2018's Time & Space saw Turnstile breach the headwaters of the mainstream with a bracing set of songs that were delivered with gusto and peppered with creative funk and hip-hop interludes. The Baltimore hardcore enthusiasts go all-in on their dizzying third long-player, Glow On, bringing in Dr. Dre protégé Mike Elizondo (Mastodon, Twenty One Pilots, 50 Cent) to helm the production and delivering a 15-track set that stays true to their punk roots while carving out an impressive swathe of old, new, borrowed, and blue sonic real estate. Commencing with a billowing synth arpeggio, triumphant opener "Mystery" sets the table with an earworm-heavy blast of punchy '90s alt-rock that pulls the choicest pieces of meat from the carcasses of Fugazi, Jane's Addiction, and Nirvana. "Blackout," "Holiday," and "T.L.C. (Turnstile Love Connection)" go big as well, with the former administering lethal amounts of taut, Helmet-worthy riffage over a mix of analog and triggered beats -- replete with Latin drum flourishes -- and the latter two cuts looking to consolidate the mosh pit and the dancefloor into a sweaty, earthbound murmuration. The interstitial moments of Time & Space have been folded in rather than tacked on this time around, which helps otherwise sonic outliers like the languid indie rocker "Alien Love" (one of two tracks to feature Devonté Hyne, aka Blood Orange) and the bubbly and aptly named dance-pop gem "Underwater Boi" find some equilibrium with the rest of the album. Turnstile's predilection for genre-hopping never tempers their enthusiasm, and the concise and inclusive hardcore anthems that have been their forte since emerging in 2010 still make up the bulwark of their sound. Both vital and respective of the listener's time at just under 35 minutes, Glow On rolls in like a violent, late-summer storm and pummels the power grid but mercifully leaves the lights on.© James Christopher Monger /TiVo

Fusion, transcendence: it's what he's always done. At 74, Carlos Santana is still as curious as ever, and his 26th studio album brings together all his current interests, with an unabashedly popularising aim. With this record, the Mexican-born guitarist wanted to "return to radio". And this album has all the ingredients to make its mark on the airwaves in the coming months. First of all, he relaunched his duet with Rob Thomas, which had won a Grammy for Smooth at the time of Supernatural, Santana's 1999 comeback album. And the very groovy track Move looks set to do it again. The cover of Manu Dibango's Soul Fiesta (taken from 1972’s Africadelic), here becomes Santana Celebration, an intro in the form of a percussion and wah-wah jam, is also a noteworthy track.Santana then wanders between Latin music (Rumbalero with Asdru Sierra from the Californian band Ozomatli), pop passages (Break, Breathing Underwater, She's Fire) and high-quality guest appearances, starting with Joy, with country singer Chris Stapleton coming in for a well-oiled reggae/blues double-act, and a cover of Procol Harum's Whiter Shade of Pale featuring Steve Winwood. But the highlight of the album is the encounter with Kirk Hammett, the guitarist of Metallica (+ Mark Osegueda, the singer in Death Angels) on America for Sale, six minutes of rage with a totally unbridled finale featuring these two guitar heroes. Note also that Blessings & Miracles contains Chick Corea's very final recording, on Angel Choir / All Together. The legendary American pianist, who died in February 2021, had sent over a keyboard part, which Santana embellished with his guitar, creating an excellent jazz-rock track, rounded out by the musician’s widow, Gayle Moran Corea, who provided the opening chorus. © Smaël Bouaici/Qobuz

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  

"With their third studio album, Red Velvet have returned to what they do best -- spinning chilling tales with flawless harmonies at the centre."© TiVo

When Hawkwind released their self-titled debut album in 1970, they seemed slightly behind the times, trading in sci-fi-tinged psychedelia at a time when the U.K. psych scene was fading out in favor of prog and art rock. Fifty-four years later, Hawkwind exist in a time zone all their own, having evolved with the passage of a few decades but still trading in their singular brand of space rock, with chugging guitars and buzzy electronics accompanying Dave Brock's tales of interplanetary sonic exploration. According to its accompanying press release, 2024's Stories from Time and Space is Hawkwind's 36th album (though the number is much higher if you add in all their live releases), and Brock was four months away from his 83rd birthday when it was released, so the album's lyrical concerns with how long these characters and their world can go on has a certain autobiographical undertow, even if the slightly doomstruck tone isn't that unusual for this band. (There's also a love story involved, but don't feel bad if you don't immediately recognize it without reading the liner notes.) Hawkwind don't rock as hard in the year 2024 as they did in their prime, but Stories from Time and Space doesn't sound rote or weak-willed, either, and if there's nothing here quite like the ten-minute pulse/drone track that opened 2023's The Future Never Waits, Brock and his synth-playing bandmates Magnus Martin and Thighpaulsandra are still traveling the spaceways with their extended journeys into abstract soundscapes and serialist rhythms, especially on the triple-play of "Traveler of Time and Space," "Re-Generate," and "The Black Sea." The group's focus is tighter on more song-oriented tracks like "Can't Last Forever" and "The Tracker," but even the most conventional-sounding performances show Hawkwind's commitment to aural questing is as strong as ever. The music boasts a strong sense of adventure, while this edition of the band plays with an admirable blend of tight musicianship and eagerness to follow the spirit wherever it feels like leading them. Hawkwind still sound like themselves and nobody else on Stories from Time and Space, and if it doesn't break new ground, it's the work of a band with interesting ideas and the talent and imagination to make something of them, which not many groups can manage, let alone one that's been doing this for more than half a century.© Mark Deming /TiVo

The soundtrack for Pirates of the Caribbean was originally composed by Alan Silvestri, who left the project prior to the film's release. Credited to Klaus Badelt, a protégé of Hans Zimmer, it was hastily assembled at the last minute, resulting in a paint-by-numbers exercise in big studio fluff that required the work of several unnamed composers. Badelt and his mysterious co-conspirators have created a schizophrenic pastiche of Hollywood excess -- much like the film itself -- disguised as a traditional score. The swashbuckling is propelled by an instantly unmemorable -- albeit rousing -- motif that contains bits of every action score in existence. "Fog Bound" starts off with a sprightly Celtic flair before dissolving into a generic Jerry Bruckheimer wash of keyboard strings and synthetic flute patches. This is the case for much of the record, resulting in inspired flashes of creativity amidst a barrage of filler. © TiVo

Lurking beneath the seductive, supple gloss of The Voyager lies a serious undercurrent of sorrow -- an undercurrent Jenny Lewis doesn't disguise but doesn't bring to the surface, either. Someone, somewhere broke her heart, and perhaps the culprit is Lewis herself. Regret and self-recrimination abound on The Voyager: it's a tattered storybook full of relationships gone to rot, missed marriages, infidelities forgiven but not forgotten, wistful teenage memories fading in the face of adult disappointment. Whether the songs are autobiographical or not -- and they're filled with seemingly personal signifiers, ranging from red hair and scars left from the San Fernando Valley to a philandering, layabout beau named John -- doesn't matter much, as The Voyager aims to strike a universal chord for ladies in their thirties watching the years slide by as they wait for boyfriends to commit or life to start happening. It's heavy midlife crisis material but The Voyager plays lightly, offering a warm balm of Southern California sounds. Much more than Under the Blacklight, Rilo Kiley's 2007 stab at Fleetwood Mac-styled pop, this feels like vintage L.A. studio rock. Working primarily with producer Ryan Adams -- Beck comes aboard to give "Just One of the Guys" a narcotic sway, while Jenny collaborates with longtime partner Johnathan Rice on "Head Underwater" and "You Can't Outrun 'Em" -- Lewis indulges in the sunnier aspects of vintage yacht rock, occasionally dipping into the Laurel Canyon folk-rock she's specialized in on her own. Guitars roam wide-open spaces, couched in luxurious reverb and draped in strings; the rhythms often follow cool, steady eighth-note pulses; the surfaces always shimmer. It's such a sultry, soothing sound that it's easy to ignore the pain that lies beneath but that's a feature, not a bug: on The Voyager, Lewis' characters live for today without ever thinking that the world might pass them by, and having her music flow so smooth and easy, she illustrates how easy it is to get sucked into that alluring stasis.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

How can music translate the idea of a natural element such as water? One Claude Debussy already tackled the subject, but Alexandre Desplat chose a different esthetics from the one of his elder—even if, just like with Debussy, the timbers are at the heart of Desplat’s idea. For this fantastic tale from Guillermo Del Toro, which tells the love story between a young mute girl, Elisa (Sally Hawkins), and an amphibian creature (Doug Jones), Desplat incorporated no less than twelve flutes to the legendary London Symphony Orchestra—alto flutes, bass flutes, transverse flutes. The partition integrates very few brass instruments, and it is the string and wood instruments that suggest the undulation and water’s fluidity. To this is added the delicacy of instruments such as the piano, the harp and the vibraphone, which reinforce this idea. From this uncommon orchestral canvas, Alexandre Desplat joins different themes and moods. Therefore, the title sequence is a solo whistling (performed by the composer himself), which represents the young heroine’s “voice”. As for the bandoneon (which symbolizes the creature), it accentuates the oneiric aspect of the pictures thanks to its sensuality and softness. Those two instruments graciously evolve together, just like the two movie protagonists, atypical heroes who dream of being the stars of a Hollywood musical. Because beyond this incongruous script premise, The Shape of Water most of all pays homage to cinema—mostly to classic American movies. Throughout the soundtrack, you will continuously find this feeling of nostalgia, especially in the choice to highlight the South-American percussion (bongos, congas…), evoking so many movies from the 1950s and 1960s (remember Touch of Evil, directed by Orson Welles and composed by Henry Mancini). For the end credits, and just like the movie’s subject, Alexandre Desplat plays the crossover card by calling upon soprano Renée Fleming to perform a brand new arrangement of the jazz classic from the 1940s You’ll Never Know. Finally, let’s note that with The Shape of Water, Alexandre Desplat won his second Academy Award, three years after his first one for Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel. ©Nicolas Magenham/Qobuz

Placebo's career is a living, breathing example of the power of a niche audience. After making a mild splash in the glam-friendly Brit-pop aftermath -- they ratcheted up the gothic androgyny of Suede, straightening out the guitars while piling up the makeup, vocal tics, and tortured poetry -- the group settled into an appreciative cult that never seemed to penetrate the pop consciousness on either side of the ocean. Battle for the Sun, the band's sixth album and first with drummer Steve Forrest, is given a steel-reinforced production by David Bottrill, a sound that could conceivably be placed on mainstream rock radio if that format still existed, or if it were used as a vehicle for something else than Placebo's music, which remains resolutely pitched toward a niche audience, no matter how many little frills of horns or farting synths grace their guitar grind. Certainly, a good portion of what makes Placebo a cult band is Brian Molko himself, how his strangled vocal affectations and enduring angst speak directly to a small, dedicated batch of listeners while alienating all others, something that Molko, after a decade and a half of semi-stardom, rightly wears as a badge of honor, but the increased care spent on the sound of Battle for the Sun emphasizes how the band's sound -- an extension of '80s growth, right down to its reflected love of '70s Bowie, but never unfriendly to any passing electronic fad -- is never quite hooky, nor does it have a rock kick. Instead, everything about Battle for the Sun -- the thumping rhythms, the subtly churning keyboards, the clanking grind of the digital distortion -- is coloring for the group's disaffected stance, not so much stylish but terminally out of time, alienation preserved in amber for those few who understand.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

Starting with the careening "From Out of Nowhere" driven by Roddy Bottum's doomy, energetic keyboards, Faith No More rebounded excellently on The Real Thing after Chuck Mosley's was fired. Given that the band had nearly finished recording the music and Mike Patton was a last minute recruit, he adjusts to the proceedings well. His insane, wide-ranging musical interests would have to wait for the next album for their proper integration, but the band already showed enough of that to make it an inspired combination. Bottum, in particular, remains the wild card, coloring Jim Martin's nuclear-strength riffs and the Bill Gould/Mike Bordin rhythm slams with everything from quirky hooks to pristine synth sheen. It's not quite early Brian Eno-joins-Led Zeppelin-and-Funkadelic, but it's closer than one might think, based on the nutty lounge vibes of "Edge of the World" and the Arabic melodies and feedback of "Woodpeckers from Mars." "Falling to Pieces," a fractured anthem with a delicious delivery from Patton, should have been a bigger single that it was, while "Surprise! You're Dead!" and the title track stuff riffs down the listener's throat. The best-known song remains the appropriately titled "Epic," which lives up to its name, from the bombastic opening to the concluding piano and the crunching, stomping funk metal in between. The inclusion of a cover of Black Sabbath's "War Pigs" amusingly backfired on the band -- at the time, Sabbath's hipness level was nonexistent, making it a great screw-you to the supposed cutting-edge types. However, all the metalheads took the song to heart so much that, as a result, the quintet dropped it from their sets to play "Easy" by the Commodores instead!© Ned Raggett /TiVo

After the commercial breakthrough of their 2009 album Fantasies, it would seem kind of unfair to ask Metric to do anything differently on their next outing. That album perfectly took their usual tuneful blend of hooky new wave and spooky synth pop and blew it up to stadium-huge levels while adding more emotional content than ever before. It was a trick that seemed so improbable in the first place that it would be crazy for the group not to try re-creating it on Synthetica. So they did. The album has the same glossy textures, gigantic sounding arrangements, huge choruses, and open-hearted vocals as Fantasies did, but keeps the instantly memorable songs and exposed emotions intact. It also retains the same balance of super hooky songs and gloomy ballads, hitting you in the gut one minute and sending you off cheerfully singing along the next. (It's the same kind of trick Garbage were able to pull off in their prime, and Metric sound very much like a widescreen Garbage throughout Synthetica.) The success that band has achieved hasn't exactly healed Emily Haines' wounds, and her vocals have the same powerfully aching quality that has always been there -- they cut through the music and right to the heart of the listener. Songs like "Artificial Nocturne" and "Dreams So Real" hit very, very hard thanks to her vocals. Elsewhere, she shows a ton of range on tracks as varied as the dramatic "Speed the Collapse," the creepily cute "Lost Kitten," and the dreamily desolate "Nothing But Time." The band provides capable backing throughout, framing her voice in a soft web of sound and creating modern pop that goes down easily but never bores. Only the unwelcome appearance of Lou Reed on "The Wanderlust" breaks the mood of the record and brings it down to earth a bit. Even with his warbling croak gumming things up, the song is a highlight on an album full of them. That Metric were able to follow up their best record with another just as good is quite an achievement, hopefully something they will do again and again.© Tim Sendra /TiVo

Midway through production of the Viking drama The 13th Warrior, writer Michael Crichton jettisoned director John McTiernan and took over the production himself. At that time, he also ousted composer Graeme Revell in favor of the legendary Jerry Goldsmith, clearly anticipating an epic score in the mold of past Goldsmith classics like Patton and Planet of the Apes. But the end result is a frustrating work hampered by Goldsmith's frustrating reticence to allow his imagination to run wild. As Crichton's liner notes state, "We know nothing about what Viking music was like, which meant Jerry would have to invent it," but his innovations prove surprisingly tepid, employing wordless chanting and primitive drumming but not much else. Goldsmith remains a master of large-scale drama, crafting dark, powerful themes like "The Fire Dragon" and "The Horns of Hell," but there's little that makes The 13th Warrior a truly unique entry in his large catalog.© Jason Ankeny /TiVo

Gravity is the sixth studio album from Welsh metallers Bullet for My Valentine and follows their 2015 album Venom. Produced by Carl Brown (My Vitriol, Radiohead) the album sees frontman Matt Tuck push the group's sound into a new direction by adding elements of electronica into their metalcore sound.© Rich Wilson /TiVo