Featuring a surprisingly poignant cover photo of a suburban house -- not unlike the Downey, CA homestead in which Karen and Richard Carpenter grew up -- Now & Then is a concept album about the music that inspired Karen and Richard in their childhood. Besides the hit single "Sing" and a charming take on Hank Williams' "Jambalaya," the centerpiece of Now & Then is Richard Carpenter and John Bettis' nostalgic "Yesterday Once More." The song opens and closes a side-long medley of early-'60s pop hits that includes the Beach Boys' "Fun, Fun, Fun," Skeeter Davis' "The End of the World," the Crystals' "Da Doo Ron Ron," and Jan & Dean's "Dead Man's Curve." Also included are Shelley Fabares' "Johnny Angel," Bobby Vee's "The Night Has a Thousand Eyes," Ruby & the Romantics' "Our Day Will Come," and the Chiffons' "One Fine Day." Given Karen's immense skills as an interpretive singer, not one of the covers is less than interesting, and most are flat-out wonderful.© TiVo

It's difficult to mentally uncouple Elite Hotel from its immediate predecessor, Pieces of the Sky. Both albums were released in 1975 (Elite in December, Sky in February), both bristle with the energy of an inspired new talent eager to make a name for herself (Harris considered Sky her proper debut album, and has all but disowned the tentative sounds of her 1970 Gliding Bird release), and both establish themselves quickly by forcefully opening with a doozy of a number written by Rodney Crowell. In the case of Elite Hotel, Harris chose "Amarillo," which she co-wrote, and which wails with the same loose abandon of "Bluebird Wine," but is a little more focused on heartbreak than on boozing.  It’s one aspect of Elite Hotel that sets it apart from its predecessor, along with Harris' open-hearted honoring of her late musical co-conspirator Gram Parsons. While Pieces of the Sky was conspicuous in its absence of Parsons' material, Elite features three of Gram's tunes: two from his time with the Flying Burrito Brothers ("Sin City" and "Wheels"), as well as "Ooh Las Vegas," which Harris had previously sung with him on Grievous Angel. Nonetheless, Elite is far from a Gram Parsons tribute; instead, Harris mindfully and appropriately puts him alongside other great songwriters both classic (Hank Williams, Don Gibson, Buck Owens) and contemporary (Crowell, the Beatles) to deliver a remarkably diverse and dynamic album. Crowell's atmospheric, elegiac "Till I Gain Control Again" is an absolute highlight, with a haunting tone and emotional resonance that provides a stark contrast to the freewheeling album opener he co-wrote with Harris. The album's production, helmed by Brian Ahern, is also impressive, with skillful, organic balance of instrumentation that allows Harris's voice to take center stage, creating an intimate and full-sounding listening experience. The chemistry between Harris and the Hot Band—comprised of talented musicians such as Crowell, steel guitarist Hank DeVito, keyboard player Glen Hardin, bassist Emory Gordy Jr., and drummer John Ware—further elevates the album's sonic landscape, and bridges the gap between traditional roots music and modern "cosmic American music." © Jason Ferguson/Qobuz

With wonderfully chosen songs like "Hearts of Stone" and George Jones' classic country weeper "She Thinks I Still Care," John Fogerty's solo debut with The Blue Ridge Rangers has held up well over the last two decades. It isn't the most supple or technically proficient one-man recording of all time, but it's a wonderfully engaging record; upbeat, unpretentious, and loaded with good songs. Fogerty's rigid, no-frills drumming took a lot of heat for being mechanical, but no one has ever explained how Fogerty's abilities on the trap kit are significantly different from Creedence's Doug Clifford. In retrospect, this was a tremendously risky record to make; country music in the early '70s was regarded as the domain of right-wing, rock & roll-hating Nashville traditionalists, and it was reasonable to assume that fans (even staunch ones) wouldn't take kindly to this genre switch. While it wasn't a huge success, it was in no way a disaster, and perhaps more importantly, served as a much-needed rock & roll history lesson.© John Dougan /TiVo

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While Emmylou Harris spent much of her career carrying on the legacy of Gram Parsons, Elite Hotel ranks among her most overt tributes to his genius, thanks to its covers of the Flying Burrito Brothers' "Sin City" and "Wheels," along with "Ooh Las Vegas" from the Grievous Angel album. In addition to the usual eclectic mix of covers -- which includes the Beatles' "Here, There and Everywhere" and Hank Williams' "Jambalaya" this time out -- Elite Hotel offers renditions of the country perennials "Together Again" and "Sweet Dreams," which were, respectively, Harris' first two number one chart hits.© Jason Ankeny /TiVo

Not for one minute will you mistake this collection of unreleased recordings as a proper album. It isn't just the preponderance of covers, it's the subtle shifts in production and tone, lending a general unevenness to this record, even if it's culled just from 1975 and 1976 (meaning they're leftovers from Fire on the Bayou and Trick Bag). That doesn't mean it's a bad listen by any stretch, since even if Kickback is second-rate and leftover Meters, they're still an incredibly supple, engaging band that can take such bad choice of material like Neil Young's "Down by the River" and turn it into something listenable. Such cover choices as that, the Beatles' "Come Together," and Stephen Stills' "Love the One You're With" all sound intriguing, particularly to the record geek that's this album's core audience, but apart from the latter (and a fine, surprisingly hard-rocking alternate version of "Honky Tonk Women"), these kind of choices play better in theory than in actuality. The rest of the record may not have as distinctive a calling card, but they're better, finding the band laying back and doing what they do best, which is laying down a solid, irresistible groove. No, there's not much here that's essential, but it's fine second-tier stuff that will satisfy the dedicated. And, truth be told, second-tier Meters still sounds pretty good to the unconverted, too.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

A powerfully rhythmic, delightfully hypnotic representation of the resiliency of the Crescent City, John Boutte's Treme (perhaps the creative centerpiece of this diverse gumbo of a collection) is the perfect theme song for the popular HBO series about N'awlins people living in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. But the classic stomping vibe of that piece and a handful of others (including the opening romp "Two Bands Rolling") is just part of the diverse magical vibe created by a true native son who sounds a tad like Rod Stewart and whose two-decade career is infused with everything from jazz and gospel to R&B, blues, and Latin music. He uses his raspy soul voice to channel Sam Cooke on a restrained but emotionally searing version of "A Change Is Gonna Come," and finds a clever way to merge gospel with danceable upright bass-driven jazz swing on "Battle Hymn of the Republic." Other tunes, like the midtempo ballad "Shake My Gate," are pure blues-soul-pop that could have come from any region. A good example of how he blends his N'awlins soul and his gospel musical roots is "At the Foot of Canal Street," which paints its hometown imagery with a lighthearted, skipping gospel groove. The overall effect is like church-hopping through the gritty neighborhoods of New Orleans (he hails from the 7th Ward), looking beyond any sorrow and devastation to the call of a higher power that tells Boutte, yes, you and your fellow natives can overcome. © Jonathan Widran /TiVo

Gerry & the Pacemakers are fated to eternal comparisons to the Beatles, their onetime Merseybeat rivals who rapidly eclipsed the quartet in popularity and accomplishment, leaving them as something of a pop culture punchline. In the wake of the Beatles, it was hard to look back at Gerry Marsden and his irrepressibly cheerful music and think it was in the same league as the Fab Four, or any of the British Invasion groups that followed. That may be true, but Gerry & the Pacemakers shouldn't be judged against such R&B-schooled rockers as the Rolling Stones, the Animals, and the Kinks but rather against the stiff, starched rock & roll of pre-Beatles Britain. Compared to this prim, proper pop, the skiffle beats and bouncy melodies of Gerry & the Pacemakers seem fresh, almost serving as a bridge between formative English rock and the bright blast of the Beatles -- who were contemporaries of Gerry & the Pacemakers, so this doesn't quite parse exactly, but seen this way the band doesn't seem like a joke, so it's easier to enjoy what the group had to offer.Even armed with this perspective, sitting through the four-disc, 123-track set You'll Never Walk Alone: The EMI Years 1963-1966 can be a bit of a long slog, and not just because this contains a full disc of stereo mixes in addition to some songs showing up sans strings or in other variations. Discounting these variations, You'll Never Walk Alone still serves up far too much too Gerry & the Pacemakers for anybody but the dedicated, but that doesn't mean this isn't instructive. First, this does confirm that they were a good singles band with the best of their hits -- the quite lovely "Don't Let the Sun Catch You Crying" and "Ferry Cross the Mersey," the infectious "It's Gonna Be All Right," and depending on mood, maybe "How Do You Do It" -- holding up quite well. Outside of the singles, there aren't too many hidden treasures. Every once in a while there's a surprise like Marsden's delightful Beatlesque rocker "Think About Love" or a chirpy cover of the early Lennon-McCartney trifle "Hello Little Girl," and the group shows some aptitude on covers of Jerry Lee Lewis and Hank Williams, but for the most part this is pleasantly cheerful Merseybeat and not much more. The exception is the live Gerry in California EP; culled from a concert at Oakland in October 1964, the complete show of which is released here for the first time, this live performance shows the band to be more energetic on-stage than on record, turning in a fun performance showcasing a band that's eager to please. That eagerness translated into politeness in the studio, where they were only too happy to follow the lead of their producers and create polite, well-scrubbed pop whether they were happily singing Merseybeat or singing middlebrow pop like "Strangers in the Night" just when their peers were branching out. Gerry dipped his toe into folk-rock with a not-bad version of Paul Simon's "The Big Bright Green Pleasure Machine," but that was an anomaly -- by the end of his run at EMI, soft pop like "Guantanamera" was more his speed, which may explain why Gerry & the Pacemakers faded from the view just when their peers got psychedelic. You'll Never Walk Alone proves that the band just wasn't made for those times. Nevertheless, there's an enduring innocence to their music that does make this a pleasant nostalgia trip (or piece of pop archeology, depending on your point of view), at least in small doses.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

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A number of albums into her quest to add all major world music genres into her bossa nova repertoire, Japanese songbird Lisa Ono recorded Jambalaya, an album of American country music (as well as bluegrass and related regional sounds) re-imagined in a Brazilian format. The similarity between some lighter fare (such as John Denver's "Take Me Home, Country Roads") and bossa is made surprisingly clear as some songs seem hardly affected by the genre transition. Other classics seem more out of place (such as "I'm an Old Cowhand"), but are treated respectfully and carefully by Ono.© Adam Greenberg /TiVo

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Sonstige's Legends of Rock N Roll is a good budget-line collection of 18 tracks from Fats' classic Imperial recordings. This isn't the best of all budget-line comps -- there are others that are assembled with more thought and are easier to find -- but this nevertheless offers a bunch of good music at an affordable price.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo