What does a shrug sound like? On "Don't Know Why,” the opening track of her debut effort, Norah Jones suggests a few possibilities. The first time she sings the title phrase, she gives it a touch of indifference, the classic tossed-off movie-star shrug. Her tone shifts slightly when she hits the chorus, to convey twinges of sadness; here the casual phrasing could be an attempt to shake off a sharp memory. Later, she shrugs in a way that conveys resignation, possibly regret—she's replaying a scene, trying to understand what happened. Those shrugs and shadings, tools deployed by every jazz vocalist of the 1950s, are inescapable throughout Come Away With Me—in part because everything surrounding Jones' voice is so chill. There's room for her to emote, and room for gently cresting piano and organ chords. Unlike so many of her contemporaries, Jones knows instinctively how much (or how little!) singer the song needs. The secret of this record, which came out when Jones was 22, is its almost defiant approachability: It is calm, and open, and gentle, music for a lazy afternoon in a porch swing. As transfixing covers of Hank Williams' "Cold Cold Heart” and Hoagy Carmichael's "The Nearness of You” make clear, Jones thinks about contours and shadows when she sings; her storytelling depends as much on the scene and the atmosphere as the narrative. And Jones applies the same understatement to the original songs here, which weave together elements of country, pop, jazz and torch balladry in inventive ways. It's one thing to render an old tune with modern cleverness, a skill Jones had honed as a solo pianist/singer before she was discovered. It's quite another to transform an original tune, like Jesse Harris' "Don't Know Why,” into something that sounds ageless and eternal, like a standard. Jones does that, over and over, using just shrugs and implications, rarely raising her voice much above a whisper. © Tom Moon/Qobuz

Out of the Blue may not have been Electric Light Orchestra's best album (that would be its immediate predecessor, the taut and driving New World Record), but it was absolutely their most-est album. Coming off the creative, critical, and commercial breakthrough of New World Record, ELO's Jeff Lynne clearly felt at the height of his powers, and for Out of the Blue, he delivered a trifecta of "overconfident '70s rocker" signifiers: 1) a double album that 2) featured a side-long "song suite" and 3) a shocking amount of novelty numbers and instrumentals. And while it may not have been surprising that Out of the Blue was hugely successful—it went multi-platinum on the backs of some of the band's most memorable hits, including the now-immortal "Mr. Blue Sky"—it is remarkable how well the material holds up decades later. Lynne's unabashed Beatles-worship gets a robust airing, but it's here more than any other ELO record that his love of the Fab Four is so artfully fused into everything from prog-rock symphonics, proto-disco rhythms, lush synth-pop, and, er, whale song. It's absolutely pretentious, but in a beguiling and infectious way that winds up making it remarkably personal and highly idiosyncratic. "Turn to Stone" charges out of the gate and sets the tone for the entirety of Out of the Blue, combining rich soundscapes, expansive arrangements, and earworm melodies. The album also features the epic "Concerto for a Rainy Day," a four-part suite that is literally about the weather, featuring "Standin' in the Rain," "Big Wheels," "Summer and Lightning," and concluding with "Mr. Blue Sky," a song that has since become synonymous with ELO's signature sound. Of course, there are some overreaching missteps—the album would be fine without the weird and silly Tarzan effects of "Jungle" and the instrumental burbles of "The Whale" would have been more appropriate as a b-side bonus—but they are more than compensated for by the moments where Lynne's ego pushes him and the band to unexpected greatness. The dizzying mariachi melodrama of "Across the Border" or the dreamy swoon of "Starlight" would have been attempted by few other acts in 1977, and only ELO could deliver them so convincingly.  When it came to radio hits, cuts like "Sweet Talkin' Woman" and even "Wild West Hero" are maddeningly catchy but also supremely weird. Of course, subsequent releases would find diminishing returns by trying to recreate the magic of Out of the Blue, but for this one bold, baroque moment, it seemed that Jeff Lynne and ELO had absolutely defined the future of artful pop-rock. © Jason Ferguson/Qobuz

