White Blood Cells may have been a reaction to the amount of fame the White Stripes had received up to the point of its release, but, paradoxically, it made full-fledged rock stars out of Jack and Meg White and sold over half a million copies in the process. Despite the White Stripes' ambivalence, fame nevertheless seems to suit them: They just become more accomplished as the attention paid to them increases. Elephant captures this contradiction within the Stripes and their music; it's the first album they've recorded for a major label, and it sounds even more pissed-off, paranoid, and stunning than its predecessor. Darker and more difficult than White Blood Cells, the album offers nothing as immediately crowd-pleasing or sweet as "Fell in Love With a Girl" or "We're Going to Be Friends," but it's more consistent, exploring disillusionment and rejection with razor-sharp focus. Chip-on-the-shoulder anthems like the breathtaking opener, "Seven Nation Army," which is driven by Meg White's explosively minimal drumming, and "The Hardest Button to Button," in which Jack White snarls "Now we're a family!" -- one of the best oblique threats since Black Francis sneered "It's educational!" all those years ago -- deliver some of the fiercest blues-punk of the White Stripes' career. "There's No Home for You Here" sets a girl's walking papers to a melody reminiscent of "Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground" (though the result is more sequel than rehash), driving the point home with a wall of layered, Queen-ly harmonies and piercing guitars, while the inspired version of "I Just Don't Know What to Do With Myself" goes from plaintive to angry in just over a minute, though the charging guitars at the end sound perversely triumphant. At its bruised heart, Elephant portrays love as a power struggle, with chivalry and innocence usually losing out to the power of seduction. "I Want to Be the Boy" tries, unsuccessfully, to charm a girl's mother; "You've Got Her in Your Pocket," a deceptively gentle ballad, reveals the darker side of the Stripes' vulnerability, blurring the line between caring for someone and owning them with some fittingly fluid songwriting. The battle for control reaches a fever pitch on the "Fell in Love With a Girl"-esque "Hypnotize," which suggests some slightly underhanded ways of winning a girl over before settling for just holding her hand, and on the show-stopping "Ball and Biscuit," seven flat-out seductive minutes of preening, boasting, and amazing guitar prowess that ranks as one the band's most traditionally bluesy (not to mention sexy) songs. Interestingly, Meg's star turn, "In the Cold, Cold Night," is the closest Elephant comes to a truce in this struggle, her kitten-ish voice balancing the song's slinky words and music. While the album is often dark, it's never despairing; moments of wry humor pop up throughout, particularly toward the end. "Little Acorns" begins with a sound clip of Detroit newscaster Mort Crim's Second Thoughts radio show, adding an authentic, if unusual, Motor City feel. It also suggests that Jack White is one of the few vocalists who could make a lyric like "Be like the squirrel" sound cool and even inspiring. Likewise, the showy "Girl, You Have No Faith in Medicine" -- on which White resembles a garage rock snake-oil salesman -- is probably the only song featuring the word "acetaminophen" in its chorus. "It's True That We Love One Another," which features vocals from Holly Golightly as well as Meg White, continues the Stripes' tradition of closing their albums on a lighthearted note. Almost as much fun to analyze as it is to listen to, Elephant overflows with quality -- it's full of tight songwriting, sharp, witty lyrics, and judiciously used basses and tumbling keyboard melodies that enhance the band's powerful simplicity (and the excellent "The Air Near My Fingers" features all of these). Crucially, the White Stripes know the difference between fame and success; while they may not be entirely comfortable with their fame, they've succeeded at mixing blues, punk, and garage rock in an electrifying and unique way ever since they were strictly a Detroit phenomenon. On these terms, Elephant is a phenomenal success.© Heather Phares /TiVo

Nation of Language's 2020 debut album, Introduction, Presence, aligned perfectly with an origin story that had founder Ian Devaney inspired to fashion the band's icy, driving synth pop after revisiting early-period Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark track "Electricity" for the first time since he was a kid. By the time he and bandmates recorded their second album, 2021's A Way Forward, they'd added touches of experimental electronic and Krautrock influences to their catchy, subterranean club songs. With third album Strange Disciple, they open up their sound just a bit further with the occasional inclusion of live instruments, specifically drums and guitar, without ever coming close to forsaking their turn-of-the-'80s roots. Featuring the lineup of Devaney, spouse Aidan Noell, and newcomer Alex MacKay (Mogwai, CHAI), along with returning producer Nick Millhiser, Strange Disciple finds their songwriting -- never a weakness for the group -- in even more consistent form. It opens with the spacious, haunting "Weak in Your Light," a song whose warbly bass and desperate vocals ("I'm in love…/Beleaguered and overdrawn/I can feel myself come undone") produce nearly all motion. While tempos vary throughout the set, infectious thumping and metallic beats then settle in by the intro to track two and never dissipate. That song, the similarly themed "Sole Obsession," populates dank atmospheres with trebly 16th-note synth patterns that reinforce a robotic bass-snare-bass-snare anti-cadence alongside pulsing low tones and echoing, trashcan-lid-like percussive accents. Meanwhile, Devaney, whose deep but limber vocal delivery falls in the vicinity of new wave icons like Phil Oakley, Dave Gahan, and Men Without Hats' Ivan Doroschuk, issues frustrated lines like, "Empty idol, strange disciple" and "To only seek and never find." Although loaded with bloopy, melancholy Minimoog jams, the album's more tuneful highlights include the elegant "Spare Me the Decision" and more Devo-esque "Too Much Enough," while tracks like "Swimming in the Shallow Sea" and the racing "Stumbling Still" incorporate shoegazey shimmer, at least at the surface level. That said, Nation of Language adhere strictly to a core timbral palette and, at least so far, always sound like themselves. Despite its anxious closing words, "I will never learn," fans of the band's prior releases are almost guaranteed to embrace Strange Disciple, and it's an excellent entry point for the uninitiated. © Marcy Donelson /TiVo

Michael League and Bill Laurance, pillars within the ‘fusion’ big band Snarky Puppy, have released a surprising duo album, Where You Wish You Were. This release gives light to the most intimate parts of their musical worlds and to the artistry and friendship that has united them for all these years. In keeping with his last solo album, Affinity (in which he abandoned the synthesisers and created elegant, entirely acoustic pieces), Bill Laurance takes to the traditional piano here, drawing inspiration from both new music and the classical world.Michael League adds an array of instruments to this acoustic foundation: from the oud to the fretless acoustic guitar, not to mention the baritone electric guitar and the ngoni. His sound explores the oriental and Mediterranean, and he allows this to develop fully over this new release. Through personal, original compositions full of beautiful melodies, the two men invent a type of music that’s atmospheric, lyrical, journeyed and nuanced in the way it combines tones and textures. With its clear discourse and frank, shimmering harmonies, this stunning album remains accessible despite its experimental sound. © Stéphane Ollivier/Qobuz

"They remain true to the basic beats of sugary Euro techno and dubstep's prevalent, halting grooves, but inject elements of ambient soundscape and console-game electronica, reggae riffs and accents..."© TiVo

Scoring the End of the World is the sixth album from American metal outfit Motionless in White and follows their 2019 release Disguise. Produced by Drew Fulk and Justin DeBlieck, the album sees the group dealing with corruption, climate change, and political upheaval through a blast of expansive metal.© Rich Wilson /TiVo

4 stars out of 5 -- "A dense synth jitters away underneath the sombre voice of Ian Devaney – conveying a deep yearning through giddy eighties vibes..." © TiVo

After a few years of only being able to afford to release the occasional single, Nation of Language's Ian Richard Devaney and Aidan Noell funded their 2020 debut Introduction, Presence with gift money from their wedding (even though, Devaney has said, "Nearly every person we asked this of politely implied it was a terrible idea or that we should go on a honeymoon instead"). When that record did well enough that they could have paid themselves back, the couple instead decided to almost immediately pour the money into a second album. A Way Forward was worth the investment—continuing to embrace the band's love of '80s synth-rock classics like OMD and A Flock of Seagulls, but also expanding. It all kicks off with "In Manhattan," Noell's Krautrock-style keyboards racing as if on the Autobahn, while Devaney's vocals stay in the slow lane; the contrast is mesmerizing. "Wounds of Love" sounds like it could've been on the Pretty In Pink soundtrack (alongside OMD and Echo and the Bunnymen), all moody lyrics—"They say 'walk it off' but, in my heart/ I was never more than what you said" —and synth that bubbles forth like light waves refracted. Likewise, "Across That Fine Line" perfects the push-pull dynamics between verse and chorus. The Joe Jackson-style electronic drums and Michael Sue-Poi's throbbing bass keep things steady while Noell's keyboards roll in like a big wave. Indeed, Sue-Poi is a major force throughout, his rich bottom end surprisingly airy on the upbeat "Whatever You Want." "A Word & A Wave" is alive, its deep pulse like a heartbeat. With Devaney's vocals layered and a bit blanketed, pleasantly sleepy "Miranda" feels like a dream you can't quite pull out of—until Noell's bubbling-under synth turns into a pretty, aspirationally optimistic melody. On ballad "Former Self," meanwhile, the keyboards are like steady rain, haunted by occasional background bleeps and beeps and a slightly industrial churn; it all ends with Devaney vocalizing "ahhhhhhhh" like a release valve. With its running-jog rhythm, churchy keys and catchy bass line—its attack so precise—"The Grey Commute" is irresistible. Finally, "They're Beckoning" opens with a ticking clock nervousness before the ethereal, spacey synth washes in, only for the ticking to increase, maddening, before it merges into what sounds like the beginning of U2's "Where the Streets Have No Name" then eases into great, soaring vocals on the chorus. Surprising, and engaging. © Shelly Ridenour/Qobuz

Uh-Huh found John Mellencamp coming into his own, but he perfected his heartland rock with Scarecrow. A loose concept album about lost innocence and the crumbling of small-town America, Scarecrow says as much with its tough rock and gentle folk-rock as it does with its lyrics, which remain a weak point for Mellencamp. Nevertheless, his writing has never been more powerful: "Rain on the Scarecrow" and "Small Town" capture the hopes and fears of Middle America, while "Lonely Ol' Night" and "Rumbleseat" effortlessly convey the desperate loneliness of being stuck in a dead-end life. Those four songs form the core of the album, and while the rest of the album isn't quite as strong, that's only a relative term, since it's filled with lean hooks and powerful, economical playing that make Scarecrow one of the definitive blue-collar rock albums of the mid-'80s.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

Scoring the End of the World is the sixth album from American metal outfit Motionless in White and follows their 2019 release Disguise. Produced by Drew Fulk and Justin DeBlieck, the album sees the group dealing with corruption, climate change, and political upheaval through a blast of expansive metal.© Rich Wilson /TiVo

Chaos & Colour sees the return of long running British hard rock outfit Uriah Heep. Produced by Jay Ruston (Black Star Riders, Amon Amarth) the album sees the group deliver another collection of finely-tuned, classic hard rock cuts. The single "Save Me Tonight" is included.© Rich Wilson /TiVo