Flesh + Blood suggested that Roxy Music were at the end of the line, but they regrouped and recorded the lovely Avalon, one of their finest albums. Certainly, the lush, elegant soundscapes of Avalon are far removed from the edgy avant-pop of their early records, yet it represents another landmark in their career. With its stylish, romantic washes of synthesizers and Bryan Ferry's elegant, seductive croon, Avalon simultaneously functioned as sophisticated make-out music for yuppies and as the maturation of synth pop. Ferry was never this romantic or seductive, either with Roxy or as a solo artist, and Avalon shimmers with elegance in both its music and its lyrics. "More Than This," "Take a Chance with Me," "While My Heart Is Still Beating," and the title track are immaculately crafted and subtle songs, where the shifting synthesizers and murmured vocals gradually reveal the melodies. It's a rich, textured album and a graceful way to end the band's career.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

This new project by the exceptional British acappella octet Voces8, founded in 2005, follows on from After Silence, released in July 2020 on their own label (Voces8 Records). Over more than two beautifully conceived hours, this record combined some great classic vocal repertoire with a few more contemporary numbers - a whirlwind of emotions, both in terms of the quality of the performances and the diversity and combination of the selected repertoires.In this space-inspired album, Infinity, the vocal quality itself remains dazzling: precision of intonation, meticulous respect for harmonic intervals, pleasant frictions, supremely elegant singing and grandiose choral space. In short, this is cosmically magnificent choral singing. In this respect, the sumptuous In the Shining Blackness by the very young London composer Benjamin Rimmer, born in 1993, is a lovely discovery. The whole programme has a uniquely soaring, uniformly post-ambient minimalist character, from Sophie Hutchings' By Night to Nainita Desai's My Mind Is Still to Johann Jóhannsson's more accessible A Pile of Dust, Ola Gjeilo's Still or Stephen Barton's The Universe Within You - the addition of various instruments, from ethereal strings to bowed vibraphones, harps or a sample of the Sputnik satellite signal, all enhance our listening pleasure. ©Pierre-Yves Lascar/Qobuz

After gaining some recognition from the success of the band's previous album, Bachman-Turner Overdrive got around to recording Not Fragile. Not only had one of the three Bachman brothers (Tim, the rhythm guitarist) left the band to BTO's advantage, but Randy Bachman and C.F. Turner had clearly grown musically. To the album's benefit, most of the material on Not Fragile are the band's much-liked rock anthems, ranging from the hyper-distorted title track, through the famous but far more timid song "You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet." Indeed, for hard rock fanatics, it doesn't come much better than on Not Fragile. Randy's electrifying lead guitar is here more raucous than ever before, as are his rowdy vocals (particularly noticeable on the predictable, but fun "Sledgehammer"). The man steals the show on Not Fragile through his extensive and often astounding guitar solos. Generally, though, Bachman-Turner Overdrive are at their prime as a whole, both in songwriting and playing terms. As regards the mixing, it's hard to find fault with this release. The drums are clear but not so prominent that they dominate the recording, while the guitars, along with the bass, are kept rigidly in their place. Not Fragile is one of the finest arena rock albums of the era, featuring all the hallmarks of what makes a classic release in the genre. Randy's impressive guitar work and typically boisterous vocals complement the overall framework of the album superbly, as do the crunchy rhythm guitars. This release will astound fans of the genre and band, while those thoroughly against stadium rock may find something to convert their views.© Ben Davies /TiVo

Life for Rent doesn't offer anything that drastically different from Dido's debut album, No Angel -- the dance beats are marginally fresher, the production is clean and new -- but this predictibility is actually rather refreshing because the album delivers on its promise, unlike many sophomore affairs in 2003. That its promise is rather modest doesn't really matter, since Dido is successful at modest songs. She has a sweet, warm voice and a knack for tuneful modern folk-pop that sounds intimate while being confidently catchy and nicely atmospheric. In other words, it retains the feel of No Angel and its two big hits, "Here With Me" and "Thank You," without ever rewriting either song, but contributing songs like "White Flag," "Stoned," "Life for Rent," and "Do You Have a Little Time," which are nearly as memorable. The appeal of Life for Rent is what makes Dido appealing -- she's unassuming and gentle, but her songs are so melodic and atmospheric they easily work their way into the subconscious, and the records are well-crafted enough to be engaging on repeated plays. So, Life for Rent isn't much different than its predecessor, but that's a very good thing in this case.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

The tenth studio long-player from the venerable Swedish melodic death metal unit featuring ex-members of Carcass, Carnage, Mercyful Fate, Armageddon, Eucharist, and Spiritual Beggars, War Eternal is the first outing to feature the talents of new vocalist Alissa White-Gutz, formerly of the Canadian extreme metal outfit Agonist, who joined the group after the amicable departure of longtime Arch Enemy crooner Angela Gossow. The self-produced Century Media-issued, 14-track collection of new music was preceded by the singles "No More Regrets," "You Will Know My Name," and the blistering title cut.© James Christopher Monger /TiVo

