Cat Power—Chan Marshall—wanted to mark the moment in 1966 that "informs everything …  this precipice of time that changed music forever": Bob Dylan's "Royal Albert Hall Concert" (actually played at the Manchester Free Trade Hall), the one when he switched from acoustic to electric midway through—prompting an incensed folk purist to yell out "Judas!" Fifty-six years after that concert, Marshall delivered a sublime song-for-song re-creation of the set, at the actual Royal Albert Hall. "I'm not being Bob … I'm just recreating it, that's all. But not making it mine," she has said. Inevitably, though, the songs do become hers. It's evident right away, from "She Belongs to Me" (and shortly after, "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue"), the influence Dylan has long had on Cat Power's music. But with her husky voice, so like Nico's now and far from Dylan's youthful reediness, revealing traces of her Georgia upbringing ("She don't look baaaaack") and contrasting the clean acoustic guitar and shiny harmonica, she owns it. "Desolation Row" is a twelve-and-a-half minute marvel. The guitar is not blindingly bright like Charlie McCoy's flamenco flavor, but that works well with Marshall's more serious/less jaunty air here. Without aping Dylan, she hits his inflections, putting exuberant emphasis on the ends of lines ("And the good Samaritan! He's dressing!"). Her "Visions of Johanna" underscores the prettiness of the melody, while the way she sings the name "Jo-hanna" make it feel so much more exotic than it is. She gets playful with the familiar phrasing on the chorus of "Mr. Tambourine Man" and sings "Just Like a Woman" beautifully, offering a softer, less angular version of Dylan's classic. At 50, she was twice the age of Dylan when he recorded the song for Blonde on Blonde, and you can hear—feel—the extra tread on her heart. When electrified "Tell Me Momma" kicks in like the Wizard of Oz Technicolor moment, it's as thrilling as it's supposed to be, the first word of the titular line bitingly crisp each time. "I Don't Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met)" plays up the soulful grooviness that always feels a little buried on Dylan's live recording, while "Baby, Let Me Follow You Down" expertly captures his wild-eyed edginess. Marshall's "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues" is more elegant, even with its raw edges, than Dylan's young-man machismo. She does not recreate things down to the between-song patter but there is a moment, just before "Ballad of a Thin Man" (so slinky, so powerful), when someone yells out "Judas!"—and Marshall, serenely, responds, "Jesus." "I wasn't expecting the audience to recreate their part of the original show as well, but then I wanted to set the record straight—in a way, Dylan is a deity to all of us who write songs," she has said. And, as it did in 1966, closer "Like a Rolling Stone" sounds like liberation; maybe even like Marshall knows some part of this is hers now. © Shelly Ridenour/Qobuz

There are words that inevitably come to mind with a new Foo Fighters record: pummeling, shredded, heavy. But the band's 11th album, But Here We Are, also bears the weight of grief. The release date marks just over a year since the shocking death of the band's seminal drummer Taylor Hawkins while on tour. "Someone said I'll never see your face again/ Part of me just can't believe it's true/ Pictures of us sharing songs and cigarettes/ This is how I'll always picture you," leader Dave Grohl (who, no surprise, also handles drumming duty this time around) sings on "Under You," a glorious power-pop blast of anguish—the best kind of tribute to a musician who was unparalleled in his explosive joy. But there's more confusion than sentimentality on the album, which teams the band once again with producer Greg Kurstin and is dedicated to both Hawkins and Grohl's mother, who also died in 2022. "I've been hearing voices, none of them are you," Grohl sings on the slinky, mysterious "Hearing Voices," boasting a killer bass line from Nate Mendel. "Where are you now?/ Who'll show me how," he wonders on "Show Me How," moody in the vein of Mendel's old band Sunny Day Real Estate and featuring duet vocals by Grohl's teenage daughter Violet. "I'll take care of everything from now on," he resolves by the end. And then there is "The Teacher," an ambitious 10-minute toss-and-turn dream. "Who's at the door now?/ Wake up," Grohl sings, his drums pounding like someone at the door with bad news as he howls "wake up" over and over. There is excellently mercurial guitar work by Chris Shiflett and a haunted break—"You showed me how to grieve/ Will you show me how to say goodbye?"—before the whole thing breaks down into static. Kicking in with fury and working its way to a headbanging, heart-pumping build, opener "Rescued" is an instant classic along the lines of "Everlong" or "The Pretender." The band delves into power ballads with "The Glass" and  "Beyond Me." And "Nothing at All" is an intriguing surprise, the verses adorned with rocksteady two-tone guitar blasts and slippery-smooth bass before it all turns into raw screamo, its chorus a hair-pulling tantrum: "Everything or nothing at all!" It all ends with "Rest," a stripped-down heartbreaker about putting a loved one to rest: "Laying in your favorite clothes/ Chosen just for you," Grohl sings, sounding so vulnerable without the usual flash and squall. It's almost impossible to imagine how they'll get through playing these songs live, but with the release comes relief. © Shelly Ridenour/Qobuz

