The Weeknd is going back to his roots on this surprise album (or half album) that he has gifted the world. After a collaborative album with Daft Punk (Starboy), which shot him to international stardom and also brought him a Grammy, the R&B singer from “The 6” (Toronto Metropolitan Area) has shifted back to a more personal effort. Abel Tesfaye, or alias The Weeknd co-writes 6 deeply personal tracks that focus on love, drugs and sex, the perfect formula for an R&B album. He opens up more than ever about his current trials and tribulations with relationships, but his pain is our gain. The 21 minutes of music is vintage The Weeknd from his album Trilogy, deeply chilling with distressed synths and spacey falsetto vocals. OG fans of The Weeknd will love this record, while it will still create many new ones.

This is the sort of album that gives the mainstream a good name. It's wonderfully recorded, especially at the low end of the spectrum: Peter Washington's bass and Kenny Washington's kick drum speak with authority yet never overwhelm Charlap's piano. The trio's approach is distinctive, marked by tight and fairly elaborate arrangements, thrilling shifts in tempo, and wholly surprising modulations and harmonic choices on Charlap's part. The overall classicism of the group's sound recalls Tommy Flanagan. Charlap is at his most animated on the opener, a brisk reading of Cole Porter's "In the Still of the Night." He's more laid-back and deliberate on midtempo tracks like Johnny Mercer's "Dream" and the Gershwins' "Lorelei," where the Washingtons' bone-deep sense of swing really comes to the fore. Another, even more contemplative side of Charlap comes out on an achingly slow "One for My Baby" and a pair of Harold Arlen tunes, "The Man That Got Away" and "It Was Written In the Stars." However, the most comprehensive and bracing showcases of Charlap's talent are Irving Berlin's "Blue Skies" and Frank Loesser's "Slow Boat to China." Setting up the Berlin tune with the seldom-played introductory verse, Charlap then crafts a contrapuntal head arrangement that recalls early McCoy Tyner. After a round of concise and inventive solos, Charlap restates the melody in the original key of F minor, but then modulates to E minor for the concluding A section. (The pop cliché is to modulate up a half-step, not down.) The trio then vamps on a bluesy G7 tonality before wrapping up with a decorative coda. Analogous surprises also crop up during "Slow Boat to China." Charlap takes the melody at a medium tempo and then moves through a series of shifting chords before launching into a faster tempo for the solos. He plays the tune in B flat, but takes the second half of his final chorus in D -- a seemingly random event. Then he returns to B flat for the first half of the out melody, halves the tempo, and modulates to A major (again, down a half-step) to finish the song. All this is to say that Charlap is an uncommonly imaginative arranger, not to mention a great player. He's also unusually resourceful in terms of repertoire. Arlen, Porter, Gershwin, Mercer, Rodgers and Hart: These are all big-name songwriters, but Charlap astutely picks some of their lesser-known songs. And speaking of lesser-known songs, Charlap also offers a moving tribute to his late father, Broadway composer Moose Charlap, with a solo piano rendition of "I'll Never Go There Anymore." This is perhaps the clearest example of how Charlap invests his material with a genuinely personal touch.© David R. Adler /TiVo

Over the years, the Twilight Sad have mastered many flavors of brooding and bittersweet, from their debut album Fourteen Autumns & Fifteen Winters' folky atmospheres to No One Can Ever Know's hard-edged electronics. They've been around long enough to look back, and that's what they do on Nobody Wants to Be Here and Nobody Wants to Leave. Inspired by their late-2013 and early-2014 live performances of Fourteen Autumns & Fifteen Winters and with their songwriting honed by No One's stark experiments, the Twilight Sad transform everything that came before into some of their most compelling music. By blending the extremes of their previous albums, they give intimate moments an epic scope in ways that sound truly revitalized. As the title implies, Nobody Wants to Be Here and Nobody Wants to Leave captures the point in a relationship when staying together and breaking up sound equally appealing and terrible. It's an emotional state detailed by bleakly beautiful songs ranging from the dramatic post-punk of "There's a Girl in the Corner," "Last January," and "I Could Give You All That You Don't Want" to the lusher but just as haunted sounds of the swooning "Pills I Swallow" and the title track's brilliant shoegaze, which sounds like My Bloody Valentine's "Soon" with all of its hushed romance turned into pleading. Lyrically, the group also uses all the tools at its disposal to convey the album's conflicting moods: singer James Graham is alternately callous and wounded throughout, whether delivering wry barbs like "I put you through hell/But you carry it oh so well" on "Drown So I Can Watch" or simply baring it all on "Sometimes I Wished I Could Fall Asleep," where the ghostly echo on his voice when he sings "There's nothing left for us" is painfully vulnerable. Equally desolate and majestic, Nobody Wants to Be Here and Nobody Wants to Leave's naked emotions and sophisticated music mark a new high point for the Twilight Sad. © Heather Phares /TiVo

