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Loved by fans but underrated or derided as a showman rather than an innovator by purists, the late Canadian pianist Oscar Peterson, who won seven Grammy Awards and released over 200 albums in his lifetime, is also often thought of as one of the great keyboard accompanists from his time backing Ella Fitzgerald. An apostle of a crowd-pleasing mainstream aesthetic, Peterson could also be an engaging straight-ahead jazz player especially when pushed, which on this unreleased "lost" recording from a 1987 European tour, is done by virtuoso electric guitarist Joe Pass. Recorded at Helsinki's Kulttuuritalo by Heikki Hölttä and Pentti Männikkö of the Finnish Broadcasting Company in clear, beautifully balanced sound, the set opens with a trio of Peterson compositions, one of which, "Love Ballade," is a long, undeniably beautiful example of Peterson the writer and player at his sweetest and soulful best. Despite the title, the three-part "A Salute to Bach," is a anything but a dry attempt to replicate the classical keyboard master although there are moments during its 20-minute run time—particularly in the Andante section—where Peterson ups the tempos and plays passages that vaguely imitate Bach's style. Pass is especially wonderful in this piece, staying alongside the pianist as the pace increases, adding exclamations and competing heat to the racing fires. Supported by Peterson's longtime rhythm section of English drummer Martin Drew and fellow Canadian bassist Dave Young, all the musicians settle into a familiar groove in the concert's all standards second half where Peterson favorite, Benny Goodman's "Soft Winds," gets a swinging reading with the pianist's fleet digits adding his trademark showy runs. Listeners can decide if Peterson's lively take on Bill Evans' "Waltz for Debby," which contains a brief quote from "Pop Goes the Weasel," is either evidence that Peterson had no interest in being a serious jazz player as he frolics and improvises around the familiar melody, or the enjoyable transformation of an overly serious jazz number into an accessible showpiece. That's followed by a pair of sure-to-please showstoppers with Pass weaving his gentle way through "When You Wish Upon a Star," while the entire band joins for a rousing medley of Ellington tunes that opens with "Take the A Train." Welcoming and apparent, Peterson was the master of quartet jazz made for the masses. © Robert Baird/Qobuz

Anybody who has followed Jack White's online screeds and offstage brawls knows that the White Stripes' mastermind can tend to get a little, well, defensive when he's challenged (and sometimes even when he's not), but this trait hasn't always surfaced on record -- at least not in the way he and his merry band of Raconteurs do on their second album, Consolers of the Lonely. At the very least, this bubbling blend of bizarro blues, rustic progressive rock, fractured pop, and bludgeoning guitars is a finger in the eye to anyone who dared call the band a mere power pop trifle, proof that the Raconteurs are a rock & roll band, but it's not just the sound of the record that's defiant. There's the very nature of the album's release: how it was announced to the world a week before its release when it then appeared in all formats in all retail outfits simultaneously; there's the obstinately olde-fashioned look of the art work, how the group is decked out like minstrels at a turn-of-the century carnival, or at least out of Dylan's Masked and Anonymous. Most of all, there's the overriding sense that the Raconteurs are turning into an outlet for every passing fancy that Jack has but will not allow himself to indulge within the confines of the tightly controlled White Stripes, whether it's melodramatic Western operas like "The Switch and the Spur" (whose concluding bridge states "any poor souls who trespass against us...will be suffer the bite or be stung dead on sight", functioning as a virtual manifesto for the band), or the slick studio trickery that makes this the biggest White-related production yet. And it's hard to shake the feeling that this is the show of Jack White III (as he now insists on billing himself, playing right into his ongoing Third Man fetish), as that despite the even split in songwriting and producing credits between Jack and Brendan Benson, and even how they trade off lead vocals, that only White could have pushed the Raconteurs to get as stubbornly, stiffly weird as they do here. Of course, that impression is not tempered by how Brendan mimics Jack's manic blues babble, particularly on the spitfire "Salute Your Solution" -- White does follow Benson's gentle, rounded phrasing on the elongated melodies, but that's a subtle distinction overpowered by the force of Jack's concepts. And this is indeed "concepts" in plural: how cult hero Terry Reid is used as a touchstone for the band's progressive blues-rock via a blazing cover of "Rich Kid Blues," or how there's an evocation of the old weird America in all the album's rambling centerpieces, or how half of the record fights against pop brevity, while all of it is a deathblow against the idea that the Raconteurs are power pop sissies. Sometimes, the group hits against that notion with a bluesy bluster, especially on the opening pair of tunes which tread a bit too closely toward Jack conventions, sometimes their attempts to stretch out are either ill-defined ("Attention," "You Don't Understand Me") or collapse under their own weight ("Many Shades of Black"), but the moments that do work -- and there are many -- make for the best music the Raconteurs have yet made. The album truly kicks into gear with the tipsy country stomp of "Old Enough" and after that, there's a series of remarkable moments: that absurd Morricone dust-up "The Switch and the Spur"; "Hold Up," which rages like '70s Stones at their sleaziest; the rampaging "Five on the Five"; that splendid Reid cover that finds its heir on the steadily building "These Stones Will Shout," and finally, the closing backwoods ballad on "Carolina Drama." These songs illustrate all the ways that Jack White's stubborn stylization pays off -- they're quite deliberate in their conflation of the traditional and modern, yet they never sound over-thought, they kick and crackle as pure kinetic music. Broken Boy Soldiers lacked tunes like these, tunes with considerable weight, and these songs turn Consolers of the Lonely into a lop-sided, bottom-loaded album that's better and richer than their debut.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

Richly detailed, alternately rugged and studio slick, the airy and expressive debut album from Montreal's Half Moon Run is caught somewhere between the pastoral, harmony-laden northwoods folk of Fleet Foxes, the hazy classic rock meanderings of Band of Horses, and the soulful midnight din of Alt-J and Jeff Buckley. Formed via a craigslist ad, the band's internal anonymity is hardly relative with regard to its cohesiveness, as each track on the brainy yet intuitive Dark Eyes sounds like the sum of its parts, but there is enough space between those parts to suggest a sort of unspoken agreement to avoid any sort of showboating. This predilection for musical mindfulness is best exemplified by album opener "Full Circle," a carefully tiered, slow-burn brooder that churns along like a river swollen with menace, and then manages to explode without any sort of real violence. The effect is surprisingly and elegantly dramatic, and when Half Moon Run mine this particular cadence, as they do on standout cuts like "No More Losing the War," "Fire Escape," and "Give Up," the latter of which sounds like it morphed out of the early moments of Radiohead's "Paranoid Android," they cast a spell that can prove difficult to break free of. That elegance is retained on more mellifluous offerings like the breezy "Call Me in the Afternoon" and the multi-layered, electro-pop-kissed closer, "21 Gun Salute," both of which lean harder toward the Alt-J side of the equation, but they lack the command of atmosphere and sense of purpose that drive the darker numbers.© James Christopher Monger /TiVo

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It's only been seven years between Just Whitney and 2009's I Look to You, not even Houston's longest time between albums, but it feels much, much longer, her glory days obscured in hazy memories of lost luster chiefly deriving from a bad marriage with Bobby Brown, chronicled in an embarrassing reality show for Bravo in 2004. I Look to You attempts to wash this all away with something of a return to roots -- a celebration of Houston's deep disco beginnings, tempered with a few skyscraping ballads designed to showcase her soaring voice. Houston's rocky decade isn't ignored, but it isn't explored, either: songs allude to Whitney's strength, her willpower as a survivor struggling through some unnamed struggle -- enough for listeners to fill in the blanks, either with their own experience or their imaginings of Houston's life. More than the songs, Whitney's voice tells the tale of her lost decade. The highs are diminished, the sweetness sanded away, leaving her a thick, knotty powerful growl that has an emotional pull not quite like a ravaged latter-day Billie Holiday, but not all that far removed, either; at the very least, Whitney can still sing, knowing when to wring emotion out of a phrase, knowing when not to push for the glory notes that she can no longer hit. This diminished skill set actually serves the showboating showstoppers well, turning them into something that operates on a human scale, injecting them with something approximating warmth, something that the songs quite deliberately avoid. Also, there just aren't that many of them on I Look to You, either. Most of the album splits the difference between burnished neo-disco and modern soul, aware of fashion but not pandering to them. Which isn't to say that these songs are necessarily age-appropriate, either: they're suspended in time and fashion, tinged with nostalgia but not quite taking into account that Houston isn't now (and never really was) a creature of the clubs. What she undoubtedly is, is a pro -- she sells these subdued glitzy productions, she makes boring songs interesting, she remains a forceful, tangible presence. With this admirable, if not quite successful, un-comeback out of the way, maybe she can pull away from the spotlight and settle into the serious business of finding songs to suit her new voice.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

Rich Robinson decided to reach out to Marc Ford in 2014, a gesture that healed a decade's worth of animosity between the two Black Crowes guitarists. They in turn brought former Crowes keyboardist Eddie Harsch into a circle that included Robinson's touring band -- which also featured Sven Pipien, who played bass in the waning days of the Black Crowes -- and this crew of seven musicians and three backup singers formed the Magpie Salute. Harsch passed during the recording of the group's eponymous 2017 debut -- they recruited Matt Slocum in his place -- but the essential fact remains: the Magpie Salute sound like a reconstituted version of the Black Crowes, only heavier. Some of that weight is due to how the focus of the group is on the interplay between Robinson and Ford, who keep spiraling solos and riffs, intertwining and weaving instead of battling. Some of this heaviness is also due to the absence of Chris Robinson, who was a charismatic frontman in the Crowes and also brought along a strong dose of hippie mysticism. Despite a cover of Pink Floyd's "Fearless," the Magpie Salute have no time for the cosmos. They're proudly earthbound as they crank out versions of old Delaney & Bonnie and Faces tunes, dabbling in a few deep Crowes cuts for good measure. The presence of these oldies underscores how this group is mature -- not as reckless in approach, but confident and assured, a band of lifers who still gain sustenance from playing the music of their life.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo