Featuring his would-be-soulman sound, Slow Dancer finds Boz Scaggs straddling the apparently fine line between Van Morrison and Isaac Hayes. While Silk Degrees is often touted as Scaggs' best '70s album -- based largely upon the chart success of "Lowdown" -- Slow Dancer features just as many catchy melodic tunes that meld a kind of boogie pub rock with an organic urban soul. Produced by Motown regular Johnny Bristol, Scaggs delivers some of his best performances on the Bristol-penned track "Pain of Love" and the Neil Young meets Marvin Gaye ballad "Sail on White Moon."© Matt Collar /TiVo

I Love Rock-n-Roll, Joan Jett's first record with the Blackhearts, was a tougher, louder album than Bad Reputation, primarily because her new backing band gave her a more coherent sound. That dynamic, hard rock crunch is what made the title track into an international hit, but it also gives the album dimension -- not only can Jett & the Blackhearts tear up heavy glam rockers, but they also pull off the mock psychedelia of Tommy James & the Shondells' "Crimson and Clover" with aplomb. On the whole, I Love Rock-n-Roll doesn't have as many strong songs as its predecessor, but the band's muscular, gritty sound makes the album just as good as Bad Reputation.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

After mainstream success happened for Alison Krauss & Union Station, one would have rightly expected a commercial sweetening of their sound, resulting in diminishing (or even abandoning) the simple but very unique thing that brought them into the public eye -- and eventual public acclaim -- in the first place. But the group's first new recording in the wake of the surprise success of Now That I've Found You: A Collection finds Alison Krauss & Union Station happily keeping their eclectic focus firmly on the prize stretched before them with no silly attempts to court the hat-hunk-of-the-month or the boot-scoot-boogie crowd. Despite the media's singling out of Krauss as country's new bluegrass solo diva, Union Station (with Krauss as simply a featured member of it) remains very much a group, and that's the real refreshing news here. It is that collective spirit that remains the reoccurring theme and the resounding musical point being made here, and it is the solid anchor that roots this album into place from beginning to end. Krauss' expert evocative way with a ballad is on full display here, with "Deeper Than Crying" and "It Doesn't Matter" featuring her on violas, adding a new voice to Union Station's sound. But the lead vocals are passed around among Krauss, mandolinist Adam Steffey, guitarist Dan Tyminski, and banjoist Ron Block, while Krauss' fiddle work in a backup capacity is an integral part of the sound as well. All in all, this is a totally un-gimmicky album that flies in the face of what usually happens when mainstream success comes calling. And, as a result of that commitment to quality and musical focus, one that makes you want to play it again when it's all over.© Cub Koda /TiVo

After quickly rising to fame as co-writer and producer for his sister Billie Eilish and winning big-category Grammys for his sleek, intimate approach to both disciplines, Finneas O'Connell makes his full-length solo debut with Optimist. It follows a second chart-topping Eilish album, Happier Than Ever, by three months. Taking its title from a reluctant line in the first track, Optimist is somewhat of a departure from the brooding, often suffocating tone of his kid sister's prior releases while at the same time indulging and repurposing his trademark sound. The most notable difference between the siblings is FINNEAS' warmer, more assertive vocal presence on an album that's immersed in the absurdities and anxieties of its time. Released about a year-and-a-half into an ongoing pandemic with lingering touring ramifications Stateside, it opens with lead single "A Concert Six Months from Now." Part lockdown fantasy and part un-breakup song, it looks forward to the possibility of both a show and a reconciliation in the distant-but-not-too-distant future. Beginning with strummed acoustic guitar, a flash of crowd noise, and melancholy, double-tracked octave vocals, it introduces distorted rock guitar and drums at the midway point, coinciding with lines like "I've been thinking too much/And it's ruined my nights" and "My heart doesn't slow down/When you kill the lights." The song closes on acoustic guitar, soft strings, and an invitation. The overcast-but-hopeful outlook continues on "The Kids Are All Dying," a song whose teasing tone, playful toy keyboard timbre, and stomping beat are offset by lyrics questioning the act of writing songs about sex, drugs, and rock & roll when the day's news -- and planet's future -- is so grim. Later, the slinky pop tune "The 90s" romanticizes a simpler time without smartphones. That song underscores lyrics about the heavy mental burden of worry with woozy, processed vocal effects. Contrasting these thoughtful Zoomer anthems are tuneful piano ballads like "Love Is Pain" and the heartrending (and again hopeful) "What They'll Say About Us," as well as catchier R&B-pop ("Happy Now") and the eerie, intimate electro-pop of "Around My Neck." While Optimist makes a good case for FINNEAS' skills around a pop melody and a perceptive viewpoint, he also drops the instrumental piano piece "Peaches Etude" in the middle of the track list. Accordingly, the album plays like a portfolio, perhaps fitting for a musician still sorting out and amplifying his potential.© Marcy Donelson /TiVo

