An absolute delight, the first full-length album from singer-songwriter supergroup boygenius truly plays to its members' individual and collective strengths. (Credits extend to Autolux's Carla Azar on drums and Jay Som's Melina Duterte on bass.) Each is allowed to shine equally, taking lead on their own songs—but also bring out surprising, shining qualities in the others. "True Blue" sounds like a track from one of Lucy Dacus' solo records, filled out with pure harmonies and grand, low-key drama. Dacus is brilliant at pinpointing fine, evocative details—bandmate Phoebe Bridgers says of her, "Lucy's a noticer"—and there's no shortage in this tale of real, messy friendship that thrills and bruises: "When you moved to Chicago/ You were spinning out … When you called me from the train/ Water freezing in your eyes/ You were happy and I wasn't surprised." Julien Baker's vibrant "$20," likewise, delivers her trademark nervous edge, but the trio take it to unexpected places: First, Bridgers and Dacus thread a gossamer string of ethereal sweetness through Baker's earthiness; later, the three sing over each other in a glorious round robin of conversation until Bridgers, desperate to get her message across, shreds her throat raw yelling out "Can you give me $20?!" They trade lines on "Not Strong Enough," playing around with Cure guitars (acknowledged in Baker's verse: "Drag racing through the canyon/ Singing 'Boys Don't Cry'") and interpolating Sheryl Crow ("Not strong enough to be your man/ I tried, I can't"). That one builds to an excellent '80s anthemic bridge, with the three chanting "Always an angel, never a god." "Cool About It" summons a Simon & Garfunkel-style folk melody and layers on 2023 cleverness with thoughts like, "I took your medication to know what it's like/ Now I have to act like I can't read your mind." "Satanist" delights in off-kilter and herky-jerky chords à la early Weezer, before sliding sideways into a woozy dreamscape. Even a tossed-off lark like "Without You Without Them"—with sweet, a capella Andrews Sisters harmonies—charms. Bridgers' "Emily I'm Sorry" is particularly moody and moving, while stoic "We're in Love" is a stark portrait of Dacus and a guitar for nearly eight tear-jerking minutes before the others float in for support. Perhaps the most revealing is "Leonard Cohen," so intimate you can hear fingers sliding on strings. It's a true story about the trio's friendship and a time Bridgers was so excited to play an Iron and Wine song for her bandmates that she lost track of her surroundings. "On the on-ramp you said/ 'If you love me you will listen to this song'/ And I could tell you were serious/ So I didn't tell you you were driving the wrong way on the interstate/ Until the song was done," Dacus sings, before showing off their grateful love for each other: "Never thought you'd happen to me." © Shelly Ridenour/Qobuz 

Antonio Vivaldi's Le Quattro Stagioni is one of the most beloved works in Baroque music, and even the most casual listener can recognize certain passages of Spring or Winter from frequent use in television commercials and films. Yet if these concertos have grown a little too familiar to experienced classical fans, Max Richter has disassembled them and fashioned a new composition from the deconstructed pieces. Using post-minimalist procedures to extract fertile fragments and reshape the materials into new music, Richter has created an album that speaks to a generation familiar with remixes, sampling, and sound collages, though his method transcends the manipulation of prerecorded music. Richter has actually rescored the Four Seasons and given the movements of Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter thorough makeovers that vary substantially from the originals. The new material is suggestive of a dream state, where drifting phrases and recombined textures blur into walls of sound, only to re-emerge with stark clarity and poignant immediacy. Violinist Daniel Hope is the brilliant soloist in these freshly elaborated pieces, and the Konzerthaus Kammerorchester Berlin is conducted with control and assurance by André de Ridder, so Richter's carefully calculated effects are handled with precision and subtlety. Deutsche Grammophon's stellar reproduction captures the music with great depth, breadth, and spaciousness, so everything Richter and de Ridder intended to be heard comes across.© Blair Sanderson /TiVo

