Dream Box is Pat Metheny's third date for BMG's Modern Recordings, a set of nine solo tunes for electric guitar, drawn from a folder on his laptop's hard drive. Metheny often records new ideas, covers, or standards by playing them once. During 160 days of touring in 2022, he had ample time to survey the folder's contents. He was surprised when the music he had little memory of recording revealed these "moments in time" as an organic whole. Further, all but one original had compositional roots in the method utilized on "Unity Village" on 1976's Bright Size Life -- an initial harmonic scheme buoyed by a second offering melodic and improvisational sequences. This program contains six original compositions, two standards, and a cover. Longtime fans will find little save for guitar tone in common with earlier solo records such as 1979's New Chautauqua or 2011's What's It All About. It does bear aesthetic and emotional relation to 2004's One Quiet Night, a set of ballads recorded at home solo on an acoustic baritone guitar.One of Metheny's aesthetic signatures is an often euphoric character in his composing and playing. While that's absent here, emotion, vulnerability, and poignancy aren't. The sparse chords and melodic line that introduce opener "The Waves Are Not the Ocean" are gently presented to the listener without adornment save for the dictates of its lyric harmony. The spaces between whispered chord voicings carry the listener's heart alongside. "From the Mountains" seemingly underscores that flavor with a slightly darker yet more majestic Latin-tinged melody. "Trust Your Angels" is lilting, tender, and expository in its impressionistic use of the blues, à la mentors Jim Hall and Charlie Haden. The first four originals are followed by two elegantly wrought covers. The first is a harmonically and rhythmically re-envisioned reading of Russell Vernon Longstreth's (aka Russ Long) obscure yacht rock classic "Never Was Love." Metheny's version strips away the sheen of pop artifice, revealing the sophisticated nature of its intricate blue melody. Sammy Cahn's "I Fall in Love Too Easily" is rendered with a similar approach to the one pianist Bill Evans articulated on 1962's Moon Beams. Metheny's gentle use of reverb adds an additional multi-phonic voice as he hovers between single string melody, chord changes, and the mysterious innovative shapes he employs as bridges between. The other standard is Luiz Bonfa's "Morning of the Carnival" ("Manha de Carnival"). Unlike the many jazz versions out there, Metheny's realization closely adheres to Bonfa's save for a subtle meld of samba and cumbia rhythms. When Metheny states the melody, he offers contrasting melodic voices on top, culminating in a warm, pointed solo. Set closer "Clouds Can't Change the Sky" is another listener-enveloping ballad composed in sections. Its lyric statement is followed first by abstraction in tone, texture, and tempo before establishing a second melody from that investigation, resolving them both. The electric guitar ballads on Dream Box offer unvarnished introspection, uncanny musical vision, and gorgeous technique.© Thom Jurek /TiVo

