Jason Isbell certainly knows about the elation that comes from success and validation. He has yet to stumble in a solo career that began in 2007, a kind of roll most musicians only dream of. But on Weathervanes, his first album of originals since 2020's just-as-the-pandemic-struck Reunions, Isbell returns to examining what he calls "boundaries" and the sticky riddle of how to "keep the ability to love somebody fully and completely while you're growing into an adult and learning how to love yourself." An expressive vocalist who's at his best singing his own songs (the mark of all great songwriters), Isbell is one of the craftiest, most honest songwriters working today. His genius lies in his ability to mix troubled tales of sharp-eyed realism with a fascination for humanity's cruelty, regret, and redemption. As a master lyricist, he can open this record with a raw tune like "Death Wish," because of couplets like, "Did you ever love a woman with a death wish/ Something in her eyes like flipping off a light switch" and "Who's gonna save you, who's left to pray to/ What's the difference in a breakdown and a breakthrough?" While he has a poet's eye for details like "thick cut bacon on Texas toast" and "Got square-toed boots so he ain't for real/ Wouldn't last five minutes on a pedal steel" ("Strawberry Woman"), his storytelling succeeds because of the grace with which he encapsulates emotional quagmires as he does in the nervous brushes-on-cymbals hymn "If You Insist": "We're running out of options/ I'll wait outside the door/ If you insist on being lonely/ I might wait a minute more." Occasionally, there's even a touch of humor as in the opening lines of "Cast Iron Skillet": "Don't wash the cast iron skillet/ Don't drink and drive, you'll spill it." Given his rising celebrityhood it's not surprising the film business would come calling; Isbell has a part in Martin Scorsese's latest film, Killers of the Flower Moon. Watching the director gave the songwriter a new vision for collaboration, and here his co-producing partnership with Matt Pence (Centro-matic, Justin Townes Earle, Elle King) resulted in a sound that is full and rich without surrendering to excessive loudness. His sensitive, well-oiled band the 400 Unit, with stalwarts Derry deBorja (keyboards) and Sadler Vaden (guitar), ably add atmosphere and support Isbell throughout but especially on electrified rockers like the pounding "When We Were Close" and "This Ain't It," the latter echoing '70s Southern rock by way of the Marshall Tucker Band. Listen closely, Isbell's artistry continues.  © Robert Baird/Qobuz

Just over a year ago, the fledgling British musician Emma Rawicz caused a sensation with her first self-produced album Incantations. It was the spontaneous affirmation of a mellifluous saxophone as a true tenor, combining the influences of great masters such as Joe Henderson, Wayne Shorter and Michael Brecker. She is more than just a pretty instrumental voice however, demonstrating serious ambitions and talent as a composer, as evidenced by the opening track "Voodoo," an abstract pictorial work in fauvist colours in a musical setting. Now supported by the German label ACT, she’s back with Chroma at the head of an all-star band featuring the guitarist Ant Law (already present on the first album), singer Immy Churchill, Ivo Neame on piano—all guided by the implacable strength of a high-flying "made in the UK" rhythm section of Conor Chaplin on bass and double bass and Asaf Sirkis on drums.Switching between tenor saxophone, bass clarinet and flute with a great sense of timbre and nuance, this polyphone describes composition and arrangements in great complexity, in the very modern register of a neo-fusion mixed with post-bop and spiritual jazz. Making use of the full spectrum of her chromesthesia Rawicz is able to illustrate with impossible vividity. Each piece is named after colours she confesses she has never heard before, whose symbolism she makes use of respectively. The three versions of the theme "Xanadu," which serve as the backbone of the whole, offer a remarkable insight into Emma Rawicz’s art, which we might ultimately consider this time as an art of variegation. A remarkably coherent work, full of promise for the future which was bound to become Qobuzissime! © Stéphane Ollivier/Qobuz

The way that Chaka Khan turbocharged the career of Chicago funk band Rufus was extraordinary enough to warrant the group appending "featuring Chaka Khan" to its name throughout most of her hit-making tenure with them. So, it was inevitable that after four successful studio albums between 1974 and 1977 that "featured" Chaka Khan, Rufus would soon watch their star vocalist embark upon a solo career, even though that solo career mostly took place alongside her role in Rufus. (Khan would appear on several more—though not all—Rufus albums until the band's eventual dissolution in 1983, truly becoming a "featured" performer.) 1978's Chaka was released the same year as Street Player, her fifth studio album with the band, and the contrast between the two records could not be more sharp. While the latter focused on brassy funk and midtempo drama like "Stay," Chaka explodes out of the gate with "I'm Every Woman," a now-inescapable banger that finds both Khan and the songwriting team of Ashford & Simpson at the heights of their powers. Its lush, discofied groove makes the song an insistent dancefloor hit and also a remarkable showcase for Khan's voice.  While that voice had long been a focal point on Rufus albums, they often used group harmonies. On Chaka, her room-filling approach to singing is given plenty of space to shine, and she is unafraid to unleash its full power, which she does so tastefully and with plenty of dynamics. "I'm Every Woman" is undoubtedly the best-known classic, but the album also shines with other notable moments like the slow jam favorite "Roll Me Through the Rushes," which would become a deep-cut cornerstone of Quiet Storm radio, the gender-flipped Stevie Wonder cover "I Was Made to Love Him," and the jazzy romance of "We Got the Love," which finds Khan duetting with George Benson. Arif Mardin's production touch is a perfect match, expertly fusing a sophisticated soulfulness with dancefloor acumen and marshaling an army of session players to execute this material at its highest possible level, and this dynamic modern remaster delivers warmth and presence. © Jason Ferguson/Qobuz

1980's Middle Man was Boz Scaggs' last album for Columbia before an eight-year self-imposed sabbatical. Scaggs nonetheless caps off the decade with equal nods to his '70s hitmaking formulas and the newer, shinier production techniques of the coming decade. The synthesizer rocker "Angel You" and the title track are given the full in-vogue androgynous (i.e., Hall & Oates) treatment, while the opener "Jo Jo" and "Simone" are pages taken from his Here's the Low Down-era grooves that wedded soulful vocals against a flurry of jazz changes. His penchant for the ballad is explored on "You Can Have Me Any Time" and "Isn't It Time," while his seldom-seen rockier side comes up for air on the bluesy "Breakdown Dead Ahead" and "You Got Some Imagination," both featuring stinging guitar from Steve Lukather. Not his best album, but a very timely one.© Cub Koda /TiVo

We know, we know, Paramore isn't just Hayley Williams. Paramore is a band. But when every roiling, addictive album is directly fueled by the discord of yet another lineup change, you start to wonder: Should the hole left by the most recently departing bandmate be considered an official member of the band?It's a thought you can't help but mull over listening to Paramore's crackling fifth full-length album, 2017's After Laughter. The lineup this time features Williams, guitarist Taylor York (a member since their 2007 sophomore effort Riot!) and original drummer Zac Farro, returning after an estrangement since 2010. Notably not present here is bassist Jeremy Davis, who left for the second time in a huff of legal disturbances in 2015. The first time Davis left was immediately preceding the band's 2006 debut, All We Know Is Falling -- an album ultimately devoted to the struggle and strife of his departure (though he ultimately rejoined for Riot!). Paramore also famously came close to disbanding after Riot!'s breakthrough success, with Farro and his brother, guitarist Josh Farro, disliking, apparently, the intense focus on Williams. That conflict directly informed 2010's Brand New Eyes, with the Farro brothers leaving in a dust cloud of public smack-talk afterward. The sturm und drang of the Farros departure became the theme of the band's massively successful 2013 eponymous album, which found Williams, Davis, and York playing as a trio. But Davis eventually became unhappy with that record's royalty split and left the group to sue them. Which brings us to the "Never Say Die" theme of After Laughter, an album that proves one thing above all else: Paramore thrive amid conflict.Again working with producer Justin Meldal-Johnsen, Paramore churn out anthem after infectious anthem, each euphorically designed to grab you where it counts -- melodically and emotionally. Where 2013's Paramore found the group tentatively transitioning from their pop-punk roots toward a multi-layered '80s synth-pop sound, After Laughter reveals them having beautifully completed the transformation. Much credit here goes to York, who co-wrote all of the songs and whose deft guitar and keyboard make up much of the album's distinct aural character. But of course, Williams still beats at the center of everything, her voice providing the album's warm, exuberant core. Tracks like the lead-off disco-tinged "Hard Times" and crisply attenuated "Told You So" are earworms rife with DayGlo marimba and icy adult-contempo synths. Elsewhere, Williams weaves in the arpeggiated warmth of the Cure's "Friday I'm in Love," on "Grudges," and evinces Diva-era Annie Lennox on "Forgiveness.”Despite the album's buoyantly pastel new wave tones, it unsurprisingly contains a truckload of hard-won maturity and a growing sense of battle fatigue. You hear it on virtually every track, particularly on the yearning closer "Tell Me How" ("I'm getting sick of the beginnings"). Ultimately, each Paramore album thus far has been more or less another triumphant battle cry of a band having fought and survived a breakup. But After Laughter intersects this with transcendence: the realization that life is an ongoing series of new beginnings.© Matt Collar /TiVo

