How to better a record like Revolver? Sign off another by the name of Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. For many, this is truly the greatest pop and rock music of all time, if not one of the most significant works of art in popular culture from the second half of the twentieth century... After discovering the endless possibilities offered to them in the recording studio, John, Paul, George and Ringo continue their crazy musical experiments. More than ever considered as the ‘fifth Beatle’, producer George Martin runs out a magic carpet of discoveries that would go on to influence the future of pop. When this eighth studio album is released in June 1967, the era is one that has embraced the all-out psychedelic, and this concept album is a true hallucinatory trip (not only for Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds). Like the patchwork of his mythical pocket, Sergeant Pepper's journeys through pure pop, manly rock'n'roll, totally trippy sequences (to near worldly scales), retro songs of nursery rhymes, animal noises and even classical music! On the composition side, the duo of Lennon/McCartney is at the top of its game, delivering new songs that are still influential today. © MZ/Qobuz, Translation/BM

Audio Vertigo is the tenth studio album from British indie outfit Elbow and follows 2021's Flying Dream 1. Produced by Elbow's Craig Potter and recorded at various studios across the U.K., including their own Blueprint Studios in Salford, the album sees the band opt for a grittier, more garagey feel compared to their previous work, while also expanding their sonic palette.© Rich Wilson /TiVo

Drop everything: it's here! For once, a reissue-plus-rarities set that's worth all the time you have. Revolver, the Beatles' seventh studio album originally issued on August 5,1966, is widely celebrated as the greatest single album of the rock era. It brought psychedelic invention paired with impeccable melodies to the entire world. That first, wildly inventive release remains beyond stunning, and this is not meant to supplant it in any way. The expanded reissue of Revolver shows us the most successful band in the world at the top of their powers, in love with possibility (each song is a different template for sonic possibilities, from blue-eyed soul to avant-garde pop to beautiful melancholic dream music), and still absolutely in love with being a band. The unabashed, youthful enthusiasm for using the studio as an instrument, which would be their path forward as they no longer toured after the release of Revolver, is on special display in all of the outtakes.You likely know the original inside and out, so be prepared. The new mixes by Giles Martin and Sam Okell are truly high fidelity. As you might have read, Martin (son to George) and Okell employ a "de-mixing" technology recently developed by Emile de la Rey and others for the Peter Jackson Get Back documentary project. New details emerge, and the voice separation is spectacular. We're not saying that it's like you are hearing it for the first time, but you will discern new elements in a way that enhances and never detracts. This is so difficult to not only accomplish, but to do well. We've all fallen for reissues that don't live up to the hype. Some grand sonic experiments with reissuing can take years to realize. Perhaps they didn't need to lop off half of the sonic information on the 1990s era Robert Johnson reissues in order to present the music without the crackles and pops of the original 78s. This new de-mix (get it?) is surely a new standard. Hundreds of hours of expert care went into this release. If you haven't listened in a while, the same questions remain, such as why begin their biggest leap forward with a song as lurching and "meh" as "Taxman?" Aside from that song being merely good and not mind-blowing, the only quibble is that the release's track listing presents different outtakes and demos of the same track end to end. One does see them flower and fracture by doing this, but after the first listens, it might be repetitive. This ahead-of-its-time full-length is so close to perfect.Beatlemaniacs and newborn fans alike must consider this the new reference, the new source. As the band infamously sing on "Tomorrow Never Knows" (which has the most revelatory demos of all on this set), invoking both Eastern thought and contemporary enthusiasts of the psychedelic revolution, "Lay down all thoughts, surrender to the void; it is shining, it is shining." © Mike McGonigal/Qobuz