Max Richter's 2012 Recomposed album was an enormous success, topping charts in many countries (not just the usual classical-oriented ones) and making its way onto numerous soundtracks, including that for the television series Bridgerton. For those rare souls who haven't encountered it, it was a sort of contemporary remake of Vivaldi's Four Seasons violin concertos, using the originals as thematic source material to a greater or lesser degree and subjecting them to electronic treatment. It has become almost as ubiquitous as the concertos on which it was based. Now, Richter has remade Recomposed, even recomposing it a bit; the new album is just under four minutes shorter than its predecessor. He also recruits London's ethnically diverse Chineke! Orchestra, gives them gut-stringed period instruments on which to play (the players were using these for the first time, and this works quite a bit better than you might expect), and collaborates with a new violinist, the wirier Elena Urioste in place of Daniel Hope, and also uses "period" electronics, playing a vintage Moog synthesizer himself. Deutsche Grammophon's notes reassure classical listeners that they may not recognize the difference between the Moog and the earlier contemporary electronics, and perhaps this is a problem as well for the many young electronic music fans who have come to Richter, but for anyone around in the 1970s, Richter's bass lines and sonic washes will be quite recognizable. Is Richter simply trying to milk his original concept? Maybe, but in a sense, this was and remains the point. Richter has written that he wanted to use period instruments on the original Recomposed recording but couldn't interest recording companies in the idea. They add a fresh wrinkle to the sound, and the whole new project is an intriguing attempt to see what remains of Vivaldi in an era when music evolves through remixes and through sampling of earlier material rather than being fixed and discrete. There is even a "Levitation Mix" of the "Spring 1" movement, as if to say that the process will continue beyond its latest iteration. It's safe to say that this release has something to offer even to those who know the original Recomposed album well, or for that matter, who know the original Four Seasons well.© James Manheim /TiVo

In 2017, Sampha lit up the world with his debut solo album Process, which delved into the grief of losing his parents and unveiled an incredibly sensitive side to his music. Since then, the London-based artist has embarked on numerous collaborations with heavyweights like Kendrick Lamar, Beyoncé, Solange, Kanye West, and FKA Twigs. The impact of this period on Sampha’s work is clear – perhaps none more so than in his second album Lahai, inspired by the birth of his daughter in 2020.Crafted with delicacy and a quiet strength, Lahai certainly stands out as a musical highlight of 2023. The album presents a succession of exquisitely mastered ideas, whether it's the oddly energetic "Suspended," a tale of Sampha’s state of bliss, "What If You Hypnotise Me?" featuring a haunting piano performance by Léa Sen, or the single "Only," which clearly bears the influence of modern soul. Sampha continues to explore intimacy supported by impeccably crafted production, and undoubtedly, he delivers his best project to date. © Brice Miclet/Qobuz

Just six months after the release of her third studio album, Charli, Charli XCX found herself confined in her home in Los Angeles. The hyperactive English songwriter quickly set herself the challenge of writing an album from scratch in just six weeks and, most importantly, she made the project an interactive experience with her fans. While she was guided by industry titans such as A.G. Cook, (founder of the label PC Music) and BJ Burton (producer for Bon Iver and Miley Cyrus), everyone was invited to take part in the project. Some people sent her snippets of music while others gave their opinion on the demos she played on Instagram or the lyrics she posted on Twitter. She also organised Zoom conferences with hundreds of participants. The result is a pretty solid album by Charli XCX that remains faithful to the futuristic electronic pop sound that made her famous, with potential hit songs like the autotuned ballad Forever, the more dance-y Claws, as well as the lovely hybrid electro-pop song, I Finally Understand. And it seems like the artist may even carry on down that road: “I don’t know why I didn’t do it sooner!”. © Smaël Bouaici/Qobuz

He has been everywhere these last two years: on TV in Atlanta or Saturday Night Live, in cinemas with Star Wars, and on all the radio shows with his latest global hits Feels Like Summer or This Is America, and his superb video denouncing racism and violence in the country. After a period of confinement, Donald Glover came back without warning, uploading his fourth album, soberly titled 3.15.20. The track listing is just as detached, with tracks composed of numbers indicating the length of time since the beginning of the record, with the exception of Algorhythm, a cranky industrial P-funk that launches the album after a psychedelic prologue, and Time, with a very discreet Ariana Grande (Feels like Summer also returns under the title 42.26). Assisted in production by the faithful Ludwig Goransson and DJ Dahi (Kendrick Lamar, Vince Staples...), Childish Gambino revisits black music with a twist (53.49) and pushes it to its limits, mixing rap, rave and industrial on 32.22 or on the eight minutes of 24.19, somewhere between Prince and Bohemian Rhapsody. These sonic and cultural collisions create great moments, such as the synthetic pop song of the future 19.10 or 12.38 with 21 Savage and Khadja Bonet, the climax of an album that still has the power to upset the applecart. © Smaël Bouaici/Qobuz