A month after K-pop superstars BTS announced they were taking a break from group activities, bandmember and rapper J-Hope released his debut solo full-length, Jack in the Box. As the first member to officially step out on his own, the artist born Jung Ho-seok delivers emotional depth and irresistible energy. Backed by rowdy production, his aggression, raspy delivery, and tongue-twisting bars take center stage, showcasing the rap-focused perspective that he brings to the BTS formula. His introspection also comes to the fore, balancing tempered optimism ("STOP"), hope for change ("= [Equal Sign]"), and comfort ("Safety Zone") with the contemplation of fame (the explosive "MORE") and his place in a broken world (the haunting "Pandora's Box"). It's a lot to pack into roughly 20 minutes, but J-Hope manages with equal parts heart and fire, like on the closing track "Arson." Longtime BTS fans who are familiar with the group's early rap-heavy days will delight at the hard beats and nostalgic production, which echo the best of old-school East Coast hip-hop (right down to the satisfying sample of Ol' Dirty Bastard's "Shimmy Shimmy Ya" on the rousing "What If..."). Of course, diehards will eagerly await the day when the BTS hiatus ends, but if the rest of the group members produce solo endeavors of this caliber, then that uncertain period should fly by quickly.© Neil Z. Yeung /TiVo

Michael Giacchino's fifth score for director Matt Reeves (following Cloverfield, Let Me In, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, and War for the Planet of the Apes), 2022's The Batman was a remarkable undertaking for several reasons. Firstly, as the inaugural film in yet another reboot, Giacchino was responsible for composing new music themes for beloved franchise characters. Secondly, Reeves approached Giacchino to do the score before lead actor Robert Pattinson was even cast; as a result, music including the main Batman motif pre-dated production on the film. The Batman is also the longest score Giacchino had ever written to this point; the film has a running time of nearly three hours, and the score recording clocks in at four minutes short of two hours. It was recorded in October 2021 with a 70-piece orchestra and six-member boys choir divided between Abbey Road Studios One and Two and tracked concurrently with two different conductors. The instrumentation is another noteworthy feature, consisting of rock instruments as well as orchestral strings, brass, and percussion but almost no woodwinds (just three clarinets). If that's any indication of the score's sound, one would likely still underestimate how dark, lurking, and often (not always) eerily sparse the final work is, which had Giacchino looking to film noir classics for inspiration in addition to his Batman predecessors, Danny Elfman, Elliot Goldenthal, and Hans Zimmer. There was so much anticipation surrounding the film and score that Giacchino's main character tracks -- "The Batman," "The Riddler," and "Catwoman" -- were issued as singles and broke WaterTower Music streaming records for pre-release score material. The ominous, marching four-note (two-pitch) Batman motif is introduced on the opening track, "Can't Fight City Halloween," later appearing alongside the more elegant, melancholy Bruce Wayne theme on tracks including "Riddles, Riddles Everywhere." The Catwoman theme embodies jazzier noir, and the Riddler's rising and falling minor-key melody utilizes the children's choir. They intertwine and react to each other according to the onscreen action throughout the score, whose recording closes on the 12-minute "Sonata in Darkness," performed by pianist Gloria Cheng. The Batman marked Giacchino's debut on the Billboard 200. Note: Wordplay aficionados will want to do a close reading of the track list.© Marcy Donelson /TiVo

Not everyone can be signed to the Verve label, but Jon Batiste’s has one of those unique mojos. He has an elegance that shines through on the contents of Hollywood Africans. Here, performance isn’t the main thing. Expression of nuances and precision of rhythms with the aim to create harmony is what it’s all about. On the piano, Batiste explores all sorts of possibilities. It therefore comes as no surprise that the album shares its title with Jean-Michel Basquiat’s 1983 art work, as the artist was known for his wide range of influences. The album opens with a very traditional boogie before moving on to the famous What A Wonderful World, it then travels back to the times of Chopin. With Green Hill Zone, the Louisianian conductor and musician even dares wander onto the theme of Japanese composer Nakamura Masato. Hollywood Africans breaks down barriers! Each note played is a soft and delicate push towards an artist’s universe. And when Batiste starts singing, it only brings another layer of sensuality. © Anna Coluthe/Qobuz

Sporting the same lineup as on American Psycho (read: two members from the band's prime, but no Glenn Danzig), the reunited Misfits continue their questionable resurrection from the grave with Famous Monsters, titled after a '70s horror magazine. To their credit, the band does try to maintain a certain amount of variety in coloring its sonic palette, throwing in a little doo wop and rockabilly, and they do sound tighter than in the past. However, there's still no getting around the fact that Glenn Danzig was so intrinsic to the sound and direction of the original Misfits that Famous Monsters can't help but feel like an inferior, forced imitation much of the time.© Steve Huey /TiVo

Less of a hodgepodge than his debut album, In the Midnight Hour, Pickett's second album established -- if there had been any doubt -- his stature as a major '60s soul man. The 12 tracks include his monster hits "634-5789," "Ninety-Nine and a Half (Won't Do)," "In the Midnight Hour," and "Land of 1000 Dances" (the last of which was his first Top Ten pop hit). Collectors will be more interested in the non-hit cuts, which are of nearly an equal level. These include covers of the R&B standards "Something You Got," "Mercy Mercy," and "Barefootin'"; several original tunes written in collaboration with Memphis soul greats Steve Cropper, Eddie Floyd, and David Porter; and Bobby Womack's "She's So Good to Me." It all adds up to one of the most consistent '60s soul albums ever.© Richie Unterberger /TiVo

With 2022's Fifty, Grammy-winning vocal quartet the Manhattan Transfer celebrate their 50th birthday in illustrious fashion, collaborating with Germany's WDR Funkhausorchester. Founded in the 1960s by the late Tim Hauser, the Manhattan Transfer helped repopularize '40s-style vocal harmony jazz, swing, and traditional pop, all while incorporating contemporary pop and dance elements. Here, original members Janis Siegel and Alan Paul, along with longtime member Cheryl Bentyne and Trist Curless (who joined after Hauser's passing in 2014), look back on the group's albums and revisit some of their favorite songs. Helping them achieve this time-traveling journey is producer and Take 6-member David Thomas as well as musical arrangers Jorge Callandrelli and Vince Mendoza and vocal arranger Amanda Taylor. While there's certainly a sense of warm familiarity about many of the songs included here, the group smartly eschews many of their obvious hits, like "Birdland" or "Tuxedo Junction," that became staples of their live shows. Instead, they favor equally memorable songs that represent the many genres and styles they've incorporated into their sound over the decades. There's a widescreen, Technicolor vibe to the album that feels like a classic Hollywood film where the main characters travel the globe to far-off exotic locales. Emblematic of this is the opening "Agua," a cinematic and moody MPB ballad by Djavan and Brock Walsh off 1987's Brasil that evokes the expansive harmonies of '60 groups like Free Design. Similarly, "Paradise Within" is a dreamy tropical number off 2018's The Junction that conjures the romantic big band vibe of the 1940's that remains so redolent of the Manhattan Transfer sound. Also bringing to mind the group's swinging, big band-inspired style is their lush rendition of the Artie Shaw standard "The Man I Love" -- a never-before-recorded arrangement. In classic decade-mashing fashion, they also they also dive into some of their more adventurous choices, including their surprising update of XTC's '80s classic "The Man Who Sailed Around His Soul" from The Junction and the hip-hop-infused "What Goes Around, Comes Around" off 1991's The Offbeat of Avenues. They even revisit their campy reworking of Bernard Herrmann's Twilight Zone theme off 1979's Extensions. These are lush, orchestral productions that add even more textural colors to the quartet's already vibrant vocal harmonies.© Matt Collar /TiVo

XTC continue on with the big drum sound of Drums and Wires, adding more polish and an even heavier-hitting approach for Black Sea -- their arrangements are fuller and they rock harder than ever before. Where Drums and Wires implied social commentary, Black Sea more directly addresses sociopolitical concerns, handling them not strictly in a theoretical sense, but rather showing a human response to the circumstances. Of course, the band's skewed outlook and mid-'60s pop sense keeps things from becoming too heavy -- included are some of their finest songs, like "Respectable Street," "Generals and Majors," and "Towers of London," as well as the thoroughly enjoyable pop fluff throwaway "Sgt. Rock (Is Going to Help Me)" to keep the mood light. All in all, there isn't a bad song in the bunch -- Black Sea is their most consistent album to date -- and although XTC always operated on the fringes, the album is their most commercial-sounding, fitting in perfectly with the new wave of the late '70s/early '80s. [The 1987 CD reissue adds three tracks -- "Smokeless Zone," "Don't Lose Your Temper," and "The Somnambulist" -- to the middle of the album. And while the extras are welcomed (especially "Don't Lose Your Temper"), they really should have been tacked on to the end rather than disrupting the original.]© Chris Woodstra /TiVo

If 2001's Britney was a transitional album, capturing Spears at the point when she wasn't a girl and not yet a woman, its 2003 follow-up, In the Zone, is where she has finally completed that journey and turned into Britney, the Adult Woman. Like her peer Christina Aguilera, Britney equates maturity with transparent sexuality and the pounding sounds of nightclubs, but since she's not as dirrty as Xtina, her spin is a little different. Where Christina comes across like a natural-born skank, Britney is the girl next door cutting loose at college, drinking and smoking and dancing and sexing just a little too recklessly, since this is the first time she can indulge herself. And that's what In the Zone is -- Britney indulging herself, desperate to prove that she's an adult. Since she's a pop diva, the record label certainly set some limits -- and, really, given her track record and taste, there was little chance that she would follow Pink's lead and write an album with a punk rocker and then draft Peaches for a cameo -- but she has been freed from her musical parent, Max Martin, who is absent for the first time from a Britney Spears album. She's chosen to play the field and work with a bunch of different collaborators, including Madonna, Moby, the Matrix, Trixster, Roy "Royality" Hamilton, Bloodshy & Avant, and R. Kelly. This laundry list of producers and co-writers reveals a combination of savvy and stupidity, reminiscent of the good ideas and bad judgment a young adult goes through in the throes of adjusting to maturity, but one thing ties it all together: her yearning to prove that she's a mature adult. Since the songs are almost exclusively about sex or dancing, with an empowerment tune and a couple of heartbreak ballads tossed in for good measure, it's a pretty limited definition of adulthood, which would be fine if Spears didn't treat it all so seriously, as if maturity were only about sex and dancing. Since she's so determined to be a woman, not a girl, she has completely shed the sugarcoated big hooks and sappy love songs that drove her stardom, concentrating on music that glides by on mellow grooves or hits hard with its hip-hop beats. It's all club-ready, but despite some hints of neo-electro and the Neptunes, it doesn't quite sound modern -- it sounds like cuts from 1993 or Madonna's Bedtime Stories and Ray of Light. Madonna, of course, duets on the album's first single, "Me Against the Music," whose title practically begs to be mocked. Unfortunately, any snarky jokes directed at the song are warranted, since it's the worst single either Britney or Madonna had yet released, a songless mess of staccato beats whose chorus weirdly recalls Oasis' "D'You Know What I Mean." Neither singer has much range, yet they usually exploit their weakness well; here, they succumb to their limitations to the point that their thin voices are indistinguishable apart from Madonna singing "Hey Britney" ad nauseam. This is not the only time on In the Zone that the music is hampered by Britney's limited vocal abilities. She may be older now, but she still sounds like a little girl, which undercuts both the glistening, sensual mid-tempo grooves that dominate the album and the big, booming up-tempo cuts that offer a change of pace. Production-wise, these tracks are not only accomplished but much more varied than any of her previous albums -- in particular, Moby's "Early Mornin'" has a sleek feel, Mark Taylor's "Breathe on Me" is alluring, and the Bloodshy & Avant productions "Showdown" and "Toxic" are irresistible ear candy -- but Britney's voice just isn't sexy enough to sell these songs; she often sounds like a girl dressing up in her big sister's clothes, whether she's murmuring seductive or delving into rap and ragga. All of this undercuts not just the songs, but the theme of the album, since it seems that she's still not yet a woman, no matter how much she protests that she is. While there are surely some good moments here and while this is surely her most ambitious, adventurous album to date, it's not a particularly successful one, since she treats her freedom as a burden, not a blessing. After all, if an album is going to be about sex, dancing, and freedom, it should at the very least sound joyous and fun. In the Zone deliberately avoids fun, which is why it's less likeable than Britney's previous albums, even if it is musically more accomplished.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

The departure of Ronnie James Dio gave Ritchie Blackmore a chance to reinvent Rainbow, which he does to a certain extent on Down to Earth. Adding former Deep Purple colleague Roger Glover as bassist and Graham Bonnet as vocalist, Blackmore tones down some of the excess of the Dio years, particularly in terms of fantastical lyrics, and turns to straight-ahead hard rock, only occasionally adorned by prominent synthesizers. In general, their material is fairly solid, and "Since You Been Gone" easily ranks among the band's best songs, but overall the record is a little generic and sounds very much of its time -- namely, the late '70s, when album rock still ruled the arenas. Nevertheless, Rainbow has a distinct idea, primarily through the guitar artistry and mystical sensibility of Ritchie Blackmore. He sounds invigorated on the album, turning in muscular performances and strong solos on each cut; clearly, the reunion has revitalized him. Unfortunately, Bonnet tends to oversell his vocals, screaming a little bit too often, but he doesn't distract from the fact that Blackmore, Glover, and drummer Cozy Powell turn Down to Earth into a fine hard rock platter. It might not offer anything unique, but it delivers the goods.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

Static-X's Shadow Zone is a numbingly vacuous, no-dimensional dud that seems to have arrived via wormhole from 1998. In songs like "Kill Your Idols," "Destroy All," and "Monster," Wayne Static -- who's never sounded more like Korn's Jonathan Davis -- yells nonsense like "My head's a loaded gun" and "Breathing, killing, seething, willing" over thudding, one-note thrash busied up with dated electronic fuzz. Producer Josh Abraham (Orgy, Crazy Town) flattens the material to a harsh hiss, reducing the drumming to a vague click behind an impenetrable wall of guitars, and eventually it all just sounds like, yes, static. By mid-album, "The Only"'s foray into Stabbing Westward-style electro-industrial provides depth simply by being derivative in a different way. (Even here, Static's vocal resemblance to Davis is stunning.) Reliance on formula has always been admissible in metal, but it's Static-X's apparent refusal to try anything new or remotely original that makes Shadow Zone such a disappointment. Predictably, the album ends clumsily. "So" and "Invincible" debut some sort of double-track effect on Static's voice, which makes him sound like Layne Staley instead of Davis. Along with the interlude "Transmission," which probably seemed a lot scarier in the studio, the two tracks are a final indictor of Static-X's quickly advancing irrelevance. Shadow Zone's impossibly generic cover art only makes it more indistinguishable.© Johnny Loftus /TiVo

Aaron Randall advises his listeners to prepare for attack, but by then the battle has already commenced, as guitarists Jeff Waters and Goldberg roll out the usual power chords and the rhythm section of Wayne Darley and Mike Mangini piledrive every beat. Annihilator bring a certain efficiency to garden-variety speed metal, never wasting time, which, in a genre defined by excess, gives them a certain elegance.© William Ruhlmann /TiVo

From Simon & Garfunkel to Daft Punk and NTM, it’s not unusual for duos to break up in the music industry. Given the format of this new release—a double album containing two separate records—Dom Maker and Kai Campos (the two acoustic-loving uni buddies who launched Mount Kimbie a decade ago) could probably have each pursued their own musical path. Nonetheless, the British musicians have chosen to stick together as a team, resulting in this double album composed of Dom Maker’s hip-hop record, Die Cuts, and Kai Campos’ experimental techno album, City Planning.Returning from Angeles with a phone full of contacts, Dom Maker has released a 90’s hip-hop/R&B producer record, much like Pete Rock or RZA. This is a quality record that brings together ultra-inspired vocalists, such as the incredible slowthai, who appears on two tracks. James Blake also features on a track that’s sure to make many cry. Soul/R&B tracks like ‘f1 racer’ (feat. Kučka), ‘say that’ (feat. Nomi), and ‘a deities encore’ (feat. Liv.e) are also stunning, bringing a vibe we haven’t felt since Teyana Taylor’s K.T.S.E. in 2018. A spellbinding record from start to finish. Impressive. Whilst there are no featured artists on City Planning, there are plenty of good ideas (such as the incredible tribal opening, ‘Q’, and the bizarre ‘Transit Map (Flattened)’), all fully developed in the space of just one or two minutes. ‘Zone 1 (24 Hours)’ is an exception to this, being the only club-format track on the record. It’s stripped-down techno with a bassline that completely engulfs the brain. There’s a signature sound that links these two different records, and it’s this sound that has made Mount Kimbie’s albums a warm refuge in the winter months. © Smaël Bouaici/Qobuz

Having combined the Cali-reggae sound of Sublime with a jam band attitude years ago, Rebelution were well into their groove by the time Peace of Mind rolled around, and they had the sizable, loyal fan base to prove it, too. As such, this "on top of our game" album doesn't try hard to please, and when a rock-reggae group starts a song with "Woke up this morning" -- which happen here -- it's dangerously close to clichéd territory, but the enthusiasm, the musical skills, and the cottage industry love poured into this effort overcome the arguable shortcomings. When "Route Around" drives by with its pop ballad style and nylon-string guitar solo, the bar is raised and the horizon is broadened; then add a love of nature that's beautifully communicated through "Meant to Be" and Rebelution are much more than a bleach-blond crew stumbling out of a van telling all the "suits" to "chill." Still, they retain enough of that surfer dude mojo to be charming, and while Peace of Mind often leads with its "good vibes," there's a deep impact to be had here and there. Plus, "Comfort Zone" makes that "try to think of nothing" thing sound so good that any poignancy shoehorned in would really harsh its mellow.© David Jeffries /TiVo