An '80s pop icon with Yes, Buggles, and the Art of Noise, Trevor Horn is also well known as a producer behind the scenes. He brings this aspect of his talents to the fore with 2024's Echoes: Ancient and Modern, a covers album that finds him putting a new twist on songs, many of which he produced originally. The album is the conceptual follow-up to his previous covers project, 2019's Reimagines the '80s. As with that album, Echoes finds him joined by guest vocalists, each of whom is recognizable in their own way and has worked with Horn in the past. Given some of the new wave and dance-pop leanings of Horn's own classic work, one might expect Echoes to be a frothy, upbeat affair. While there are certainly moments of buoyant pop fun to be had, the overall approach is more low-key, with Horn reworking most of the songs in a more dramatic, sonically textured, and emotionally introspective way than the originals. Perhaps a good clue to the aesthetic vibe he conjures here is with his cover of Bryan Ferry and Roxy Music's "Avalon," the sole track to feature his own vocals. It's subdued and somewhat jazzy, not unlike Ferry's version, and feels like a creative touchstone for the overall vibe Horn is going for. Similarly, we get an arid, goth dreamscape arrangement of Frankie Goes to Hollywood's "Relax" featuring singer Toyah and husband/guitarist Robert Fripp. While the original "Relax" as produced by Horn was done with singer Holly Johnson's tongue firmly in cheek, here Horn goes for a deadpan earnestness, underlining the notion that he is deconstructing each song to get to the core emotion at the center. Yet more far afield of the original is his shadowy, EDM-esque take on Pat Benatar's "Love Is a Battlefield" with Marc Almond, which turns the rock anthem into a dark club ballad. Another surprisingly effective transformation is Tori Amos' opening rendition of Kendrick Lamar's "Swimming Pools." Her throaty coo is a perfect match for the moody atmosphere Horn creates and one could easily imagine listening to a whole album of Amos and Horn done in a similar fashion. Admittedly, some of the covers are more admirably interesting than effective: Rick Astley offers a pleasant adult contemporary reading of "Owner of a Lonley Heart" and Andrea Corr and Jake Lukeman's electro-acoustic take on Billy Idol's "White Wedding" washes away much of the song's bite. Still, we get Iggy Pop and Lambrini Girls joining forces for a rootsy take on Depeche Mode's "Personal Jesus," while Seal offers a compelling version of Joe Jackson's "Steppin' Out." All of this is done with impeccable taste as Horn mixes analog elements with electronic ones and takes his time building each song with the creativity and passion he is known for.© Matt Collar /TiVo

After summing up his maverick tendencies on Scary Monsters, David Bowie aimed for the mainstream with Let's Dance. Hiring Chic guitarist Nile Rodgers as a co-producer, Bowie created a stylish, synthesized post-disco dance music that was equally informed by classic soul and the emerging new romantic subgenre of new wave, which was ironically heavily inspired by Bowie himself. Let's Dance comes tearing out of the gate, propulsed by the skittering "Modern Love," the seductively menacing "China Girl," and the brittle funk of the title track. All three songs became international hits, and for good reason -- they're catchy, accessible pop songs that have just enough of an alien edge to make them distinctive. However, that careful balance is quickly thrown off by a succession of pleasant but unremarkable plastic soul workouts. "Cat People" and a cover of Metro's "Criminal World" are relatively strong songs, but the remainder of the album indicates that Bowie was entering a songwriting slump. However, the three hits were enough to make the album a massive hit, and their power hasn't diminished over the years, even if the rest of the record sounds like an artifact.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

With his sixth album, Gregory Porter excels once again in perfectly blending jazz, soul, rhythm'n'blues, pop and gospel. In addition to being blessed with a voice of pure velvet (so cliché, but so true), the Californian, who knows Great Black Music inside out, is also a real wordsmith. In these troubled times, Gregory Porter's music refreshes and rejuvenates, like on "Revival Song," a sort of neo-gospel hymn that ignites the soul and frees the body. This sense of wellbeing can also be felt when Porter puts on his crooner hat on "If Love Is Overrated" or when he channels his inner Marvin Gaye and George Benson on "Faith In Love." Brilliantly produced by Troy Miller (Laura Mvula, Jamie Cullum, Emili Sandé), All Rise propels the American singer towards greater global recognition, reaching audiences well outside the jazz sphere. © Max Dembo/Qobuz

Just a year after the excellent concentrate of Northern soul “Change the Show” (2022), Miles Kane is back to business with a fifth album. The Englishman hasn’t wasted time in finding his way back to the studio, the brand-new Kempton Street Studios in Liverpool, and with his cousin James Skelly of The Coral on production, he’s gotten back to work with the guitar at the center of his world.“Making the album back in Liverpool with my family really helped to bring this out of me,” Kane explains. “We left no stone unturned. Sometimes you have to go backwards to go forwards, and this album helped me rediscover why I picked up a guitar in the first place. This album is like a brand new, yet somehow familiar leather jacket. A comforting melting pot of all the music that has inspired and continues to inspire me every day.” Amidst its dancefloor rock (in particular the two singles “Baggio” and a very 2000s rock “Troubled Son”), Kane swerves into soul (the dancey “Doubles”) and blues-rock with “Never Taking Me Alive”, which is reminiscent of the Black Keys (“Lonely Boy”), all while the languid “Ransom” and the guitar-vocal ballad “Scared of Love” provide a soft landing. A successful return to roots.

Little was heard from James Blake throughout an almost three-year period that followed Overgrown, his second straight Top Ten U.K. album. He appeared on an Airhead track and released a 12" on his 1-800-Dinosaur label, yet it wasn't until February 2016, during his BBC Radio 1 program, that listeners got their initial taste of album three. Drawn like a scene from a dissolving relationship that immediately precedes release and relief, "Modern Soul" hinted that the album could be a bit brighter with less of the anguish that permeated the singer/producer's first two albums. Another song, a vaguely aching minimal dub ballad, was aired two months later, possibly chosen because it too had a title, "Timeless," that could potentially wind up detractors. In late April, when it seemed like he might spring on his audience a tune named something like "Proper Music," Blake received a profile boost from Beyoncé, whose Lemonade prominently sported a pair of songs featuring his assistance. A couple weeks later, the long-delayed The Colour in Anything materialized at a length nearly that of his first two albums put together. Recording began in London. Once stalled by creative fatigue, Blake decamped to Rick Rubin's Malibu studio. The sunnier environment had no evident effect on the album's outlook. Regardless of location, Blake continues to deal in fraught romantic trauma, setting the album's tone immediately with "Radio Silence," a mix of mournful gospel and surging synthesizers in which "I can't believe this, you don't wanna see me" is stated something like ten times. As he sifts through the wreckage in puzzled and lucid states, he still stretches and distorts his frail but transfixing choir boy voice. A few lines are expressed with Auto-Tune fillips, some are enhanced through fine layering, and others are left unembellished, sometimes sunk into the mix of basslines that tap and thrum, percussion that gently skitters and scrapes, and synthesizers, applied like coating, that swell and swarm. Most disorienting is "Put That Away and Talk to Me," akin to a malfunctioning lullaby mobile playing a late-'90s Timbaland knockoff. Blake sought some help, not only from Rubin, who co-produced the Malibu sessions, but from Justin Vernon, who assisted with two songs and is heard on "I Need a Forest Fire," while Frank Ocean co-wrote another pair, including the all-voice closer, where Blake solemnly resolves -- ta-da -- that contentment is up to him. Compared to the self-titled debut and Overgrown, this a more graceful and denser purging, one that can soundtrack some intense wallowing or, at a low volume, throb and murmur unobtrusively in the background.© Andy Kellman /TiVo

Blessed with an intuitive genius that illuminated his entire career, Ray Charles sensed that country music and the blues had a common soul that he could touch with his expressive voice and natural gifts for phrasing. Having left Atlantic Records for the ABC label where he was guaranteed artistic freedom, Charles decided to step through the looking glass; in the middle of the civil rights movement he turned country music into lush, R&B-influenced 60s pop, blurring racial and artistic barriers in the process. As proof of his success, the single, “I Can’t Stop Loving You” (written by white country star Don Gibson) spent five weeks at #1 on the pop charts and sixteen weeks at #1 on the R&B charts before winning the 1962 Grammy Award for Best Rhythm and Blues Recording.  As fresh today as when they were recorded, no context is required to appreciate these sublime tracks, which have now been combined into a single package.  Charles knew a hit song when he heard it and he convincingly transformed a well-known track like Hank Williams’ “Your Cheating Heart” into a sweet, sexy ballad that seems as right as the original.  For instrumental backup, Charles used two modes: strings and vocal choir by arranger Marty Paich for ballads like “I Can’t Stop Loving You” and punchier swing band arrangements by famed composer/arranger Gerald Wilson for tracks like “Hey Good Lookin’.” While a snappy, brass-led version of Williams’ “Move it Over” is a revelation, the utterly transformative version of one of country music’s most storied touchstones, “You Are My Sunshine,” featuring Charles in full Atlantic-era R&B mode—complete with Raelettes—is spectacular.  One of the finest moments in an acclaimed career, the expansive vision and charismatic vocals heard here are still breathtaking. © Robert Baird / Qobuz

Get Happy!! was born as much from sincere love for soul as it was for Elvis Costello's desire to distance himself from an unfortunate verbal faux pas where he insulted Ray Charles in an attempt to get Stephen Stills' goat. Either way, it resulted in a 20-song blue-eyed soul tour de force, where Costello doesn't just want to prove his love, he wants to prove his knowledge. So, he tries everything, starting with Motown and Northern soul, then touching on smooth uptown ballads and gritty Southern soul, even finding common ground between the two by recasting Sam & Dave's "I Can't Stand Up (For Falling Down)" as a careening stomper. What's remarkable is that this approach dovetails with the pop carnival essayed by Armed Forces, standing as a full-fledged Costello record instead of a genre exercise. As it furiously flits through 20 songs, Costello's cynicisms, rage, humor, and misanthropic sensibility gel remarkably well. Some songs may not quite hit their targets, but that's part of the album's charm -- it moves so fast that its lesser songs rush by on the way to such full-fledged masterpieces as "New Amsterdam," "High Fidelity," and "Riot Act." Get Happy!! bursts with energy and invention, standing as a testament to how Costello, the pop encyclopedia, can reinvent the past in his own image. [The Japanese edition includes bonus material.]© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

Including sessions recorded the same day as those on Bags Groove, this album includes more classic performances from the date that matched together trumpeter Miles Davis, vibraphonist Milt Jackson, pianist Thelonious Monk, bassist Percy Heath, and drummer Kenny Clarke. Davis and Monk actually did not get along all that well, and the trumpeter did not want Monk playing behind his solos. Still, a great deal of brilliant music occurred on the day of their encounter, including "The Man I Love," "Bemsha Swing," and "Swing Spring."© Scott Yanow /TiVo

Tell Me I'm Alive, the ninth studio album by All Time Low, follows in the footsteps of their 2020 release, Wake Up Sunshine. While remaining true to their pop-punk roots, the band expands its sound by incorporating elements of indie rock and pop. The standout track "Sleepwalking" is included.© Rich Wilson /TiVo

Far from the retreat implied in its title, The Woods is another passionate statement from Sleater-Kinney, equally inspired by the call-to-arms of their previous album, One Beat, and the give-and-take of their live sets, particularly their supporting slot on Pearl Jam's 2003 tour. Throughout their career, the band has found ways to refine and elaborate on the fiery spirit that makes them so distinctive without diminishing it. The Woods is no exception -- it may be Sleater-Kinney's most mature and experimental album to date, but unlike most mature and experimental albums released by bands entering their second decade, it doesn't forget to rock like a beast. The album's opening salvo, "The Fox," is shockingly feral, an onslaught of heavy, angry, spiralling guitars, ridiculously loud drums, and Corin Tucker's inimitable, love-them-or-hate-them vocals. It's so crushingly dense that it's hard to believe it came from Dave Fridmann's studio; reportedly, The Woods' sessions were challenging for band and producer alike, but from the results, it's clear that they pushed each other to make some of the best work of both of their careers. Though it may be hard to believe, at first, that this is a Fridmann-produced album, his contributions become a little clearer on tracks like the dysfunctional domesticity of "Wilderness," which has the depth and spaciousness usually associated with his work. However, it's easy enough to hear that The Woods is quintessential Sleater-Kinney. This may be the band's most self-assured sounding work yet -- their music has never lacked confidence and daring, but now they sound downright swaggering: "What's Mine Is Yours" is a subversive nod to Led Zeppelin and also captures Sleater-Kinney's own formidable power as a live act. Tucker's voice and viewpoints are as thoughtful and fierce as ever, and as usual, she's even better when aided and abetted by Carrie Brownstein's harmonies, as on "Jumpers." Capturing both the deeply depressing and liberating sides of suicide, the song moves from moody almost-pop to an intense but still melodic assault; unlike so many bands, Sleater-Kinney can go back and forth between several ideas within one song and never sound forced or muddled. A martial feeling runs through The Woods, but unlike the more overtly political One Beat, dissent is a more of an overall state of mind here. The more literal songs falter a bit, but "Modern Girl" is saved by its sharp lyrics ("I took my money and bought a donut/The hole's the size of the entire world"), while Tucker and Brownstein's dueling vocals and Janet Weiss' huge drums elevate "Entertain" above its easy targets of retro rock and reality TV. However, the songs about floundering or complicated relationships draw blood: "Rollercoaster," an extended food and fairground metaphor for an up-and-down long-term relationship with tough-girl backing vocals and an insistent cowbell driving it along, is as insightful as it is fun and witty. The unrepentantly sexy "Let's Call It Love" is another standout, comparing love to a boxing match (complete with bells ringing off the rounds) and a game of poker. At 11 minutes long, the song might be indulgent (especially by Sleater-Kinney's usually economic standards), but its ebbs and flows and well-earned guitar solos underscore the feeling that the band made The Woods for nobody but themselves. It flows seamlessly into "Night Light," an equally spooky and hopeful song that offers promise, but no easy answers -- a fitting end to an album that often feels more engaged in struggle than the outcome of it. One thing is clear, though: Sleater-Kinney remain true to their ideals, and after all this time, they still find smart, gripping ways of articulating them.© Heather Phares /TiVo

This is the ultimate Neil Diamond record. Not necessarily the best -- he's at his most appealing crafting in the studio -- but certainly the ultimate, capturing all the kitsch and glitz of Neil Diamond, the showman. And that also means that it's not just loaded with flair, but with filler, songs like "Porcupine Pie," "Soggy Pretzels," and "And the Grass Won't Pay No Mind" -- attempts to write grand, sweeping epics that collapse under their own weight. Still, that's part of the charm of Diamond and while it can sound unbearable on studio albums, it makes some sense here, surrounded by his pomp and circumstance. That spectacle is the great thing about the record, since it inflates not just his great songs, it gives the weaker moments character. At 20-plus tracks in its original release and various reissues over the years, this does wind up being a little much, but it nevertheless is the one record for casual Neil fans (after the hits collections), since it shows Diamond the icon in full glory.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

Venom is the debut album from English synthpunk duo Wargasm. This record showcases the breadth of Wargasm's genre influences, combining elements of metal, punk, EDM, and hip hop and injecting it all with vast amounts of sheer energy.© Liam Martin /TiVo

When Kevin Godley and Lol Creme left 10cc in 1976 to pursue a solo career, many thought it was the death knell for the group. However, Eric Stewart and Graham Gouldman kept the group alive as a duo (with the assistance of percussionist Paul Burgess) and turned in a surprisingly solid album with 1977's Deceptive Bends. It may lack the devil-may-care wackiness that popped up on previous 10cc albums, but it makes up for it by crafting a series of lush, catchy pop songs that are witty in their own right. Deceptive Bends also produced a pair of notable hits for the group: "Good Morning Judge" told the comical tale of a career criminal over a hook-laden, surprisingly funky pop backing while "The Things We Do for Love" was an irresistible Beatles pastiche that showcased 10cc's mastery of pop vocal harmonies. "People in Love," a surprisingly straightforward ballad built on a gorgeous string arrangement, also became a modest chart success. The remainder of the material doesn't stand out as sharply as these hits, but each of the tracks offers up plenty of naggingly catchy pop hooks, oodles of catchy riffs, and surprising twists in their arrangements. Highlights among the non-hit tracks include "Marriage Bureau Rendezvous," a satire of dating services set to a lilting soft rock melody, and "You've Got a Cold," a portrait of illness-influenced misery set to a percolating pop melody. The only place where Deceptive Bends slips is on "Feel the Benefit," the lengthy medley that closes the album. Its excessive length and hazy lyrics make it less satisfying than the album's shorter tunes, but it is kept afloat by a catchy, mock-Spanish midsection and some lovely string arrangements. All in all, Deceptive Bends is the finest achievement of 10cc's post-Godley and Creme lineup and well worth a spin for anyone who enjoyed Sheet Music or The Original Soundtrack.© Donald A. Guarisco /TiVo