Be Opened by the Wonderful is the 17th album from British rock outfit James and follows 2021's All the Colours of You. The 20-track release sees the band reworking their back catalog with the help of the Andra Vornici lead orchestra Orca 22 and the Manchester Inspirational Voices gospel choir. The album also includes the new track "Love Make a Fool," which was recorded specially for the album.© Rich Wilson /TiVo

Among the crop of Nigerian stars succeeding on a global scale, few burn as bright as Burna Boy. After breaking into the mainstream with 2019's African Giant, the singer cemented his international status with the success of 2022's Love, Damini, which hit number 14 on the U.S. pop chart and nearly topped the U.K.'s top position. After a tour playing to packed houses in North America and Europe, Burna sold out London Stadium, becoming the first African artist to headline a U.K. stadium tour. Released in August 2023, his seventh album is something of a victory lap. He addresses that concert in particular on the title track, singing "I told them I'm a genius, had to show them what the meaning is" alongside a guest spot from Wu-Tang legend GZA, the latest in a series of high-profile guests who have joined him in the studio. RZA gets in the game, too, offering up a spoken affirmation on the brief "12 Jewels." Other guests include J. Cole, 21 Savage, and Seyi Vibez, but of course they are only guests; this is Burna's party and he is operating at the top of his game. Despite the cockiness of its title, his songs remain pleasingly mellow and eclectic, working through a range of styles (highlife, dancehall, Afro-Cuban) and delivering memorable hooks and melodies with the confidence of his status.© Timothy Monger /TiVo

As the only player who has appeared on all of Mofro's albums, singer JJ Grey is a funky force of nature. The North Floridian returns nine years after his last recording, still honing his mix of soul passion, Skynyrd-styled rock, outright funk and that sassy, butt-shaking magic that makes New Orleans music so irresistible. Grey is skilled in writing across rhythm-heavy genres and Olustee is another strong collection that even calls on the skills of the Budapest Symphony Orchestra under conductor Zoltán Pad. The title track is a bluesy shaker, spiced with harmonica and slinky guitar that eventually turns into a huge electric solo for guitarist Pete Winders. The album's lone cover, "Seminole Wind," is made bigger through liberal use of reverb, before it, too, raves up and becomes a solo showcase, this time for trumpet. "Wonderland" is a pure soul jump number—always one of Grey's strongest suits—and he convincingly steps into it as a born-to-lead soul shouter.  He gets his strut on in "Rooster" and rolls out the heavy, horn-aided funk, singing: "I'm a rooster, full legit/ Keeping it strong boy with true grit." Recorded at Retrophonics Studio in Saint Augustine, Florida, Olustee was recorded by Jim Devito and produced by Grey and Ivory Daniel; its sonics have a convincing snap with just enough low end to get its points across. Several holdovers from Grey's last album accompany him, including bassist Todd Smallie and trumpeters Dennis Marion and Marcus Parsley.  A new wrinkle is that Grey is now extra determined to sing big, soaring pop soul ballads, often surrounded by liberal amounts of violins and brass. His aspirations are admirable, and for the most part he pulls them off. The lyrics turn fanciful in "The Sea" ("The moon shining through, silvered by a storm/ Painted on the night, all the way to dawn"), where he pushes his falsetto to sell this odd choice of an opening track. Though clearly impassioned, his vocals on "On a Breeze"—supported by a quartet of backing singers—are less convincing, but later in "Waiting" he's more believable as a full-on 1960s soul cryer, emotionally belting out lines condemning his sloth while simultaneously demolishing a meaningless cliché: "Everyone's a winner/ Well we damn well know that's a lie/ 'Cause how the hell you gonna win/ If you don't even get out there and try?" Continuing to stir his piquant roux of Southern rock, funk and blue-eyed soul, JJ Grey is an American music original.  © Robert Baird/Qobuz

Fire alert! Gathering in the same room Beth Hart and Joe Bonamassa is the nightmare of every fireman in the world. True pyromaniacs of the blue note, those two have had their field day since their meeting in 2010. The Californian with her soul panther voice and the New Yorker, an epileptic of the electric guitar, join forces that are a perfect match. And their tandem is probably the most inspired thing to happen to blues rock in ages, as is confirmed by this third studio album, after Don’t Explain (2011) and Seesaw (2013). As usual, Beth Hart’s voice is some kind of irresistible magnet that tows every word, every sentence, each chorus… An intense singing which finds in Joe Bonamassa’s playing THE dream partner. As for the repertoire revisited for this Black Coffee, recorded in five days at the Studio at the Palms in Las Vegas in August 2016 (with drummer Anton Fig, saxophonists Ron Dziubla and Paulie Cerra, trumpet player Lee Thornburg, keyboardist Reese Wynans, bass player Michael Rhodes, guitarist Rob McNelley and backing vocalists Mahalia Barnes, Jade Macrae and Juanita Tippins), simply reading those names is enough to gauge the good tastes of the duo: Edgar Winter, Etta James, Ike Turner, Ella Fitzgerald, Lil’ Green, LaVern Baker, Howlin’ Wolf and Lucinda Williams. © CM/Qobuz

Three years would pass between OU812 and 1991's For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge. Not only was that the longest gap between Van Halen albums to date, but that time period also saw the world collectively turn from the stadium rock of Van Halen to the upcoming alternative rock revolution; Nevermind would be released three months after Unlawful, but the winds of change were blowing briskly while Van Halen spent a year (!) recording this album. The Van Halen that emerged was a dramatically changed one—complexity and intensity replaced riffs and swagger, and there's an uncomfortably melodramatic seriousness to even the dumb numbers ("Spanked" is about phone sex but it's more dour than dirty). Of course, this is the album on which Eddie plays guitar with a drill ("Poundcake"), as well as the home of two mega-hits "Right Now" and "Top of the World" (which are both, incredibly, sequenced at the album's close), but it's otherwise a slog to listen to, as dense as it is unremarkable.  © Jason Ferguson/Qobuz

After a mere three albums in just under three years, Cream called it quits in 1969. Being proper gentlemen, they said their formal goodbyes with a tour and a farewell album called -- what else? -- Goodbye. As a slim, six-song single LP, it's far shorter than the rambling, out-of-control Wheels of Fire, but it boasts the same structure, evenly dividing its time between tracks cut on-stage and in the studio. While the live side contains nothing as indelible as "Crossroads," the live music on the whole is better than that on Wheels of Fire, capturing the trio at an empathetic peak as a band. It's hard, heavy rock, with Cream digging deep into their original "Politician" with the same intensity as they do on "Sitting on Top of the World," but it's the rampaging "I'm So Glad" that illustrates how far they've come; compare it to the original studio version on Fresh Cream and it's easy to see just how much further they're stretching their improvisation. The studio side also finds them at something of a peak. Boasting a song apiece from each member, it opens with the majestic classic "Badge," co-written by Eric Clapton and George Harrison and ranking among both of their best work. It's followed by Jack Bruce's "Doing That Scrapyard Thing," an overstuffed near-masterpiece filled with wonderful, imaginative eccentricities, and finally, there's Ginger Baker's tense, dramatic "What a Bringdown," easily the best original he contributed to the group. Like all of Cream's albums outside Disraeli Gears, Goodbye is an album of moments, not a tight cohesive work, but those moments are all quite strong on their own terms, making this a good and appropriate final bow. © Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

The title is a tip-off: Lenny Kravitz is a hippie, something that was commonplace 20 years before his debut, Let Love Rule, and was familiar five years later when he scaled the charts with Are You Gonna Go My Way, but was practically unheard of in 1989 when the Grateful Dead were reaping the benefits of hippies turning into establishment. Kravitz had yet to become a classic rock caricature and he could still surprise on this unformed, endearingly unwieldy first record, where he split the difference between John Lennon, Curtis Mayfield, David Bowie, and Prince, sometimes exhibiting too clear of a debt to his idols but more often getting by on a combination of chutzpah and pastiche, something that winds up as an enormously appealing guilty pleasure. Kravitz has a tendency to overreach lyrically, striving to speak deep truths about big themes from world peace to child abuse, but the winning thing about Let Love Rule is how it plays as sheer sound, evoking memories of the paisley-drenched '60s and the lush sounds of '70s soul, all filtered through the multicultural flowering of the late '80s. Remarkably for an album that's essentially the work of a one-man band, Let Love Rule never feels stiff or insular -- it feels roomy and open, testament to Kravitz's talents as a producer -- but the record remains one of his best because it also has one of his greatest collections of songs, chief among them the stately, psychedelic march of "I Build This Garden for Us," the hippie-funk of "Sittin' on Top of the World," the Hendrixian riffs of "Freedom Train," the urban groove of "Mr. Cab Driver," and the surging "Let Love Rule," songs that created Kravitz's sound and persona and remain among his most engaging work.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo