B.B. King hasn't made many better pop-flavored albums than this. Besides making Leon Russell's "Hummingbird" sound like his own composition, King showed that you can put the blues into any situation and make it work. Joining King here were Leon Russell, Joe Walsh and Carole King; several pop luminaries who did more than just hang on for the ride. © Ron Wynn /TiVo

Hoping for the reformation of Pink Floyd, the band’s drummer Nick Mason grew tired of awaiting a call from bandmates David Gilmour or Roger Waters. Mason, the only member to have played on all the albums by the group, launched his project Saucerful Of Secrets in 2018, also the name of the Englishmen’s second album which saw singer Syd Barrett’s dismissal during the recording. The idea being to have some fun playing tunes from Pink Floyd’s early days in a sort of five star “tribute band”. Accompanied by guitarist Gary Kemp from British group Spandau Ballet and Guy Pratt (who has taken Roger Walter’s place) on the bass and microphone, Mason set off on a large international tour with the aim of “capturing the spirit” of Pink Floyd before the album The Dark Side of the Moon. An essential step in the tour was at London’s famed venue, The Roundhouse. Here, the English group performed their legendary concerts in 1967 and 1971. And this double album is just as grandiose. Nick Mason and his lackeys are liberal with their long, ultra-psychedelic passages from the incipit Interstellar Overdrive, followed by a nod towards Astronomy Domine, another track written by Barrett, whose ghost haunts a record which will delight all Floyd fans and impress passers by. © Smaël Bouaici/Qobuz

When does an artist morph from being current to nostalgia? It's an often imperceptible evolution that can happen almost overnight. Back in 2010, when this album was first released, old friends and musical contemporaries Carole King and James Taylor were fast approaching that turn. And yet this pair of indispensable American singer/songwriters were still in fine voice and even more buoyant spirits during these shows which judging by the crowd reaction, were a rousing success. Capturing highlights from three 2007 shows at the legendary (and still open) Troubadour in West Hollywood, these shows were meant to celebrate the club's 50th anniversary, and also its history with King and Taylor, who once laid the foundations of their respective careers there. In 1969 prior to her first solo release Writer, King played piano in Taylor's band during a six-night residency at the club. The next year they returned to co-headline a multi-night stand. Their appearance in 2007, using the same band as those original gigs—Danny Kortchmar (guitar), Leland Sklar (bass) and Russ Kunkel (drums)—were a love fest for the fans and performers alike, igniting the subsequent 2010 Troubadour Reunion Tour which touched down in the US, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. The big news with this reissue is that for the first time it's available in 96 kHz/24-bit high resolution. While live albums will never be noted for their pristine sound, the increased level of detail, hearing the resonances of the room for the first time and the newly crisped edges to the overall production are a welcome improvement. Needless to say, finding suitable material was not this duo's problem. The dilemma quickly became which songs not to play. Adopting the your song-my song method of a guitar pull they swing back and forth between originals. No disrespect to Taylor but King's songs, many from her 1971 breakthrough, Tapestry, are hard to top. While not the singer she was in 1970, King delivers a first-class rendition of "It's Too Late" which is spiced by a tight Danny Kortchmar solo. "Smackwater Jack," with King playing barrelhouse piano licks, becomes even more of a head-bobbing, toe-tapping stomp than the original. She reaches back, giving a slow performance of "Will You Love Me Tomorrow?" her 1960 hit for the Shirelles, in which Taylor sings a duet in the chorus. Wise performers that they are, they save the big fireworks for the finale: Taylor works his way through a slow-paced "Fire and Rain," King adds the necessary snap to "I Feel the Earth Move" before Taylor volleys back with "You've Got a Friend" where King takes a verse and sings duet in the choruses on a song that opened side two of Tapestry. In closing, they trade verses on King's "Up On The Roof," a 1962 hit for The Drifters, and sing a duet on Taylor's "You Can Close Your Eyes," which seems a bit anticlimactic and mournful for a friendly performance—akin to listening to '70s FM Radio—from aging old pros which is anything but. © Robert Baird/Qobuz

