The beguiling improvisations on Love in Exile unfold at their own pace; they are like songs that have been stretched out yet retain an arc. The album's six tracks range in length from eight to fifteen minutes but seem shorter, and were recorded live in the studio, without any preparation; there was little editing afterwards. The winning results demonstrate that the musicians in this trio—Arooj Aftab on vocals (singing in Urdu), Vijay Iyer on piano and electronics, and Shahzad Ismaily on bass and Moog synthesizer—are strongly connected.  Elements of South Asian music are clearly present—Aftab, Iyer, and Ismaily are all of South Asian descent—but these explorations inhabit their own sonic space. The spare, texturally nuanced instrumental music has an ambient quality that sets the stage for Aftab's vocals. Her voice has a clear, warm tone that can take on a rougher quality in its lower register. A fair amount of time may pass before she makes an entrance; when she does, her every inflection rivets. "To Remain/To Return" opens with drony low tones and shimmering electronics before Iyer adds acoustic piano. Aftab begins to sing three and half minutes into the track. After her lovely statement, she drops out for a while, but eventually returns. In total, she appears on about a third of the piece, and her singing gives shape to everything around it. The first sound we hear on "Sharabi" is the hypnotic buzz of a panning synthesizer. Aftab makes a relatively early entrance here. Higher-pitched electronics come in, quietly coloring the background, and soon Aftab's voice rises. Tinkling electric piano reverberates; later, acoustic piano picks up on those tones. The music eventually reaches a dramatic peak before it fades, ending the album on a mysterious note. © Fred Cisterna/Qobuz

The Red Hot Chili Peppers are having fun in 2022. After Unlimited Love, released seven months ago, the Californians are following up with Return Of The Dream Canteen, certainly their best album in a long time. Why? Because its raw, stripped-back vibes drop us right in the middle of a hefty, super-controlled jam session. Of course, the two records were recorded at the same time, but the band clearly wanted to deliver two distinct musical intentions—and it works. It’s obviously impossible to escape their adolescent ravings about ‘high school’, and tedious teachers on the single ‘Eddie’. But the main thing is that the second half is all Stratocaster, which entails a series of pretty adventurous ideas. For example, there are two tracks which use electronic drums: ‘My Cigarette’ (which is almost reminiscent of Prince) and the TR-808 cowbell-clad ballad that is ‘In The Snow’. These pleasantly surprising choices are mixed together with the usual irony of ‘Peace and Love’, the whispered pop delirium of ‘Shoot Me A Smile’, and of course the essential funk-rock urges on ‘Afterlife’ or on the single ‘Tippa My Tongue’. Like its predecessor, Return Of The Dream Cantine is produced by Rick Rubin, who clearly pushed the band to remove any sense of artifice and thus contributed to making this album such a great success in terms of its composition and arrangement. © Brice Miclet/Qobuz

In English, the Greek word "anastasis" is literally translated as "resurrection." The definition is apt as the title to Dead Can Dance's reunion offering, their first recording of new studio material since 1996's Spiritchaser. Lisa Gerrard and Brendan Perry established a well-deserved global reputation for pushing boundaries in popular music. Coming from the fringes of the gothic music world on the iconic 4AD label, they brought a sense of near classical discipline (and pretension) into their sound. They incorporated cutting-edge production techniques and also folded in -- mostly accurately -- several international musical traditions; combined, they created a deeply atmospheric, lushly textured, dramatic brand of post-gothic pop. Self-produced and released by PIAS, Anastasis features eight songs, and clocks in at just under an hour. The trace elements will be very familiar to DCD fans. In fact, Anastasis can be called, for the most apart, an album of tropes; it is much more a tour through much of the band's previous history than an exercise in delivering anything new. This is surprising given Gerrard's vast soundtrack experience and Perry's solo albums, various collaborative contributions, and film work. The musical tenets here derive from near-Eastern Mediterranean sources (mainly Greek and Turkish folk forms), and some from the various nations of North Africa. Immediately noticeable is Perry's voice (which holds forth on the fine meta-mystical opener "Children of the Sun" and the hollowed-out bliss of "Opium"); it is deeper, richer, more restrained in its delivery, but more powerful because of it. He and Gerrard rarely sing on the same tune. For Gerrard, her instantly recognizable instrument shines forth on "Agape" and "Kiko," with their Arab-scaled strings, dumbeks, ouds, and cymbaloms. The set's finest moment is "Return of the She-King," whose drones, and the processional multi-tracked vocals by Gerrard, are matched by strings, deep tom-toms, swooping ethereal guitars, ouds, and numerous instruments. Perry joins in at the end, and their twin voices meet in a gauzy dexterity and contrast amid a swirl of neo-classical strings. While Anastasis doesn't have any problems per se, it does feel all of a piece, and given the track lengths, they can seem to bleed together. With the exception of the surprising snare cadences on "Children of the Sun," the rhythmic palettes are surprisingly uniform, making the album feel as if it is devoid of a clear center. Anastasis will more than likely please longtime fans -- and to be fair that is who it seems geared to -- rather than win many new ones.© Thom Jurek /TiVo

