Since 1979, