Two years after Honey Moon, Lana del Rey comes back with the much anticipated Lust for Life, her fourth studio album. The voice is magnetic, more sensual than ever; the melodies are solid. If through the eyes of Lana, the world stays affected, slow and pensive, the skillfully chosen featuring tracks offer a few welcome respites. Thereby, the baby doll has invited a few friends to her ball. A$ap Rocky officiates on Groupie Love and Summer Bummer—in which he brings with him Atlanta’s wild youngster, Playboi Carti—The Weeknd on Lust for Life, Jonathan Wilson on Love. Others, and not least among them, have joined the party. Stevie Nicks, Fleetwood Mac’s emblematic singer, pops by on Beautiful People Beautiful Problems, and Sean Ono Lennon on Tomorrow Never Came. 16 tracks, 72 minutes. It’s a mix of genres ranging from hip hop with trap accents to psychedelic, without forgetting ballads on piano, and always a focus on acoustic. It’s a passionate craving for life then, which comes back to the one that has made her queen, Born to Die. It’s almost ironic. Has it gone back full circle? Anyway, this faded color melancholy is as attractive as ever, and its varnish doesn’t only crack to reveal the throes of an idol anymore, but also to tackle a modern America in disarray, between past and future. © MD/Qobuz

Shane MacGowan's potent appetite for alcohol was evident from the time the Pogues cut their first album, but by the time they got to work on Peace and Love in 1989, it was evident that he'd gone far past the point of enjoying a few pints (or many pints) and had sunk deep into drug and alcohol dependence. The Pogues were always far more than just MacGowan's backing band, but with the group's principal songwriter and lead singer frequently unable to rise to the occasion, the recording of Peace and Love became a trying experience, with the rest of the band often scrambling to take up the slack for their down-for-the-count frontman. Given the circumstances, the Pogues deliver with greater strength than one might expect on Peace and Love; while MacGowan's vocals are often mush-mouthed and his songwriting is markedly beneath his previous standards, Terry Woods contributes two terrific traditional-style numbers ("Young Ned of the Hill" and "Gartloney Rats"), Philip Chevron's "Lorelei" is a superb tale of lost love (he and Darryl Hunt also teamed up for a fine bit of Celtic-calypso fusion on "Blue Heaven"), and Jem Finer brought along a trio of strong originals. Musically, Peace and Love found the band stretching their boundaries, adding accents of film noir jazz on "Gridlock," rockabilly on "Cotton Fields," straight-ahead rock on "USA," and power pop on "Lorelei," though the group's highly recognizable Celtic-trad-on-steroids style is never far beneath the surface. Peace and Love isn't as good as the two Pogues albums that preceded it (which represent the finest work of their career), but it does make clear that MacGowan was hardly the only talented songwriter in the band -- though the fact that the set's most memorable songs were written by others did not bode well for the group's future.© Mark Deming /TiVo

Produced by The Black Keys' Dan Auerbach and recorded over three days, Hank Williams Jr.'s 57th studio album is a set of mostly covers of songs by blues greats, backed up by a killer North Mississippi band: bassist Eric Deaton (who played with T-Model Ford on Fat Possum's Juke Joint Caravan), electric slide guitarist Kenny Brown (who R.L. Burnside called "my adopted son") and drummer Kinney Kimbrough (son of Junior Kimbrough), plus Auerbach. Williams has long flirted with what he calls "stripped-back blues," usually under the stage name Thunderhead Hawkins. Here, he sounds, at times, jubilantly playful—riffing and strutting like a Bantam rooster on Lightnin' Hopkins' "My Starter Won't Start" and getting deep into the rollicking, bottom-heavy grease of Burnside's "Georgia Women." ("All the way to Mobile, baby/ All the way to Birmingham!" Williams crows.) A particular standout is Burnside's sweltering-cool "Fireman Ring the Bell," a funky dance-floor call with Williams unleashing a fiery "whooooo!" He even adds his own unique wail at the end: "His name is Thunderhead 'cause he fell off that mountainside," a reference to the 1975 climbing accident that nearly killed the singer and led to his signature look of a beard, sunglasses and cowboy hat, all to cover his scars. Other bits of improv are more cringeworthy, like when Williams announces "I ain't gonna be here crying after you, bitch" on Jimmy Reed's "Take Out Some Insurance." Too bad, as the song is a corker up until that point, with Williams twisting the word "insurance" into some language of his own and borrowing a bit of his dad's famous yodel for the line "if you e-e-e-ver say goodbye." Likewise, a muscular take on "TV Mama" swings and sashays so much you don't miss the piano rolls and powerful elegance of Big Joe Turner's voice . . .  but Auerbach could've cut the ad lib "I must be having one of them wet dreams." Williams also rolls out a few of his own numbers, including the chugging title track and "I Like It When It's Stormy," which is the most country of the bunch and has a real outlaw feel: sun-leathered and don't give a damn. His "Call Me Thunderhead," a growling junkyard dog of a song, is almost parody with its list of self-referential bona fides, warning of "imposters": "They got no scars" and don't know nothing about being whiskey bent and hell-bound (the title of a classic Jr. country track). It all closes out with a super soulful, shambling spin on Hopkins' "Jesus, Won't You Come By Here" that exposes the twisted and overlapping roots of country, gospel, and blues. © Shelly Ridenour/Qobuz

Named after a coffee table book from fashion photographer Helmut Newton, White Women is an equally titillating, prose-free, and '80s-embracing effort from Canadian electro-pop duo Chromeo, who are hitting their stride when it comes to hooks, although they arguably stumble when it comes to cute. Case in point is a light electro lark called "Sexy Socialite," an easy singalong candidate if "I could be your boyfriend and your counselor" and other cringe-worthy bits didn't drive the track off the cheeky cliff, but this minor speed bump is overshadowed by 11 other cuts that could have come from a Prince side project launched during the fruitful Purple Rain era. Finger-poppin' funk and Morris Day-styled come-ons like "What matters to me is what's inside/And a little backside too/Can I get a bird's eye view?" drive the cool swaying single "Over Your Shoulder" into highlight territory. "Come Alive" comes on strong with a popping bass and a guest appearance from Toro y Moi as it falls somewhere between the easy cool of DeBarge and the bright disco joy of Earth, Wind, & Fire. Speaking of guest appearances, Vampire Weekend's Ezra Koenig returns to croon the miniature bridge that's appropriately titled "Ezra's Interlude" while Solange appears on the great "Lost on the Way Home," an R. Kelly-styled love duet served with a touch of Kavinsky's sound, meaning 16-bit video game music and Reagan-era movie soundtracks. One iffy joke don't stop no show, so take White Women as fun, frivolous, and floor-filling stuff where that slick '80s flair is gloriously bolstered by that modern dancefloor punch.© David Jeffries /TiVo

Produced by The Black Keys' Dan Auerbach and recorded over three days, Hank Williams Jr.'s 57th studio album is a set of mostly covers of songs by blues greats, backed up by a killer North Mississippi band: bassist Eric Deaton (who played with T-Model Ford on Fat Possum's Juke Joint Caravan), electric slide guitarist Kenny Brown (who R.L. Burnside called "my adopted son") and drummer Kinney Kimbrough (son of Junior Kimbrough), plus Auerbach. Williams has long flirted with what he calls "stripped-back blues," usually under the stage name Thunderhead Hawkins. Here, he sounds, at times, jubilantly playful—riffing and strutting like a Bantam rooster on Lightnin' Hopkins' "My Starter Won't Start" and getting deep into the rollicking, bottom-heavy grease of Burnside's "Georgia Women." ("All the way to Mobile, baby/ All the way to Birmingham!" Williams crows.) A particular standout is Burnside's sweltering-cool "Fireman Ring the Bell," a funky dance-floor call with Williams unleashing a fiery "whooooo!" He even adds his own unique wail at the end: "His name is Thunderhead 'cause he fell off that mountainside," a reference to the 1975 climbing accident that nearly killed the singer and led to his signature look of a beard, sunglasses and cowboy hat, all to cover his scars. Other bits of improv are more cringeworthy, like when Williams announces "I ain't gonna be here crying after you, bitch" on Jimmy Reed's "Take Out Some Insurance." Too bad, as the song is a corker up until that point, with Williams twisting the word "insurance" into some language of his own and borrowing a bit of his dad's famous yodel for the line "if you e-e-e-ver say goodbye." Likewise, a muscular take on "TV Mama" swings and sashays so much you don't miss the piano rolls and powerful elegance of Big Joe Turner's voice . . .  but Auerbach could've cut the ad lib "I must be having one of them wet dreams." Williams also rolls out a few of his own numbers, including the chugging title track and "I Like It When It's Stormy," which is the most country of the bunch and has a real outlaw feel: sun-leathered and don't give a damn. His "Call Me Thunderhead," a growling junkyard dog of a song, is almost parody with its list of self-referential bona fides, warning of "imposters": "They got no scars" and don't know nothing about being whiskey bent and hell-bound (the title of a classic Jr. country track). It all closes out with a super soulful, shambling spin on Hopkins' "Jesus, Won't You Come By Here" that exposes the twisted and overlapping roots of country, gospel, and blues. © Shelly Ridenour/Qobuz

