Lana Del Rey is a femme fatale with a smoky voice, a languorous image, and a modeling contract. Not coincidentally, she didn't lack for attention leading up to the release of her Interscope debut, Born to Die. The hype began in mid-2011 with a stunning song and video for "Video Games," and it kept on rising, right up to her January 2012 performance on Saturday Night Live (making her the first artist since Natalie Imbruglia in 1998 to perform on SNL without an album available). Although it's easy to see the reasons why Del Rey got her contract, it's also easy to hear: her songwriting skills and her bewitching voice. "Video Games" is a beautiful song, calling to mind Fiona Apple and Anna Calvi as she recounts another variation on the age-old trope of female-as-sex-object. Her vacant, tired reading of the song rescues it from any hint of exploitation, making it a winner. Unfortunately, the only problem with Born to Die is a big one. There is a chasm that separates "Video Games" from the other material and performances on the album, which aims for exactly the same target -- sultry, sexy, wasted -- but with none of the same lyrical grace, emotional power, or sympathetic productions. Del Rey doesn't mind taking chances, varying her vocalizing and delivery, toying with her lines and reaching for cinematic flourishes ("he loves me with every beat of his cocaine heart," "Pabst Blue Ribbon on ice"), and even attempting to rap. But she's unable to consistently sell herself as a heartbreaker, and most of the songs here sound like cobbled retreads of "Video Games." An intriguing start, but Del Rey is going to have to hit the books if she wants to stay as successful as her career promised early on.© John Bush /TiVo

Live album or studio album? Woman Worldwide falls right between the two; it’s the synthesis of a huge one-year tour and the meticulous work by the French duo. It all began with their third album Woman, released in 2016, which gave rise to the creation of one of the most impressive live shows the following year. However, Xavier De Rosnay and Gaspard Augé have not just revisited Woman, they have also drawn from their previous two albums (Cross and Audio Video Disco) to create this supercharged mash-up. But for this duo, simply releasing an album isn’t enough. Their label Ed Banger adds that "After a year of testing, performing, refining and recording on the road, they returned to the studio in Paris to give their songs the finish that live performance doesn't always allow.” At first glance, the result seems enormous: you are quickly lead through ten years of Justice with a power that has never been reached before by the French duo. It shakes, it lifts, it explodes. But when you listen to the remix again, the mixing and arrangement work is so thorough that you can understand why one of the most talented electronic duets on the planet have chosen to present this work as a studio album. Our only regret is that no exclusive tracks have been included; it could have alleviated the pain of waiting until the next record. © Sylvain Di Cristo / Qobuz

Adjectives like "ambitious," "jagged," and "startling" have always defined System of a Down, and their third official full-length is no different. Prerelease, the band described Mezmerize as being the first part -- the first side -- of what's essentially a double album. The records' packaging would even slot together, making the eventual Mezmerize/Hypnotize whole. Appropriately then, there's an intro to System's first new material since 2001's brilliant Toxicity. On "Soldier Side" Daron Malakian and Serj Tankian harmonize as they do throughout the record, and Malakian's guitar has a mournful, Eastern air. But it's just a lull before "B.Y.O.B.," a thrash assault pierced with rabid and incredulous screams. "Why do they always send the poor?" Suddenly the gears switch, and the song stomps in crunchy half-time as its lyrics riff with a sick grin on cultural ignorance. The government's lying, System's saying, but "Blast off!/It's party time." The vocal exploration between Tankian and Malakian on Mezmerize is a thrill -- they spur each other on like a two-headed hardcore hero. Their intermingling voices make "Cigaro" more aggressive, frantic, operatic, and totally bananas; they'd be triumphant over the break in "Violent Pornography" if they weren't spitting out lines like "Choking chicks and sodomy." The fantastic "Pornography" is a rusty shiv of absurdity, another example of System's ability to effectively skewer society with little more than hyper guitar, blistering percussion, and weird turns of phrase. Their volatile mix of righteousness, wordiness, odd meters, and thrash has balanced System's activism since their self-titled debut, making them "unique heavy music" over the much more problematic "unique, heavily political music." And Mezmerize doesn't fail to be unique. "Old School Hollywood" essays the bizarre experience of a celebrity baseball game ("Tony Danza cuts in line!") over keyboard effects from "Beat It" and a brutally simplistic rhythm, "This Cocaine Makes Me Feel Like I'm on This Song" is more twisted-tongue histrionics and explosive playing, and Tankian and Malakian's harmonies are the catalyst (again!) for making "Revenga" a truly feral epic. System of a Down -- what's another adjective for "awesome"?© Johnny Loftus /TiVo

In their first half-decade of existence, the great paradox of the French duo known as Justice is that they have always been familiar, and yet you can’t quite pin them down. No one could advocate for their debut full-length without mentioning Daft Punk, but the unique Justice voice was there in the mix too, becoming more obvious with each return visit. Four years later, its follow-up comes with the same appeal as prog rock, pop-metal, and that big drum thunk of the ‘80s, which are all touchstones for the overall sound. Still, the heart of the album comes from the duo’s increasingly good songs and performance touches that are identifiably Augé and de Rosnay, as dreamy vocals echo underneath crisp percussion and very Euro-styled synths. Guitars plays a bigger role than ever as “Brianvision” comes with some Phil Manzanera-style riffage, while “New Lands” brings reminders of the Cars in all their new wave glory. Just so the dancefloors don’t go hungry, the rhythmic thump is present on big singles like “Civilization”, the title track, and the great “Helix,” which sounds like Italo-disco going post-punk. With so many genres having heavy influences on this mash, Audio, Video, Disco might just be the quintessential example of pop music in the Internet world where everything is available, and available to shuffle, but the main point is good times, great record.© David Jeffries /TiVo

On her third album, singer-songwriter Lucy Dacus confronts her past with gimlet-eyed veracity. Her brand of nostalgia is both pining—for people, the past, old feelings—and calling it out for what it was. "I know that the teen version of me wouldn't approve of me now, and that's embarrassing and a little bit heartbreaking," she has said—adding that revisiting places that were once significant can feel like "trespassing." Opener "Hot & Heavy" gets right at that. "Being back here makes me hot in the face," she sings a capella before the second verse kicks in with lush guitar and chiming piano and you realize that the "you" she's addressing is a past version of herself: "You used to be so sweet/ Now you're a firecracker on a crowded street." The vibrant, twinkling "Brando" tells the story of a "dramatic" high school friend—the kind who uses pop-culture references as a shield to pretend they are better than everyone else—who, Dacus has said, only wanted her "to be a scene partner in the movie of his life." The bouncy, Phoebe Bridgers-esque "First TIme" recalls the scary thrill of sneaking out of the house, with synth and then guitar shining like a bright beam of light to lead the way. "VBS"—as in Vacation Bible School, a summer program for Christian youth—is easy-loping and catchy as the clever Dacus looks back on her religious youth and an early romance. "In the summer of '07, I was sure I'd go to heaven/ But I was hedging my bets at VBS," she sings. Slightly off-kilter guitar sounds like a question, while the line "Playing Slayer at full volume helps to drown it out" is followed by a little explosion of metal noise for a punchline. Like her boygenius bandmate Julien Baker, Dacus grew up in a religious household; but while Baker has agonized over her doubts pretty viciously in her music, Dacus sounds like she has reached more of a settled reckoning. "Triple Dog Dare" remembers what it was like wrestling with religious condemnation of queer love, and "Christine" recalls "coming home from a sermon saying how pent-up evil we are." That song sounds light and tender, Dacus' delivery almost choir-like, but the lyrics are heartbreaking, addressing a friend slipping into an all-consuming relationship: "Nobody's perfect/ There may be better but you don't feel worth it/ That's where we disagree." Meanwhile, "Thumbs" is about meeting a college friend's abusive father and how hard it was to contain her rage. "I love your eyes and he has them ... I imagine my thumbs on the irises/ Pressing in until they burst," she sings, promising, "I would kill him if you let me." The music is spare, barely a shadow behind Dacus' voice, and she remains at an even keel—but that only makes her conviction sound all the more true. Who knew gauze could be so impenetrable? © Shelly Ridenour/Qobuz

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Lana Del Rey is a femme fatale with a smoky voice, a languorous image, and a modeling contract. Not coincidentally, she didn't lack for attention leading up to the release of her Interscope debut, Born to Die. The hype began in mid-2011 with a stunning song and video for "Video Games," and it kept on rising, right up to her January 2012 performance on Saturday Night Live (making her the first artist since Natalie Imbruglia in 1998 to perform on SNL without an album available). Although it's easy to see the reasons why Del Rey got her contract, it's also easy to hear: her songwriting skills and her bewitching voice. "Video Games" is a beautiful song, calling to mind Fiona Apple and Anna Calvi as she recounts another variation on the age-old trope of female-as-sex-object. Her vacant, tired reading of the song rescues it from any hint of exploitation, making it a winner. Unfortunately, the only problem with Born to Die is a big one. There is a chasm that separates "Video Games" from the other material and performances on the album, which aims for exactly the same target -- sultry, sexy, wasted -- but with none of the same lyrical grace, emotional power, or sympathetic productions. Del Rey doesn't mind taking chances, varying her vocalizing and delivery, toying with her lines and reaching for cinematic flourishes ("he loves me with every beat of his cocaine heart," "Pabst Blue Ribbon on ice"), and even attempting to rap. But she's unable to consistently sell herself as a heartbreaker, and most of the songs here sound like cobbled retreads of "Video Games." An intriguing start, but Del Rey is going to have to hit the books if she wants to stay as successful as her career promised early on.© John Bush /TiVo