The Complete Budokan 1978 captures some of Dylan's very first concert appearances in Japan and is an essential release for diehards, while an intriguing curio for the casual listener. Complete Budokan encompasses all of the material originally issued as a double LP in 1978, plus three dozen additional tracks. This lovingly remastered album, sourced from the original 24-channel multi-track analog tapes, sounds far crisper than the original release (especially the vocals). Released to coincide with the 45th anniversary of the original eight-show run at the infamous Budokan auditorium, we hear the entirety of two shows from February 28 and March 1, 1978. Bob Dylan is at a fascinating crossroads in his career here, and in fine voice. The album finds our hero in between the traveling circus that was the mid 1970s Rolling Thunder tour, and one year before his conversion to Christianity. Dylan shows us what a traditional American great he is, with a near-orchestral band and dramatically reworked takes on classic songs. Some of these arrangements are wonky, especially to modern ears. But they're always intriguingly put together, and intricately executed takes—the highlight being a knockdown, muscular "The Man in Me." It's clear from the start that this is not your grandpa's Dylan. Stirring leads on saxophone, mandolin, and fiddle deliver the vocal melodies to "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall." "Shelter from the Storm" is given a halting, reggae-ish tempo, a positively E Street-worthy sax solo, and the delightful touches one would expect from the Dead. Other tunes stray closer to a Vegas revue. "I Threw It All Away" is transformed into a full-blown showtune, as the backing vocals take center stage. One wonders if a line of chorus dancers were onstage for this or the lilting, tango-esque take on "Love Minus Zero." There is occasional flute, notably on "Mr. Tambourine Man," which we weren't sure about at first, but by the third listen we were absolutely digging it, even as it takes the tune straight to Margaritaville. © Mike McGonigal/Qobuz

Whether it's the atmospheric reverb on "Midnight Rambler," Byron Berline's fiddle (recorded outside on the street) on "Country Honk," or the meaty bass part that opens "Live with Me," Let It Bleed has always been an album full of intriguing sound. Add to that Merry Clayton's unforgettable vocal overdubs on "Gimme Shelter" (as well as its opening ghostly voices, washboard guiro scrapes and reverb-drenched guitar) and Let It Bleed, newly remastered by Bob Ludwig for its 50th anniversary reissue, is an album especially suited to the world of high resolution audio. From 1968 through 1972, no popular music act (except The Beatles) made better albums than The Rolling Stones. Their blockbuster run began in late 1968 with Beggars Banquet and continued through Let It Bleed (1969), Sticky Fingers (1971) and Exile on Main Street (1972). If Beggars Banquet was the sound of the band stripping down their sound and working out their frustrations over their legal tangles and impending departure of Brian Jones (replaced in June 1969 by Mick Taylor), Let It Bleed was the band emerging unbowed, with a new confidence and a dramatic leap in songwriting quality from Jagger/Richards, bookended by the ominous "Gimme Shelter" and the common sense rock gospel of "You Can't Always Get What You Want." Let It Bleed also acknowledges the band's deep roots in the blues with with an acoustic cover of Robert Johnson's "Love in Vain," Richards' prolific slide guitar parts and "Midnight Rambler," the band's "blues opera." Despite its popularity (#1 in UK and #3 in US), there's even a sleeper track—the underrated "Monkey Man," whose lyrics sum up the swinging '60s with impenetrable lines like, "I'm a cold Italian pizza / I could use a lemon squeezer / What you do?” Originally produced by Jimmy Miller and engineered by Glyn Johns, the new remastering is a sonic refresh with a larger soundstage that adds new detail to Jagger's vocal performance of "Love in Vain" and Richards' guitar work in "Midnight Rambler". Like all the recent ABKCO reissues from this period, this may well be the best Let It Bleed will ever sound. © Robert Baird / Qobuz