One of her most pop-oriented albums, but also one of her best and most consistent. Most of the songs feature dramatic, swinging large-band orchestration, with the accent on the brass and strings. Simone didn't write any of the material, turning to popular European songsmiths Charles Aznavour, Jacques Brel, and Anthony Newley, as well as her husband, Andy Stroud, and her guitarist, Rudy Stevenson, for bluesier fare. There are really fine tunes and interpretations, on which Simone gives an edge to the potentially fey pop songs, taking a sudden (but not uncharacteristic) break for a straight jazz instrumental with "Blues on Purpose." The title track, a jazzy string ballad version of the Screamin' Jay Hawkins classic, gave the Beatles the inspiration for the phrasing on the bridge of "Michelle."© Richie Unterberger /TiVo

Released in 1976, this fifth album from the Eagles would remain their greatest success. Opened by the eponymous hit single, Hotel California marked a turning point in the career of the American group. Bernie Leadon, the most country-orientated band member, jumped ship and Joe Walsh came on board. For his part, Don Henley also seemed to take more control the business. The result was a much more mainstream record than the album’s predecessors with truly enveloping sounds at the peak of their tracks. Everything is XXL here! The production, the solos, the melodies… everything! A masterpiece of classic rock, this is above all a work that crosses decades and makes the crowds go wild. Glenn Frey, Don Felder, Joe Walsh, Randy Meisner and Don Henley would never again find again such impressive complicity and efficiency… Published in November 2017, this 40th anniversary edition offers an original remastered album as well as an energetic Californian live session recorded at The Forum in Inglewood, October 1976. © CM/Qobuz

Sonny & Cher, Jane Birkin & Serge Gainsbourg, Nancy Sinatra & Lee Hazlewood, Gram Parsons & Emmylou Harris, Les Paul & Mary Ford, She & Him... The history of popular music is full of mythical mixed duos. And here, a new tandem makes an entry greeted by a Qobuzissime! On one side, a gold-plated rock icon who occasionally comes out of his lair: Paul Simonon, ex-bassist of the Clash (that's him on the cover of London Calling!) and more recently member of The Good, The Bad And The Queen with Damon Albarn and the late Tony Allen. On the other, the folkeuse Galen Ayers, daughter of Kevin Ayers, the eccentric British co-founder of Soft Machine.The album that these two have just recorded is however light years away from their history-laden resumes. From the very first notes of Can We Do Tomorrow Another Day?, Galen & Paul play the troubadour card, the simple—not simplistic—walk between styles, landscapes and territories. Viscerally cosmopolitan and even European (they sing in English and Spanish, and talk about Paris), these ten tracks play it nonchalant with a street singer side. Mariachi fragrances, reggae sounds, the carefree Italian and French variety of the '60s—the concept of Galen & Paul is retro without being old-fashioned, funny without being potache, poetic without being cliché.The duo is supported by impeccable musicians (guitarist Simon Tong—another one of Simonon's The Good… bandmates, jazz drummer Seb Rochford and Dan Donovan on keyboards), and by Tony Visconti, Bowie's producer who is more used to "big sound" records. And then there is Damon Albarn who comes to blow in his melodica on some tracks. In 38 minutes, Galen & Paul take us around the world, a warm, benevolent, nostalgic elsewhere that feels good. © Marc Zisman/Qobuz

How to better a record like Revolver? Sign off another by the name of Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. For many, this is truly the greatest pop and rock music of all time, if not one of the most significant works of art in popular culture from the second half of the twentieth century... After discovering the endless possibilities offered to them in the recording studio, John, Paul, George and Ringo continue their crazy musical experiments. More than ever considered as the ‘fifth Beatle’, producer George Martin runs out a magic carpet of discoveries that would go on to influence the future of pop. When this eighth studio album is released in June 1967, the era is one that has embraced the all-out psychedelic, and this concept album is a true hallucinatory trip (not only for Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds). Like the patchwork of his mythical pocket, Sergeant Pepper's journeys through pure pop, manly rock'n'roll, totally trippy sequences (to near worldly scales), retro songs of nursery rhymes, animal noises and even classical music! On the composition side, the duo of Lennon/McCartney is at the top of its game, delivering new songs that are still influential today. © MZ/Qobuz, Translation/BM