Riley Green doesn't shy away from his sentimental side on his full-length debut, Different 'Round Here. He pushes it to the forefront on "I Wish Grandpas Never Died," a sappy tearjerker that is a bit too corny for its own good. Turns out corn is a place Green finds quite comfortable. All through Different 'Round Here, he embraces all manner of lyrical clichés, finding them as comforting as the throwback traditionalism of his music. Green sticks to the straight and narrow as it was defined in the 1990s, favoring clean, crisp productions and music that seamlessly blends classic country with pop hooks and a slight rock kick. What keeps Different 'Round Here humming is how Green manages to avoid the temptation of succumbing to straight-ahead revivalism. He takes old-fashioned attitude and simple, lean arrangements and plays them with a fresh directness. His straight-ahead nature may indeed lead him toward cornball territory, but the album on the whole is distinguished by how Green wears his heart on his sleeve.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

If you've never heard Blind Willie Johnson, you are in for one of the great, bone-chilling treats in music. Johnson played slide guitar and sang in a rasping, false bass that could freeze the blood. But no bluesman was he; this was gospel music of the highest order, full of emotion and heartfelt commitment. Of all the guitar-playing evangelists, Blind Willie Johnson may have been the very best. Though not related by bloodlines to Robert Johnson, comparisons in the emotional commitment of both men cannot be helped. This two-CD anthology collects everything known to exist, and that's a lot of stark, harrowing, emotional commitment no matter how you slice it. Not for the faint of heart, but hey, the good stuff never is.© Cub Koda /TiVo

Coming off multi-platinum, Grammy-winning success with Starboy and apt placement on the Black Panther soundtrack, Abel Tesfaye shirks candy-coated summertime jams for aggrieved ballads with this six-track EP, issued with little advance notice. Considering its unswerving focus on romantic anguish and self-medication, and a listener's natural inclination to associate the pronouns with Tesfaye's famous exes, the EP might seem extreme, but it retraces familiar shapes in condensed form. Most obviously, "Call Out My Name" resembles "Earned It" with synthesized menace in place of strings and a dash of the distorted terror previously heard on "The Hills." In one verse directed at the object of his unrequited affection, Tesfaye confesses that he wasn't truthful when he said he "didn't feel nothing," then lashes out for being taken at his initial word and treated in kind, "just another pit stop." In that regard, the level of emotional maturity hasn't changed much since the mixtapes. Apart from the sly and sweet 2-step rhythm on "Wasted Times," the sound of the EP is bleary R&B with beats that drag and lurch, suited for Tesfaye's routine swings between self-pity and sexual vanity, chemically enhanced from one extreme to the other. For all his rehashed scenes, Tesfaye can be one of the most affecting vocalists in contemporary pop. When he sings "I got two red pills to take the blues away" in "Privilege," he might as well be slouched in the driver's seat of one of his luxury sports cars, staring into his open palm like he's holding all that he truly values.© Andy Kellman /TiVo

By 1957, hard bop was firmly established as the "jazz of now," while pianist Oscar Peterson and his ensemble with bassist Ray Brown and guitarist Herb Ellis were making their own distinctive presence felt as a true working band playing standards in the swing tradition. Louis Armstrong was more recognizable to the general public as a singer instead of the pioneering trumpet player he was. But popularity contests being the trend, Armstrong's newer fans wanted to hear him entertain them, so in retrospect it was probably a good move to feature his vocalizing on these tracks with Peterson's band and guest drummer Louie Bellson sitting in. The standard form of Armstrong singing the lead lines, followed by playing his pithy and witty horn solos based on the secondary melody, provides the basis for the format on this charming but predictable recording. What happens frequently is that Armstrong and Peterson play lovely ad lib vocal/piano duets at the outset of many tunes. They are all songs you likely know, with few upbeat numbers or obscure choices. It is, however, the familiarity of songs like the midtempo "Let's Fall in Love," with Armstrong's gravelly scat singing, and his marvelous ability to riff off of the basic songs, that make these offerings endearing. A classic take of "Blues in the Night" is the showstopper, while choosing "Moon Song" is a good, off-the-beaten-path pick as the trumpeter plays two solo choruses, and he leads out on his horn for once during the slightly bouncy, basic blues "I Was Doing All Right." Some extremely slow tunes crop up on occasion, like "How Long Has This Been Going On?," an atypically downtempo take of "Let's Do It," and "You Go to My Head," featuring Peterson's crystalline piano. There are the dependable swingers "Just One of Those Things," "I Get a Kick Out of You," and "Sweet Lorraine," with Peterson at his accompanying best. There's a ramped-up version of the usually downtrodden "Willow Weep for Me" and a duet between Armstrong and Ellis on the sad two-minute ditty "There's No You." All in all, it's difficult to critique or find any real fault with these sessions, though Peterson is subsumed by the presence of Armstrong, who, as Leonard Feather notes, really needs nobody's help. That this was their only collaboration speaks volumes to how interactive and communal the session really was, aside from the fairly precious music.© Michael G. Nastos /TiVo

The Weeknd is going back to his roots on this surprise album (or half album) that he has gifted the world. After a collaborative album with Daft Punk (Starboy), which shot him to international stardom and also brought him a Grammy, the R&B singer from “The 6” (Toronto Metropolitan Area) has shifted back to a more personal effort. Abel Tesfaye, or alias The Weeknd co-writes 6 deeply personal tracks that focus on love, drugs and sex, the perfect formula for an R&B album. He opens up more than ever about his current trials and tribulations with relationships, but his pain is our gain. The 21 minutes of music is vintage The Weeknd from his album Trilogy, deeply chilling with distressed synths and spacey falsetto vocals. OG fans of The Weeknd will love this record, while it will still create many new ones.

Linda Martell was the first black female artist to perform at the Grand Ole Opry, in 1969, going on to play the show a dozen times (and, inevitably, prompting comparisons as "the female Charley Pride"). Artists like Waylon Jennings and Hank Snow took her out on the road—but audiences weren’t as open-minded, hurling racist slurs at the stage. "You're gonna run into hecklers, and I did . . . You felt pretty awful," Martell once told Rolling Stone. That, combined with a wave of business troubles, led to her giving up on Nashville. She worked as a cruise-ship entertainer and eventually moved home to South Carolina, where she took a job as a bus driver. In recent years, though, there’s been a rediscovery of Martell’s work and all she did to pave the way for others. Artists including Darius Rucker, Carrie Underwood and Mickey Guyton—who has cited Martell as an inspiration—honored her at the 2021 CMT Music Awards, and a documentary is being made about her life. This remastered reissue of her one and only album, 1970’s Color Me Country, offers brand-new clarity for Martell's honey-rich voice, but it also paints a heartbreaking portrait of what could've been. She sounds invitingly warm and glowing on tracks like the swooning ballad "Then I'll Be Over You" and Dionne Warwick-esque "San Francisco Is a Lonely Town," which showcases Martell's lovely vibrato. "Bad Case of the Blues" is a hoot—with its unmistakable late '60s vibe of  hillbilly fiddle, jug-band bass, and blinding steel complimenting Martell's countrypolitan twang and gossamer-fine yodel. She goes honky-tonk on the title track and stands strong for "You're Crying Boy, Crying," a Wanda Jackson-style barnburner. A moving, countrified cover of The Winstons' shimmering "Color Him Father" finds Martell as a kid singing an ode to her stepfather after her "real old man" was killed in the war. The highlight, of course, is her cover of "Before the Next Teardrop Falls," which would be a hit for Tejano star Freddy Fender in 1974. Simply put, Martell sounds as bright as the sun. © Shelly Ridenour/Qobuz

At the time he recorded his final Capitol album, Point of No Return, Frank Sinatra was no longer interested in giving his record label first-rate material, preferring to save that for his new label, Reprise. However, someone persuaded the singer to make the album a special occasion by reuniting with Axel Stordahl, the arranger/conductor who helped Sinatra rise to stardom in the '40s; he also arranged the vocalist's first Capitol session, so his presence gave a nice sense of closure to the Capitol era. Even though the Voice gave a more heartfelt, dedicated performance than expected, the project was rushed along, necessitating the use of a ghost-arranger, Heine Beau, for several tracks. Point of No Return remains a touching farewell, consisting of moving renditions of standards like "September Song," "There Will Never Be Another You," "I'll Remember April," and "These Foolish Things," with only three charts being replications of their previous work ("I'll Be Seeing You," "September Song," "These Foolish Things"). Sinatra would never sing these standards with such detailed, ornate orchestrations, and, as such, the album has a feeling of an elegy. [The compact disc edition includes the first Sinatra/Stordahl sessions for Capitol.] © Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

Depending on your count, The Sound of the Smiths is the third or fourth posthumous Smiths compilation -- a number that may be a bit excessive considering the group's rather concise catalog, containing just four studio albums and singles rounded up on three singles compilations (and two of those covered the same essential territory, too). That's a lot of repetition but whether it's taken in either its single-disc or double-disc deluxe editions, The Sound of the Smiths is the best of these posthumous overviews. The single-disc -- which is the first disc of the deluxe set -- is the hits disc, containing every cut from the 18-track 1995 compilation Singles and expanding it with five cuts all dating from the mid-'80s: "Still Ill," "Nowhere Fast," "Barbarism Begins at Home," "The Headmaster Ritual," and "You Just Haven't Earned It Yet Baby." As a Smiths-basics goes, it's first-rate, an introduction and summary that's compulsively listenable. The second disc on the deluxe The Sound of the Smiths splits the difference between a rarities compilation and a "more of the best" collection of album tracks, rounding up non-LP singles and B-sides like "Jeane," "Wonderful Woman," "Money Changes Everything," and the New York Vocal version of "This Charming Man," live versions of "Handsome Devil," "Meat Is Murder," "What's the World?" and "London," the Troy Tate demo of "Pretty Girls Make Graves," and a bunch of great Smiths songs including a hefty chunk of The Queen Is Dead. It falls short of being the long-awaited collection of Smiths rarities, the absence of which remains a mystery, but it's the best stab at one to date and a pretty entertaining listen in its own right.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo