A bassist vital to the US jazz scene since the 90’s – partner of choice for musicians as notable as Joe Henderson, Joshua Redman, Roy Hargrove, and Pat Metheny – Christian McBride, alongside his frequent work as a sideman (on over 300 records to date), leads a rich career as a frontman, expanding upon his orchestral formations (from trios to big band) in varying registers. He encompasses a large palette of styles that are always deeply anchored in the foundations of traditional African-American jazz. This new record conceived and recorded in partnership with another bass virtuoso, Edgar Meyer, himself exploring other idioms and imagining other landscapes (from bluegrass to “crossover” classical), indisputably introduces a new perspective to the bassist’s rich discography.Intended to feel like a conversation between friends, each speaking in a relaxed, playful tone, offering support through active listening in order for each to be able to “play their own melody” with full peace and security of mind, But Who’s Gonna Play the Melody? sounds like a charming and timeless departure into a world entirely dedicated to the bass. Applying their great virtuosity towards each melody, without ever veering into competitive territory, the two musicians, with an irresistibly natural sense of groove, never cease to seduce the listener through a repertoire that draws not only from jazz, but also from folk, classical music, bluegrass, and funk, making room for the kind of collective memory that goes beyond styles and generations. An album with no pretense other than the pure pleasure of playing music – authentically all-encompassing in the best possible way. © Stéphane Ollivier/Qobuz

Love it or hate it, Over-Nite Sensation was a watershed album for Frank Zappa, the point where his post-'60s aesthetic was truly established; it became his second gold album, and most of these songs became staples of his live shows for years to come. Whereas the Flo and Eddie years were dominated by rambling, off-color comedy routines, Over-Nite Sensation tightened up the song structures and tucked sexual and social humor into melodic, technically accomplished heavy guitar rock with jazzy chord changes and funky rhythms; meanwhile, Zappa's growling new post-accident voice takes over the storytelling. While the music is some of Zappa's most accessible, the apparent callousness and/or stunning sexual explicitness of "Camarillo Brillo," "Dirty Love," and especially "Dinah-Moe Humm" leave him on shaky aesthetic ground. Zappa often protested that the charges of misogyny leveled at such material missed out on the implicit satire of male stupidity, and also confirmed intellectuals' self-conscious reticence about indulging in dumb fun; however, the glee in his voice as he spins his adolescent fantasies can undermine his point. Indeed, that enjoyment, also evident in the silly wordplay, suggests that Zappa is throwing his juvenile crassness in the face of critical expectation, asserting his right to follow his muse even if it leads him into blatant stupidity (ironic or otherwise). One can read this motif into the absurd shaggy-dog story of a dental floss rancher in "Montana," the album's indisputable highlight, which features amazing, uncredited vocal backing from Tina Turner and the Ikettes. As with much of Zappa's best '70s and '80s material, Over-Nite Sensation could be perceived as ideologically problematic (if you haven't got the constitution for FZ's humor), but musically, it's terrific.© Steve Huey /TiVo

After the catharsis of 2021's Act 1, Imagine Dragons complete the story with Mercury: Act 2, a whopping 18-track journey that examines the time after the shock and grief of loss has begun to settle. While part one processed those messy emotions with some of the rawest and most vulnerable moments in the band's usual radio- and gym-friendly catalog, part two loses focus by biting off more than they can chew. There are plenty of great songs here -- fully expected for a band as hook-savvy as Imagine Dragons -- but there's simply too much going on and not enough editorial trimming to make this as impactful an experience as Act 1. Starting strong with irresistible singles "Bones" and "Sharks," Act 2 soon takes a turn to the pensive and reflective, with frontman Dan Reynolds lamenting his shortcomings on "I Don't Like Myself" and pleading for relief on "Take It Easy." The second half of the album is weighed down by similar moments, snuffing the momentum of the handful of classic stompers peppered throughout. Of this introspective bunch, the country-dusted acoustic gem "Crushed" is on par with "Wrecked" as a tearjerking standout, as "Sirens" merges the group's usual radio-friendly ear with a deep well of emotion. While the buoyant handclaps-and-synths highlight "Younger" and the riffs-and-breakbeats blazer "Blur" come closest to joining their array of mainstream smashes on a future Greatest Hits set, the bulk of Act 2 is truly for the dedicated fans who care to patiently sit with Reynolds and his feelings until everyone's ready to pump out a more focused and immediate set. [Compiling both parts on Mercury: Acts 1 & 2, the band presents the full experience across an expansive 32 tracks, which joins Act 1 and 2 as well as the hit single "Enemy" with JID from the Arcane League of Legends soundtrack.]© Neil Z. Yeung /TiVo

Tom Waits collaborated with director Robert Wilson and librettist William Burroughs on the musical stage work The Black Rider in 1990. A variation on the Faust legend, the 19th century German story allowed Waits to indulge his affection for the music of Kurt Weill and address one of his favorite topics of recent years, the devil. Waits had proven an excellent collaborator when he worked with director Francis Ford Coppola on One from the Heart, making that score an integral part of the film. Here, the collaboration and the established story line served to focus Waits' often fragmented attention, lending coherence and consistency. He then had three years to adapt the score into a record album in which he did most of the singing and writing (though Burroughs contributed, singing one song and writing lyrics to three), and he used the time to come up with his best recording in a decade, a varied set of songs that work whether or not you know the show. (Seven of the 20 tracks were instrumentals.) Waits used the word "crude" to describe his working method several times in the liner notes, and a crude performing and recording style continued to appeal to him. But the kind of chaos that can sometimes result from that style was reined in by the bands he assembled in Germany and Los Angeles to record the score, so that the recordings were lively without being off-puttingly primitive. © William Ruhlmann /TiVo

This is certainly not the only collection of popular Christmas carols from one of Britain's venerable collegiate choirs, and the Choir of King's College, Cambridge, conducted then as now by Stephen Cleobury, has even issued one in the past, containing many of the carols sung here. Are there distinctive strengths? Absolutely. One is the mostly fresh set of arrangements, by Cleobury and others, that enliven the material with chromaticism, often in a slightly humorous way. And then there's the presence of a couple of new hymns, one of which, Bob Chilcott's The Shepherd's Carol, just might turn into a permanent addition to the repertory. (Both that and a carol by Rutter were commissioned by the choir.) But above the individual attractions looms the solid quality of the recording. Cleobury gets from the choristers an ideal balance of purity, conviction, musical sensitivity, and a bit of gutsiness, and the whole program brings a feeling of newness to the most familiar musical materials of all. Those in search of a Christmas carol recording from one of Britain's top collegiate choirs can buy with confidence here.© TiVo

Conversations with Christian is an unusual release, as it features the veteran bassist playing duets with a number of good friends. The vocal meetings include Angélique Kidjo, Sting, and Dee Dee Bridgewater (the latter with a hilarious, funky cover of the Isley Brothers' signature song "It's Your Thing"). The pairings with musicians of McBride's generation (trumpeter Roy Hargrove, tenor saxophonist Ron Blake, and guitarist Russell Malone) all exceed expectations. There are several enjoyable duets with pianists, one featuring Latin jazz master Eddie Palmieri, a duo improvised tango by Chick Corea and the leader, plus an all too rare acoustic outing by the talented George Duke (who tears up the keyboard with his hard-charging "McDukey Blues"). But McBride's meetings with Dr. Billy Taylor (playing his beautiful "Spiritual" with some potent arco playing by the bassist) and the elegant, swinging meeting with the gifted jazz master Hank Jones ("Alone Together") remain moments to savor, as they are among the final recordings by the two jazz greats, both of whom died in 2010. The last track is a funky blues just for laughs, with actress Gina Gershon joining the bassist by playing a Jew's harp, and featuring lots of comic spoken exchanges between the two. Throughout it all, Christian McBride plays with the chameleon-like adaptability of a Milt Hinton or Ray Brown. In the two-plus decades since arriving on the jazz scene, Christian McBride has demonstrated that he is a jazz master in the making, and this is easily one of his most compelling sets. © Ken Dryden /TiVo

Though the reissue campaign that presented PJ Harvey's albums with their demos was extensive, it still didn't gather everything in her archives. She fills in those gaps with B-Sides, Demos & Rarities, a comprehensive set of harder-to-find and previously unreleased material that covers three decades of music. Kicking off with a handful of previously unreleased demos, the collection celebrates what makes each track special within Harvey's chronology. Short but fully realized versions of "Dry" and "Man-Size" reaffirm that by the time she hits the record button, she knows exactly what she's doing; the guitar and voice sketches of "Missed" and "Highway 61 Revisited" are as formidable as the finished takes; and the demo of the B-side "Me Jane" (yes, that's how thorough this set is) offers one of the Rid of Me era's catchiest songs in an even rawer state. B-Sides, Demos & Rarities reinforces just how vital Harvey's non-album tracks are to her creative trajectory. The uncanny carnival oompah of "Daddy," a "Man-Size" B-side, feels like one of the earliest forays into the eeriness that gave an extra thrill to To Bring You My Love, White Chalk, and much of Harvey's later work. She continues Is This Desire?'s experimentation on "The Bay," which contrasts songwriting befitting a classic folk ballad with pulsing keyboards and jazzy rhythms, and continues to try to make sense of the world's chaos on Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea-era material spanning the whispery Saturn return of "30" to "This Wicked Tongue," an updated expression of biblical sin, desire, and torment that delivers one of the set's most quintessentially PJ Harvey moments. Fittingly for such an anachronistic-sounding album, White Chalk's B-sides reach back to Harvey's earliest days: "Wait" and "Heaven" date back to 1989 and deliver sprightly, strummy folk-pop that's almost unrecognizable as her work. The set's previously unreleased music contains just as many revelations. One of its most notable previously missing puzzle pieces is the demo of Uh Huh Her's title track. A shockingly pure expression of rage, jealousy, and sorrow, it may have been too raw and revealing even for a PJ Harvey album, but it's a shame that it and the like-minded "Evol" didn't make the cut. Conversely, "Why'd You Go to Cleveland," a 1996 collaboration between Harvey and John Parish, and the 2012 demo "Homo Sappy Blues" are downright playful, proving the complete picture of her music includes something akin to fun. Highlights from the collection's 2010s material include "An Acre of Land," a lush ballad rooted in the British folk traditions that are just as essential to her music as punk or the blues, and the 2019 cover of Nick Cave's "Red Right Hand," which pays homage to a kindred spirit while transforming the song into something more desolate and plaintive. A must-listen for anyone following Harvey's archival series, B-Sides, Demos & Rarities serves as a fascinating parallel primer to her music and the multitudes within it.© Heather Phares /TiVo

Zappa in New York was recorded in December 1976 at the Palladium and originally intended for release in 1977. It was held up due to arguments between Frank Zappa and his then-record label, Warner Bros. When the two-LP set finally appeared in March 1978, Warner had deleted "Punky's Whips," a song about drummer Terry Bozzio's attraction to Punky Meadows of Angel. The Zappa band, which includes bassist Patrick O'Hearn, percussionist Ruth Underwood, and keyboard player Eddie Jobson, along with a horn section including the two Brecker brothers, was one of the bandleader's most accomplished, which it had to be to play songs like "Black Page," even in the "easy" version presented here. Zappa also was at the height of his comic stagecraft, notably on songs like "Titties & Beer," which is essentially a comedy routine between Zappa and Bozzio, and "The Illinois Enema Bandit," which features TV announcer Don Pardo.© William Ruhlmann /TiVo

On Real Gone, Tom Waits walks a fraying tightrope. By utterly eliminating one of the cornerstone elements of his sound -- keyboards -- he has also removed his safety net. With songwriting and production partner Kathleen Brennan, he strips away almost everything conventional from these songs, taking them down to the essences of skeletal rhythms, blasted and guttural blues, razor-cut rural folk music, and the rusty-edge poetry and craft of songwriting itself. His cast includes guitarists Marc Ribot and Harry Cody, bassist/guitarist Larry Taylor, bassist Les Claypool, and percussionists Brain and Casey Waits (Tom's son), the latter of whom also doubles on turntables. This does present problems, such as on the confrontational opener, "Top of the Hill." Waits uses his growling, grunting vocal atop Ribot's monotonously funky single-line riff and Casey's turntables to become a human beatbox offering ridiculously nonsensical lyrics. It's a throwaway, and the album would have been better had it been left off entirely. But it's also a canard, a sleight-of-hand strategy he's employed before. The jewels shine from the mud immediately after. The mutated swamp tango of "Hoist That Rag" has stuttered clangs and quakes for drums, decorated by distorted Latin power chords and riffs from Ribot, along with thundering deep bass from Claypool. On the ten-plus minute "Sins of My Father," Cody's spooky banjo walks with Taylor's low-strung bass and Waits' shimmering reverbed guitar as he ominously croons, revealing a rigged game of "star-spangled glitter" where "justice wears suspenders and a powdered wig." It's part revelation, part East of Eden, and part backroom political culture framed by the eve of the apocalypse. It's hunted, hypnotic, and spooky. In stripping away convention, Waits occasionally lets his songs go to extremes with absurd simplicity, such as on "Don't Go into That Barn," a musical cousin to his spoken "What's He Building?" from Mule Variations. But there's also the downright riotous squall of "Shake It," which sounds like an insane carny barker jamming with R.L. Burnside, or the riotous raging blues of "Baby Gonna Leave Me." There are "straight" narratives such as "How's It Gonna End," with its slow and brooding beat storyline, and the moving murder ballad "Dead and Lovely," with its drooping, shambolic elegance. There's the spoken word "Circus," with its wispy spindly frame that features Waits on chamberlain. And "Metropolitan Glide" feels like a hell-bent duet between James Brown and Captain Beefheart's Magic Band, followed by the fractured, busted-love, ranting-at-God pain that rips through "Make It Rain." The tender "Green Grass" is among Waits' finest broken love songs; it's movingly rendered by a character who could have resided in one of William Kennedy's novels. The set closes with "Day After Tomorrow," featured on MoveOn.org's Future Soundtrack for America. It is one of the most insightful and understated antiwar songs to have been written in decades. It contains not a hint of banality or sentiment in its folksy articulation. Real Gone is another provocative moment for Waits, one that has problems, but then, all his records do. His excesses, however, do nothing to cloud the stellar achievements of his risk-taking vision and often brilliant execution.© Thom Jurek /TiVo

Gershwin's World is a tour de force for Herbie Hancock, transcending genre and label, and ranking among the finest recordings of his lengthy career. Released to coincide with the 100th anniversary of George Gershwin's birth, this disc features jazzman Hancock with a classy collection of special guests. The most surprising of Hancock's guest stars is Joni Mitchell, who delivers a gorgeously sensual vocal on "The Man I Love," then provides an airy, worldly take on "Summertime." On these two tracks, she shows she has come a long way from her folksinger beginnings to become a first-class jazz singer in her own right. Stevie Wonder's unmistakable harmonica complements Mitchell's singing on "Summertime" and shares lead instrument space with his own voice on the W.C. Handy classic "St. Louis Blues." Jazzman extraordinaire Wayne Shorter smokes a solo spot on Duke Ellington's "Cotton Tail" and carves out some space for his soprano saxophone in the midst of "Summertime." A number of the young lions of jazz are featured on various cuts, and Herbie's old pal Chick Corea joins the leader for a piano duet of James P. Johnson's "Blueberry Rhyme." Gershwin's wonderful, extended "Lullaby" finds Hancock teamed with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, as does an attractive arrangement of a "Concerto for Piano and Orchestra" by Maurice Ravel, whose jazz influence can be heard on the piece. In addition, one of the most beautiful tracks on the album places star soprano Kathleen Battle's voice at the forefront of Gershwin's own "Prelude in C# Minor." Yet with all the fine performances by his guests, Gershwin's World remains Hancock's show, and he plays magnificently throughout. From beautiful to funky, percussive to melodic, improvisational to tightly arranged, Hancock and cohorts take a wondrous journey through the music and world of Gershwin.© TiVo

At the age of 33, and after a good ten albums for different labels including EmArcy and Mack Avenue, guitarist Julian Lage has now come knocking at Blue Note's door. Now settled in New York, this former Californian child prodigy is making his big début at the prestigious firm with his close friend, the double bass player Jorge Roeder and Bad Plus drummer Dave King. This pair had already made an appearance on Love Hurts, Lage's 2019 album made up of covers of artists ranging from Roy Orbison to Ornette Coleman. Squint takes a different approach: nine of the eleven tracks here are original material. This focus on his own writing showcases even more of Lage's talent: a talent which is truly broad, as the styles here alternate between jazz, blues and even rock. And here, as elsewhere, the breadth of his influences is on display too: Jim Hall, Pat Metheny and Bill Frisell. But when it comes to his improvisations, Julian Lage has his own language, with dazzling clarity (as on his superb version of Emily by Johnny Mandel and Johnny Mercer) and a stunning gift for a slick melody (for example, the very beautiful theme Day and Age and its whiff of Americana). A true virtuoso, Lage is no show-off, but displays real class. © Marc Zisman / Qobuz

Croce's debut ABC album was also his commercial breakthrough, topping the charts for five weeks, largely due to the comic, up-tempo title tune, a story song about competing pool hustlers, although Croce also reached the Top 20 with the change-of-pace ballad "Operator (That's Not the Way It Feels)." Just after his death, ABC issued the track "Time in a Bottle," and a newly ironic message propelled it to number one.© William Ruhlmann /TiVo

The reels, jigs, strathspeys, airs, hornpipes, and more on this album suggest a folk release, but that is not quite so; the music is performed from printed notation and taken from publications of Scots and Irish "national" music in the 18th century. It is performed on a mixture of classical and folk instruments. Certainly, the distinction is, in some sense, an artificial one; it doesn't matter whether this is classical or folk music. This is the second such release by The Curious Bards, and either one might indeed be interesting to folk musicians, who may find that some of the tunes have survived the centuries in oral tradition. So have some of the performance practices; the pieces are mostly grouped into sets that may accelerate as they go along. Some of the vocal pieces are in Gaelic, others in English. To the classical side, published arrangements of folk music seem to have been an important part of 18th century musical life, and this repertory has been little explored; that makes this release by The Curious Bards valuable. Most of the music is anonymous, but there are a few pieces by the Irish national composer Turlough O'Carolan. The biggest reason to hear Indiscretion is that the music is thoroughly enjoyable. There is great variety in theme in the vocal pieces, from playful to sad, and rhythmically in the instrumental pieces, from the jigs to little variation sets to the spiky strathspeys. The performances are brisk and not precious, the singing by various vocalists unmannered. Anyone from either side of the folk-classical divide will enjoy this release.© James Manheim /TiVo

This 51-track collection digs into the back catalogue of Chris Rea, covering the years between 1978 and 1984. Included are a number of singles -- such as "Fool (If You Think It’s Over)" -- alongside a number of demos, b-sides, and Spanish language versions.© Rich Wilson /TiVo

Like Latto, Doja, Nicki, and others before her, Coi Leray makes a smart and savvy pivot into the pop mainstream with COI. Balancing pure pop earworms with edgier, hardcore aggression, she shoots for the stratosphere with intentionally crowd-pleasing fare, such as the album's global smash "Players," a multi-platinum hit that samples Grandmaster Flash's "The Message." Speaking of samples, there's a load of familiar sounds floating around COI, including Hall & Oates' "Rich Girl" on the aptly titled kiss-off "Bitch Girl"; Lesley Gore's "It's My Party," which is transformed into an equally cheeky (but way saucier) "My Body"; and Daft Punk's robo-list-reader "Technologic," which gets a little twist with the additional imperative on the spare, chest-thumping "Phuck It." One of the more recognizable interpolations arrives in the form of "Make My Day" with frequent collaborator David Guetta, who cuts Technotronic's "Pump Up the Jam" lyric into a throbbing, hedonist anthem. Guetta sticks around for "Man's World" (a spin on the James Brown classic) and the surprise rock number "Black Rose," which slaps riffs and pounding drums on a stadium-sized singalong that hints at exciting, genre-hopping possibilities for the artist. Additional guests include Saucy Santana, Giggs, Lola Brooke, and Skillibeng, with each adding their own special touch to the set, from '90s house to grime to dancehall. However transparent, this stylistic shift is, in the very least, an interesting move for Leray. But, at its most passable, COI is an engaging play with enough highlights to pack a playlist and keep the party moving.© Neil Z. Yeung /TiVo

After debuting in 2011 with the evocative If..., a largely orchestral, all-instrumental set inspired by author Italo Calvino's 1979 post-modernist novel If on a Winter's Night a Traveler, former Coral guitarist Bill Ryder-Jones seemed poised to go the film score route, which he had shown interest in shortly after leaving his flagship band. Instead, he released the lovely A Bad Wind Blows in My Heart, an equally evocative, yet more traditional collection of songs that suggest what Nick Drake might have sounded like had he emerged in the early aughts instead of the late '60s. Measured, melancholy, and mysterious, Jones' debut as a singer/songwriter is as subtle as it is striking, skillfully marrying the sedate melancholy of Elliott Smith with the sly, darkly comic lyricism of the National. Recorded in his old childhood bedroom in his mother's house in Liverpool, A Bad Wind Blows in My Heart can feel a bit like an exorcism, and there's an extra shade of intimacy to stand-out cuts like the sad and sensual "Hanging Song," the wry, Luke Haines-inspired "You're Getting Like Your Sister," and the impossibly lonesome "There's a World Between Us," the latter of which is one of a few songs that threatens to break into Chris Isaak's "Wicked Game" at any moment, but it never feels like a self-absorbed, autobiographical bore, as Jones' is an enigmatic enough narrator and a gifted enough arranger that what initially seems like ephemera turns out to be surprisingly affecting. © James Christopher Monger /TiVo