Most of this album finds Sparks doing what they do best: spewing out clever, mile-a-minute lyrics over solid-rocking accompaniment (this time, provided by a superior group of studio musicians). Drummer Hilly Michaels and guitarist Jeffrey Salen lend the Mael brothers' songs considerable rock & roll authority. Standouts include the opening blast, "Big Boy" (which was featured in the film Rollercoaster), the propulsive "Fill-Er-Up," and the falsetto-delivered proclamation "I Like Girls," apparently a leftover from their previous album, Indiscreet. Generally, however, they eschew the elaborate arrangements of Indiscreet and go for a powerful, stripped-down sound. As titles such as "Everybody's Stupid" and "Thrown Her Away (And Get a New One)" suggest, the album brims with decidedly politically incorrect (and often hilarious) lyrics. © James A. Gardner /TiVo

Jyoti Mishra's second full-length album under the "band" name White Town continues the move away from the indie guitar pop of his earliest releases, first seen on 1996's Abort Retry Fail? EP. Simply recorded, mostly on a Macintosh computer in Mishra's bedroom, with Mishra playing everything except four tracks' worth of guitar, there's a pleasantly homemade feel to the album; hand percussion, piano, and acoustic guitars coexist with the synths and samplers, but even the few entirely electronic tracks have a warm, organic vibe. The album's best-known track, of course, is the enormous hit "Your Woman," a playful piece of gender-bending built around samples from Lew Stone's 1932 jazz hit "My Woman" and the static that opens the Buggles' "Video Killed the Radio Star." An infectious piece of pure synth pop, "Your Woman" sounds like it could have been released on Rough Trade around 1981. It's an entirely atypical track, though. Most of the rest of Women in Technology consists of low-key, soft pop songs like the tender, almost jazzy "A Week Next June" and the romantic opener "Undressed." Other songs, like the puckish "The Function of the Orgasm" and "Theme for an Early Evening American Sitcom," have the D.I.Y. feel of White Town's earlier records, albeit with a more synthesized tone. Women in Technology is a good-to-great album, though it's easy to see how the masses charmed by "Your Woman" might have been disappointed by that track's lack of resemblance to the rest of the album.© Stewart Mason /TiVo

Two years after Honey Moon, Lana del Rey comes back with the much anticipated Lust for Life, her fourth studio album. The voice is magnetic, more sensual than ever; the melodies are solid. If through the eyes of Lana, the world stays affected, slow and pensive, the skillfully chosen featuring tracks offer a few welcome respites. Thereby, the baby doll has invited a few friends to her ball. A$ap Rocky officiates on Groupie Love and Summer Bummer—in which he brings with him Atlanta’s wild youngster, Playboi Carti—The Weeknd on Lust for Life, Jonathan Wilson on Love. Others, and not least among them, have joined the party. Stevie Nicks, Fleetwood Mac’s emblematic singer, pops by on Beautiful People Beautiful Problems, and Sean Ono Lennon on Tomorrow Never Came. 16 tracks, 72 minutes. It’s a mix of genres ranging from hip hop with trap accents to psychedelic, without forgetting ballads on piano, and always a focus on acoustic. It’s a passionate craving for life then, which comes back to the one that has made her queen, Born to Die. It’s almost ironic. Has it gone back full circle? Anyway, this faded color melancholy is as attractive as ever, and its varnish doesn’t only crack to reveal the throes of an idol anymore, but also to tackle a modern America in disarray, between past and future. © MD/Qobuz

Jyoti Mishra's second full-length album under the "band" name White Town continues the move away from the indie guitar pop of his earliest releases, first seen on 1996's Abort Retry Fail? EP. Simply recorded, mostly on a Macintosh computer in Mishra's bedroom, with Mishra playing everything except four tracks' worth of guitar, there's a pleasantly homemade feel to the album; hand percussion, piano, and acoustic guitars coexist with the synths and samplers, but even the few entirely electronic tracks have a warm, organic vibe. The album's best-known track, of course, is the enormous hit "Your Woman," a playful piece of gender-bending built around samples from Lew Stone's 1932 jazz hit "My Woman" and the static that opens the Buggles' "Video Killed the Radio Star." An infectious piece of pure synth pop, "Your Woman" sounds like it could have been released on Rough Trade around 1981. It's an entirely atypical track, though. Most of the rest of Women in Technology consists of low-key, soft pop songs like the tender, almost jazzy "A Week Next June" and the romantic opener "Undressed." Other songs, like the puckish "The Function of the Orgasm" and "Theme for an Early Evening American Sitcom," have the D.I.Y. feel of White Town's earlier records, albeit with a more synthesized tone. Women in Technology is a good-to-great album, though it's easy to see how the masses charmed by "Your Woman" might have been disappointed by that track's lack of resemblance to the rest of the album.© Stewart Mason /TiVo

Foreigner continued its platinum winning streak on Head Games, the band's third album. By the time Head Games was released, FM radio had fully embraced bands like Foreigner, Journey, and Boston, whose slick hard rock was tough enough to appeal to suburban teens, but smooth enough to be non-threatening to their parents. Tailor-made for the airwaves, "Dirty White Boy" and "Head Games" kept Foreigner at the top of the arena rock heap as the decade came to a close; and the supergroup's successes would continue well into the '80s.© Andy Hinds /TiVo

Recorded in 1980, this "live at Austin City Limits" performance by Tony Joe White is one of the wildest and rawest they ever taped. Many artists choose to beef up their bands for the program. White played with his touring group: drummer Jeff Hale and bassist Steve Spear. White is infamous for bucking trends of all kinds and he comes out of the gate snarling with "Mama Don't Let Your Cowboys Grow Up to Be Babies," funking it up with wiry thumb-picked fills and dirty-ass chords. He goes into "Disco Blues," the same way, grabbing Slim Harpo's "Hip Shake" riff as his fuel, and slips into a funky version of the riff from "Polk Salad Annie" in the chorus. (Oh yeah, he plays the hell out of the song itself later in the set.) But White digs deep into his utterly fantastic catalog here as well; in fact, other than a version of the Donnie Fritts/Eddie Hinton classic "300 Pounds of Hongry" (written for him) all the tunes on this slab are by him. And while hearing live versions of his classics done wild and raw is awesome, hearing Tony Joe White play the hell out of his guitar in a without-a-net-setting is a rare thing. He doesn't need to show off, it's all at the service of his greasy, gritty, deeply soulful swamp funk tunes. His read of his classic "Rainy Night in Georgia" is the rare ballad here, and no one sings it the way he does. "Willie and Laura Mae Jones" is here, as is a Delta blues-drenched "Lustful Earle and the Married Woman," done on an acoustic. And the "Swamp Rap" is pure, deep-south funk. The anthem "I Came Here to Party," takes off on the Waylon Jennings' outlaw country two-step riff and moves it into overdrive. Live from Austin, TX closes with the minor key blues rocker "I Get Off on It," making the entire proceeding a must-have for White fans.© Thom Jurek /TiVo