Verve Records have released a live album, recorded on November 26th 1961 at New York’s famous jazz club, Village Gate. On stage are Stan Getz and his new quartet comprising of pianist Steve Kuhn, double bass player John Neves and drummer Roy Haynes. Although the recordings were set aside after that night and had ended up in the record company’s archives, 58 years later, they have now re-emerged with flawless sound. Getz at the Gate understandably arouses much interest as the saxophonist’s artistic direction throughout the entirety of the 2 hours 20-minute concert is one that he did not pursue thereafter.Getz formed this new group having just returned from Europe and its more modern and aggressive sound was most likely influenced by John Coltrane’s quartet in which Kuhn played. But in 1962, his album with guitarist Charlie Byrd was a hit, sparking the trend for bossa nova-infused jazz and propelling Getz not only down other stylistic paths but also to the top of the charts with numerous albums with Luiz Bonfá, João Gilberto, Antonio Carlos Jobim and Astrud Gilberto. Getz at the Gate is quite clearly light years away from this exoticism but is still far from the Getz bop, cool or West Coast jazz from his early days. Here, in a highly effective post-bop style, he revisits tracks played during the 1950s such as When The Sun Comes Out, Like Someone in Love and even Spring Can Really Hang You Up The Most and Roy Haynes’ drumming ties everything together brilliantly, as always. Of course, the four men also show their admiration for Coltrane by taking on his legendary Impressions. In short - a previously unreleased and utterly thrilling concert. © Marc Zisman/Qobuz

We are at the point now in Annie Clark's career as St. Vincent that the parlor game of "autobiography, high concept, or both?" has become de rigueur with each album release. To be sure, Clark has never hewn closely (or, really, at all) to the dynamic of confessional songwriter that too often is expected of women making music, but the way that she teases out moments from her own life, recontextualizes them into fully-built worlds, and then shifts seamlessly between the two, leaves the listener unsure as to whether we're hearing from "Annie Clark," "St. Vincent," a brand-new character, or some amalgamation of the three. And, until Daddy's Home, that conceptual conceit has been the thing that linked St. Vincent most closely to David Bowie. Now, though, Clark is explicitly calling out the Bowie comparisons by making an album steeped in homage to the 1970s of Bowie's creative peak. While Daddy's Home is definitely not a glam-rock album, it's also detached from the maximalism of the last few St. Vincent releases. Instead, it's thick with warm, organic grooves and genre fluidity, evoking the liminal space between Bowie and Luther Vandross on Young Americans as easily as it does the spacey cocaine afterburn of Station to Station. However, while on one hand she's clearly calling out the "character-building" at play here, Clark has also been forthright in interviews surrounding the album in saying that the "daddy" of the title is her actual father, who is now "home" after being in jail for the last few years. The '70s rock vibe of many of the tracks definitely seems to evoke a dad's record collection, and the title track—which is either an abandoned showtune demo or a loose, gritty, and spare piece of indie rock—boasts some incredibly direct lyrics about visiting an inmate and wondering if their badness is your burden; but it's also probably the least interesting cut here musically. "Down and Out Downtown" sounds like "Strange Mercy" (the title track of the third St. Vincent album which turned out to be about her reaction to her father being sent to jail) reworked by the Beastie Boys with a country-sitar vibe. Does that make the album autobiographical? Who knows! Likewise, "The Melting of the Sun" tackles sexism in the entertainment industry, while dizzyingly conflating the struggles of Joni Mitchell with those of Marilyn Monroe. Again: maybe autobiographical? Who knows! This is not a game anyone will win. Instead, look to album opener "Pay Your Way in Pain"—a glitchy, Prince-ly take on analog funk—which seems to be about just making it through the day when you just want to be loved. However, it is unmistakable that the conceit and concept behind Clark's approach here—a warm, slightly sleazy, definitely human take on "rock 'n' roll"—is effective. "Live in the Dream" is a George Harrison-esque piece of dreamy light-psych with a deep vein of pathos, while "The Melting of the Sun" is a slice of soulful psychedelia, complete with background singers and wobbly sonics; they are wisely sequenced next to one another as they seem to form the spiritual core of the album. Similarly, "At the Holiday Party" nearly gets lost near the end of the running order, but it is a singer/songwriter track of the highest order, alternating between stark simplicity, baroque cinematic flourishes, and groove-oriented ecstasy. It's a refreshing and wholly unexpected take for St. Vincent, whoever she may be today. © Jason Ferguson/Qobuz

Creedence were the first to sign up for Woodstock. In April 1969, the Fogerty brothers' band pocketed a cheque for $10,000. Now that they'd landed such a big fish, the organisers knew that other big names would start looking for their own spot on the bill of what was set to be THE festival of the year... But all the same, the group were disappointed to find themselves with a very late billing, between half past midnight and 1:20am, after the Grateful Dead. But that didn't do anything to dampen a perfect performance, presented here in full and remastered. In 1969, Creedence Clearwater Revival was already one of the most popular acts of the day, thanks to their three albums Creedence Clearwater Revival (May 1968), Bayou Country (January 1969) and Green River (August 1969, released two weeks before Woodstock). At the height of the reign of the Beatles and Stones, John Fogerty's Californian gang had something original up their sleeve: savage, raw rock'n'roll, built from rough-hewn, unadorned blues and country. Creedence marked themselves out with their marriage of redneck ways and a hippie style; of tradition and rock'n'roll modernity. Flanked by his big brother Tom, drummer Doug Clifford and bassist Stu Cook, John Fogerty would serve up Dantean hits like Born On The Bayou, Proud Mary and Green River: which are all given a lively, strong treatment here. As ever, Fogerty brays down the mic like a madman (his version of Screamin’ Jay Hawkins's I Put a Spell on You is a show-stopper) while his brother provides pared-down, sharp and affecting guitar lines. With Creedence, you don't get any blowhard solos or incontinent psychedelics. Just a full-frontal blast. Bam! © Marc Zisman/Qobuz

Coming down after the twin high-water marks of It Takes a Nation of Millions and Fear of a Black Planet, Public Enemy shifted strategy a bit for their fourth album, Apocalypse 91...The Enemy Strikes Black. By and large, they abandon the rich, dense musicality of Planet, shifting toward a sleek, relentless, aggressive attack -- Yo! Bum Rush the Show by way of the lessons learned from Millions. This is surely a partial reaction to their status as the Great Black Hope of rock & roll; they had been embraced by a white audience almost in greater numbers than black, leading toward rap-rock crossovers epitomized by this album's leaden, pointless remake of "Bring the Noise" as a duet with thrash metallurgists Anthrax. It also signals the biggest change here -- the transition of the Bomb Squad to executive-producer status, leaving a great majority of the production to their disciples, the Imperial Grand Ministers of Funk. This isn't a great change, since the Public Enemy sound has firmly been established, giving the new producers a template to work with, but it is a notable change, one that results in a record with a similar sound but a different feel: a harder, angrier, determined sound, one that takes its cues from the furious anger surging through Chuck D's sociopolitical screeds. And this is surely PE's most political effort, surpassing Millions through the use of focused, targeted anger, a tactic evident on Planet. Yet it was buried there, due to the seductiveness of the music. Here, everything is on the surface, with the bluntness of the music hammering home the message. Arriving after two records where the words and music were equally labyrinthine, folding back on each other in dizzying, intoxicating ways, it is a bit of a letdown to have Apocalypse be so direct, but there is no denying that the end result is still thrilling and satisfying, and remains one of the great records of the golden age of hip-hop.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

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