It's natural to suspect that In Concert is simply the hastily constructed live album cash-in that comes after the long-awaited reunion (2012's Anastasis was the group's first studio album in 16 years), but it's actually a sweet souvenir of the world fusion duo's return to the stage, tastefully presented and impeccably recorded. Rarely do live albums sound so luxurious and warm, but besides being a fine demo disc for high-end speakers, this chamber concert on wax offers some more comfortable, more alive versions of Anastasis' studio material, along with a quick stroll through the group's early work. "The Ubiquitous Mr. Lovegrove" always sounded vintage but here it sounds downright wise with Brendan Perry's full-bodied voice properly aged and not weathered in the least. Speaking of voices, Lisa Gerrard is absolutely majestic on the aptly titled closer, "Return of the She-King," and anyone who puts "Sanvean" in a list of top ten heart-movers ever deserves to hear the fine version she delivers here. That fan favorite made its debut on the band's first live album, Toward the Within (1994), but this second live effort differs from that one in that very little new material is premiered. There are only two "new" tracks and they are cover songs, the first being the centuries-old Arabic song "Lamma Bada" and the second being the Tim Buckley (via This Mortal Coil) tune "Song to the Siren," both performed by Perry and the latter to perfection. The only thing left of concern is the editing out of the in-between song chatter (Perry's usual, informative intro to "Lamma Bada" is gone), but otherwise this is a well-executed capture of a great performance, pure and simple.© David Jeffries /TiVo

This is the definitive Kansas recording and includes their most famous tune, "Dust in the Wind." The band is in peak form and also churned out the single "Point of Know Return," which is still played daily on classic rock stations. While their pop-oriented approach and standard rock guitar sound helped define the classic rock sound of the '70s, careful listening reveals that this band's talent goes beyond colleagues such as Bachman-Turner Overdrive and Boston. Their arrangements and time signatures more accurately reflect the music of Yes and Emerson, Lake & Palmer. "Paradox" and "The Spider" are both excellent examples of their progressive approach. Unfortunately, the band always struggled to maintain a healthy balance of progression combined with pop. That made for such awkward moments here as "Portrait (He Knew)" and "Lightning's Hand." Yet despite the minor inconsistencies and a dated sound, their interplay and superior musicianship make this both an essential classic rock and progressive rock recording.© Robert Taylor /TiVo

At this stage of the game, any new Tom Waits record is an event. Listening through the music of his entire career is daunting, to say the least, but it's a journey no one else, with the possible exception of Bob Dylan, has taken before. If one listens to the official recordings, from 1973's Closing Time, featuring the songs of an itinerant Beat barroom singer (no lounges please), right on through to the frenetic mania of 2004's Real Gone, one becomes aware of not only the twists and turns of a songwriter wrestling and bellowing at and with his muse, but of a journeyman artist barely able to hold on to the lid of his creativity, let alone keep it on. True, there have been many stops along the way: in the seediest lounges (1977's Foreign Affairs, which could have been a twisted inspiration to novelist Phillip Kerr when he wrote the Berlin Noir trilogy); acid-drenched blues scree (1980's Heartattack and Vine); travelogues of the unseen and the unspeakable (1985's Rain Dogs); seething and murderous suburban nightmares (1987's Franks Wild Years); the frighteningly comic tales of plagues and carnivals (1993's Black Rider); the scrape, squeal, and hollowed-out metal crunch of urban junkyards and classically American paranoia (1999's Mule Variations); and through-the-mirror-darkly image nightmares and fairy tale variations (2002's Alice and Blood Money). All of it is contained in the man who takes delight in the bent, quarreling marriage of song and sound with dangerously comic imagery.Orphans is the most unwieldy Tom Waits collection yet. Packaged in a Cibachrome-tinted box are three discs containing 56 songs total. It claims 30 new tunes, but a mere 14 can be found on other records -- six others have to be hunted for while the remainder have shown up in various incarnations. This crazy thing began as a collection of outtakes, rarities, soundtrack tunes, and compilation-only cuts -- some of which survive here in new form, including tracks from the Ramblin' Jack Elliot tribute, the Bridge benefit, and two Ramones covers, to name a few. In other words, the first conception was as a hodgepodge collection of attic material. Waits checked out the tune selection as it was and said something like "nah, bad idea; this would suck." So, he did what any self-respecting artist with a head full of ideas, two stomping, shuffling feet, and itchy fingers -- and time on his hands -- would do: he recorded new songs and re-recorded others, so the thing would have some kind of elasticity yet hold its rickety bone and far-reaching sources together by means of cheap glue, chewed gum, solder, and a visionary recording engineer named Karl Derfler. The end result is this daunting triple disc divided by title and theme: disc one is "Brawlers," Waits' rock and blues record, evoking everyone from T. Rex and Johnny Burnette to Sonny Curtis and Howlin' Wolf. It's a grand thing, since he hasn't released one like this before -- the closest were Heartattack and Vine on one side and Mule Variations on the other. Travel, regret, murder, salvation, guttersnipe meditations on sorrow, and nefarious and broken-down innocent -- and nefarious -- amorous intentions are a few of the themes that run through these tunes like oil and sand. Disc two is "Bawlers," a collection of ballads, raw love songs, weepy wine tunes, wistful yet tentative hope -- in the form of floppy prayers -- and an under-the-table and wishing, bewildered, yet dead-on topical tome on the world's political situation. Disc three, entitled "Bastards," is even edgier; it's Waits hanging out there with his music and muse on the lunatic fringe of experimentation. Think Bone Machine's wilder moments and Waits' loopy standup comedy in the form of six spoken word pieces included here. Thank goodness he finally did this. If you've ever seen the man on a stage, you'll get why these are so important immediately."Brawler" digs deep into the American roots music that has obsessed Waits since the beginning of his long labyrinthine haul. There's the frenetic rockabilly swagger that probably makes Carl Perkins and Gene Vincent shake and shimmy in their graves. One of the movie tunes, a cover of "Sea of Love," recalls its place in the film for those who've seen it. If you haven't, it's a slanted, tarnished jewel freshly liberated from antiquity. The hobo ballad "Bottom of the World" recalls old country gospel, and "Lucinda" can only be described as a gallows dance tune. The slippery hoodoo blues "Road to Peace" is the season's most timely and topical political song. "Bawlers" is the set's bridge, and it's easy to see why: it's the most accessible disc in the box. There are some of the movie tunes here, from flicks like Pollock, Big Bad Love, and Shrek 2. Other cuts, such as "Goodnight Irene," recall "Tom Traubert's Blues (Four Sheets to the Wind in Copenhagen)" from the Small Change album; the singing protagonist here is older and more desperate, almost suicidal. Resignation displaces hope; it's a long reach into the past and expresses the void of the present. The cover of the Ramones' "Danny Says" is completely reinvented; it's one of the loneliest, most sweetly desolate of Waits' many sides. It's not all darkness, however; there are gorgeous songs here too, such as "Never Let Go" and "You Can Never Hold Back Spring," where an indomitable human spirit reins and rings true. Finally, it comes down to "Bastards." The eerie, strange, cabaret-in-a-carnival music that is Weill and Brecht's "What Keeps Mankind Alive" enlists banjos, accordion, tuba, and big bass drum as simply the means to let these twisted words out of the box. Thankfully the cover of "Books of Moses," originally by Skip Spence, is here, as is Daniel Johnston's "King Kong." Neither of these cuts resembles their original version, and Waits brings out the dark underbelly inherent in each. "Bedtime Story" is the first of the Waits monologues here. It is the repressed wish of every parent (with a sense of humor) to have the temerity to tell this kind of tale to their children when they retire. Others include a reading of Charles Bukowski's "Nirvana," the hilarious monologue "The Pontiac," and the live routine "Dog Door." Perhaps the most inviting cut here is the piano-and-horn ballad "Altar Boy," a postmodern saloon song that would make Bobby Short turn red with rage. This disc is the true mixed bag in the set: unruly, uneven, and full of feints and free-for-alls.Ultimately, the epicenter of Orphans is Waits' voice. It's many expressions, nuances, bellows, barks, hollers, open wails, roughshod croons, and midnight whispers carry these songs and monologues to the listener with authority as an open invitation into his sound world, his view of tradition, and his manner of shaping that world as something not ephemeral, but as an extension of musical time itself. As a vocalist, Waits, like Bob Dylan, embodies the entire genealogical line of the blues, jazz, local barroom bards, and traveling minstrels in the very grain of his songs. That wily throat carries not only the songs he and his songwriting partner and wife, Kathleen Brennan, pen, but also the magnet for the sonic atmospheres that frame it. There is adventure, danger, and the sound of the previous, the forgotten, and the wished for in it. And it is that voice that links all three of these discs together and makes them partners. One cannot dismiss that even though some of these songs have appeared elsewhere, Orphans is a major work that goes beyond the origins of the material and drags everything past and present with sound and texture into a present to be presented as something utterly new, beyond anything he has previously issued. To paraphrase Ezra Pound in response to Allen Ginsberg's inquiry about what his poem "The Cantos" meant, these orphans speak for themselves.© Thom Jurek /TiVo

After scoring a handful of chart-toppers with EPs Fearless and Antifragile, South Korean girl group Le Sserafim repackaged some previously released tracks with new songs for their first proper studio album, Unforgiven. Showcasing their bass-heavy, groove-forward dance anthems, the set featured 2022 hit singles "Fearless" and "Antifragile," as well as the chart-topping "Unforgiven" with guitarist Nile Rodgers, who brings his signature funk to the elastic jam. While most of the effort is comprised of sweaty dancefloor fillers and shimmering synth bops, Unforgiven also features the standout "Fearnot (Between You, Me and the Lamppost)," a tender acoustic breather that highlights the group's vocal harmony and vulnerability. As a summary of what they've accomplished thus far, this LP is an ideal entry point into the world of Le Sserafim.© Neil Z. Yeung /TiVo

Conductor Susanna Mälkki gained plenty of attention during her tenure as chief conductor of the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, which concluded in 2023; she made several recordings with the group, and some of these turned out to have commercial appeal. This one made classical best-seller lists in early 2024. Mälkki is most identified with 20th century and contemporary music, but here, she shows plenty of expertise in music by the most mainstream of Finnish composers, Jean Sibelius. Here, she and the Philharmonic essay some early Sibelius, which tends to be of a Wagnerian or a blood-and-guts cast, but the mature Sibelius is always lurking, ready to come out. There are some familiar pieces here; the Karelia Suite, Op. 11, is a picturesque work that is often performed everywhere, and The Swan of Tuonela, from the programmatic Lemminkäinen Suite, Op. 22, is a concert standard. Sample the latter for a taste of Mälkki's gifts; the sound is flawless and the performance elegant, but there is not a hint of fussy perfectionism, and go on to the darker, adventure-oriented final two movements of this suite. In general, Mälkki avoids overdoing these works, which can sound like Gilbert and Sullivan if they get out of hand. The three-movement suite Rakastava, Op. 14, which started life as music for a male choir, is not often heard, at least outside Finland, and it is another draw in a greatly satisfying Sibelius release. The three works were recorded at different times, but the album nevertheless emerges as a sonic and artistic whole.© James Manheim /TiVo

With a solid classical education, a pronounced taste for funk and pop and years of apprenticeship alongside the greatest jazz big bands of the modern era under his belt, Nils Landgren is eclectic by nature. The multi-talented trombonist, singer, composer, producer, arranger and conductor has established himself as one of the most iconic artists of the German label ACT (founded by Siggi Loch in 1992). He’s written over forty albums (and featured on around twenty more as both producer and guest soloist) and has now created an almost exhaustive overview of his musical talents with this three-CD box set. He brings together three generations of musicians, organised into small groups. Landgren varies the style and mood from one piece to the next, ensuring aesthetic coherence throughout with his articulate phrasing and the velvety sound of his trombone. There’s something for everyone here, from funk to chamber jazz to sophisticated pop songs. Plus, all of ACT’s star singers make an appearance (Caecile Norby, Viktoria Tolstoy, Anna Greta and Camille Bertault). There are some phenomenal tracks, such as the memorable trio (and quartet!) tracks with Lars Danielsson on bass and Michael Wolny on piano (‘White Moon’, ‘Ols’); the beautiful duet with Joachim Kühn (‘Weltall’); or the remarkable encounter with accordionist Vincent Peirani, saxophonist Emile Parisien and vocalist Youn Sun Nah (‘My Heart’s in the Highlands’). In this musical adventure, Nils Landgren demonstrates flawless craftmanship – a truly inspired and original musician. © Stéphane Ollivier/Qobuz

Coheed and Cambria continue to combine metal, pop, and sometimes punk influences on In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3. The high-register vocals of Claudio Sanchez are reminiscent of Shudder to Think's Nathan Larson. The vocals combined with the glam metal-pop music of such tracks as "The Velourium Camper I: Faint of Hearts" and "Blood Red Summer" can at times bring out the influences of Queen, T. Rex, or the Cars, and the recent influences of Cap'n Jazz or Jets to Brazil. Coheed and Cambria could look a bit more to these influential bands that they take from and cut down on song length and tedious poetry. The production of In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3 keeps the passionate emotion at bay. The double-tracking of guitars can give an interesting metal-influenced sound, as on "Cuts Marked in the March of Men" and "The Crowing," but production choices hold back the distortion and push up the reverb, keeping the whole record a bit too safe. Coheed & Cambria are at their best when they combine the half-time chumpdowns of Braid-like emo with late-'70s/early-'80s-influenced glam pop stylings. "Three Evils (Embodied in Love and Shadow)" and "The Velourium Camper III: Al the Killer" are Coheed and Cambria's best examples of their uses of angular, driving metal and passionately sung/screamed double-tracked vocals. In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3 furthers Coheed and Cambria's efforts to make an epic record, but that may only be in length and a grand vision of the final outcome that falls a bit short.© David Serra /TiVo

Their first collaboration, entitled Mare Nostrum in 2007, was really rather magical. So, it was hardly surprising that Paolo Fresu, Richard Galliano and Jan Lundgren returned with Mare Nostrum II in 2016, an album that was just as superb as the last. The Sardinian trumpeter, French accordionist and Swedish pianist once again displayed their natural sense of lyricism and poetry in their highly refined jazz through reinterpretations of pieces by the likes of Satie and Monteverdi… But good things always come in threes; after having recorded Volume I in Italy and Volume II in France, it seemed only logical that this album was recorded in Sweden to complete the trilogy. In the middle of Winter 2019, Fresu, Galliano and Lundgren met up once again to mix their personal compositions together for Volume III as well as integrating two covers of soundtracks – Norman Jewison’s The Windmills of Your Mind by Michel Legrand for The Thomas Crown Affair and Quincy Jones’s Love Theme from The Getaway from Sam Peckinpah’s The Getaway. Their partnership reaches new heights, the spaces feel even more comfortable and the musicality of their improvisations is multiplied tenfold. © Clotilde Maréchal/Qobuz

Hearing Budd's piano slowly fade in with the start of "Late October" is just one of those perfect moments -- it's something very distinctly him, made even more so with Eno's touches and slight echo, and it signals the start of a fine album indeed. Acting in some respects as the understandable counterpart to Ambient 2, with the same sense of hushed, ethereal beauty the partnership brought forth on that album, The Pearl is so ridiculously good it instantly shows up much of the mainstream new age as the gloopy schlock that it often is. Eno himself is sensed as a performer on the album, if not by his absence then by his very understated presence. The merest hints of synth and whisper play around Budd's performances, ensuring the latter takes center stage. Eno and Daniel Lanois handle the production side of things, their teamwork once again overseeing a winner. When they bring themselves a little more to the fore, it still always is in the subtlest of ways, as with the artificially higher-pitched notes from Budd on "Lost in the Humming Air." Part of the distinct charm of the album is how the song titles perfectly capture what the music sounds like -- "A Stream With Bright Fish" is almost self-defining. Another key point is how Budd truly captures what ambience in general can and does mean. "Against the Sky" is a strong example -- it can be totally concentrated upon or left to play as atmospherics and is also at once both truly beautiful and not a little haunting in a disturbing sense. Other highlight tracks include the deceptively simple title track, as serene a piece of music as was ever recorded, and the closing "Still Return," bringing The Pearl to a last peak of beauty.© TiVo