How to better a record like Revolver? Sign off another by the name of Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. For many, this is truly the greatest pop and rock music of all time, if not one of the most significant works of art in popular culture from the second half of the twentieth century... After discovering the endless possibilities offered to them in the recording studio, John, Paul, George and Ringo continue their crazy musical experiments. More than ever considered as the ‘fifth Beatle’, producer George Martin runs out a magic carpet of discoveries that would go on to influence the future of pop. When this eighth studio album is released in June 1967, the era is one that has embraced the all-out psychedelic, and this concept album is a true hallucinatory trip (not only for Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds). Like the patchwork of his mythical pocket, Sergeant Pepper's journeys through pure pop, manly rock'n'roll, totally trippy sequences (to near worldly scales), retro songs of nursery rhymes, animal noises and even classical music! On the composition side, the duo of Lennon/McCartney is at the top of its game, delivering new songs that are still influential today. ©MZ/Qobuz, Translation/BM

Following the cool reception to Insomniac, Green Day retreated from the spotlight for a year to rest and spend time with their families. During that extended break, they decided to not worry about their supposedly lost street credibility and make an album according to their instincts, which meant more experimentation and less of their trademark punk-pop. Of course, speedy, catchy punk is at the core of the group's sound, so there are plenty of familiar moments on the resultant album, Nimrod, but there are also new details that make the record an invigorating, if occasionally frustrating, listen. Although punk-pop is Green Day's forte, they sound the most alive on Nimrod when they're breaking away from their formula, whether it's the shuffling "Hitchin' a Ride," the bitchy, tongue-in-cheek humor of "The Grouch," the surging surf instrumental "Last Ride In," the punchy, horn-driven drag-queen saga "King for a Day," or the acoustic, string-laced ballad "Good Riddance." It's only when the trio confines itself to three chords that it sounds tired, but Billie Joe has such a gift for hooky, instantly memorable melodies that even these moments are enjoyable, if unremarkable. Still, Nimrod suffers from being simply too much -- although it clocks in at under 50 minutes, the 18 tracks whip by at such a breakneck speed that it leaves you somewhat dazed. With a little editing, Green Day's growth would have been put in sharper relief, and Nimrod would have been the triumphant leap forward it set out to be. As it stands, it's a muddled but intermittently exciting record that is full of promise.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

One of the most recognisable voices to have emerged from the UK garage scene in the nineties and noughties, The Streets frontman Mike Skinner's last decade or so has been marked by ups and downs. A six-year drought followed the band's fifth—and at the time, final—album, Computers and Blues (2011), after which the project was revived as something of a legacy act, releasing only the occasional single or collaboration, and one full-length: the None Of Us Are Getting Out Of This Life Alive (2020) mixtape. In 2023, the result of Skinner's silent labors have at last seen the light of day, via The Darker The Shadow The Brighter The Light, an album and identically titled indie film-noir and murder mystery musical. Where many fall victim to the routine inertia which comes with writing an album, touring it, and eventually tiring of it, this new, hybrid release represents far more than a mere snapshot of a couple of years of creativity. It is the culmination of seven or more years of hard graft, which saw Skinner take on the role of producer, rapper, director, actor, screenwriter—everything necessary to bring the album and its accompanying film into being … and all in the absence of external funding. "It's been an obsession ... I kind of did everything myself so it just didn't stop, really. The tunnel was very long, very dark, and there was no light—apart from a train, maybe," he has shared.As far as the format goes, there's nothing new under the sun here. Indeed, the filmic aspect should come as no surprise to Streets fans given the conceptual similarity to A Grand Don't Come For Free (2004), an album which also flirted with portraying a movie-like narrative over its course. What stands out with this project is Skinner's unrelenting commitment to seeing through his highly ambitious artistic designs, no matter the cost or consequence. His instinct for storytelling and nose for excitement in the seemingly everyday both resonate across the fifteen tracks, the sound of which picks up right where the band left off: garage, bassline, and drum and bass beats set the pace for characteristically unfussy, in-your-face riffs and Skinner's dry, Brummie delivery.The Darker The Shadow The Brighter The Light exceeds even the most daring aspirations of its creator, and will surely go down as a fan favourite in the band's discography. Have a break, Mike—you've definitely earned it this time. © Finn Kverndal/Qobuz

In the six years between And in the Endless Pause There Came the Sound of Bees and Orphée, Jóhann Jóhannsson became a celebrated film composer, earning back-to-back Oscar nominations for his life-affirming score for The Theory of Everything and his ominous, rough-edged music for Sicario. During this time, Jóhannsson continued to work on personal projects including this, his Deustche Grammophon debut. In its own way, Orphée is also a little like a soundtrack: the composer drew inspiration from the story of Orpheus' ill-fated attempt to rescue his wife Eurydice from the underworld, building on Ovid and Jean Cocteau's versions of the tale in his meditations on death, rebirth, and creativity. The Orpheus myth reflected Jóhannsson's life while he worked on the album: his move from Copenhagen to Berlin marked the closing of one chapter in his life and the start of a new one. Like And in the Endless Pause There Came the Sound of Bees, Orphée is both more intimate than some of his larger works, and immediately recognizable as Jóhannsson's. On "Flight from the City," a gentle but insistent piano motif rises and falls like breath, while strings deepen its sweet ache; layers of counterpoint inspire bittersweet wonder on "The Drowned World"; "Orphic Hymn" showcases the composer's flair for choral pieces, with Paul Hillier's Theatre of Voices performing lines from Ovid's text in Renaissance style; and "Fragment II" offers a brief burst of his grander scale with its ever-widening sea of drones and strings. This piece features Orphée's main motif, an ascending harmonic pattern that also appears on the ghostly "A Song for Europa," which introduces the staticky, numbers station-like recordings that flicker through the album, adding another layer of distance and mystery. Orphée's studies in change give equal time time to mourning and hope, whether on the spine-tingling "A Pile of Dust" or the way "A Sparrow Alighted Upon Our Shoulder" and "By the Roes, and by the Hinds of the Field" dance between joy and sorrow. Similarly, Jóhannsson makes the album's chiaroscuro qualities explicit on "De Luce et Umbra," where a shadowy, almost subliminal pulse adds tension to the skyward strings, and on the Emily Dickinson-inspired diptych "Good Morning, Midnight" and "Good Night, Day," where subtle transitions evoke standing between ends and beginnings. On Orphée, Jóhannsson expresses the need to let some things and people go to let new ones in with remarkable nuance, as well as the affecting beauty fans have come to know and love.© Heather Phares /TiVo

Everyone has their favorite Beatles record, but Revolver will always be a truly pivotal point, one of the most influential (THE most?) albums in the history of rock. This seventh studio recording, which was released in August 1966, waves goodbye to the friendly and playful image of the Fab Four from Liverpool in order for them to become the architects of a total pop revolution. With Revolver, backed by the indispensable production of George Martin, the group embarks on some of the wildest experiments in the service of creating their most fascinating material ever. They tinker with their sound and explore new territory once again, they thrive on prohibited substances (also evoked in their lyrics), introduce an impressive range of instruments (harpsichord, trumpet, sitar, organ...) and strengthen their writing, once so carefree in the infancy of their careers. Notably, the Fab Four then decided not to perform on stage again, preferring to use the recording studio as an instrument in itself, if not sometimes as an additional member. For the rest, the simple song titles written in procession is apt conclusion: Tomorrow Never Knows, Eleanor Rigby, I'm Only Sleeping, Got To Get You Into My Life, Taxman... ©MZ/Qobuz, Translation/BM