Portishead's album debut is a brilliant, surprisingly natural synthesis of claustrophobic spy soundtracks, dark breakbeats inspired by frontman Geoff Barrow's love of hip-hop, and a vocalist (Beth Gibbons) in the classic confessional singer/songwriter mold. Beginning with the otherworldly theremin and martial beats of "Mysterons," Dummy hits an early high with "Sour Times," a post-modern torch song driven by a Lalo Schifrin sample. The chilling atmospheres conjured by Adrian Utley's excellent guitar work and Barrow's turntables and keyboards prove the perfect foil for Gibbons, who balances sultriness and melancholia in equal measure. Occasionally reminiscent of a torchier version of Sade, Gibbons provides a clear focus for these songs, with Barrow and company behind her laying down one of the best full-length productions ever heard in the dance world. Where previous acts like Massive Attack had attracted dance heads in the main, Portishead crossed over to an American, alternative audience, connecting with the legion of angst-ridden indie fans as well. Better than any album before it, Dummy merged the pinpoint-precise productions of the dance world with pop hallmarks like great songwriting and excellent vocal performances.© John Bush /TiVo

After the album-tour-album cycle of Script for a Jester's Tear, Fugazi, and the subsequent Euro-only release of Real to Reel, Marillion retreated to Berlin's Hansa Ton Studios with Rolling Stones producer Chris Kimsey to work on their next opus. Armed with a handful of lyrics born out of a self-confessed acid trip, Fish came up with the elaborate concept for 1985's Misplaced Childhood. Touching upon his early childhood experiences and his inability to deal with a slew of bad breakups exacerbated by a never-ending series of rock star-type "indulgences," Misplaced Childhood would prove to be not only the band's most accomplished release to date, but also its most streamlined. Initial record company skepticism over the band's decision to forge ahead with a '70s-style prog rock opus split into two halves (sides one and two) quickly evaporated as Marillion delivered its two most commercial singles ever: "Kayleigh" and "Lavender." With its lush production and punchy mix, the album went on to become the band's greatest commercial triumph, especially in Europe where they would rise from theater attraction to bona fide stadium royalty. The subsequent U.S. success of "Kayleigh" would also see Marillion returning to the States for a difficult tour as Rush's support act.© John Franck /TiVo

With this February 1996 album, Nick Cave took up his role as the bipolar preacher, caught between sin and redemption. Half goth-punk Johnny Cash, half infernal Lee Hazlewood, the brains of the Bad Seeds, a crooner to the core, told his stories of death, betrayal, sex, violence and passion... His cavernous voice and his Biblical pen fascinated fans. Behind him, the Bad Seeds were knitting together a blood-red score, a cocktail of blues and jazz on ghostly pianos, disquieting guitars and martial percussions. This is a Nick Cave in full Nosferatu mode, and he even has a couple of virgins to snack on: his double, PJ Harvey, on Henry Lee, and his compatriot Kylie Minogue for an erotic thriller entitled Where The Wild Roses Grow. © Marc Zisman/Qobuz

Accompanied by the London Philharmonic under the direction of Vince Mendoza, Canadian singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell revisits with great emotion, in a voice marked by time and supported by sumptuous orchestral arrangements, several standards of the American music hall from the 1920s to the 1970s, as well as very heart-moving remakes of two of her songs, her famous hit 'Both Sides', now from 1968 and 'A case of you' from the 1971 album 'Blue'.

Released to commemorate the tenth anniversary of Frank Sinatra's death, Nothing But the Best is indeed one of the best single-disc compilations ever released on Sinatra. This isn't a career overview, however, since it begins with his inaugural Reprise recordings circa 1960 and surveys the rest of the '60s (including only two tracks not from the '60s). This was the age of Sinatra as the hard-swinging Chairman of the Board, illustrated perfectly by "Luck Be a Lady" and "My Kind of Town." But it was also the age of wistful, middle-aged material like "Summer Wind," "Strangers in the Night," and, of course, "It Was a Very Good Year." And it was also the age when Sinatra had the freedom to record with everyone he wanted to record with, whether it was Count Basie or Antonio Carlos Jobim or his daughter Nancy (the latter on the 1967 chart-topper "Somethin' Stupid"). All of those periods are represented on Nothing But the Best, which takes its place above the best previous Reprise collection, Sinatra Reprise: The Very Good Years, even though it somehow omits one of his classics, "Love and Marriage." For this compilation, Reprise also commissioned new 2008 remasters of each track, which sound better than any previous, and added a new bonus track: a version of "Body and Soul" with a vocal recorded in 1984 laid over a 2007 arrangement by Torrie Zito and Frank Sinatra, Jr.© John Bush /TiVo

Brian Burton was a teenage Roots fanatic -- so eager to own but too short on funds to buy his beloved band's Do You Want More?!!!??! that he paid an acquaintance to lift a copy for him. A decade later, Burton had become Danger Mouse, an ascendant producer with enough clout and confidence to seek lead Roots MC Black Thought for a collaboration. Mouse and Thought meshed and recorded demos for a potential LP. Other projects then took precedence. Thought reached out to Mouse after another 11 years passed, in 2017, and over the next year, the two laid down much of what materialized in 2022 as Cheat Codes. Given the project's genesis before the rapping half's 2018-2020 solo trilogy, it stands to reason that Cheat Codes isn't billed as Streams of Thought, Vol. 4. It's also of an even higher concentration. Returning to sample-based production, Danger Mouse favors '60s and '70s psych, prog, and soul recordings that are moody, trippy, and sometimes eerie. The crisp if soot-coated drums, smeared strings, moaning organs, and gnarled guitars are all very compatible with Thought, who scythes through it all with unparalleled wordplay delivered with surgical precision. The guest appearances are superfluous more often than they are truly complementary. Representing the latter, MF Doom (recorded post-Danger Doom) shuffles into place on "Belize" with such ease that he sounds like part of a longtime trio. Michael Kiwanuka sets up "Aquamarine" -- one of two tracks that also reconnects Mouse with fellow Kiwanuka producer Inflo -- by crooning a grave hook that leads to some of Thought's bleakest and most authoritative statements. They pivot from lines ending with "bullion," "Suleiman," a racist epithet, and "depression" to "I'm a king, I'm dipped in God's Black complexion." Some stellar outside contributions notwithstanding, Cheat Codes stimulates most when Mouse and Thought are sequestered, allowing the latter to leave space only for the occasional instrumental break or rare prominent sampled vocal. The title track is an unremitting torrent of high-alert reality checks like "Shit, it's real when you done lost your last feeling/Jump then bounce back off the glass ceiling/Back to stealing, to Xanax and smack dealing." "Violas and Lupitas," which could triple in length without losing its transfixing power, ends the album with a grand flourish: "Go ask them about the gatekeeper, world leader/Kill shit quicker than Usain could run a hundred meter." Quotables such as that, over a production that skillfully combines opulence and grit, prove that the duo fulfilled their plan right on time.© Andy Kellman /TiVo

Jonas Kaufmann, it seems, is in search of an album that will make him, not just a great tenor but a household name, and The Sound of Movies represents his latest attempt. The album certainly has some pieces that deliver the compelling vocals that have made Kaufmann such a beloved figure. Sample his Edelweiss from The Sound of Music, one of a couple of tracks that benefit from the presence of guitarist Miloš Karadaglić. The album is quite a mixed bag of material, with a few film music favorites but other tunes that are quite obscure, and at times, it is hard to divine what the sequencing principles behind the program might be. There are songs in English, German, Italian, and Spanish, and Kaufmann may do well, or less so, with any of these. He generally has a German accent in English, and this may be preferable to tense efforts to avoid it. However, the effectiveness of the songs depends less on their language than on their degree of American rhythmic content. Kaufmann is a good deal more relaxed in Moon River, for instance, than in What a Wonderful World (which makes the cut due to its presence in the film Good Morning, Vietnam). Many listeners will find that the sheer beauty of Kaufmann's tenor will override any objections, while for others, he will be a fish out of water. Kaufmann gets clean support from the Czech National Symphony Orchestra under conductor Jochen Rieder. It is a safe bet that his fans will find this a satisfying release.© James Manheim /TiVo

J.J. Cale's debut album, Naturally, was recorded after Eric Clapton made "After Midnight" a huge success. Instead of following Slowhand's cue and constructing a slick blues-rock album, Cale recruited a number of his Oklahoma friends and made a laid-back country-rock record that firmly established his distinctive, relaxed style. Cale included a new version of "After Midnight" on the album, but the true meat of the record lay in songs like "Crazy Mama," which became a hit single, and "Call Me the Breeze," which Lynyrd Skynyrd later covered. On these songs and many others on Naturally, Cale effortlessly captured a lazy, rolling boogie that contradicted all the commercial styles of boogie, blues, and country-rock at the time. Where his contemporaries concentrated on solos, Cale worked the song and its rhythm, and the result was a pleasant, engaging album that was in no danger of raising anybody's temperature.© Thom Owens /TiVo

Ten albums and 15 years into their career, Death Cab for Cutie are as musically muscular as an arena-ready band. It's there on the title track of Asphalt Meadows, which sounds at times like New Order and sports a bit of Johnny Marr-esque guitar. "I'll Never Give Up On You" is almost menacing in its powerfully brooding instrumentation. "I Don't Know How I Survive" wraps in a surprisingly funky snaking guitar line, with frontman Ben Gibbard dragging out the word "listen" until it trails off like vapor; it all cracks open in a knockdown tsunami of sound at the chorus, and a blinding wash of guitar. You can hear—and feel—the muscularity on "Roman Candles," with rapid-fire drums and guitars that streak by like the firework it's named for. Gibbard has said it was written to reflect "a general sense of anxiety [as] the feeling that the fabric that weaves a functioning society together was crumbling during the pandemic." Indeed, that's a theme that pervades, as Death Cab becomes the latest act to file their "pandemic record" for posterity. Gibbard's plain-spoken poetry is particularly suited for the job. "It's been a battle just to wake and greet the day/ Then they all disappear like sugar in my coffee/ A hint of sweetness/ But the bitterness remains/ The acidity devouring my body," he sings on "Roman Candles." The edgy "I Miss Strangers'' probes at the lockdown conundrum of craving the public connection we all previously took for granted: "These days I miss strangers/ More than I/ More than I miss my friends." The Marr-like guitars return, like the sun forcing its way through the clouds, for  jubilant-sounding "Here to Forever," as Gibbard sings, "These days it's so hard to relax/ You've got to hold a gun to my back/ To make me smile." As always, there are captivating short stories packed into songs. "Wheat Like Waves"—with warm keys like a buttery salve—tells of catching up with an old friend: combining fine detail ("Prefab Sprout echoing out/ Of your '90s Accord/ With mismatched doors"), intriguing similes ("Your tattoos like the stamps on your passport") and universal ideas, this time about how fast time evaporates with age: "So little time/ So many miles to drive/ Before the endless sleep eventually arrives." And "Foxglove Through The Clearcut" finds the band in an experimental mode, playing with spoken verses and loose, oceanic guitar for a story about a man who lived by the ocean but feared the water; it ends at full tide, musically cresting and crashing, an overwhelming and maybe dangerous thing of beauty. © Shelly Ridenour/Qobuz

Four years after 2018's relatively warm Thank You for Today, indie rock stalwarts Death Cab for Cutie issue their tenth set, Asphalt Meadows. For a group so deep into their careers, the album sounds surprisingly urgent and revitalized, like a band reborn against the tumultuous backdrop of the early 2020s. As Ben Gibbard sings on "Roman Candles," "It's been a battle just to wake and greet the day…but I am learning to let go." That track crackles to life in a great clatter, with bassist Nick Harmer, drummer Jason McGerr, and guitarists/keyboardists Dave Depper and Zac Rae propelling the song forward like the titular fireworks. The standout title track pushes the urgency even further, riding a Radiohead-esque undercurrent, just as the breakneck "I Miss Strangers" catapults Death Cab into Cure-meets-Silversun-Pickups territory on their rockingest song in years. These energetic highlights abound: "Here to Forever" is classic Death Cab, balancing yearning and uncertainty with Gibbard's typically evocative lyrics, and "Pepper" rides restrained guitar, tinkling piano, and a persistent beat like something from their early Atlantic years. On the dreamier end of the spectrum, the soft rock "Rand McNally" sprinkles sparkling production atop patient bass plucks, before the bittersweet storytelling of "Foxglove Through the Clearcut" carries Asphalt Meadows into the ether. That spaced-out sound returns at the close with the meandering "Fragments from the Decade" -- a programming/production spectacle that is as spacious as it is vulnerable -- and the epic "I'll Never Give Up on You," a showcase of buzzing electronics, dramatic piano chords, and layered vocals. Kicking off their third decade post-Barsuk, Death Cab continue their evolution in fascinating and rewarding ways, somehow managing to surprise with fresh directions and sounds yet unheard from this ever-reliable crew.© Neil Z. Yeung /TiVo

Switching from Epic to Capitol with 1985's Heart proved to be a wise move for the Wilson sisters, who experienced a major resurgence in popularity and gained many new followers. Heart's arena rock sound had become even glossier, and the band was selling more albums than ever. But for all its production gloss (courtesy of Ron Nevison) and pop slickness, Bad Animals comes across as sincere rather than formulaic or cynical. From the rockers "You Ain't Too Tough" and "Easy Target" to the power ballads "Alone" and "Wait for an Answer," all of the songs are quite memorable. The folk elements and acoustic leanings that characterized many of Heart's early ballads were long gone, and the Wilson sisters keep the volume high but slow the tempo.© Alex Henderson /TiVo