Elvis Costello had been writing songs and performing them in public long before he became the most gifted Angry Young Man of the New Wave Class of 1977 with his debut album My Aim Is True. While plenty of punk and new wave acts espoused a Year Zero attitude about rock & roll, Costello obviously had a strong working knowledge of pop songwriting past and present, though it wouldn't be until he made 1981's Trust and 1982's Imperial Bedroom that he was willing to reveal just how firmly rooted he was in pop classicism. Years later, Costello and Burt Bacharach teamed up to write "God Give Me Strength" for Allison Anders' 1996 film Grace of My Heart, a pairing that seemed like an amusing mismatch only to people who hadn't paid much attention to Costello's career since 1979's Armed Forces. The song was a brilliant evocation of Bacharach's sweetly melancholic tunes of the '60s, with lyrics from Costello that were thoughtful, mature, and fully worthy of the gravity and craft of Bacharach's melody. "God Give Me Strength" was good enough that Bacharach and Costello chose to write and record an album together, and 1998's Painted from Memory was a master class in pop songwriting for grown-ups, informed by Bacharach's salad days without betraying the least bit of nostalgia, and featuring some of the finest, most well-considered vocals Costello ever committed to tape. Bacharach and Costello extended the collaboration to pen a number of songs for a projected Broadway musical (conceived by, of all people, Chuck Lorre, the sitcom titan behind Two and a Half Men and The Big Bang Theory), and The Songs of Bacharach & Costello is a box set that combines a remastered version of Painted from Memory with 16 performances of songs either written for the uncompleted musical Taken from Life or adapted from tunes on the album. The Taken from Life material is splendid and should please any fans of the collaborators, though the performances by Cassandra Wilson, Jenni Muldaur, Audra Mae, and others point out how specifically these songs seem to fit Costello's voice, and that they were crafted to suit a narrative that was never fully resolved. Rounding out the set is a collection of live performances of the Bacharach/Costello numbers and a final disc of Costello singing Bacharach/Hal David classics on-stage. The sizable majority of this has been previously released, but the material here has been packaged and presented with consummate care, and Costello penned a fascinating 10,000-word essay on his work with Bacharach for this release. As fate would have it, The Songs of Bacharach & Costello arrived less than a month after Bacharach died on February 9, 2023 at the age of 94. This collection wasn't intended to be a memorial, yet the deep dive into one of his last major collaborations pays worthy homage to his skill and dedication to craft, and every moment testifies to Costello's towering respect for the great man.© Mark Deming /TiVo

A misconception has sometimes been associate with Norah Jones: that the Texan is little more than a pleasant light-jazz singer whose albums serve as harmless background music for high-brow and proper evening dinners. Though her writing, playing and eclectic collaborations, she has clearly proved that she is far more interesting than this cliché. And this 2020 offering is a new illustration of her complexity. As is often the case with Norah Jones, Pick Me Up Off the Floor is not quite jazz, not quite blues, not quite country, etc… Her genre-defying music works primarily to suit the song being played. Here we find what has been left behind after sessions with Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy, Thomas Bartlett, Mavis Staples, Rodrigo Amarante and several others.But for all that the result is not simply a contrived mishmash of collaborations but a collection of songs that hold the same silky groove (present on six out of 11 tracks on the record in which Brian Blade’s drums work delicate miracles) and calm sound which increasingly suits the artist, somewhere between pure poetry and realism. “Every session I’ve done, there’ve been extra songs I didn’t release, and they’ve sort of been collecting for the last two years. I became really enamoured with them, having the rough mixes on my phone, listening while I walk the dog. The songs stayed stuck in my head and I realised that they had this surreal thread running through them. It feels like a fever dream taking place somewhere between God, the Devil, the heart, the Country, the planet, and me.” Rarely has Norah Jones sang with such strength, like on I’m Alive where she sings of women’s resilience, or on How I Weep in which she tackles love and exasperation with unequalled grace. This Deluxe Edition contains two bonus tracks and a collection of 17 songs culled from Norah’s Live From Home weekly livestream series. Thie Live From Home selections include a mix of career-spanning originals and such covers as Guns N’Roses’ Patience, John Prine’s That’s The Way The World Goes Round and Ravi Shankar’s I Am Missing You. © Marc Zisman/Qobuz

She was set to be one of the revelations of 2020. But the pandemic got in the way, and Celeste Epiphany Waite postponed the planned release of her first album. Celeste is a new UK sensation. She received the Rising Star prize at the prestigious Brit Awards, an honour which has been bestowed upon such promising young people as Sam Smith or Adele, who went on to enjoy colossal success and international stardom. Add another nomination, for the BBC's Sound of 2020, and the growing interest in this newcomer to the global pop scene was clear. While waiting for the album, Celeste did not sit idly by. She provided some vocals for the high-flying soundtrack for Pixar's successful Soul, and for the series The Chicago Seven, which was broadcast on Netflix. In terms of musical education, Celeste was brought up almost exclusively on blues, jazz, and golden-age soul by James Brown, Aretha Franklin (whom Celeste worships), Nina Simone and Sarah Vaughan. A coppery, nonchalant voice, tinged with a hoarse fragility, Celeste instantly sounds like a little sister to Adele and Amy Winehouse. Finally, the album is here. With its nose-thumbing title, Not Your Muse is an impressive engine, perfectly conceived and calibrated to conquer airwaves around the world, and audiences too. From Strange's skin-tight tenderness to the old-school sixties throwback Love is Back, to the party number Tonight Tonight, all the ingredients are there to make this album a must-have for years to come. © Yan Céh/Qobuz

George Harrison had two periods of great commercial success, separated by 15 years and two record labels. This extended gap is the chief reason there hasn't been a career-spanning Harrison collection until 2009's Let It Roll: Songs By George Harrison, the first-ever disc to gather songs from George's stints at both Apple and Dark Horse, and only his third-ever hits collection, following 1976's Beatles-heavy The Best of George Harrison and The Best of Dark Horse, released in 1989 in the afterglow of Cloud Nine's comeback success. Let It Roll balances these two periods, swapping any Beatles-era song ("Something," "Here Comes the Sun," "While My Guitar Gently Weeps") for a live version from The Concert for Bangladesh, then mixing it all up chronologically, so the set starts with the pristine bounce of "Got My Mind Set on You" before giving way to "Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth)" If anything jars, it's the sounds of times, as Jeff Lynne's clean, manicured arrangements don't necessarily fit with Phil Spector's lush, magisterial productions, but that's a minor quibble about a useful compilation that consolidates all of Harrison's signature tunes on one very enjoyable disc.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

The 1990s were a time when hip-hop infused with R&B became pop music, and at the forefront of this movement was En Vogue. Their most commercially and critically successful album, Funky Divas, stands as one of the best pop/R&B albums to emerge from that time, incorporating soul, hip-hop, pop, dance, and rock to create one of the era's most diverse, dazzling, and exciting pieces of work. The album, which is basically free of filler, scored no less than five hit singles, three of which became Top Ten pop hits. Additionally, several other album tracks became dance hits and received considerable airplay as well. These include the unstoppable "My Lovin' (You're Never Gonna Get It)," which combined perfect harmonies, street sass, and 1990s female assertion to create one of the biggest hits of 1992, as well as a catch phrase which became ubiquitous in popular culture. Other hits include their sophisticated, shimmering Top Ten remake of "Giving Him Something He Can Feel," a ghetto love fable initially popularized by Aretha Franklin, the doo wop good-feelin' "Give It Up Turn It Loose," the jazzy "Love Don't Love You," and the hard rock smash "Free Your Mind." The last was a hit which, following the summer of the Los Angeles riots, struck a chord with national audiences by coaxing people to let down their guards about racism and prejudice. Other highlights include the great opener "This Is Your Life," the hip-hop tracks "Hip Hop Lover" and "It Ain't Over Till the Fat Lady Sings," the house track "What Is Love," the sexy, Middle Eastern-influenced "Desire," and their wonderful, should-have-been-a-hit version of Curtis Mayfield's "Hooked on Your Love." Combining sass, elegance, and class with amazing vocals and perfect production, this delightful set stands as one of the 1990s definitive pop albums.© Jose F. Promis /TiVo

Paolo Fresu won't be stopped so easily! Not even at 60. In this, his birthday week, the Sardinian trumpeter with the XXL discography (his name appears on more than 300 records!) is releasing a triple album! The one who keeps slaloming between genres, inspirations and partners is offering up three sides of his art. This copious P60LO FR3SU opens with a remastered reissue of Heartland, a 2001 album featuring the voice of David Linx and arrangements for string quartet by Diederik Wissels. It closes with Heroes, a surprising vocal work, exclusively composed of David Bowie covers. These covers are often surprising and full of  freshness, performed by Petra Magoni and recorded at the end of 2020. Fresu has placed The Sun on the Sea, dead centre in this vocal romp. Also recorded in 2020, it was made with two faithful companions: his fellow bandoneonist Daniele Di Bonaventura and the Brazilian cellist Jaques Morelenbaum. A trio sailing on the currents of a Mediterranean jazz which is also pushed along by Latin American waves. More than two hours and forty-five minutes of protean and colourful music, made in the image of the trumpeter himself. © Clotilde Maréchal/Qobuz

The Psalmes, Songs and Sonnets of 1611 was William Byrd’s final publication. And what a superbly fitting culmination to a lifetime of musical service it is! As well as being packed with variety and invention – including both sacred and secular music and using a range of forces from small trios to consorts to full choir – it is probably the happiest, most serene collection of music Byrd ever produced. The Sixteen is joined by celebrated viol consort, Fretwork, for this complete recording of William Byrd's 1611 Psalmes, Songs and Sonnets. © The Sixteen