Following 2020's deep cuts collection Undiscovered, the revered Italian minimalist modern-classical composer and pianist presents this second volume, comprising tracks that wouldn't fit on the first. It features a selection of rarities and underplayed tunes from across the breadth of his career as well as pieces never before available physically, including a new solo piano version of fan favorite "Experience."© TiVo

With Metals, Feist responds to the surprise success of 2007’s The Reminder with a whisper, not a bang. She treads lightly through a series of disjointed torch songs and smoky pop/rock numbers, singing most of the songs in a soft, gauzy alto, as though she’s afraid of waking some sort of slumbering beast. Whenever the tempo picks up, so does Feist’s desire to keep things weird, with songs like “A Commotion” pitting pizzicato strings against a half-chanted, half-shouted refrain performed by an army of male singers. But Metals does its best work at a slower speed, where Feist can stretch her vocals across fingerplucked guitar arpeggios and piano chords like cotton. “Cicadas and Gulls,” with its simple melodies and pastoral ambience, rides the same summer breeze as Iron & Wine, and “Anti-Pioneer” breaks down the blues into its sparsest parts, retaining little more than a sparse drumbeat and guitar until the second half, where strings briefly swoon into the picture like an Ennio Morricone movie soundtrack. They’re gone after 30 seconds, though, leaving things as quiet as they began. Like the rest of the subdued track list, “Anti-Pioneer” is unlikely to find itself featured in an iPod commercial, meaning Feist’s days as a provider of hip, trendy TV jingles may be over. Still, there’s a soft-spoken power to Metals, even if its songs are more liquid and atmospheric than the title suggests.© Andrew Leahey /TiVo

Poetic and tremendously sincere, Rosanne Cash honours the traditions of country music that she learned from her illustrious father, the Man in Black. Having won three Grammys with her album The River & The Thread in 2014, Cash makes an eagerly-awaited return, without any nasty surprises. This 15th record called She Remembers Everything highlights a period of change through personal and touching songwriting. Recorded in Portland and New York, John Leventhal and Tucker Martine accompany her on the majority of the tracks, but she also brings in some other outstanding guests. Kris Kristofferson lends his voice on 8 Gods of Harlem and Elvis Costello takes charge of the strings to awaken Cash's warm timbres. Pop-country with acoustic sounds at the forefront, our singer's sublime harmonies and sincerity form a firm connection with the listener from the off. But the real strength of She Remembers Everything lies in the meaningful lyrics. Rosanne Cash's vision here is of a complex and fragile reality. The weight of past generations, painful and nostalgic memories as well as a woman's life in the broadest sense: our artist carries all these thoughts on her shoulders as she delivers irresistible country serenades. This is a profound album that manages to sound like a cry from across the centuries and yet still have a brilliantly modern feel. © Clara Bismuth/Qobuz

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The Coral built a long, meaningful career out of mining garage rock, psychedelia, post-punk, AOR, and folk-rock for their best parts, then sticking them together in immediately hooky and mysterious new ways. 2021's Coral Island feels like their honors dissertation, tying up all the strands of sound they've examined over the years and weaving them masterfully into a beautifully rendered, emotionally powerful experience. A concept album based on the bandmembers' sepia-tinged memories of spending time at seaside resorts on the West Coast of England, the album is wide-ranging, deeply felt, and sonically enthralling. James Skelly turns in a batch of his best songs yet; poppy gems like the jangling "My Best Friend" and organ-led folk-garage nugget "Vacancy" slot in nicely next to warm, richly arranged ballads ("Mist on the River"), rippling rockers ("Lover Undiscovered"), and spooky tracks that harken back to the Joe Meek-era of British pop ("Faceless Angel"). The group take their usual meticulous approach to arranging and producing. Every song is perfectly crafted and full of chiming, twanging guitars, plinking and humming keys of a vintage nature, and a rock-solid rhythm section. Add in James Skelly's vocals, which take up the middle of the mix with all the power of a strongman in a sideshow, and it's high-quality Coral from beginning to end. This time, James Skelly shares the songwriting and vocal duties with the rest of the band and the results add to the expansive nature of the record. Drummer Ian Skelly turns in a couple of nice tunes (like the suitably sunny "Summertime," which sounds like a lost Mungo Jerry track); keyboardist Nick Power shines on the moody "Strange Illusions"; and guitarist Paul Molloy's strummy "Calico Girl" conjures up end-of-the-season light melancholia. Power composed most of the music for the short pieces of narration (provided by the Skellys' grandad) that stitches together the concept of the album nicely. Half of the record captures the whirling fun and sparkle of a resort in full swing; half nails the faded mystique of a decaying, once-beloved spot. The feelings are specific to the members of the band but they're also universal -- this could be an album about Blackpool or Asbury Park or any once-bustling place that's not what it used to be. That's definitely not an issue with the Coral -- they've retained all the youthful enthusiasm of their earliest records, and all the melancholy wisdom and skill they've gained over the years. Coral Island is the band at their best, effortlessly conjuring up the glorious ghosts of rock & roll's past and turning those sounds into something timeless and instantly rewarding at once.© Tim Sendra /TiVo

The darkest, most ponderous score to grace the Star Trek feature film franchise, Cliff Eidelman's Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country largely eschews the interstellar fanfare most associated with the series in favor of a series of ominously warlike themes brought to life via ethnic instruments that underscore the otherness of the Trek mythos. Eidelman spotlights the murderous Klingons as much as the heroic crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise, creating a series of suspenseful themes rich in malicious portent -- the climactic "The Battle for Peace" nevertheless recaptures the power and glory one expects from a Star Trek score, perfectly capping off the series' most fully rounded entry to date.© Jason Ankeny /TiVo

Richie Sambora's second solo album Undiscovered Soul is a more ambitious affair than Stranger in This Town, finding the guitarist trying on a wide variety of styles. Not all styles are fit Sambora's bluesy hard rock foundation, but it's interesting him to try out blues-rock, power ballads, pop/rock, arena rock and Stonesy rock, even if he's not always successful. Sambora has a pleasantly bland voice and knows how to craft a hard rock song, even if he doesn't always come up with a good hook. The result is a respectable journeyman album filled with competent songwriting and fine guitar playing -- just the kind of record that will appeal to his fans.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

Richie Sambora's second solo album Undiscovered Soul is a more ambitious affair than Stranger in This Town, finding the guitarist trying on a wide variety of styles. Not all styles are fit Sambora's bluesy hard rock foundation, but it's interesting him to try out blues-rock, power ballads, pop/rock, arena rock and Stonesy rock, even if he's not always successful. Sambora has a pleasantly bland voice and knows how to craft a hard rock song, even if he doesn't always come up with a good hook. The result is a respectable journeyman album filled with competent songwriting and fine guitar playing -- just the kind of record that will appeal to his fans.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

Another unlikely pop singer to hop aboard the indiscriminate good ship Storchaveli, Brooke Hogan -- it's just "Brooke" henceforth, or at least for the time being -- is stuck in an awkward phase where she's too young to be convincing as a vixen and too old to relate to younger teenagers. Lead single "About Us" tells you more than you need to know. "I'm just tryin' to live, but you're all up in my grill/How's a girl to breathe with the media staring down my mouth with a four-inch lens/I just wanna hit the mall with some of my friends." This is delivered with a Beyoncé-aping flow in a not-too-pleasant voice that resembles an exaggerated (or piercing) version of Gwen Stefani. She's backed by Paul Wall's half-alert "Naw"s and "They don't know, baby"s. That's gross. Produced mostly by Scott Storch (everybody), the comparisons to Paris Hilton's album are inevitable, even though the two celebrities-turned-singers are at different stages in their lives. Hilton's album effectively rides on the entitled heiress persona that dozens of middle-class singers have attempted before, whereas Undiscovered sounds exactly like the kind of album made by the teenaged Floridian daughter of a professional wrestler. Brooke tries way too hard to be authentic and taken seriously, and though some of the material is mildly enjoyable, the batch of productions she is given is noticeably weak when they're stacked up against the tracks on Paris. (Scott Storch played his cards right, but if he's going to work on a sequel to this, he should check out the Bratz albums.) Brooke does drop the seriousness on the throwaway finale, but it doesn't fare any better. Anyone who knows War's "Low Rider" will likely flinch at the sight of the track's title; sure enough, "Low Rider Jeans" adopts some of the words and all of the notes of its chorus: "Low rider jeans hug a little tighter."© Andy Kellman /TiVo

Poetic and tremendously sincere, Rosanne Cash honours the traditions of country music that she learned from her illustrious father, the Man in Black. Having won three Grammys with her album The River & The Thread in 2014, Cash makes an eagerly-awaited return, without any nasty surprises. This 15th record called She Remembers Everything highlights a period of change through personal and touching songwriting. Recorded in Portland and New York, John Leventhal and Tucker Martine accompany her on the majority of the tracks, but she also brings in some other outstanding guests. Kris Kristofferson lends his voice on 8 Gods of Harlem and Elvis Costello takes charge of the strings to awaken Cash's warm timbres. Pop-country with acoustic sounds at the forefront, our singer's sublime harmonies and sincerity form a firm connection with the listener from the off. But the real strength of She Remembers Everything lies in the meaningful lyrics. Rosanne Cash's vision here is of a complex and fragile reality. The weight of past generations, painful and nostalgic memories as well as a woman's life in the broadest sense: our artist carries all these thoughts on her shoulders as she delivers irresistible country serenades. This is a profound album that manages to sound like a cry from across the centuries and yet still have a brilliantly modern feel. © Clara Bismuth/Qobuz

James Morrison's debut had already gone platinum in Britain before it was released in the U.S., and the young singer/songwriter has scored hit singles at home. With a pleasantly soulful voice that faintly recalls Stevie Wonder, he offers several slices of polite soul-pop that deftly manage to recall the heyday of soul while still managing to sound modern -- a neat balancing trick. However, smooth as Morrison sounds, for much of the album there's a distinct lack of passion in his voice -- and that's a prime ingredient of real soul music. Only on "Call the Police" does he summon any real anguish. "You Give Me Something," his first British hit, is catchy and memorable, but not a classic. Indeed, this is an album without soul classics. Ultimately it's more a piece of pop, but there's nothing wrong with that. Time will tell how ephemeral the songs will be, but Morrison shows here that he might become a real talent with some age and work, and maybe a little personal pain wouldn't hurt. He has a hand in all the songs here, showing definite qualities as a writer. Again, time will tell.© Chris Nickson /TiVo