As both an accomplished collaborator and a striking solo artist, Nils Lofgren is too talented to fit into any easy category.  He began as a classical accordionist at age five, but switched to guitar later in his youth, formed the rock band Grin, and played on Neil Young's After the Goldrush. While Lofgren has also been an on-and-off member of Crazy Horse since the early '70s, he's best known for his tenure as a member of Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band—joining in 1984 for the Born in the U.S.A. Tour. Those years with Bruce are audible in a version of the Springsteen original, "Back in Your Arms," which comes complete with backing from the Howard Gospel Choir. Another mass of voices beefs up the jumpiness of "We Better Find It," a tune with musical echoes of the 1980s. "Ain't the Truth Enough," another Bruce-like number, opens the album with the emotional reach that marks the E Streeter's best work.  Charged with a thumping beat and low-end menace, "Only Ticket Out" is the doleful tale of a tortured man who "Blacked out cold in an alley/ Full of NyQuil and stale dope." Later "Won't Cry No More," which chugs along with a steady groove, is dedicated to the late Rolling Stones drummer, Charlie Watts. In "Nothin's Easy (For Amy)," Lofgren pays tribute to his titular wife who's listed as co-producer on the album: "As I walk the hurt in this world/ People searchin' with no clue/ I take comfort in one truth/ Nothin's easy 'cept you." "Dream Killer," bathed in 1980's styled reverb, showcases Lofgren's still-supple voice and continued ability to hit the high notes in each chorus. Although the lyrics he sings are sappy—"Queen of mercy heal us with your love/ Cleanse this wasted world"—he lets loose with the album's vocal highlight on the closer, "Angel Blues." Calling a musician "a pro" is high praise and few deserve that compliment more than Nils Lofgren. © Robert Baird/Qobuz

This is U2 following in the footsteps of David Bowie. Like the Heroes singer, who moved to Berlin in 1976 to find fresh inspiration, Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen went to the German capital in 1990 to write their seventh album. With the wall having fallen a year earlier, there was an atmosphere of freedom, and indeed of chaos. Produced by Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois, Achtung Baby blends these two moods, both in content and form. Musically, it is more experimental, industrial and electronic than in the band's previous albums, although it retains a certain lyricism. As for the lyrics, they meet the Irish group’s usual standard, transcending their sentimental themes to evoke human relationships more generally (So Cruel, Even Better Than the Real Thing, Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses). Unification is at the heart of some tracks, starting with the famous One. But here again, Bono brings a universal outlook.This Berlin exile was not ideal from an artistic point of view and they finished Achtung Baby at home, in Irish studios. However, traces of Germany can be felt in some of the songs, starting with Zoo Station, a reference to the Zoologischer Garten underground station. The rocking Until the End of The World was written for the film of the same name by German director Wim Wenders. It is a fictional conversation between Jesus and Judas, carried by a powerful guitar solo by The Edge. Eno summed up U2's European album as follows: “Buzzwords on this record were trashy, throwaway, dark, sexy and industrial (all good) and earnest, polite, sweet, righteous, rockiest and linear (all bad).” In addition to the remastered version of Achtung Baby, this 30th Anniversary Edition includes 22 previously unreleased songs and many remixes. © Nicolas Magenham/Qobuz

Willie Nelson's Red Headed Stranger perhaps is the strangest blockbuster country produced, a concept album about a preacher on the run after murdering his departed wife and her new lover, told entirely with brief song-poems and utterly minimal backing. It's defiantly anticommercial and it demands intense concentration -- all reasons why nobody thought it would be a hit, a story related in Chet Flippo's liner notes to the 2000 reissue. It was a phenomenal blockbuster, though, selling millions of copies, establishing Nelson as a superstar recording artist in its own right. For all its success, it still remains a prickly, difficult album, though, making the interspersed concept of Phases and Stages sound shiny in comparison. It's difficult because it's old-fashioned, sounding like a tale told around a cowboy campfire. Now, this all reads well on paper, and there's much to admire in Nelson's intimate gamble, but it's really elusive, as the themes get a little muddled and the tunes themselves are a bit bare. It's undoubtedly distinctive -- and it sounds more distinctive with each passing year -- but it's strictly an intellectual triumph and, after a pair of albums that were musically and intellectually sound, it's a bit of a letdown, no matter how successful it was.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

Ane Brun’s unmistakable voice incarnates the sweet softness of her ballads in its tonality; mellifluous and light, with a slight tremble that ushers in a precious ephemerality. Playful as Joanna Newsom and Fiona Apple, powerful as Joni Mitchell and Dolly Parton, this Norwegian has reconstituted the art of her elders to come up with her own music, for her own universe. Her personal touch resonates even throughout her covers. To celebrate the 20th anniversary of her career, Ane Brun has returned to her signature move by releasing four perfect compilations, exclusively covers, of which Portrayals is the first volume. “Covers have been such a big part of my career. It’s almost a career in itself. They have their own dynamic. I wanted to celebrate that by giving these songs their own space. It’s always a real creative process to record your own version of someone else’s song. I’m not interested in doing a cover version that sounds like the original…” Like Nina Simone, or, closer to home, Cat Power, the Scandinavian makes every song her own. Something that is all the more impressive given that the "revisited" artists come from any background in whichever decade. Portrayals features tracks from Sade (By Your Side), Nick Cave (Into My Arms), Bob Dylan (Make You Feel My Love), Radiohead (How to Disappear Completely), Emmylou Harris (All My Tears), Foreigner (I Want to Know What Love Is), Alphaville (Big in Japan), Beyoncé (Halo), Rodgers & Hart (Blue Moon), the Beatles (From Me to You) and many others. Magical. © Marc Zisman/Qobuz

French hip-hop producer and cinephile Wax Tailor conceptualised his sixth album with a phrase by Orson Welles. The Citizen Kane director regularly stated that his role was to ‘preside over’ the accidents that occurred during the making of a film. For Wax Tailor, it’s also a question of ‘knowing how to capture them in order to make the accident an artistic intention. I decided not to follow a well-established concept but this more instinctive guideline and to go fishing for accidents’. The result is this series of happy accidents, punctuated by samples that always cut to the chase. While rap has undergone major evolutions both stylistically and in terms of its audience, Wax Tailor hasn’t budged an inch, sticking to the abstract hip-hop style originally conceived by DJ Shadow, DJ Krush and DJ Cam. He continues to create cinematic art, making music videos with a retro charm for both his solo tracks and those made with collaborators from diverse stylistic backgrounds. The album is bursting with great songs, such as the beautiful ‘Shaman in Your Arms’, featuring Jennifer Charles (from Elysian Fields), ‘Freaky Circus’ and its golden age boom bap (featuring Mr Lif and Napoleon da Legend), and the incredible ‘Come With Me’, which features his inspiring new muse, Victoria Bigelow © Smaël Bouaici/Qobuz

If a decade separates Henry Saint Clair Fredericks alias Taj Mahal from Kevin Roosevelt Moore alias Keb' Mo', blues is the common thread that joins the lives of these two great musicians. But this blues is anything but monolithic, taking nourishment from soul as well as from rock'n'roll and world music. Taj Mahal and Keb' Mo' have united for the first time under the banner of TajMo to bring out this record. Mixing covers and original compositions and bringing in Bonnie Raitt, Joe Walsh, Sheila E. and Lizz Wright, the album offers two styles that mix together to give birth to a music striking the perfect balance between tradition and innovation. Here the soul is festive (That’s Who I Am), there the blues is pared-down (Diving Duck Blues) and a little further off there are Cajun flavours too (Squeeze Box). But it is the collaboration between the two men that makes TajMo really exhilarating. © CM/Qobuz

Apart from "She Wants to Dance With Me," Astley's second album didn't have songs as strong as those on his debut. Most of the album was pleasant dance-pop filler, showing the weaknesses of the Stock, Aitken & Waterman production team.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

After debuting in 2011 with the evocative If..., a largely orchestral, all-instrumental set inspired by author Italo Calvino's 1979 post-modernist novel If on a Winter's Night a Traveler, former Coral guitarist Bill Ryder-Jones seemed poised to go the film score route, which he had shown interest in shortly after leaving his flagship band. Instead, he released the lovely A Bad Wind Blows in My Heart, an equally evocative, yet more traditional collection of songs that suggest what Nick Drake might have sounded like had he emerged in the early aughts instead of the late '60s. Measured, melancholy, and mysterious, Jones' debut as a singer/songwriter is as subtle as it is striking, skillfully marrying the sedate melancholy of Elliott Smith with the sly, darkly comic lyricism of the National. Recorded in his old childhood bedroom in his mother's house in Liverpool, A Bad Wind Blows in My Heart can feel a bit like an exorcism, and there's an extra shade of intimacy to stand-out cuts like the sad and sensual "Hanging Song," the wry, Luke Haines-inspired "You're Getting Like Your Sister," and the impossibly lonesome "There's a World Between Us," the latter of which is one of a few songs that threatens to break into Chris Isaak's "Wicked Game" at any moment, but it never feels like a self-absorbed, autobiographical bore, as Jones' is an enigmatic enough narrator and a gifted enough arranger that what initially seems like ephemera turns out to be surprisingly affecting. © James Christopher Monger /TiVo

Compiled of demos the band recorded with John Cale in 1973, The Modern Lovers is one of the great proto-punk albums of all time, capturing an angst-ridden adolescent geekiness which is married to a stripped-down, minimalistic rock & roll derived from the art punk of the Velvet Underground. While the sound is in debt to the primal three-chord pounding of early Velvet Underground, the attitude of Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers is a million miles away from Lou Reed's jaded urban nightmares. As he says in the classic two-chord anthem "Roadrunner," Richman is in love with the modern world and rock & roll. He's still a teenager at heart, which means he's not only in love with girls he can't have, but also radios, suburbs, and fast food, and it also means he'll crack jokes like "Pablo Picasso was never called an asshole...not like you." "Pablo Picasso" is the classic sneer, but "She Cracked" and "I'm Straight" are just as nasty, made all the more edgy by the Modern Lovers' amateurish, minimalist drive. But beneath his adolescent posturing, Richman is also nakedly emotional, pleading for a lover on "Someone I Care About" and "Girl Friend," or romanticizing the future on "Dignified and Old." That combination of musical simplicity, driving rock & roll, and gawky emotional confessions makes The Modern Lovers one of the most startling proto-punk records -- it strips rock & roll to its core and establishes the rock tradition of the geeky, awkward social outcast venting his frustrations. More importantly, the music is just as raw and exciting now as when it was recorded in 1973, or when it was belatedly released in 1976.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

Download not available

For years, decades even, Bruce Springsteen was legendary for the amount of recordings he did not release. Every time he cut an album, he recorded a surplus of songs and left some out, not always on the basis of quality, but often because they simply didn't suit the mood of the record. It was inevitable that dedicated fans and collectors would bootleg these recordings, and for many years, he was one of the most popular bootlegged artists, rivaling even Bob Dylan. Dylan released a box set of unreleased songs in 1991, paving the way for the long-overdue appearance of a similar Springsteen set, Tracks, in 1998. Spanning four discs, it isn't entirely devoted to unreleased material -- a few B-sides pop up here and there -- nor is it truly definitive, since it misses a number of key outtakes, plus his original version of "Because the Night," the sole hit for Patti Smith. Instead, the compilation is an unassuming sampling of what's in the vaults, from his early acoustic demos to polished outtakes from Human Touch and Lucky Town. Along the way, there are a number of great songs -- "Bishop Danced" is every bit as terrific as its legend, as are "Thundercrack," "Give the Girl a Kiss," "Hearts of Stone," "Roulette," and many others. Tracks merely offers fans an enjoyably sequenced selection of what was left behind. If the end result isn't as revelatory as some may have expected (even the acoustic "Born in the U.S.A.," powerful as it is, doesn't sound any different than you may have imagined it), it's because Springsteen is, at heart, a solid craftsman, not a blinding visionary like Dylan. That's why Tracks is for the dedicated fan, where The Bootleg Series and The Basement Tapes are flat-out essential for rock fans.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

Ascend couldn't be a more appropriate title for Illenium's third album. The Denver-based EDM producer has been constantly on the rise since he began releasing singles in 2014, and both of his first two albums reached the Top Ten of Billboard's Dance/Electronic albums chart. Ascend hit the pole position, additionally debuting at number 14 on the Billboard 200. All of which is apropos for the artist's most accessible, earnest, and emotional collection of songs yet. Moving away from the festival-friendly dubstep and trap of his earlier work, this is an album of intense, personal songs dealing with subjects such as drug abuse and toxic relationships. The extensive list of guest producers and vocalists include X Ambassadors, Bipolar Sunshine, Foy Vance, and Georgia Ku. The album's biggest hit single, "Takeaway," is a collaboration with the Chainsmokers and singer Lennon Stella.© TiVo

The Black Keys shot to fame in 2010, packing out huge stadiums with their sixth album Brothers. The album artwork paid tribute to a controversial Howlin’ Wolf album (This is Howlin’ Wolf’s New Album. He Doesn’t Like It…) and it was a sign. A sign that all the music they love stems from the blues, even if they also explore other avenues. That’s exactly how they started, playing the blues as a duo in their native industrial Midwest (Akron, Ohio), while dreaming of electric juke joints in Mississippi. The Black Keys have never expressed their love for the blues as much as on Thickfreakness, their second album (and for blues fans, their best). The record where Dan Auerbach carved steaks out of the soft belly of the blues by playing guitar haché with an overpowering sound. The one where drummer Pat Carney seemed to be playing to calm his nerves after a day at the factory. They had faith, rage and hunger in their stomachs, tired and hungry for success. As much inspired by the electric blues of North Mississippi (notably Junior Kimbrough) as by proto-punk (from The Stooges to The Sonics, covering their song Have Love Will Travel), the Black Keys wrote their own legend. Listening to this record on top volume is like sticking your head out of the window of a car speeding down a sun-burned road. Only without all the midges in your face. © Stéphane Deschamps/Qobuz

This EP from Christine And The Queens – released only a year and a half after her second album Chris – continues in the musical line that is so personal to Héloïse Létissier (Chris’ real name). Electronica from the 80s and 90s appears to still be the driving force behind the singer’s music, but there are influences from Michael Jackson and Laurie Anderson as well. That’s not where the ‘new’ aspect from the title comes from then. La Vita Nuova refers instead to the first work written by Dante in the 13th century, in which Beatrice Portinari appears, a woman that Dante is madly in love with. He experiences great suffering following her sudden disregard for him, but also develops a certain level of maturity. The emancipatory virtues of moral suffering are at the heart of this EP, especially in its cornerstone track People I’ve Been Sad: “Adolescence contrariée par un millier de chardons morts/Marcher pieds nus sur du verre et maintenant tout est plus fort (Teenage years upset by a million dead thistles/Walking barefoot on broken glass now everything is stronger). Chris seems to be playing the victim, but a former victim whose pain has made them stronger, as in Je disparais dans tes bras: “Pourrais-tu m’aimer? Ça j’en doute, quand tu prends ce que tu veux de moi” (Could you love me? I doubt it, when all you take from me is what you need). If we turn our attention to the cover, the roles appear to be reversed. Other than the vague references to The Exorcist and Mary Poppins, the image of Chris looking forlornly into the distance, leaning against a lampost on a foggy street, reminds you of Joan Bennett in Fritz Lang’s Scarlet Street (1945). Bennett plays Kitty, a scheming femme fatale who plots against Edward G. Robinson’s naïve character called… Chris. In identifying with Kitty, Christine And The Queens deploys her strength, while also endeavouring to forget her painful past. The dominance of the colour purple – which in Dante’s time was the colour of mourning – across the various imagery of the project, is telling. On Nada, over an understated but upbeat orchestration, she states loud and clear that she's “never ever coming back again”. With this collection of multilingual songs (French, English, Spanish, Italian), Christine And The Queens is drawing a new map of her life, a glittering atlas with Mountains steeper and more grandiose than ever. © Nicolas Magenham/Qobuz