would relax even the most stressed-out of Wall Street traders. He even pushes them to the point of instrumental abstraction at times (Kurt Runner). Though some may find this album too slow or too long, others will find it transports them into a fourth dimension where time and space collide. © Charlotte Saintoin/Qobuz

There's a grim but ultimately wonderful story behind Walter Trout's The Blues Came Callin'. A fine songwriter with an explosive, searing guitar style, Trout, a New Jersey native, is a lifetime blues musician, having been a member of John Mayall's Bluesbreakers and Canned Heat, toured in John Lee Hooker and Big Mama Thornton's road bands, and released a number of strong solo albums under his own name. When it was discovered that he had a disease that ruined his liver, a transplant was his only option, and he had neither the money nor the insurance to have the procedure done. He wrote the songs for this album knowing that it might well be his last. Thanks to social media and a fervent fan base, enough money was raised to allow the transplant, and The Blues Came Callin', another excellent outing from Trout, would appear to not be his last album after all. The blues may not be about happy endings, but it is a music about surviving hardships and reaching toward personal change and redemption, and Trout gives all of that credence with this fine release.© Steve Leggett /TiVo

One strange thing about Eric Clapton's '90s success is that it relied almost entirely on covers and new versions of classic hits; he released no albums of new material between 1989's Journeyman and 1998's Pilgrim. In the decade between the two albums, he had two new hits -- his moving elegy to his deceased son, "Tears in Heaven," and the slick contemporary soul of the Babyface-written "Change the World" -- and Pilgrim tries to reach a middle ground between these two extremes, balancing tortured lyrics with smooth sonic surfaces. Working with producer Simon Climie, his collaborator on the TDF side project, Clapton has created a numbingly calm record that, for all of its lyrical torment, displays no emotion whatsoever. Much of the problem lies in the production, which relies entirely on stiff mechanical drumbeats, gauzy synthesizers, and meandering instrumental interludes. These ingredients could result in a good record, as "Change the World" demonstrated, but not here, due to Pilgrim's monotonous production. Unfortunately, Clapton doesn't want to shake things up -- his singing is startlingly mannered, even on emotionally turbulent numbers like "My Father's Eyes" or "Circus." Even worse, he's content to take a back seat instrumentally, playing slight solos and fills as colorless as the electronic backdrops. The deadened sonics would make Pilgrim a chore even if there were strong songs on the record, but only a handful of tunes break through the murk. Considering that Journeyman, his last album of original material, was a fine workmanlike effort and that From the Cradle and Unplugged crackled with vitality, the blandness of Pilgrim is all the more disappointing.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

Like the artist himself, the music on this brilliant album defies all categories, embracing Terry Callier's wide range of influences and experiences. Callier's musical kaleidoscope is filled with funk, rock, folk, jazz, and even classical influences. "Dancing Girl" opens the album with Charles Stepney's majestic orchestration. This opus is the album's pinnacle, moving with soft intensity toward soul-stirring crescendos. Songs like "What Color Is Love" and "Ho Tsing Mee (A Song of the Sun)," an elegant antiwar prayer of confusion, somehow avoid clichés or take them to another level. "You Goin' to Miss Your Candyman" was made popular by Urban Species when they sampled it on "Listen" in the early '90s, and not surprisingly, it sounds better in its original form. No matter where you turn, Callier's passionate voice captures the sweeping drama of the human condition. A lost romantic amid "concrete front yards," this album is a must-have for any music connoisseur.© Ryan Randall Goble /TiVo