If you think of TikTok only as a place where teenagers get famous covering pop songs or singing sad, bedroom-penned music, Warren Zeiders will change your perspective. Over the past couple of years, the twentysomething Pennsylvania native has racked up millions of views playing pretty, classic country. But while those clips were often acoustic, Zeiders' debut album is filled out with big production and his big, sandpapered voice. Tracks like "West Texas Weather" (as in: "She’s as wild as West Texas weather/ She can make a Midland gray sky fade away to a sunny day") definitely have a traditional feel. But Zeiders—who has said he's heavily influenced by Christian music and classic rock, in addition to country—has a voice that is also well suited to the ’80s hard-rock sound he plays with on "Pain Killer" (his delivery ranging from moody to tortured), "Tell Me Like It Is" and "Inside Your Head," a power ballad á la Skid Row or Cinderella. He leans into a Luke Combs vibe on "Coming Down High" and the title track, and—evidence of the Morgan Wallen effect—does bro-country on "Love's a Leaving." On that one, gruff-sounding Zeiders really goes for it at the chorus, punching hard on "Our love’s a leavin’." Fun "Black and Blue" packs a poppy kick. "Drive You Crazy" is a sweet acoustic guitar and fiddle ballad. He may not have completely settled into his own style yet, but almost all the tracks highlight Zeiders' unique way of slurring his lyrics—drawling vowels and dropping g's and smashing words together. It's a sound that doesn't seem specific to one place so much as to him. Zeiders comes from Hershey, Pennsylvania, and later played lacrosse and studied business in Maryland. He sings how "Some Tennessee or Kentuckys"—as in whiskey, of course—"gonna set me right again tonight," but brags that he’s as strong as “Pittsburgh Steel." It’s all a testament to the broad “boundaries" of country music. © Shelly Ridenour/Qobuz

On the positively baked Gentle Spirit, from 2011, Jonathan Wilson offered a stellar update of the early-'70s Laurel Canyon sound. For Fanfare, he is obviously inspired by the production techniques of that decade on both sides of the Atlantic. This is one of the most delightfully ornamented recordings to come down the pipe in quite some time. Its sound is so warm and inviting, it almost proves a distraction from the songs. Wilson's guest list is impressive: David Crosby, Graham Nash, Jackson Browne, Benmont Tench, Mike Campbell, and others contribute. But mostly it's Wilson: guitars, piano, drums, bass, mellotron, bells, synths, B-3, vocals, and more. Deciphering the musical trail on Fanfare is a hell of a lot of fun. The influence of Crosby's If I Could Only Remember My Name, CSN's self-titled debut, CSNY's Deja Vu, Stephen Stills' first Manassas record, Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, ELO's Eldorado, Steely Dan's Can't Buy a Thrill, and numerous other recordings saturate this album's pores. Yet, if Wilson weren't capable of doing something new with his sources, the familiar would relegate it to the closet of nostalgia. As a songwriter, his ability to craft diverse, instantly attractive melodies, bridges, and hooks allows his songs to sit alongside those that inform them. Check the easy, driving country rock on "Love to Love," the breezy folk-rock in "Moses Pain" heightened by Campbell's guiding slide guitar, and Browne's and Nash's backing vocals that make it soar, and the shifting, crunchy rock slowness in "Illumination" for examples. Wilson's ability as a producer is akin to Todd Rundgren's: he can combine, arrange, and orchestrate his influences to create something new from the instantly familiar. This is evident in the opening title track where Baroque pop orchestrations (Eldorado) are wedded to Dark Side of the Moon's spacey nocturnal tensions -- dig James King's wailing saxophone solo. "Dear Friend" and "Her Hair Is Growing Long" are sequentially suite-like in their collective nods to Woodstock, CSN's self-titled debut, and the latter's acknowledgement of the Beatles' "Golden Slumbers" in the guitar break. Wilson's lyric phrasing illustrates vivid images, all framed by inviting, self-styled textural nuances. Crosby's and Nash's vocal appearances on "Cecil Taylor" fit so seamlessly with his, the twilight, darkly lit melody almost breaks its frame. "Illumination" channels the pace and cadence of Neil Young's Crazy Horse, but its lushness expands the plodding groove. Tench's piano on the instrumental "Lovestrong" matches Wilson's blistering David Gilmour-esque guitar break. Fanfare travels easily between intimacy and more psychedelic-influenced euphoria because Wilson's songwriting remains his ace in the hole. For all its laid-back deference to his production, it's tight, clever, and artfully constructed. Together they make for an album that will likely pass the test of time.© Thom Jurek /TiVo

Despite being rightfully regarded as a mistress of darkness, Chelsea Wolfe is a more nuanced artist than her image suggests. The title Pain Is Beauty could be seen as a stereotypically gothy glorification of suffering, yet its songs explore how destruction and struggle encourage growth and change -- things that she embraces over the course of her fourth album. A shorthand description would be that she splits the difference between Apokalypsis' lo-fi fury and Unknown Rooms: A Collection of Acoustic Songs' clarity, but once again, it's a little more complicated than that. Wolfe opts for a fuller-fledged sound than she did on Unknown Rooms in a more tempered and eclectic way than Apokalypsis delivered. With the help of Ben Chisholm and her other collaborators, she's free to go in virtually any direction she chooses, and she ends up choosing quite a few: Pain Is Beauty's electronic touches are the most obvious change, but even here Wolfe spans a range, from the subtle enhancements on "Feral Love" to more radical territory like the exquisite "Sick," which sounds like it begins in the heart of darkness with baroque, Wendy Carlos-esque synths and slowly makes its way toward the light. Meanwhile, "The Warden" tops a dance beat reminiscent of Zola Jesus or Chromatics with spooky dulcimers so effortlessly, it feels like they were meant to be together. Wolfe also flirts with rock on the alternately sweet and doomy "Destruction Makes the World Burn Brighter" and the tribal "Ancestors, the Ancients," and magnifies the more familiar acoustic territory of "The Waves Have Come" into the kind of sweeping epic that her voice was made to carry. Indeed, the remarkable mix of presence and ghostly atmosphere in Wolfe's vocals unites the many sounds she explores, grounding more ethereal tracks like "House of Metal"'s swooning chamber pop and leavening denser tracks such as "Kings," one of the few times that the album comes close to being overwrought. From many other artists, this vast scope and variety would sound unfocused, and to be fair, Pain Is Beauty isn't quite as cohesive as Wolfe's earlier albums. Regardless, it's exciting to hear her try so many new things and do them so well. © Heather Phares /TiVo

Bringing together Emmylou Harris, Dolly Parton, and Linda Ronstadt for the album Trio was a truly inspired idea, and not simply because they were three of the finest voices in country and pop music at the time. While a gifted entertainer, Parton is also a business-savvy professional who will willingly set aside her gifts as a pure country singer if she thinks her audience would rather hear something like "Nine to Five." However, give her a stage for old-school country material, and she will always rise sublimely to the occasion. Similarly, some of Linda Ronstadt's finest work was on her early country-rock albums (especially Heart Like a Wheel), but she seems to operate best with strong collaborators; left to her own devices, she's just as likely to pick wrong-headed material in styles not comfortable to her, but in the right settings her gifts still dazzle. And while Emmylou Harris had as strong a track record as anyone in Nashville in the 1980s, it's obvious she loves to collaborate with others, and sings harmonies with the same rich and affecting beauty that she brings to her headlining gigs. So you take two gifted artists who need proper direction, team them up with an excellent collaborative artist, and the results should fall neatly into place. In truth, that's a formula as likely as not to fail, but on Trio the experiment works brilliantly. The three vocalists display an obvious affinity and respect for one another's talents, inspiring superb performances in one another, and while they all shine in their solo spots, some of the album's most pleasurable moments are when the three harmonize, with their distinct but equally impressive voices melding into a whole that's more than the sum of its parts. Harris, Parton, and Ronstadt also make the most of a set of fine songs (certainly a better program than Parton or Ronstadt had taken on in the studio in a while), and producer George Massenburg lined up a wonderfully subtle and intuitive backing group, with Ry Cooder, David Lindley, and Albert Lee picking gloriously without calling undue attention to themselves. In short, Trio is that rare example of an all-star collaborative effort that truly shows everyone involved to their best advantage, and it ranks with the best of all three headliners' work.© Mark Deming /TiVo

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Talking about the first time she harmonized with Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt in 1975, Dolly Parton said, "We all got to singin' and it was absolutely incredible. It gives me chills, even now." Given Parton's remarkable life and career, one would imagine it would take a lot to prompt that reaction, but there's no false modesty in Dolly's words. Parton, Harris, and Ronstadt were all splendid vocalists on their own, but they'd also shown a talent for collaborating with others throughout their careers. And when the like-minded women decided to make an album together, they created something rare, a collaboration between three major stars that never smacks of ego. Parton, Harris, and Ronstadt brought out the best in one another on their brilliant 1987 album, Trio, with the group harmonies sounding even more glorious than their lead vocals. (Trio also found Parton and Ronstadt working with better and more flattering material than they'd had on their solo albums in quite a while.) Trio was enough of a success that the singers carved out time in their busy schedules to make another album together, 1999's Trio II, with similarly impressive results. Ronstadt's health prevents her from making another Trio album in the 21st century, but Rhino Records have given us the next best thing with The Complete Trio Collection. This three-disc set brings together Trio and Trio II in full with a bonus disc of 20 outtakes and alternate versions recorded during the sessions for the original albums. Both Trio and Trio II have aged quite well, especially the first album with its emphasis on acoustic, bluegrass-influenced arrangements that blend well with three-part harmonies. (As Harris quips in the liner notes, they were playing Americana music before it had a name.) And if disc three often covers material that appears elsewhere in the set, Parton, Harris, and Ronstadt tried enough different approaches to these songs that the variants still sound fresh, and the performances are a knockout throughout. At the end of an unreleased take of "You Don't Knock," Harris quietly says, "That one felt real good," and like Dolly, she speaks the truth. For fans of the original Trio albums, buying The Complete Trio Collection to get the disc of unreleased takes might seem a bit excessive, but for anyone with a taste for great country or folk singing who has never heard Parton, Harris, and Ronstadt's work together, this set is nothing less than essential.© Mark Deming /TiVo

Pusha T's slow crawl to a debut solo album included the killer mixtape Fear of God II: Let Us Pray, which sure seemed official, being released by Kanye West's G.O.O.D. Music with major-label distribution. It stretched the definition of a mixtape fairly far, but West and his team are masters at using smoke and mirrors, as My Name Is My Name is a combination of right place and right time with the results being hot enough to burn up any rulebook. Here, the former Clipse member takes that crew's uncompromising stance into the post-Yeezus and post-Death Grips age with a claustrophobic and tight effort that roars. If ever an album could slap a listener, it's this one or Yeezus, but the big difference is that Pusha is pavement while West is penthouse. With this one, the streets keep rocking with cool and connectable moments, from an album title inspired by the television series The Wire to the idea of inviting Kelly Rowland over for the playful come-on "Let Me Love You" (Pusha offers "I know you think I'm the one, but who doesn't?," a flirty moment that would have never seemed possible while in Clipse). The Rowland cut neatly fits into an album that arcs up to its most approachable moment, because even when Big Sean and 2 Chainz show up on "Who I Am," the guaranteed 2013 hitmakers are thrown into an industrial hip-hop grinder, a challenging moment balanced by a simplistic hook right out of the Busta Rhymes playbook. "Sweet Serenade" is aptly titled, although even Chris Brown and Swizz Beatz can't pull Pusha from the edge, while "40 Acres" with the-Dream lives up to its guest's name as elegant and ethereal production meets the rapper at his most poignant ("Born to mothers who couldn't deal with us/Left by fathers who wouldn't build with us"). "S.N.I.T.C.H." with Pharrell brings some light Neptunes soul into this ominous universe, "Suicide" is a raw Clipse flashback mashing with stuttering electro trap music, and "Hold On" with Rick Ross tastes like well-aged port as an uncredited Kanye brings the sweetness with background singing while the downtrodden lyrics offer the bitter and give the song some serious body. With Pusha's pen at full force and his performance a proper combination of cold and tense, the album is as if Clipse's Hell Hath No Fury were atom-smashed into something more artful and unstable. My Name Is My Name is a remarkable and vital solo debut.© David Jeffries /TiVo

Before releasing his first solo album, Puff Daddy (aka Sean "Puffy" Combs) was famous as the producer of the Notorious B.I.G., Junior Mafia, Craig Mack, Lil' Kim, and many other rappers. As he was making his solo debut, the Notorious B.I.G. was murdered, and that loss weighs heavily on Puff's mind throughout No Way Out. Even though the album has some funky party jams scattered throughout, the bulk of the album is filled with fear, sorrow, and anger, and it's not only evident on the tribute "I'll Be Missing You" (a duet with Faith Evans and 112 that is based on the Police's "Every Breath You Take") but also on gangsta anthems like "It's All About the Benjamins." That sense of loss makes No Way Out a more substantial album than most mid-'90s hip-hop releases, and even if it has flaws -- there's a bit too much filler and it runs a little long -- it is nevertheless a compelling, harrowing album that establishes Puff Daddy as a vital rapper in his own right.© Leo Stanley /TiVo

Talking about the first time she harmonized with Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt in 1975, Dolly Parton said, "We all got to singin' and it was absolutely incredible. It gives me chills, even now." Given Parton's remarkable life and career, one would imagine it would take a lot to prompt that reaction, but there's no false modesty in Dolly's words. Parton, Harris, and Ronstadt were all splendid vocalists on their own, but they'd also shown a talent for collaborating with others throughout their careers. And when the like-minded women decided to make an album together, they created something rare, a collaboration between three major stars that never smacks of ego. Parton, Harris, and Ronstadt brought out the best in one another on their brilliant 1987 album, Trio, with the group harmonies sounding even more glorious than their lead vocals. (Trio also found Parton and Ronstadt working with better and more flattering material than they'd had on their solo albums in quite a while.) Trio was enough of a success that the singers carved out time in their busy schedules to make another album together, 1999's Trio II, with similarly impressive results. Ronstadt's health prevents her from making another Trio album in the 21st century, but Rhino Records have given us the next best thing with The Complete Trio Collection. This three-disc set brings together Trio and Trio II in full with a bonus disc of 20 outtakes and alternate versions recorded during the sessions for the original albums. Both Trio and Trio II have aged quite well, especially the first album with its emphasis on acoustic, bluegrass-influenced arrangements that blend well with three-part harmonies. (As Harris quips in the liner notes, they were playing Americana music before it had a name.) And if disc three often covers material that appears elsewhere in the set, Parton, Harris, and Ronstadt tried enough different approaches to these songs that the variants still sound fresh, and the performances are a knockout throughout. At the end of an unreleased take of "You Don't Knock," Harris quietly says, "That one felt real good," and like Dolly, she speaks the truth. For fans of the original Trio albums, buying The Complete Trio Collection to get the disc of unreleased takes might seem a bit excessive, but for anyone with a taste for great country or folk singing who has never heard Parton, Harris, and Ronstadt's work together, this set is nothing less than essential.© Mark Deming /TiVo