Betty Davis' debut was an outstanding funk record, driven by her aggressive, no-nonsense songs and a set of howling performances from a crack band. Listeners wouldn't know it from the song's title, but for the opener, "If I'm in Luck I Might Get Picked Up," Davis certainly doesn't play the wallflower; she's a woman on the prowl, positively luring the men in and, best of all, explaining exactly how she does it: "I said I'm wigglin' my fanny, I'm raunchy dancing, I'm-a-doing it doing it/This is my night out." "Game Is My Middle Name" begins at a midtempo lope, but really breaks through on the chorus, with the Pointer Sisters and Sylvester backing up each of her assertions. As overwhelming as Davis' performances are, it's as much the backing group as Davis herself that makes her material so powerful (and believable). Reams of underground cred allowed her to recruit one of the tightest rhythm sections ever heard on record (bassist Larry Graham and drummer Greg Errico, both veterans of Sly & the Family Stone), plus fellow San Francisco luminaries like master keyboardist Merl Saunders and guitarists Neal Schon or Douglas Rodriguez (both associated with Santana at the time). Graham's popping bass and the raw, flamboyant, hooky guitar lines of Schon or Rodriguez make the perfect accompaniment to these songs; Graham's slinky bass is the instrumental equivalent of Davis' vocal gymnastics, and Rodriguez makes his guitar scream during "Your Man My Man." It's hard to tell whether the musicians are pushing so hard because of Davis' performances or if they're egging each other on, but it's an unnecessary question. Everything about Betty Davis' self-titled debut album speaks to Davis the lean-and-mean sexual predator, from songs to performance to backing, and so much the better for it. All of which should've been expected from the woman who was too wild for Miles Davis.© John Bush /TiVo

The Dover Quartet, "the young American string quartet of the moment" (The New Yorker) unveils the second installment in its critically acclaimed Beethoven quartet cycle on Cedille Records. The Dover’s three-album set of Beethoven’s "Middle Quartets" includes the three Op. 59 “Razumovsky” Quartets, infused with Russian folk tunes; the graceful "Harp", Op. 74, named for its plucked string figures; and the intense Op. 95 "Serioso", a forward-looking experiment that Beethoven originally intended “for a small circle of connoisseurs". The Dover Quartet’s first Beethoven release, a traversal of the Op. 18 quartets, has garnered international praise. England’s "The Strad" said the ensemble exhibits "a beguiling freshness and spontaneity that creates the impression of these relatively early masterworks arriving hot off the press". Toronto’s "The Whole Note" cited "performances of conviction and depth. This promises to be an outstanding set". Utah-based CD Hotlist remarked, "The Dovers stand out from the pack by playing with utterly perfect intonation, a near-telepathic sense of ensemble, and a lovely balance of passion and clarity". New York’s WQXR proclaimed, "It’s hard to imagine a group better suited to recording these works than the Dover Quartet". In concert, the quartet has presented three complete Beethoven cycles, including the University at Buffalo’s famous "Slee Cycle" — which has offered annual Beethoven quartet cycles since 1955 and has featured the likes of the Budapest, Guarneri, and Cleveland Quartets. The Dover Quartet serves as the inaugural Penelope P. Watkins Ensemble in Residence at Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute of Music and holds residencies with the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and Bienen School of Music at Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, among other prestigious posts. © Cedille Records

Jack Johnson, the multi-talented American guy who likes to surf and play music, makes an honest impression on his debut album, Brushfire Fairytales. He's not focused on any genre in particular, but stays close to acoustic simplicities. Ben Harper's producer, J.P. Plunier, lends a hand and perfects Johnson's basic songwriting into a charming and inviting soundscape of songs most personal to Johnson. It's poetically abrasive, especially on tracks like "Sexy Plexi" and "Fortunate Fool," but Jack Johnson is a regular guy and his most natural feelings are indeed candid. "Inaudible Melodies" is a bluesy mix of lazy harmonies and acoustical twitching, whereas "Flake" is an easy flow of American trad rock, quite similar to Dave Matthews, but echoing steel drums and Harper's blistering lap steel guitar make for an outstanding rock & roll romp. Johnson's voice, which is hauntingly like Wes Cunningham, makes Brushfire Fairytales a decent record. He's not noisy or gregarious. He's content with his new creative finding. He might chase waves in his other life, but his songwriting ways do make for something quite charming.© MacKenzie Wilson /TiVo

Sometimes, simple is better. For their joint album Her Loss, Drake and 21 Savage have created 16 raw and unembellished tracks. There’s nothing calculated about this release; there’s no desire to push a musical agenda. There’s just a tangible yearning to lay down some fearsomely produced tracks concocted by a plethora of beatmakers, including Metro Boomin, Nyan, Earl On The Beat and Tay Keith. The sound of Atlanta–21 Savage’s stronghold–resonates throughout the album. Drake, as usual, is a chameleon, trying out new flows whilst his accomplice talks about madness and audacious ego trips in a deceptively calm voice. Reading between the lines, it seems to be women that are the source of all their ills. Both of them project their desires for revenge and deception with unbridled, sleazy romanticism. There are tremendous tracks like ‘Spin Bout U’ with its slick production and ‘BackOutsideBoyz’ with its muffled beats. There’s even a sample taken from Daft Punk’s hit ‘One More Time’ on ‘Circo Loco’, seeing Drake take another (albeit discreet) step towards house music. Her Loss is a huge release. © Brice Miclet/Qobuz

Without any project and only a few musical extracts, Playboi Carti has become a muse for this generation that is as sensitive to social media presence as to musical creations. With a mixtape and above all his track “Magnolia”, he proved his early fans right, inventing a completely minimalist style by associating with a visionary and atypical producer, Pi’erre Bourne.For this first studio album, released unexpectedly, Playboi Carti and Pi’erre Bourne state on 19 tracks all the ideas suggested in “Magnolia”. A science of texture and sound research is combined to perfect placement, sometimes repeated on loop for entire measures. By stripping down rap to its purest form, the duo engraves their creation as almost concrete electronic music, disorienting the audience in the middle of a maze of syllables and small synthetic sounds. Sometimes surrealist or just from daily life, Playboi Carti’s sentences seem to float in time and space, offering in the course of the tracks a permanent dizziness, a unique experience in current rap. Even the guests like Travis Scott, Nicki Minaj or Chief Keef are broken down in this molecular cuisine in which each atom is multiplied to get the essence of it.With Die Lit, Playboi Carti’s music has become inseparable from Pi’erre Bourne’s work. It is thus an invitation to extreme dance, an almost sensory trip, a new way of thinking for rap music in 2018. © Aurélien Chapuis/Qobuz

This 1978 album finds producer/Svengali Frank Farian starting to push his pop-disco attraction Boney M. into new and interesting musical territory. The songs are still very much disco tracks with an emphasis on bubblegum pop hooks, but Farian works some interesting musical flavors into the mix: "Painter Man" (a cover of a track by mod rockers Creation) effectively pits a series of heavy, distorted hard rock guitar riffs against its danceable beat, and "Brown Girl in the Ring" adds some distinctive steel drums into its rhythmic calypso-pop mixture. However, the oddest and most unusual and interesting combination of musical elements arrives with "Rasputin," a tribute to the legendary Russian historical figure that uses balalaikas to create its textured rhythm guitar hook. Nightflight to Venus also spawned a major international hit with "Rivers of Babylon," which mixes religious lyrics and a folk song melody with a pronounced beat to create an instantly accessible pop hymn. The other tracks include a few less than colorful moments ("Never Change Lovers in the Middle of the Night" could have been performed by any disco outfit), but Nightflight to Venus is an overall success thanks to the group's strong harmonies and the slick production from Farian, which keeps everything moving at a fast clip. The end result is one of the strongest albums in the Boney M. catalog, and a treat for anyone who likes dance music that is sugary sweet.© Donald A. Guarisco /TiVo

From the start, Panic! At the Disco was an oddball in the emo-pop court. The band had the mid-aughts haircuts and eyeliner but less in common with peers Fall Out Boy and Good Charlotte than Queen and Meat Loaf. And let that be a warning: It's impossible to describe P!ATD's seventh record without a ton of name-dropping. The title track combines Beach Boys harmonies with Attractions-era Elvis Costello giddiness; "Middle Of A Breakup" offers upBrian May-like guitar and lines like "Keep your disco/ Give me T. Rex." "Sugar Soaker" references Sweet's shameless glam metal, Nazareth's cowbell and The Archies on espresso and whiskey, with frontman Brendon Urie showing off horndog wordplay: "Lil' sugar soaker/ Breaking my bed/ Red tail lights in the back of her head/ Such a cherry leather looker." Although started as a band of teenage friends from Las Vegas, P!ATD has evolved over the past 17 years into a solo project for frontman Urie, who is apparently feeling musically and personally nostalgic. "Star Spangled Banger"—which liberally borrows Phil Lynott's vocal delivery of Thin Lizzy's "The Boys Are Back in Town" for the verses—finds him summoning up high-school memories: "We are the kids from the underground," going to the mall for a lip ring and photo-booth makeout. Ditto "God Killed Rock and Roll," which spotlights "A little dreamer in the glow of the receiver … Blew out the speakers dancing in his sneakers." It credits Argent's Russ Ballard because the chorus interpolates "God Gave Rock and Roll to You" (made famous by KISS) but, structurally, the song copies the segments of "Bohemian Rhapsody" to a T. A lot of credit for this joyousness goes to co-writer Butch Walker, who had his own foray into glam-pop with 2006's The Rise and Fall of Butch Walker and the Let's-Go-Out-Tonites; and producer Mike Viola, whose recent work in folksy tunes (Mandy Moore, Johnathan Rice, Watkins Family Hour) belies his exuberant pop-rock background—with his underrated band Candy Butchers and singing the theme to the 1996 movie That Thing You Do!. But back to P!ATD: Excellent "Don't Let the Light Go Out" gives melodic credit to Janis Ian's "At Seventeen," and Urie is in the mood to offer hope to outcast teens biding their time in small-town claustrophobia, both on "Say It Louder" and "All by Yourself." That power ballad is his version of Christina Aguilera's "Beautiful" or Pink's "Raise Your Glass"—"You always hated sports/ You buzzed your hair short/ Dyed it pink to piss them off ...They made a monster outta you/ But you're beautiful, you're tough ...You can change everything all by yourself." Even if you're decades past that period, it taps into a nostalgic insecurity and longing that never fully goes away. © Shelly Ridenour/Qobuz

Over the past five years, Luke Combs has become one of contemporary country's biggest stars, topping the charts, winning a slew of awards, joining the Grand Ole Opry and even duetting with Eric Church—who very, very rarely anoints a new artist with his stamp of approval. Combs has succeeded at what's been dubbed post-bro country, a more "traditional" backlash to the past decade's hip-hop inflected movement that embraced weekend warrior-ism and turned women into one-dimensional joke characters. Combs isn't outlaw or outsider, there's nothing "alt" about him. He's not worshiping legends like Haggard or Jennings, but you also won't find any AutoTune, borrowed trap drumbeats or pop crossover potential. And fans love that barstool authenticity. When, on new power ballad "Middle of Somewhere," he sings “Just remember when you're driving through nowhere/ To us that's the middle of somewhere," he nails what a lot of America wants to hear. "I'd be drivin' my first car, an old worn-out Dodge/ Tryin' to make rent with a dead end job, just makin' do/ With tips in a jar, my guitar," Combs sings, his voice exploding with power on "Doin' This"—as in, he'd still be playing music even if he wasn't getting paid big bucks to do it; it's easy to believe the passion. Great big "Any Given Friday Night" stomps. Just as arena-ready is "The Kind of Love We Make," which sounds like an easy-feeling Eagles song, but Combs' rasp makes it all his own. "On the Other Line" is swampy fun and clever wordplay:  “Yeah, I’ll clean up the kitchen/ I’ll do the damn dishes/ Baby, I’m wrong, you’re right ... Sorry honey, but I got to click over/ I got a six pound largemouth on the other line.” Combs duets with Miranda Lambert on "Outrunnin' Your Memory," her wild-honey angel twang a terrific complement to his macho rasp as Skynyrd-esque guitars tune the country song to Southern rock. "Ain't Far From It" namechecks George Jones, but this is a feel-good ’90s-inspired juke-joint rocker, a la Brooks & Dunn or even Shania Twain. And "Going, Going, Gone" is like a respectful male gaze case on The Chicks' "Wide Open Spaces": "Like lightnin' in the sky/ Like fireworks in July/ ... Like a whiskey shot at last call/ It's like she was made for movin' on/ That girl is going, going, gone." Combs sums up his own appeal on the Church-like "Used to Wish I Was," delivering a unique chorus pacing that makes him stand out. "I couldn’t be anybody but me, even if I tried,” he sings. “I used to wish I was, but I’m glad I’m not." © Shelly Ridenour/Qobuz