Following on the heels of an album where he repudiated his past with his greatest backing band, Blood on the Tracks finds Bob Dylan, in a way, retreating to the past, recording a largely quiet, acoustic-based album. But this is hardly nostalgia -- this is the sound of an artist returning to his strengths, what feels most familiar, as he accepts a traumatic situation, namely the breakdown of his marriage. This is an album alternately bitter, sorrowful, regretful, and peaceful, easily the closest he ever came to wearing his emotions on his sleeve. That's not to say that it's an explicitly confessional record, since many songs are riddles or allegories, yet the warmth of the music makes it feel that way. The original version of the album was even quieter -- first takes of "Idiot Wind" and "Tangled Up in Blue," available on The Bootleg Series, Vols. 1-3, are hushed and quiet (excised verses are quoted in the liner notes, but not heard on the record) -- but Blood on the Tracks remains an intimate, revealing affair since these harsher takes let his anger surface the way his sadness does elsewhere. As such, it's an affecting, unbearably poignant record, not because it's a glimpse into his soul, but because the songs are remarkably clear-eyed and sentimental, lovely and melancholy at once. And, in a way, it's best that he was backed with studio musicians here, since the professional, understated backing lets the songs and emotion stand at the forefront. Dylan made albums more influential than this, but he never made one better.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

The expectations of a son carrying on his deceased father's musical legacy are unenviable. That the son is carrying on his father's legacy under a similar—but not exactly identical—name, and in a similar—but not exactly identical—musical style, and with occasional—but not consistent—inclusions of his father's repertoire in live performances ... well, all that somehow manages to both scramble and increase those expectations. However, for the past 14 years, more than half as long as the original Penguin Cafe Orchestra performed under the leadership of Simon Jeffes, multi-instrumentalist Arthur Jeffes has been at the helm of Penguin Cafe, a group that not only includes no members of the Penguin Cafe Orchestra but also one that stakes its reputation on new, original material.Rain Before Seven is the sixth album of that original material and while Arthur Jeffes certainly doesn't shy away from evoking the multi-instrumental, quasi-folk/quasi-classical soundworld that his father pioneered in the 1970s, the younger Jeffes's approach leans much more heavily on the atmospheric soundscapes indulged in by many contemporary classical crossover artists. Although there's a raft of "real" instruments at work here—ranging from piano and strings to ukulele and (naturally) harmonium—there's a distinct sheen of digital architecture that undergirds the material on Rain Before Seven, giving it less of an organic sense of adventure and more like it's being optimized for music library placement or chill-vibes-playlist inclusion. Cuts like "Galahad" and "No One Really Leaves," are by no means unpleasant, but far less interesting than they could be, with rhythms that are pretty straightforward and undemanding, and arrangements that leave little to the imagination. Where Rain Before Seven really shines, however, is on the more complex and whimsical numbers, like "In Re Budd," which doesn't sound at all like a Harold Budd piano piece but does feature the balafon, a West African xylophone, making dense, circular rhythms and gentle, airborne melodies. Similarly, the album closer "Goldfinch" is both epic and intimate, with Jeffes & Co. pulling out all the instrumental stops, with strings pulling triple duty in quartet format, as well as wild violin solos and folksy fiddling. © Jason Ferguson/Qobuz

Released in September 2002, Forty Licks was the first compilation to bring together tracks from all of the Stones' different eras, and from all of the different labels they recorded for. The icing on these abundant forty tracks are four previously unreleased tracks: Don't Stop, Keys to Your Love, Stealing My Heart and Losing My Touch. There isn’t much to add beyond the tracklist, so many masterpieces follow one after the other: Street Fighting Man, Gimme Shelter, (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction, The Last Time, Jumpin' Jack Flash, Sympathy for the Devil, Wild Horses, Paint It, Black, Honky Tonk Women, Let's Spend the Night Together, Start Me Up, Brown Sugar, Miss You, Beast of Burden, Happy, Angie, It's Only Rock 'n Roll (But I Like It), and so on. The whole history of rock'n'roll (especially from the 60s and 70s) flashes before our ears. A magic trick lasting over two hours and forty minutes, during which the brilliant tandem Mick Jagger/Keith Richards invent a music nourished by blues, soul, country, gospel and funk. Vital! © Marc Zisman/Qobuz

GRRR Live! captures the December 15, 2012 concert the Rolling Stones held at Newark's Prudential Center as part of their 50 & Counting Tour. GRRR!, the multi-format 50th Anniversary compilation, was barely a month old at the time, hence the title of this belated 2023 release: the Stones were out hawking their hits, so why not name it after a comp few remember a decade later? As the concert was originally designed as a pay-per-view extravaganza, the show is packed with guest stars, ranging from the Stones' old mate Mick Taylor playing on "Midnight Rambler" and New Jersey's own home state hero Bruce Springsteen jamming on "Tumbling Dice" to young guns Black Keys, Lady Gaga, and Gary Clark, Jr. & John Mayer. The set list offers few surprises -- if you don't recognize a song, that's because it's a new tune added to GRRR! -- but the Stones are in fine form, never seeming tired of playing the hits in a fashion that guarantees a splendid time for one and all. © Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

How do you follow a monumental achievement like the 1972 masterpiece Exile on Main Street? The short answer is: you can't. And so if the Stones—who'd been on a massive roll of success from 1968's Beggars Banquet through Exile finally made a less than acclaimed album, who could blame them? Hence the tale of 1973's Goats Head Soup, the album forever blamed for the Stones inevitable stumble. While it's true that nothing on Goats Head Soup is on the level of Exile's many highlights ("Rip This Joint," "Tumbling Dice," "Sweet Virginia"), the album does have the Stones' finest near-ballad—the hit single "Angie"—and "Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker)," with Billy Preston on organ, and whose lyrics suddenly have fresh relevance ("The police in New York City/ They chased a boy right through the park/ And in a case of mistaken identity/ The put a bullet through his heart"). After that, however, it's a mixed bag. While they still can't be mistaken for top drawer Stones, much of the rest of the album—tunes like "Hide Your Love," "Winter" and "Can You Hear The Music"—is in retrospect not quite the filler they appeared to be in the wake of Exile. The last record produced by Jimmy Miller, who was key to their 1968-72 successes, Goats Head Soup was also one of the worst sounding Stones records before being remastered and reissued in 1994, 2009 and 2011 (Japan only), with the only difference between versions being censored or uncensored versions of the infamous last track, the Chuck Berry-styled rave up, "Star Star." Here the entire record is available for the first time in a much-improved 96kHz/24-bit hi-res mix. Among the included outtakes is a ripping instrumental take of "Dancing with Mr. D"—Mick Taylor playing slide is truly revelatory and "Scarlet" (with Jimmy Page on guitar) which while promising sounds unfinished. Also part of the reissue is the extraordinary Brussels Affair, a 1973 live show broadcast on French and American radio. Unquestionably essential, the pace of this greatest hits set has Mick Jagger out of breath the entire way. Mick Taylor has never played better and Charlie Watts, yes, the band's stone-faced metronome, turns in one of his most frantic performances. It’s the persuasive exclamation point on an overdue reappraisal of one of the Stones most maligned albums. © Robert Baird/Qobuz

In 2012, Alice Phoebe Lou left her native South Africa at the age of 19 to move to Berlin. She took to the streets of the city to sing covers of classics, until, in 2015, one of her performances (Walk On The Wild Side) went viral on YouTube. The following year, she released her debut album, entitled Orbit. Shelter is now already the fifth album from this prolific artist, who ended up moving back to South Africa in 2022. An anti-pop star par excellence, labelled "folksy" a little too quickly, the singer parades her free spirit all the way through Shelter, which she describes as a soothing farewell to the young girl she once was. The dreamy harmonies of Angel, Lately, Shine and Open My Door reflect the spirit of this record, with its gentle simplicity and charming vintage mood. A smooth rhythm section, piano, guitars and organ set the scene of the singer's hushed refuge. The peppier Shelter and Lose My Head show that appeasing messages can be communicated with effervescent energy. Halo and its vibraphone personifies the perfect harmony that Alice Phoebe Lou has struck between herself and her ego. On the whole, Shelter is a conversation between the artist and her intimate past; the song that concludes the album shows ties the end up beautifully as Lou addresses a younger woman whom she advises on how to blossom and affront the world around her. ©Nicolas Magenham/Qobuz  

Whether it's the atmospheric reverb on "Midnight Rambler," Byron Berline's fiddle (recorded outside on the street) on "Country Honk," or the meaty bass part that opens "Live with Me," Let It Bleed has always been an album full of intriguing sound. Add to that Merry Clayton's unforgettable vocal overdubs on "Gimme Shelter" (as well as its opening ghostly voices, washboard guiro scrapes and reverb-drenched guitar) and Let It Bleed, newly remastered by Bob Ludwig for its 50th anniversary reissue, is an album especially suited to the world of high resolution audio. From 1968 through 1972, no popular music act (except The Beatles) made better albums than The Rolling Stones. Their blockbuster run began in late 1968 with Beggars Banquet and continued through Let It Bleed (1969), Sticky Fingers (1971) and Exile on Main Street (1972). If Beggars Banquet was the sound of the band stripping down their sound and working out their frustrations over their legal tangles and impending departure of Brian Jones (replaced in June 1969 by Mick Taylor), Let It Bleed was the band emerging unbowed, with a new confidence and a dramatic leap in songwriting quality from Jagger/Richards, bookended by the ominous "Gimme Shelter" and the common sense rock gospel of "You Can't Always Get What You Want." Let It Bleed also acknowledges the band's deep roots in the blues with with an acoustic cover of Robert Johnson's "Love in Vain," Richards' prolific slide guitar parts and "Midnight Rambler," the band's "blues opera." Despite its popularity (#1 in UK and #3 in US), there's even a sleeper track—the underrated "Monkey Man," whose lyrics sum up the swinging '60s with impenetrable lines like, "I'm a cold Italian pizza / I could use a lemon squeezer / What you do?” Originally produced by Jimmy Miller and engineered by Glyn Johns, the new remastering is a sonic refresh with a larger soundstage that adds new detail to Jagger's vocal performance of "Love in Vain" and Richards' guitar work in "Midnight Rambler". Like all the recent ABKCO reissues from this period, this may well be the best Let It Bleed will ever sound. © Robert Baird / Qobuz

The Hurting would have been a daring debut for a pop-oriented band in any era, but it was an unexpected success in England in 1983, mostly by virtue of its makers' ability to package an unpleasant subject -- the psychologically wretched family histories of Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith -- in an attractive and sellable musical format. Not that there weren't a few predecessors, most obviously John Lennon's Plastic Ono Band album -- which was also, not coincidentally, inspired by the work of primal scream pioneer Arthur Janov. (But Lennon had the advantage of being an ex-Beatle when that meant the equivalent to having a box next to God's in the great arena of life, where Tears for Fears were just starting out.) Decades later, "Pale Shelter," "Ideas as Opiates," "Memories Fade," "Suffer the Children," "Watch Me Bleed," "Change," and "Start of the Breakdown" are powerful pieces of music, beautifully executed in an almost minimalist style. "Memories Fade" offers emotional resonances reminiscent of "Working Class Hero," while "Pale Shelter" functions on a wholly different level, an exquisite sonic painting sweeping the listener up in layers of pulsing synthesizers, acoustic guitar arpeggios, and sheets of electronic sound (and anticipating the sonic texture, if not the precise sound of their international breakthrough pop hit "Everybody Wants to Rule the World"). The work is sometimes uncomfortably personal, but musically compelling enough to bring it back across the decades.© Bruce Eder /TiVo

According to her brief liner notes, Patti Smith indulged the idea of a covers album, considering songs as far back as 1978 on the back pages of Jean Genet's Thief's Journal when she was still assembling her groundbreaking early catalog; it's evident she feels that covers have been part and parcel of her recording experience from the outset. Her debut, Horses, has her own apocalyptic version of Van Morrison's "Gloria" as well as a healthy portion of Chris Kenner's "Land of a Thousand Dances" inside "Land." On 1979's Wave she covered the Byrds "So You Want to Be (A Rock and Roll Star)," and scored with the single. Her intuitive reading of Bob Dylan's "Wicked Messenger" was a beautiful aspect of Gone Again in 1996, and she paid tribute to Allen Ginsberg by using one of his poems in "Spell," on 1997's Peace and Noise. And who can forget her reading of Pete Townshend's "My Generation" issued on the 30th Anniversary edition of Horses?While it's a popular notion these days to consider a covers album a stop-gap between albums, the truth is that Smith has never been in a hurry when it comes to recording, though she has been very productive over the last decade. She has always paid tribute in one form or another to her heroes, however disparate. This collection is a wondrous sampling of pop hits, hard rock, ballads, and soul done in Smith's inimitable way of interpreting songs -- by getting inside them and breathing their meaning, and often uncovering new shades of meaning -- from within. She begins with a newer, more spiritual reading of Jimi Hendrix's "Are You Experienced?" letting her fine band -- Jay Dee Daugherty, Lenny Kaye and Tony Shanahan -- pulse the tune's changes and vibe while she comes across as a shaman leading the way down into the underworld. Her taking on Tears for Fears' smash hit "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" may come as a surprise, but in her open-throated take, the tune brims with the wisdom of a prophetess proclaiming the folly of humankind's need for power and greed. And while her version of Neil Young's "Helpless" may come across as a bit too reverent, the seed of memory is what infuses her take on this beautiful ballad. Loss and remembrance become a memento mori, an effigy to those who who've traveled on from this plane of existence. "Gimme Shelter" is a natural, and it carries all the foreboding of an apocalypse out the original nearly 40 years later as if to say that Jagger and Richard were right all along. The tune becomes a plea for shelter, rather than a demand. George Harrison's "Within You Without You" is the complete blending of spiritual longing, with droning acoustic guitars, skittering snares and open chord drones from Kaye's electric and fleshly experience. Smith's read of Dylan's "Changing of the Guard" is ambitious. Where the original was drenched in mariachi horns and a female backing chorus, she overturns those trappings and accents Dylan's last expressionistic lyric. She sings as if everything is at stake in this clash between the forces of light and darkness, where Melville, Dumas, Joan of Arc, the myth of Orpheus and the tales of Ovid are informed by both biblical prophecy and the tarot. The meld of acoustic guitars, brushed drums and muted kickdrum wind around her. The piano and Kaye's muted electric guitars fill the space where most of the backing vocals and horns once were -- except where Smith's daughter Jesse Paris Smith harmonizes -- and seduce the emotion out of the nearly surreal narrative of renunciation.Perhaps no tune moves here like Smith's reading of "Smells Like Teen Spirit," with help from Sam Shepherd and John Cohen on banjo, Peter Stampfel on fiddle, and Kaye and Duncan Webster on guitar in a strange dreamscape driven by a standup bass. Smith digs into the lyric and then offers a poem that is as much an early American folk song elegy to the environment Kurt Cobain grew up in as it is to what's happening to America itself, but with current touches. Her poet's heart not only complements the original but makes the song timeless and brings Cobain's mature spirit to flesh once more. It is the most moving track on the set and the most visionary. Smith closes her set with a true outlaws campfire song in Gregg Allman's "Midnight Rider," and a darker than written, sparsely textured, elegiac cover of Stevie Wonder's "Pastime Paradise," with a truly haunting piano by Luis Resto. Her small notes annotating each track are welcome and revealing in and of themselves. If this is truly the covers album Smith has always wanted to record, she's succeeded on a level with the best of her studio recordings and a welcome addition to her catalog. Each song has her imprint without sacrificing the intent or spirit of the original. Full of slow burning passion and emotion, Twelve is magnificent.© Thom Jurek /TiVo

On the face of it, the self-titled debut from 15-year-old Birdy, aka Jasmine van den Bogaerde, doesn't seem any different from the hastily assembled cash-in covers albums released every year by the various X Factor alumni. But although its 11 renditions of mostly contemporary songs, many of which could be passed off as originals due to their previous lack of exposure, stick to the tried-and-tested talent show formula, that's where the comparisons end. Indeed, you won't find any karaoke standards or renditions of Miley Cyrus songs here, as this stripped-back collection of lesser-known hits and album tracks reads like a who's who of lo-fi hipster indie rock. The likes of the National's "Terrible Love" and Francis & the Lights' "I'll Never Forget You" offer little deviation from the source material, but for the most part, producers Rich Costey (Muse), James Ford (Arctic Monkeys), and Jim Abiss (Adele) strip the songs down to their bare bones, turning Cherry Ghost's everyman anthem "People Hold the People" into a tender torch song with its stately piano chords and mournful cello, toning down the aggression of the Naked & Famous' synth pop hit "Young Blood" with some muted beats and ethereal twinkling electronica, while somehow turning the already sparse "Shelter" from the xx's Mercury Music Prize winner into an even more skeletal and ghostly affair. As clever and subtle as these reworkings are, it's Birdy's youthful and fragile voice that steals the show, whether it's replicating the multi-layered harmonies of Fleet Foxes' "White Winter Hymnal," providing a poignancy to Bon Iver's "Skinny Love," or showcasing her scale-gliding abilities on the Postal Service's "The District Sleeps Alone Tonight." The gospel-tinged cover of James Taylor's "Fire and Rain," the only track to sound more expansive than the original, feels slightly out of place, while the unremarkable balladry of the only original composition, "Without a Word," suggests she might have to work a little harder on her songwriting skills if she's to avoid becoming a one-trick pony. The whole idea of Birdy sounds like a transparent attempt to court a more credible audience, but thanks to her haunting tones and a tasteful yet compelling production, it impressively avoids being the try-hard affair you'd expect.© Jon O'Brien /TiVo