Sixty years after the release of Miles Davis' masterpiece, explanations for its everlasting allure and mysterious beauty remain elusive. Over the years—in books, magazines and documentary films—a parade of Miles' contemporaries have struggled to explain this 1959 album, often cited as the best-selling jazz album in history. Recorded in long, whole takes over only two sessions 51 days apart, at Columbia Records' famed 30th Street Studios, Kind of Blue is a landmark in the evolution of jazz as the first modal classic—where the improvising is based on scales rather than the dense clusters of chord changes that powered bebop. This stylish, beloved cornerstone of any jazz collection, with its relaxed tempi, rich colors and sleek silences, also possesses a timeless simplicity that continues to sound familiar and inviting. Captured in great depth and detail by engineer Fred Plaut, brooding opener "So What," upbeat, merry "Freddie Freeloader," Bill Evans' dreamy "Blue In Green," the 6/8 double waltz "All Blues," (an aural sketch of weaving through city traffic), and the album's most purely modal number and closer "Flamenco Sketches," have all endured to become the most atmospheric, resonant and ultimately sexiest single set of recorded tunes in jazz history. Much of its undiminished magnetism comes from Miles' innate genius in building potent chemistry between musicians of contrasting styles. From the leader's icy tone to John Coltrane's muscular cascade of tenor saxophone notes, through Cannonball Adderley's soulful alto sax exuberance and pianist Bill Evans' spacious, incisive contributions, this collision of musical opposites, all driven by the underrated bassist Paul Chambers and steady drummer Jimmy Cobb, creates a mood and defines the jazz ethos of "cool" from the first dark notes of the famous opening bass line. According to Evans' original liner notes, Davis came up with these five explorations the night before the first recording session. It’s proof yet again that spontaneity and serendipity are the soul of jazz, or what Evans accurately summed up here as "collective coherent thinking" where the "direct deed is the most meaningful reflection." © Robert Baird/Qobuz

Few are the career artists who can create music over the long haul that continually sounds fresh and contemporary without seeming faddish or desperate. Across eight solo studio albums, Norah Jones has effortlessly embraced the here-and-now, followed her muse and allowed her assured sense of self to carry her forward without any embarrassing missteps. Jones wanted to explore darkness on 2020's Pick Me Off the Floor, her most recent studio album, so she flipped the switch. Two years later she swerved to record Playing Along, an oft-buoyant album of duets with artists including Mavis Staples, Valerie June and Jeff Tweedy. It succeeded on its own terms. For Visions, Jones wanted to write with a single collaborator, Leon Michels, to make a mid-tempo record with session players and solo artists who've recorded with Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, Brazilian Girls, Joni Mitchell and others. So she invited him into the studio, shut the door and made Visions.Billed by Jones' label as a more carefree, upbeat record, Visions sets a mood across twelve soulful, wood-paneled originals. Despite mentions of dance or dancing in a few songs, it's often bliss driven by solitude that's suggested. The happy-go-lucky "On My Way" floats across its measures, a joyful ode to moving forward not with a partner or lover, but alone, where the notion that "no one cares what you have to say" lives in the same space as "in the dark you can dance and sway." That many of the ideas for Visions, as Jones has said, "came in the middle of the night or in that moment right before sleep," it makes sense that she's focused on solitude, and that she's embracing it."Everyday we do God's little dance," she sings on "Staring at the Wall," an uptempo groover with a twangy, Sun Records-suggestive guitar line and a piano-propelled counter melody that, combined with sturdy snare-drum snaps, could power a Saturday night dance floor at a dive bar. "Running" gets energy from a piano melody, a reverbed drum pattern and a layered chorus of Jones' voice adding responses. "Swept Up in the Night" is a ballad of longing set after midnight. Lost in a dream, Jones can't shake her memories of a certain someone: "I find you a thousand times/ Underneath the stones in my mind." These are sturdy songs, the kind that not only linger in the psyche, but are so well crafted as to be indestructible. © Randall Roberts/Qobuz