Beck has always been known for his ever-changing moods -- particularly since they often arrived one after another on one album, sometimes within one song -- yet the shift between the neon glitz of Midnite Vultures and the lush, somber Sea Change is startling, and not just because it finds him in full-on singer/songwriter mode, abandoning all of the postmodern pranksterism of its predecessor. What's startling about Sea Change is how it brings everything that's run beneath the surface of Beck's music to the forefront, as if he's unafraid to not just reveal emotions, but to elliptically examine them in this wonderfully melancholy song cycle. If, on most albums prior to this, Beck's music was a sonic kaleidoscope -- each song shifting familiar and forgotten sounds into colorful, unpredictable combinations -- this discards genre-hopping in favor of focus, and the concentration pays off gloriously, resulting in not just his best album, but one of the greatest late-night, brokenhearted albums in pop. This, as many reviews and promotional interviews have noted, is indeed a breakup album, but it's not a bitter listen; it has a wearily beautiful sound, a comforting, consoling sadness. His words are often evocative, but not nearly as evocative as the music itself, which is rooted equally in country-rock (not alt-country), early-'70s singer/songwriterism, and baroque British psychedelia. With producer Nigel Godrich, Beck has created a warm, enveloping sound, with his acoustic guitar supported by grand string arrangements straight out of Paul Buckmaster, eerie harmonies, and gentle keyboards among other subtler touches that give this record a richness that unveils more with each listen. Surely, some may bemoan the absence of the careening, free-form experimentalism of Odelay, but Beck's gifts as a songwriter, singer, and musician have never been as brilliant as they are here. As Sea Change is playing, it feels as if Beck singing to you alone, revealing painful, intimate secrets that mirror your own. It's a genuine masterpiece in an era with too damn few of them.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

Leave insular bedroom pop to the kids. Kings of Leon (millennials approaching middle age) are back with their first album in five years, and it's as big and grand as ever. In fact, When You See Yourself feels like an '80s throwback: huge. Credit that in large part to the phenomenal rhythm section of bassist Jared Followill and drummer Nathan Followill; the punchy bass, in particular, on this record is as much the star of the show as Caleb Followill's unmistakable voice. It imbues irresistible opener "When You See Yourself, Are You Far Away" with a bouncy island quality, while bursts of charging drums punctuate the verses. It throbs so deeply on "100,000 People" that, combined with slinky guitar, you might think you're listening to a Peter Gabriel track circa '86. Meanwhile, "The Bandit"—driven by galloping drums that match the open-sky lyrics ("Chiseled their names in stone/Heavy the load you tow/ And the red horse is always close/ And the fire don't burn below")—glows bright with guitar that can only be compared to Joshua Tree-era Edge. When KOL came out of Nashville in 2003—three sons of a Pentecostal preacher plus their cousin from Mississippi—who ever would have predicted they would be the heirs to the anthemic arena rock of Springsteen and U2? (Especially since they looked like Molly Hatchet throwbacks, all shags and mutton chops and flared jeans.) The only problem with being so big that you're a festival favorite is getting written off as having lost your edge: phoning it in, married to models and living in mansions. Those last two points may be apt, but KOL are far from phoning it in. If anything, they're still growing—actually getting better as a band, coming up with thoughtful new ways to manipulate their instruments—and still full of surprises. "Stormy Weather" rumbles like a funk track cut with swooning guitar. "A Wave" comes on as a ballad, all moody piano and sustained organ, before erupting into a Springsteen-like bop, Caleb's voice bright like a searchlight. And while Caleb has always had a way with words, he's trying his hand at poetry this time around. "There's a glow at the face of the canyon/ And a sound blowing 'round/ Says you're nowhere you've ever been before," he sings on "Claire & Eddie"; it's not especially deep, but it is an evocative match to the loose-limbed desert drums and ghostly guitar. "My heart's hard of hearing/ My head's full of sand/ Feet point both directions if you need a hand," he sings on "Echoing," which, with its majestic marching drums and livewire guitar, feels most like the band's earliest spitfire singles (think: "The Bucket," "Molly's Chambers"). The record fades out with "Fairytale," a dreamy, strings-laden song practically floating in space. "Heard your little cause playing on the radio/ It's getting good, real good at getting old," Caleb sings. That's nothing he needs to worry about right now. © Shelly Ridenour/Qobuz

It would be an understatement to say that Yoann Lemoine's latest album was as eagerly-awaited as the name of the new Pope... And so here is Golden Age, bathed in a startling aura of musical luxury. It rather gives the listener the feeling that they've been plunged headlong into the soundtrack for a mad film, written by a Woodkid bristling with inspiration from all genres. Somewhere between futuristic electro and warm string sounds, the film-making musician has created an epic, never impersonal (on the contrary!) and musically excellent. © PY/Qobuz

Blue Öyster Cult scored big with Agents of Fortune and its now-classic rock hit, "(Don't Fear) The Reaper." It took the album into the stratosphere and the band's profile with it; it put them in the visible pop space they'd tried for years to get to. But upon arrival, they found that kind of success difficult to respond to. Not only did the Cult want to respond, they wanted to cement their place. Spectres is not the masterpiece that Agents of Fortune is, but it didn't need to be. However, upon hearing Spectres again, the album offers proof that the commercial and creative bent of Agents of Fortune was still in place at certain moments, and the band laid out a major single in the opening cut, "Godzilla," a tune -- however silly it may be -- that is every bit as memorable as "(Don't Fear) The Reaper." It's not the only big number here either: "Goin' Through the Motions" and the truly spooky "I Love the Night" by Buck Dharma also scored. The former track is a wonderful blend of Tommy James & the Shondells, Boston, and Mott the Hoople's roots rock glam attack. Written by Eric Bloom and Ian Hunter, it's a stunning single. It sounds less like the Cult than anything they'd recorded, but as a classic rock & roll single it succeeds in spades. And "I Love the Night" (with its guitar part resembling "Reaper" for a moment) is one of rock & roll's truly strange and seductive love songs. There is more spook and darkness here, of course, in the album's closer, "Nosferatu." As a closer, "I Love the Night" may have been a better choice, but this track has all those layered harmonies, a reverbed piano, Dharma's power chords, and lyric fills that never lose their sense of menace and once more, a story. BOC were the only band in their league, walking the line between AOR rock and metal, and offering such detailed narratives. Spectres also contains tunes that were ready-made for touring, which is what the Cult did immediately after, resulting in the wildly successful live album Some Enchanted Evening. In sum, the only reason Spectres is not regarded as a classic is because it followed Agents of Fortune. Other than the false funk of "Searchin' for Celine," it's flawless as a finely tuned tome that begins with sci-fi humor and ends with gothic horror -- all of which can be hummed to.© Thom Jurek /TiVo

Beck has always been known for his ever-changing moods -- particularly since they often arrived one after another on one album, sometimes within one song -- yet the shift between the neon glitz of Midnite Vultures and the lush, somber Sea Change is startling, and not just because it finds him in full-on singer/songwriter mode, abandoning all of the postmodern pranksterism of its predecessor. What's startling about Sea Change is how it brings everything that's run beneath the surface of Beck's music to the forefront, as if he's unafraid to not just reveal emotions, but to elliptically examine them in this wonderfully melancholy song cycle. If, on most albums prior to this, Beck's music was a sonic kaleidoscope -- each song shifting familiar and forgotten sounds into colorful, unpredictable combinations -- this discards genre-hopping in favor of focus, and the concentration pays off gloriously, resulting in not just his best album, but one of the greatest late-night, brokenhearted albums in pop. This, as many reviews and promotional interviews have noted, is indeed a breakup album, but it's not a bitter listen; it has a wearily beautiful sound, a comforting, consoling sadness. His words are often evocative, but not nearly as evocative as the music itself, which is rooted equally in country-rock (not alt-country), early-'70s singer/songwriterism, and baroque British psychedelia. With producer Nigel Godrich, Beck has created a warm, enveloping sound, with his acoustic guitar supported by grand string arrangements straight out of Paul Buckmaster, eerie harmonies, and gentle keyboards among other subtler touches that give this record a richness that unveils more with each listen. Surely, some may bemoan the absence of the careening, free-form experimentalism of Odelay, but Beck's gifts as a songwriter, singer, and musician have never been as brilliant as they are here. As Sea Change is playing, it feels as if Beck singing to you alone, revealing painful, intimate secrets that mirror your own. It's a genuine masterpiece in an era with too damn few of them.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

Chaos & Colour sees the return of long running British hard rock outfit Uriah Heep. Produced by Jay Ruston (Black Star Riders, Amon Amarth) the album sees the group deliver another collection of finely-tuned, classic hard rock cuts. The single "Save Me Tonight" is included.© Rich Wilson /TiVo

The London Oratory Schola Cantorum has been around for several decades but came on the recording scene definitively only in the 2010s, offering a series of "Sacred Treasures of ..." albums. These are not the generic products one might guess from the title. Consider 2024's Sacred Treasures of Venice, which is not an anthology but an album focusing on a specific repertory and on one specific part of it at that. It made classical best-seller charts in early 2024. St. Mark's cathedral in Venice at the end of the 16th century and the beginning of the 17th is known for polychoral magnificence, for sacred music in which instruments played a new and groundbreaking role. Of course, more intimate music was also pursued, and even in larger pieces practice, was flexible, and they might have been sung a cappella. These pieces by Giovanni Gabrieli, his uncle Andrea Gabrieli, the young Claudio Monteverdi, and a couple of other composers are ideally suited to the all-male London Oratory Schola Cantorum, whose boy singers have some texture and heft. However, it is interesting as well to hear the St. Mark's repertory sung this way; one hears that the big dimensions of the music were not just a response to St. Mark's architecture but represented a musical evolution as well. Giovanni Gabrieli was innovative not just in using instruments but in shaping musical architectures with register and harmony, and this is apparent even where no instruments are present. The contrasts among the composers here are also intriguing; hear the limpid, almost Palestrinian pieces of Giovanni Croce at the end. Hyperion records this young choir well, not at the London Oratory School but at St. Augustine's Church, Kilbourn, London, which has a spacious enough acoustic to put this music across. These are indeed Sacred Treasures of Venice, but this is also an album from which one can learn.© James Manheim /TiVo

Talk to anyone who was the right age in the early '80s for both pop radio and the dawn of MTV, and "She Blinded Me with Science" will inevitably come up. The most famous song from the reissued version of the album, it's a defiantly quirky, strange number that mixes its pop hooks with unusual keyboard melodies pitched very low and a recurrent spoken word interjection ("Science!") from guest vocalist/video star Magnus Pike. To Thomas Dolby's credit, the rest of the album isn't simply that song over and over again, making The Golden Age of Wireless an intriguing and often very entertaining curio from the glory days of synth pop. Part of the album's overall appeal is the range of participating musicians, no doubt thanks in part to Dolby's own considerable range of musical work elsewhere. "She Blinded Me with Science" itself features Kevin Armstrong on guitar, Matthew Seligman on bass, mega-producer Robert "Mutt" Lange on backing vocals, and co-production with Tim Friese-Greene. Elsewhere, Andy Partridge contributes harmonica, Mute Records founding genius Daniel Miller adds keyboards, and Lene Lovich adds some vocals of her own. The overall result is still first and foremost Dolby's, with echoes of David Bowie's and Bryan Ferry's elegantly wasted late-'70s personas setting the stage. If anything, The Golden Age of Wireless is the friendlier, peppier flip side of fellow Bowie obsessive Gary Numan's work, where the melancholy is gentle instead of harrowing. Dolby's melodies are sprightly without being annoyingly perky, his singing warm, and his overall performance a pleasant gem. Especially fine numbers include the amusing romp "Europa and the Pirate Twins" and the nostalgia-touched, just mysterious enough "One of Our Submarines."© Ned Raggett /TiVo

The sixth studio long-player from the Norwegian singer/songwriter, Music for People in Trouble sees Susanne Sundfør ditching the glacial dancefloor synth pop of 2015's acclaimed Ten Love Songs and looking inward. Written during a period of personal upheaval -- a huge star in her native Norway, the success of Ten Love Songs, among other things, nearly broke her -- the stark and aptly named set delivers all of the emotional richness of its predecessor, but in a more meditative voice. Willfully intimate, Sundfør's vocals, powerful as always, are more often than not accompanied only by piano or guitar. A classically trained pianist who isn't afraid to incorporate elements of jazz, folk, and musique concrète into her pieces -- the latter disposition looms large on the fractured title cut -- Sundfør's songs are both relatable and alien; dispatches from a planet whose axis is tilted a single degree further out from the plane of its orbit around the sun than our own. Contrast is key, like the thermal pedal steel that punctuates the otherwise downcast "Reincarnation," the ambient footsteps, cell phone beeps, and wandering clarinet that highlight the cruel boredom of insomnia on the evocative "Bedtime Stories," and the arm-hair-raising crescendo of the majestic, John Grant-assisted closer "Mountaineers." Such militant introspection can sometimes be off-putting, but Music for People in Trouble is rooted in empathy, and even at its most cynical -- the woebegone "No One Believes in Love Anymore" comes to mind -- the warmth of its core radiates outward. © James Christopher Monger /TiVo

In dubbing his album "The Golden Age" violinist Ray Chen wanted to evoke an era when violinists Fritz Kreisler and Jascha Heifetz travelled the world, and when the ink was barely dry on the works of Claude Debussy, Erik Satie, Max Bruch, Cyril Scott and George Gershwin. Chen thought of his bouquet as a great big spray bordered by smaller flowers whose size hides an often exquisite perfection. And so it is that Max Bruch's First Concerto a major work, and musically a classic, dating from 1866, is hemmed around with a few pearls from Gershwin, Ponce and Scott re-written by Heifetz et Kreisler, not to forget a few delightful winks from Stephan Koncz (born 1984) at Satie in The New Satiesfaction or Debussy in his revision of Clair de lune. It's Stephan Koncz himself, who is also the cellist of the Berlin Philharmonic, who holds down the cello role in the revisions for string quartet. Ray Chen won the 2008 Menuhin Competition and the following year won the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels: two big door-openers for the great international career which he has enjoyed since, with a constant companion in the form of a Stradivarius which had belonged to Joseph Joachim. © SM/Qobuz

Timing is everything in pop music, and Marilyn Manson hit a zeitgeist in the mid-'90s with Antichrist Superstar, riding the post-alternative wave to the top of the charts with his dark, arty, industrial metal. He was a proud shock artist and a great interview, one of the few rockers of his time who stood his own against his attackers by offering articulate, informed counterarguments to their blustering rage. Like any shock rocker, though, the novelty wears thin fast, and what was once scary turns into self-parody. Manson, no stranger to rock history, attempted to circumvent this by turning quickly to the left with the glam-soaked Mechanical Animals, but in doing so he lost huge portions of his audience, and by the time he returned to scary industrial metal form on Holy Wood in 2000, he seemed out of date and few critics or fans paid attention. Three years later, he unleashed his fifth album, The Golden Age of Grotesque, and he still seemed out of step with the times, but there was a difference -- he sounded comfortable with that development. Also, by 2003, rock, particularly heavy metal, was in desperate need of artists with a grand vision and ambition, which Manson has in spades. After all, The Golden Age is designed to be a modern update of German art, vaudeville, and decadent Hollywood glamour of the '30s, all given a thudding metallic grind, of course. In an era when heavy rockers have no idea what happened in the '80s, much less the '30s, it's hard not to warm to this, even if his music isn't your own personal bag. Musically, Manson isn't departing from his basic sound -- he's following through on the return to basics Holy Wood represented -- but his first self-production has resulted in an album that feels light and nimble, even though it's drenched in distortion and screams. It feels as if Manson now feels liberated from not being consistently in the spotlight, and his music has opened up as well. With that new freedom, he gets silly on occasion -- the gibberish on the ridiculously titled "This Is the New Sh*t," the appropriation of Faith No More's "Be Aggressive" for "mOBSCENE," the lyric "You are the church/I am the steeple/When we f*ck we are God's People" -- but instead of knocking the record off track, they are part of the big picture on this oversized album. What matters here, as it always does on a Marilyn Manson album, is the overarching concept, and while The Golden Age of Grotesque has some kind of theme, its particulars aren't discernible, but the overall feeling resonates strongly. This messy, unruly, noisy burlesque may fall on its face, but it puts itself in the position where it can either stand or fall, and, unlike in the past, Manson isn't taking himself so seriously that he sounds stiff. It all adds up to a very good album -- maybe not his best, and certainly not one that will attract the most attention, but it's a hell of a lot grander than what his peers are producing, and holds its own with his previous records. It's also a bit more fun, too, and that counts for a lot.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

Still as inspiring as ever at 83 years old, Rhoda Scott has surrounded herself here with an impressive gang of contemporary jazz Amazonians for a track aptly called Lady All Stars which follows on from her Lady Quartet created in 2004 at Jazz in Vienna, with Sophie Alour on tenor saxophone, Airelle Besson on trumpet and Julie Saury on drums. In 2007, the saxophonist Lisa Cat-Berro replaced Besson. Rhoda Scott has joined forces with Géraldine Laurent on alto saxophone, Céline Bonacina on baritone and Anne Paceo on drums, and has also brought back Airelle Besson. Here Rhoda Scott has joined forces with Géraldine Laurent on alto saxophone, Céline Bonacina on baritone and Anne Paceo on drums, and has also brought back Airelle Besson. In short, some excess power to boost the funky DNA of this brass band. Behind her blazing Hammond, the American organist, supported by this rising generation of French jazzwomen, shows above all that her Leslie has not finished turning! “Playing with these young artists has inspired me and I have learned a lot from them. After concerts, some spectators have also told me that it makes them feel good, and that we are likely role models for their daughters.” © Clotilde Maréchal/Qobuz

Talk to anyone who was the right age in the early '80s for both pop radio and the dawn of MTV, and "She Blinded Me with Science" will inevitably come up. The most famous song from the reissued version of the album, it's a defiantly quirky, strange number that mixes its pop hooks with unusual keyboard melodies pitched very low and a recurrent spoken word interjection ("Science!") from guest vocalist/video star Magnus Pike. To Thomas Dolby's credit, the rest of the album isn't simply that song over and over again, making The Golden Age of Wireless an intriguing and often very entertaining curio from the glory days of synth pop. Part of the album's overall appeal is the range of participating musicians, no doubt thanks in part to Dolby's own considerable range of musical work elsewhere. "She Blinded Me with Science" itself features Kevin Armstrong on guitar, Matthew Seligman on bass, mega-producer Robert "Mutt" Lange on backing vocals, and co-production with Tim Friese-Greene. Elsewhere, Andy Partridge contributes harmonica, Mute Records founding genius Daniel Miller adds keyboards, and Lene Lovich adds some vocals of her own. The overall result is still first and foremost Dolby's, with echoes of David Bowie's and Bryan Ferry's elegantly wasted late-'70s personas setting the stage. If anything, The Golden Age of Wireless is the friendlier, peppier flip side of fellow Bowie obsessive Gary Numan's work, where the melancholy is gentle instead of harrowing. Dolby's melodies are sprightly without being annoyingly perky, his singing warm, and his overall performance a pleasant gem. Especially fine numbers include the amusing romp "Europa and the Pirate Twins" and the nostalgia-touched, just mysterious enough "One of Our Submarines."© Ned Raggett /TiVo

Sunset on the Golden Age is the fourth album from Scottish "pirate metal" outfit Alestorm and follows their 2011 album Back Through Time. Produced by Lasse Lammert, the album sees the group deliver another collection of pirate-themed power metal tracks.© Rich Wilson /TiVo

It's nearly impossible to listen to 4 Hero's Two Pages without thinking about the incredible success enjoyed by the jungle movement (and Roni Size's New Forms LP in particular) during the four-year gap which separated Dego and Mark Mac's second album from their third. With LTJ Bukem, the duo were one of the first jungle acts to desert hardcore for the astral drift of jazz-fusion atmospheres, and Two Pages is about as fusion-soaked as it gets. The first of the two discs includes the more downtempo R&B, almost orchestral side of 4 Hero, quite indebted to jazz luminaries like Pharoah Sanders, Lonnie Liston Smith and Roy Ayers. Many of the instruments are live contributions, while vocalists as wide-ranging as poet Ursula Rucker and Digable Planets rapper Butterfly make appearances. The second disc is the dancefloor (read: tighter) half of the album, skirting through dense soundscapes of paranoid breakbeats. As could be expected, more than two hours of music is way too much for listeners to work their way through, and a heavy editing job would have made this a stellar album instead of the flawed and somewhat bloated album it turned out to be. For drum'n'bass fans, the real highlights come with second-disc tracks like "We Who Are Not as Others" and "In the Shadows" -- as it is, they're so terrific as to nearly justify purchase by themselves. (The American version of Two Pages edited the album down to fit on a single disc, and also added several tracks not available on the British two-CD version.)© John Bush /TiVo