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Following the success of 2007's Songs of Love & Loss, one of Australia's most successful female musical exports, Tina Arena, returns with another collection of orchestral cover versions of classic pop songs. While its predecessor concentrated on the lounge-pop standards of the '60s and '70s, the second volume is ever so slightly more contemporary, with renditions of several hits from the early-'80s era which inspired Arena to pursue a singing career. Backed by Simon Hale's London Studio Orchestra, the 12-track release is far from the quick-buck karaoke affair favored by many less inventive artists, as apart from faithful renditions of Joni Mitchell's "Both Sides Now" and Lulu's "Oh Me Oh My," Arena manages to put her own stamp on songs several decades old, with admittedly mixed results. Her take on the Carpenters' "Close to You" will undoubtedly shock fans of the Bacharach-penned classic, but its echoing Massive Attack-style trip-hop beats, haunting synth strings, and gothic operatic backing vocals are an impressively bold attempt to add a previously unheard sinister edge to the hopelessly romantic love song. It's an edge which is sorely lacking on her interpretation of the Police's stalker anthem "Every Breath You Take," which removes the dark undertones of the original and replaces it with an out of place, breezy, Sade-inspired cocktail bar arrangement. Elsewhere, Blondie's new-wave anthem "Call Me" is turned into a '60s-inspired Brill Building, girl group stomper; Canadian one-hit wonders the Promises' synth-glam number "Baby It's You" is given an overblown musical theater make-over, while the tribal drums, Hindu chanting, and Indian flutes on "Nights in White Satin" provides a Middle Eastern flavor to the Moody Blues' standard. But the album is far more convincing when Mark Blackwell and Greg Fitzgerald's bombastic production is toned down in favor of a more subtle and stripped-back vibe which allows Arena's sweet but powerful vocal abilities to shine. "Wouldn't It Be Good" is a gorgeous adaptation of Nik Kershaw's synth pop hit whose melancholic piano-based sound evokes the wintry balladry of Sarah McLachlan; "Only Women Bleed" is a tender, countrified reworking of Alice Cooper's bluesy tale of domestic abuse which enables Arena to unleash her Celine Dion-esque powerhouse tones, while her respectful cover of Elton John's "Your Song" emotes more feeling in its opening bars than the entirety of Ellie Goulding's recently celebrated version. With such a stunning voice, Arena should be a much bigger star than she is, but despite its admirable attempts to inject new life into some iconic songs, its inconsistency means that Songs of Love & Loss, Vol. 2 isn't going to change things any time soon.© Jon O'Brien /TiVo

Bergen White was a member of Ronny & the Daytonas during the Nashville-based hot rod group's last days, when the band was shifting away from Beach Boys-styled hot rod and surf tunes and developing its "softer" side after finding some success with a ballad hit, "Sandy." In 1969, when the group finally did break up, White remained in the Nashville area, where he recorded his first album, For Women Only, which was released on producer and mini-mogul Shelby Singleton's SSS-International label. White wrote or co-wrote several of the tracks himself ("Now" was co-written with Bob Tubert, who wrote several hits for Eddy Arnold, Sonny James, Roy Clark, and others), but many of the highlights are his soft pop renditions of material penned by other notable composers. "She Is Today" is a faster-paced, more upbeat version of the Barry Mann & Cynthia Weil song that had previously been recorded by the Vogues, who were also on SSS at the time. White covers the Lettermen's harmony pop arrangement of Little Anthony & the Imperials' "Hurt So Bad" (a Top 20 hit from September 1969) and Townes Van Zandt's gorgeous "Second Lover's Song." There are a couple of David Gates tunes too, the sublime "Gone Again" and "Look at Me," which appeared on Bread's debut album that same year. Incidentally, during this same time, White provided vocals (along with Daytonas' group leader Buzz Cason and Bobby Russell) and string arrangements for several so-called "supermarket" knockoff records that were released by the budget sound-alike Hit Records label. One of these recordings was the Bergen White-Russell-penned Beach Boys knockoff "We Built a 409," credited to "the Roamers" (aka Ronny & the Daytonas). Singleton was listed as the producer on these records. White continues to have a thriving career as an arranger/producer in Nashville.© Bryan Thomas /TiVo