The only true Purcell opera – the others considered to be semi-operas, a format closer to musical theatre – Dido & Aeneas is a masterpiece that offers such musical density that the piece was destined to radically influence the tastes of English society, which quickly embraced the arrival of entirely sung operas. The work was created in London in 1896, in a version that was surely more complete than the one that we possess today, according to the libretto by Nahum Tate which mentions a prologue of music that has since been lost. Taking on the myth of The Aeneid, the opera is a loose adaptation of Book IV of the work by Virgil. The British ensemble La Nuova Musica – whose recording of Couperin’s “Tenebrae Readings for Holy Wednesday” on harmonia mundi we so admired in 2016 – offers us a luminous and balanced version of the work, accompanied by a cast of top-notch soloists, Fleur Barron and Matthew Brook being first in line. A record released by PentaTone, this sneak preview is presented exclusively by Qobuz for download until September 21, 2023. © Pierre Lamy/Qobuz

Over the course of three essential albums, Dogrel (2019, Qobuzissime!), A Hero's Death (2020) and Skinty Fia (2022), Fontaines D.C. have established themselves as a major voice in UK rock. In fact, the Irish band quickly proved capable of breaking free of the post-punk shackles and branching out into other musical flavours. It's hardly surprising that the first solo album from their charismatic singer Grian Chatten is a rather strong display of stylistic eclecticism. In fact, there are no traces of hardcore post-punk on Chaos For The Fly, which showcases the pen of this Skerries native. Throes of success, homesickness, fear of the future, need for freedom, extreme introspection, simple contemplation… it's all there! Grian Chatten whispers his prose through a mist of melancholy that never overstates, hypnotising us with his viscerally poetic voice. As for the instrumentation, whether he opts for a stripped-down style based around a simple acoustic guitar (it was in this simple instrument that he composed his album), or for polished and varied arrangements, the leader of Fontaines D.C. demonstrates total mastery. The astonishing Bob's Casino, a slightly retro duet with his sweetheart Georgie Jesson in a very She & Him or Nancy Sinatra/Lee Hazlewood spirit, demonstrates it convincingly. In short, when it’s pens down at the end of the year, Chaos For The Fly will be up there with the best albums. Way up there! © Marc Zisman

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I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got became Sinéad O'Connor's popular breakthrough on the strength of the stunning Prince cover "Nothing Compares 2 U," which topped the pop charts for a month. But even its remarkable intimacy wasn't adequate preparation for the harrowing confessionals that composed the majority of the album. Informed by her stormy relationship with drummer John Reynolds, who fathered O'Connor's first child before the couple broke up, I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got lays the singer's psyche startlingly and sometimes uncomfortably bare. The songs mostly address relationships with parents, children, and (especially) lovers, through which O'Connor weaves a stubborn refusal to be defined by anyone but herself. In fact, the album is almost too personal and cathartic to draw the listener in close, since O'Connor projects such turmoil and offers such specific detail. Her confrontational openness makes it easy to overlook O'Connor's musical versatility. Granted, not all of the music is as brilliantly audacious as "I Am Stretched on Your Grave," which marries a Frank O'Connor poem to eerie Celtic melodies and a James Brown "Funky Drummer" sample. But the album plays like a tour de force in its demonstration of everything O'Connor can do: dramatic orchestral ballads, intimate confessionals, catchy pop/rock, driving guitar rock, and protest folk, not to mention the nearly six-minute a cappella title track. What's consistent throughout is the frighteningly strong emotion O'Connor brings to bear on the material, while remaining sensitive to each piece's individual demands. Aside from being a brilliant album in its own right, I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got foreshadowed the rise of deeply introspective female singer/songwriters like Tori Amos and Sarah McLachlan, who were more traditionally feminine and connected with a wider audience. Which takes nothing away from anyone; if anything, it's evidence that, when on top of her game, O'Connor was a singular talent.© Steve Huey /TiVo

With their eighth studio album, 2023's ebullient So Much (For) Stardust, Fall Out Boy fully re-embrace the emo and punk-pop dynamism of their classic work. It's a soaring style they've been threatening to unleash ever since returning to regular activity following their hiatus after 2008's Folie a Deux. Although their subsequent follow-ups like Save Rock and Roll, American Beauty/American Psycho, and Mania all topped the Billboard 200, the albums often felt like the band were working hard to stay current, throwing their songs into a production blender of contemporary pop, hip-hop, and EDM sounds with varying degrees of success. Without ever sounding too much like a throwback, So Much (For) Stardust has a homecoming feeling, as if Fall Out Boy are getting back to their rock roots. It's a vibe that's underlined by the presence of producer Neal Avron, with whom they recorded the core of their most beloved albums, including 2005's From Under the Cork Tree. From the start, there's a balance of measured craftsmanship (they purportedly took their time in the studio) and big melodic hooks, all effusively delivered by singer Patrick Stump. It's an infectious combination the band perfect on the opening "Love from the Other Side," a song ostensibly about dealing with (and perhaps being the cause of) a bad breakup. That said, it could just as easily work as a metaphor for the group's attempts at transforming their sound coming off the emo highs of the early 2000s. Early in the song, Stump admits, "We were a hammer to the statue of David." There's a bittersweet nostalgia implied by the song, as if the band are looking back on their career and taking stock of where they (and by proxy their fans) find themselves in a post-emo, post-pandemic world. They return to that sentiment on "I Am My Own Muse," where Stump, bellowing against a symphonic string bombast and guitarist Joe Trohman's fiery riffs, sings, "Smash all the guitars 'til we see all the stars/Oh, we've got to throw this year away like a bad luck charm." This kind of bold rock affection drives much of the album, as on the '80s AOR of "Heartbreak Feels So Good," the Queen-meets-Michael Jackson post-punk stomp of "Hold Me Like a Grudge," and the dreamy new wave romanticism of "Fake Out." Adding to the emotional push of the record are several unabashed musical and pop-cultural references, including the Earth, Wind & Fire intimations of "What a Time to Be Alive," the Don Henley "Boys of Summer" flourishes at the center of "The Kintsugi Kid (Ten Years)," and even a snippet of Ethan Hawke's soliloquy about the meaning of life from Reality Bites in which his character offers up the adage "It's all just a random lottery of meaningless tragedy in a series of near escapes." Whether that's how Fall Out Boy feel about their career or not, So Much (For) Stardust is a gloriously welcome return to form.© Matt Collar /TiVo

This eighth album from The National is refreshingly different, somewhat modifying the well-oiled mechanics of this American band. First and foremost, this is achieved through the presence of several female singers who support the leader Matt Berninger on most of the tracks. The most memorable are the performances of Gail Ann Dorsey (David Bowie’s bassist) on Had Your Soul With You, as well as the particularly poignant performances of Lisa Hannigan and Mina Tindle on So Far So East and Oblivions respectively, the latter being especially moving. Why this sudden feminine presence for an exclusively male band? It’s likely because the album was conceived after filmmaker Mike Mills asked The National to put his short film I Am Easy to Find into song form - a film which happens to be centred around a woman. It’s this relationship to images that has somewhat upended the Brooklyn band’s pop formula. There are a few references to some classics of cinema, chiefly Roman Holiday by William Wyler (1953). But apart from the new cinematic release, fans of The National will still find the legendary melancholy of the group in both the lyrics and the music. The presence of heart-wrenching strings on all the tracks (with the exception of the staccato violins on Where Is Her Head) as well as a recurring introspective piano (notably in the beautiful Light Years) will particularly be remembered. Bryan Devendorf’s singular rhythms plays on contrasts, occasionally making striking jerks (Rylan, The Pull of You) as well as adding a sensual flair (Hairpin Turns, I Am Easy to Find). © Nicolas Magenham/Qobuz  

Even high-budget Hollywood movies generally get by with one A-list composer, but the renewed Batman series that kicked off with Batman Begins under the direction of Christopher Nolan in 2005 used two, Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard, both of whom return for the second installment, The Dark Knight. Although Zimmer and Howard are co-credited with each of the cues (with Lorne Balfe given a credit for unspecified "additional music"), their styles are sufficiently distinct that their individual contributions don't seem hard to delineate. The highly percussive synthesized music, much of it seemingly already mixed in with sound effects, sounds like Zimmer; the more conventional orchestral passages, sometimes giving way to solo piano, sound like Howard (who is, in fact, credited with playing piano on the soundtrack). Both approaches are combined in these sometimes lengthy cues, however. Those pounding, thunderous drums (or synthesized percussive effects) are never absent for long, even if certain tracks, notably Harvey Two-Face, Blood on My Hands. and Watch the World Burn, have a pastoral, classical feel. Other tracks, such as I'm Not a Hero and A Little Push, in which the percussion dominates, may be more Zimmer than Howard. Still, the two work well together on a score that, by definition, is "dark," laden with ominous sounds and relentlessly rhythmic accompaniments to the fast-paced action in the film.© TiVo

Following years of buildup and a whopping eight singles, Ava Max finally delivered her first official studio full-length, Heaven & Hell. Well worth the extended promotion, the album is a masterful pop debut, one of those might-as-well-be-a greatest-hits collections like Lady Gaga's The Fame, Dua Lipa's self-titled LP, or Katy Perry's One of the Boys. Indeed, Max is a kindred spirit with those hitmakers, both in vocal delivery and her knack for picking out an effective earworm, of which there is an embarrassing abundance on Heaven & Hell. Thematically divided into those two titular sides, the album takes that well-worn dichotomy and splits the track list between energetic bops and moodier -- but no less catchy -- doses of dark pop, all bound together by primary producer Cirkut (Marina, Katy Perry, Kim Petras). Opening with the swirling electronic "H.E.A.V.E.N.," the first half features Max's high-energy empowerment anthem "Kings & Queens"; the sleek, bass-driven "Naked"; the bouncy disco-funk "OMG What's Happening"; and "Tattoo," which sounds like a 2010 time-warp collaboration between Perry and Carly Rae Jepsen. Although every song is a potential hit, "Born to the Night" is a standout, a blissful dose of shimmering synths and '80s-inspired groove that evokes similar moments on Gaga's Born This Way. On the shadowy side of things, Max sheds her wide-eyed and lovelorn optimism, erecting protective barriers and revealing a sharp set of claws. Demanding better treatment from a lackluster lover, she reminds, "I'm not a bite/I'm a five course meal" on the cautionary "Take You to Hell." Later, on the sly kiss-off "Who's Laughing Now," she rides a Clean Bandit/Ace of Base island groove into the sunset, laughing mischievously as the person who wronged her is left in the dust. Pulsing mainstream hits "So Am I," "Salt," and global smash "Sweet but Psycho" also occupy this side, but it's the slow-burning "Belladonna" that really digs in its teeth, a menacing synth-washed warning that equates Max with the deadly nightshade. There's not a moment wasted over the course of these 15 tracks, and she is clever enough to balance the immediate jams with satisfying deep cuts like "Born to the Night" and "Belladonna," providing a break from the action and intensity with earworms that are no less effective. Heaven & Hell is an expertly crafted gem, showcasing the young hitmaker's burgeoning star power, relatable personality, and sonic range.© Neil Z. Yeung /TiVo

Leonard Cohen's first album was an unqualified triumph which announced the arrival of a bold and singular talent, and many who heard it must have wondered what Cohen could do for an encore. By comparison, Cohen's second album, 1969's Songs from a Room, was something of a letdown. While it's a fine LP, it ultimately feels neither as striking nor as assured as Songs of Leonard Cohen. Bob Johnston stepped in as producer for Songs from a Room, and his arrangements are simpler than those John Simon crafted for the debut, but they're also full of puzzling accents, such as the jew's harp that punctuates several tracks, the churchy organ line in "The Old Revolution," and the harsh synthesizer flourishes on "A Bunch of Lonesome Heroes." Johnston also had trouble coaxing strong vocal performances from Cohen; his singing here sounds tentative and his meter is uncertain, which regardless of how one feels about Cohen's much-debated vocal prowess is not the case with his other work. And finally, the quality of the songs on Songs from a Room is less consistent than on Songs of Leonard Cohen; as fine as "Bird on a Wire," "You Know Who I Am," "The Story of Isaac" and "Seems So Long Ago, Nancy" may be, "The Butcher" and "A Bunch of Lonesome Heroes" simply aren't up to his usual standards. Despite the album's flaws, Songs from a Room's strongest moments convey a naked intimacy and fearless emotional honesty that's every bit as powerful as the debut, and it left no doubt that Cohen was a major creative force in contemporary songwriting.© Mark Deming /TiVo

Wishing to escape the superstar expectations that sank Blind Faith before it was launched, Eric Clapton retreated with several sidemen from Delaney & Bonnie to record the material that would form Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs. From these meager beginnings grew his greatest album. Duane Allman joined the band shortly after recording began, and his spectacular slide guitar pushed Clapton to new heights. Then again, Clapton may have gotten there without him, considering the emotional turmoil he was in during the recording. He was in hopeless, unrequited love with Pattie Boyd, the wife of his best friend, George Harrison, and that pain surges throughout Layla, especially on its epic title track. But what really makes Layla such a powerful record is that Clapton, ignoring the traditions that occasionally painted him into a corner, simply tears through these songs with burning, intense emotion. He makes standards like "Have You Ever Loved a Woman" and "Nobody Knows You (When You're Down and Out)" into his own, while his collaborations with Bobby Whitlock -- including "Any Day" and "Why Does Love Got to Be So Sad?" -- teem with passion. And, considering what a personal album Layla is, it's somewhat ironic that the lovely coda "Thorn Tree in the Garden" is a solo performance by Whitlock, and that the song sums up the entire album as well as "Layla" itself.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

Although Alice In Chains wasn’t spared by the hecatomb that decimated the current to which it was somewhat hastily affiliated, they’re back − against all odds − with a sixth album that worthily celebrates their thirty-first anniversary. Way heavier than most of their peers, Jerry Cantrell’s band wasn’t necessarily delighted to be associated with Nirvana or Pearl Jam. To Soundgarden, why not… But they felt compelled to record their most grunge album to date, Rainier Fog being a heartfelt tribute to the Seattle scene. The musicians even went back to the “scene of the crime”, the former studio Bad Animals where they had recorded their last album (Alice In Chains) with the late Layne Staley in 1995 − putting aside the live Unplugged and the subsequent live and compilation albums. Without going as far as asserting that William DuVall, “guitarist and co-singer” (with Cantrell) merely imitates his predecessor – whose longevity in the band he now matches with this album −, one cannot but recognize that he’s been able to adapt and add a strong dose of emotion in often severe and heavy compositions. The vocal harmonies, wonderfully packaged by the faithful Nick Rasculinecz (Rush, Food Fighters), work wonders throughout the album. That being said, Cantrell’s role is more obvious than ever. On multiple occasions, Rainier Fog starts resembling his solo albums Degradation Trip Vol. 1&2.Probably distressed by Chris Cornell’s passing, like he was for Staley’s, Cantrell has embarked his band in a sort of remembrance ceremony, with a shade of Soundgarden (The One You Know, All I Am), echoes of Nirvana (Rainier Fog), fragrances of Temple Of The Dog (Drone), and even a slight mention of the cursed Stone Temple Pilots (Fly)… A few lighter or seventies rock titles, like Maybe or the effective Never Fade (whose chorus will certainly remind Skunk Anansie’s I Can Dream to some) are much welcomed to compensate for the somewhat gloomy and painful aspect of the whole. © Jean-Pierre Sabouret/Qobuz

Through much of its history, rock & roll has walked hand in hand with youth culture, and most major artists have seemed wary of advancing age. Conventional wisdom has it that the greatest compliment you can pay a veteran musician is that they sure don't look or sound as old as they actually are, and that they still appear young at heart. Through much of his career, John Mellencamp has seemed ambivalent about rock stardom, so it makes a certain sense that from 2010's No Better Than This onward, he's been content to let his music reflect his time served on the planet. These days, he leans more to folk than the heartland rock that made him famous, and his vocals are steeped in audible grit caused by many years of smoking and even more time shouting out his songs. 2022's Strictly a One-Eyed Jack was released when Mellencamp was 70 years of age, and he seems proud to be something of a relic, a bit cranky and worn but with plenty to say and no shyness about sharing his thoughts. Mellencamp casts himself as a cynic and a rogue in many of these songs, one with a certain charm and a plentiful amount of swagger, and his rasp more than suits the character, complementing the mournful, jazzy tone of "Gone Too Soon," the bitter cynicism of "I Always Lie to Strangers," and the fatalistic caution of "Streets of Galilee." Mellencamp can still rock when he feels like it, though his attack is lean and sharp like a razor, aiming to cut rather than pummel. One of the major selling points of Strictly a One-Eyed Jack is the appearance of Bruce Springsteen (one of the few heartland rock acts who clearly bested him) on three tracks, and while Springsteen is two years older, the grand irony is he brings a more youthful energy to his tracks with his incisive guitar work and vocals that show the passage of time while befitting the mind of a man determined to make the most of every day he has left. The rueful "Wasted Days," the album's first single, feels like a look at one of the characters from The Lonesome Jubilee 35 years down the road, and Mellencamp and Springsteen make the most of its sadness and introspection. But the real winner is "Did You Say Such a Thing," where Springsteen's wiry guitar and sly backing vocals goad Mellencamp into a cockiness that bridges the gap between the Enlightened Grouch and the Artist Formerly Known as Johnny Cougar. More than most artists of his commercial stature, John Mellencamp embodies the stubborn independence of an artist who unquestioningly follows his heart and his muse, and Strictly a One-Eyed Jack is the work of a man accepting the passage of time rather than fighting against it. As a songwriter and a performer, it's a gambit that works in his favor.© Mark Deming /TiVo

Many film composers wrote classical works in an idiom sharply different from that of their film scores, but with Bernard Herrmann, the difference is much smaller. Then again, his film music itself was more "classical" to begin with. His scores are largely devoid of the big themes and jazz and popular influences that marked the work of many of his contemporaries, especially later in his career. Instead, he built his scores out of obsessive gestures that were a perfect match for the films of Alfred Hitchcock, his most frequent collaborator. He wrote one opera, Wuthering Heights, that was completed in 1951 and, indeed, quoted some of his earlier scores and spawned passages in later ones. It is a gigantic work, filling four LPs when Herrmann recorded it in 1965, and this condensation and arrangement by Hans Sørensen is welcome. He strips the cast down to just Cathy and Heathcliff, with newcomer Keri Fuge and veteran Roderick Williams holding up well through overheated music that evokes Emily Brontë's novel nicely. There is also an orchestral version, again arranged by Sørensen, of Herrmann's 1965 string quartet Echoes; the arrangement works fine inasmuch as his writing was quite orchestral-sounding in the original quartet. The Singapore Symphony, under conductor Mario Venzago in Wuthering Heights and Joshua Tan in Echoes, sounds fabulous, and Venzago was an inspired choice here, with a sure touch for dramatic music. Herrmann fans will be delighted with this, and listeners looking for a chance to sample his opera will find the album ideal. It landed on classical best-seller lists in the summer of 2023, testifying to growing interest in Herrmann's music. © James Manheim /TiVo

Susan Tedeschi and husband Derek Trucks would like you to think that I Am The Moon maintains a coherent narrative that meaningfully wrestles with the most universal of life's questions across four albums. But while the entire project is based on the Sufi love story of Layla and Majnun, the second installment, Ascension, is in the end seven love songs that sway back and forth between the joys and the pain inherent in this most human of emotions. As in the opening volume Crescent, Tedeschi's voice proves to be the strongest force. Over the rocked up, organ-and-tambourine R&B of "Playing with My Emotions," she sings both the male and female parts, getting in several great lines like "He's flying home but he doesn't land" before trading electric guitar solos with Trucks. A bluesy bounce returns in "Ain't That Something" with Tedeschi's voice again being the glue that both leads and holds the tune together while Trucks' guitar lunges into a psychedelic-influenced solo in the background. Heartfelt and polished, this pair of opening numbers could easily fit on any Tedeschi Trucks record of the past. Winding charts for the group's horn section of Kebbi Williams (saxophone), Ephraim Owens (trumpet) and Elizabeth Lea (trombone) mark the 9-minute long "All the Love," supposedly a single unedited take. Authentic and true to its hallowed models, "So Long Savior" splits the difference between acoustic Delta blues and rousing gospel. Led by Trucks' slide guitar, which nods to the constant influence of his uncle's band The Allman Brothers, "Rainy Day" is the kind of pop-edged southern rock that Tedeschi Trucks have consistently had a talent for concocting. The country rock of "La Di Da," which closes each verse with "So we'll raise our glasses high/ To this bittersweet goodbye/ And we'll say farewell in the morning," has more than a whiff of Gram Parsons' "We'll Sweep Out the Ashes in Morning." While the seven-song Ascension is slightly stronger than the opening volume Crescent, thoughts of whether all of this might have been better as a double album inevitably creep in.  This is a multimedia project, with the music meant to coexist with the short films, and how much that affects the way the songs sound as opposed to the look being played live is hard to say.  But just from listening, there's no doubt this is precisely played, quality song craftsmanship. © Robert Baird/Qobuz