Often pigeonholed as being prolific to a fault, Beck took an extended break from recording after the 2008 release of Modern Guilt. He kept himself busy, producing acclaimed albums for Charlotte Gainsbourg, Thurston Moore, and Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks, blowing off steam via his mischievous Record Club (an online series where he and his friends covered classic albums), and then easing back to original songwriting through the ambitious Song Reader project, a folio containing sheet music for 20 unrecorded songs. He also suffered a spinal injury in 2008, a fact not publicized until he was ready to release Morning Phase, his first album in six years, early in 2014. As Morning Phase is a slow, shimmering album deliberately in the vein of classic singer/songwriter LPs, it's easy to think of it as a pained, confessional sequel to Sea Change, the 2002 record written and recorded in the wake of a painful romantic breakup. Beck didn't shy away from these comparisons, calling it a "companion piece" to his acclaimed 2002 LP, and as "Morning" glimmers into view, sounding for all the world like "Golden Age," it almost seems as if Beck covered himself as part of the Record Club. Morning Phase soon develops its own distinct gait, one that's a little more relaxed than its cousin. Crucially, Beck has swapped sorrow for mere melancholy, a shift in attitude that makes this 2014 album sweeter than its predecessor, a distinction sometimes distinguished by moments where words, traditionally the sadness signifiers for sensitive troubadours, are washed away by cascading waves of candy-colored sound. Underneath this warm, enveloping aural blanket lie some sturdily constructed compositions -- the haunting "Heart Is a Drum," bringing to mind memories of Nick Drake; the loping country-rock "Say Goodbye" and its sister "Country Down"; "Blue Moon," where the skies part like the breaking dawn -- but the abiding impression left from this album is one of comfort, not despair, which makes Morning Phase distinctly different than its companion Sea Change.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

On The Idiot, Iggy Pop looked deep inside himself, trying to figure out how his life and his art had gone wrong in the past. But on Lust for Life, released less than a year later, Iggy decided it was time to kick up his heels, as he traded in the midtempo introspection of his first album and began rocking hard again. Musically, Lust for Life is a more aggressive set than The Idiot, largely thanks to drummer Hunt Sales and his bassist brother Tony Sales. The Sales proved they were a world-class rhythm section, laying out power and spirit on the rollicking title cut, the tough groove of "Tonight," and the lean neo-punk assault of "Neighborhood Threat," and with guitarists Ricky Gardiner and Carlos Alomar at their side, they made for a tough, wiry rock & roll band -- a far cry from the primal stomp of the Stooges, but capable of kicking Iggy back into high gear. (David Bowie played piano and produced, as he had on The Idiot, but his presence is less clearly felt on this album.) As a lyricist and vocalist, Iggy Pop rose to the challenge of the material; if he was still obsessed with drugs ("Tonight"), decadence ("The Passenger"), and bad decisions ("Some Weird Sin"), the title cut suggested he could avoid a few of the temptations that crossed his path, and songs like "Success" displayed a cocky joy that confirmed Iggy was back at full strength. On Lust for Life, Iggy Pop managed to channel the aggressive power of his work with the Stooges with the intelligence and perception of The Idiot, and the result was the best of both worlds; smart, funny, edgy, and hard-rocking, Lust for Life is the best album of Iggy Pop's solo career.© Mark Deming /TiVo

No need to have the same musical tastes to appreciate each other’s cuisine... The proof of this truism can be found in this collaboration between a revered queen of alternative country and a respected old sage of modern jazz: Lucinda Williams and Charles Lloyd, a one-day couple supported by a five-star cast of musicians in which we find guitarist Bill Frisell, pedal steel master Greg Leisz, bassist Reuben Rogers and drummer Eric Harland... Both Lloyd and Williams have previously lead a revolution in their respective fields. Here, the duo are celebrating a certain idea of America with an open-minded repertoire. A heterogeneous menu mixing jazz, blues, country and rock'n'roll, with Williams only singing on half of the ten tracks. Vanished Gardens offer up Jimi Hendrix (Angel) as well as Thelonious Monk (Monk's Mood) and Roberta Flack (Ballad of The Sad Young Men), though they also include some of their signature dishes (three by Charles Lloyd and four by Lucinda Williams). This is, above all, a refined and profound album; the work of two musicians who know how to digest well decades of music. © Marc Zisman/Qobuz

Who would have thought that in 1981, after a pair of limp, unfocused studio offerings, and two mixed -- at best -- live outings, that the once mighty Blue Öyster Cult would come back with such a fierce, creative, and uncompromising effort as Fire of Unknown Origin. Here was their finest moment since Agents of Fortune five years earlier, and one of their finest ever. Bringing back into the fold the faithful team who helped articulate their earlier vision, producer Sandy Pearlman, Richard Meltzer, and Patti Smith all helped in the lyric department, as did science-fiction and dark-fantasy writer Michael Moorcock. The band's sound was augmented by a plethora of keyboards courtesy of Allen Lanier, but nonetheless retained a modicum of its heaviness, and the sheer songwriting craft that had helped separate the band form its peers early on was everywhere evident here -- especially the gloriously noir-ish Top 40 single "Burning for You," written by Meltzer and guitarist Buck Dharma. Other standouts on the set include the plodding, über-riff pyrotechnics of "Heavy Metal: The Black and the Silver," and the Mott the Hoople- and Queen-influenced glammed up roots rock of "Joan Crawford." The terrifying images of desecration and apocalyptic war in "Veteran of Psychic Wars," with words by Moorcock, feature huge synth lines, dual leads by Dharma and Eric Bloom -- as well as a tom-tom orgy from Albert Bouchard -- offered a new pathway through the eternal night of the Cult's best work. Fire of Unknown Origin has aged well, and deserves to be remastered in the 21st century.© Thom Jurek /TiVo

Like corporate drones determined to cut loose every third Friday whether they need to or not, the Black Keys take the time to schedule semi-regular journeys into the unknown. Turn Blue, the 2014 successor to their down-and-dirty international blockbuster El Camino, is one of those trips, a churning psychedelic excursion that slowly pulses in any color you like. Those colors spread out slow and low as Turn Blue gets underway via "Weight of Love," sounding not at all unlike Pink Floyd's "Breathe in the Air," a deliberate comparison the Keys return to often throughout the album, letting it decorate fleeting moments and infuse full songs ("Bullet in the Brain," the first single pulled from the LP, hits many of the same notes). Floyd looked to space but, like the Ohio natives that they are, the Black Keys' concerns are earthbound. Dan Auerbach primarily sings songs about love lost and won, sprinkling in a little bit of lust along the way, and he and Patrick Carney certainly share a love of soul and groove, something that's rarely heard in music as trippy as this. Time and time again throughout Turn Blue, the Black Keys and Danger Mouse turn toward those rhythms without abandoning the psychedelic swirl that gives the album its distinctive flavor. Unlike 2008's Attack & Release -- the last time the Black Keys decided to get out, way out (and not coincidentally their first collaboration with Danger Mouse) -- this has momentum, a drive provided by those heavy rhythms (they escalate so much, "10 Lovers" flirts with glitter-ball disco) and sheets of outsized fuzz guitars that cut through the haze. Songs stretch out longer here than they have on any previous Black Keys LP, but this doesn't feel indulgent due to the precision of the production; things may seem to drift but every bit of fuzz and echo is in its right place. Initially, this immaculately shaded production draws attention to itself but, in time, Turn Blue reveals that underneath its surface flash it's a quietly adventurous and substantive record. The Black Keys retain their fascination with southern soul of the late '60s -- the title track is coolly insinuating, "Fever" stomps and shakes -- but where El Camino pushed these retro-fantasies to the center, they're merely the bones of this record, the solid structure upon which the band and Danger Mouse choose to expand. Although the closing "Gotta Get Away"-- its title borrowed from both the Rolling Stones and the Impressions but the song sounds like neither group -- illustrates how good the duo is when they keep things grounded in the garage, the rest of Turn Blue impresses because it does what all great bands should do: it captures a band stretching while always sounding like themselves.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

Joni Mitchell continues to dig through her archives with a second volume of rarities and unreleased material that follows Archives - Vol. 1: The Early Years (1963-1967) published in 2020. With its 119 tracks (over 6 hours of music!), Archives, Vol. 2: The Reprise Years (1968-1971) offers a chronologically-ordered tracklist presenting songs recorded during the period linking her first album, Song to a Seagull (1968), with her fourth album, Blue (1971). It was a sort of golden age of artistic uniqueness in a folk scene which was jam-packed with contenders jostling for the top spot. This release is a snapshot, above all, of her personal evolution, from the streets and small folk clubs to the most prestigious venues... Demos recorded in her home or in her friend Jane Lurie's New York flat, sessions at Sunset Sound studio in Hollywood, a TV appearance on Dick Cavett's show, live in Ann Arbor or at the Hibou Coffee House in Ottawa (recorded by Jimi Hendrix himself!), this boxed set also includes a beautiful London concert in October 1970 broadcast by the BBC, where she performed Carey, River and My Old Man, which were to be included on Blue the following year. And during this latter show, we find one James Taylor is at her side. Another highlight of this impressive collection is her February 1st 1969 concert at New York's Carnegie Hall, a sort of apogee for an artist who was then just 25 years old... As always, this kind of copious box set is above all intended for the hardcore aficionados of the Canadian’s music, although novices are also sure to be hypnotised by her otherworldly voice and these introspective lyrics, whose style would go on to influence whole generations of songwriters... © Marc Zisman/Qobuz

What does a shrug sound like? On "Don't Know Why,” the opening track of her debut effort, Norah Jones suggests a few possibilities. The first time she sings the title phrase, she gives it a touch of indifference, the classic tossed-off movie-star shrug. Her tone shifts slightly when she hits the chorus, to convey twinges of sadness; here the casual phrasing could be an attempt to shake off a sharp memory. Later, she shrugs in a way that conveys resignation, possibly regret—she's replaying a scene, trying to understand what happened. Those shrugs and shadings, tools deployed by every jazz vocalist of the 1950s, are inescapable throughout Come Away With Me—in part because everything surrounding Jones' voice is so chill. There's room for her to emote, and room for gently cresting piano and organ chords. Unlike so many of her contemporaries, Jones knows instinctively how much (or how little!) singer the song needs. The secret of this record, which came out when Jones was 22, is its almost defiant approachability: It is calm, and open, and gentle, music for a lazy afternoon in a porch swing. As transfixing covers of Hank Williams' "Cold Cold Heart” and Hoagy Carmichael's "The Nearness of You” make clear, Jones thinks about contours and shadows when she sings; her storytelling depends as much on the scene and the atmosphere as the narrative. And Jones applies the same understatement to the original songs here, which weave together elements of country, pop, jazz and torch balladry in inventive ways. It's one thing to render an old tune with modern cleverness, a skill Jones had honed as a solo pianist/singer before she was discovered. It's quite another to transform an original tune, like Jesse Harris' "Don't Know Why,” into something that sounds ageless and eternal, like a standard. Jones does that, over and over, using just shrugs and implications, rarely raising her voice much above a whisper. © Tom Moon/Qobuz

Of all the great transitional albums in rock history, Joni Mitchell's For the Roses is one of the greatest. Coming after the spare, diaristic Blue—on which Mitchell both perfected and abandoned her evolution from the coffeehouse folk scene —and pointing the direction to the more jazz-flecked and kaleidoscopic sounds of Court and Spark, Roses found her going from strength to strength lyrically, while opening a pandora's box of musical possibilities in these songs' structures and instrumentation. The album starts familiarly enough, with the piano-and-vocals simplicity of "Banquet," which initially presents as an impressionistic number but quickly reveals itself to be a biting class critique far more cynical and angry than anything Mitchell had previously recorded. If that wasn't enough of a clue that Roses was going to be a very different Joni Mitchell album, "Cold Blue Steel and Sweet Fire" makes it clear that this was an artist intent on radically reshaping her sound. The song couples bleak lyrics about addiction and codependency with a lush arrangement that leans as heavily on well-deployed horn lines as it does on a full-bodied acoustic guitar attack accentuated by subtle studio effects. It's a complex sonic construction that is remarkably airy and light-filled, providing an unsettling contrast to its dark lyrics. Despite its rather dour opening, Roses has considerable tonal variety; after all it's also home to "You Turn Me On, I'm a Radio" one of Mitchell's most beloved accidents, written as an offhanded half-joke reply to her label's insistence that she get a song on the radio. Naturally, it wound up being a hit, but also sneakily subverts the "songs about radios get played on the radio" trope by being lined with "Wall of Joni" multi-tracked vocals, no discernable chorus, and a questionable take on whether radios are actually cool or not. There are also several other numbers that align closely with the singer-songwriter vibes of Blue, most notably the beautiful piano-and-vocals approach of "Lesson in Survival," but for the most part, Roses is an album that finds Mitchell pushing forward. "Let the Wind Carry Me" is profoundly intense lyrically ("Sometimes I get that feeling that I wanna settle and raise a child with somebody/ But it passes"), and wildly dynamic musically, with odd timings, quirky phrasings, and ethereal saxophone lines intertwined with gut-punch vocal harmonies. "Car on a Hill" would revisit some of the musical themes here just a few months later, but this number is far more challenging than its Court and Spark descendant. Likewise, "Blonde in the Bleachers"—a pure homage to the sanctifying (and suffocating) power of rock stardom—is perched upon such a jazzy foundation that it wouldn't have been out of place on The Hissing of Summer Lawns three years later. This "in-between-ness" has often found For the Roses left out of conversations extolling the virtues of the records it came before and after, but that very aspect is what makes it such a remarkably unique and utterly essential album in Mitchell's catalog. © Jason Ferguson/Qobuz

What better way of making a new record than surrounding yourself with new collaborators? That was the idea that Youn Sun Nah had for She Moves On. Four years after Lento, the Korean singer has taken on a close-knit group comprising John Zorn, Jamie Saft on the piano, the Hammond organ, the Fender Rhodes and the Wurlitzer (he also produced the record), and Brad Jones on the bass alongside drummer Dan Rieser, who worked with Norah Jones in Little Willies. But it is above all the presence of the guitarist Marc Ribot on five of these eleven tracks that draws attention. Surrounded by these four strong personalities, Youn Sun Nah explores a fairly varied repertoire that owes as much to rock as to folk, to rhythms as to lyrics, taking in covers of Joni Mitchell (The Dawntreader), Paul Simon (She Moves On), Lou Reed (Teach The Gifted Children), Jimi Hendrix (Drifting with a searing solo from Ribot) or the traditional Black Is The Color Of My True Love’s Hair. Three original compositions, Traveller, Evening Star and Too Late, complete this album which is resolutely inspired by American music and which presents her impressive voice in a context which rightly recalls Norah Jones, or Melody Gardot. But Youn Sun Nah's vocal personality is strong enough that she never seems to be stepping on her illustrious sisters’ toes, and she offers, from the outset, a record that is all her own. © MD/Qobuz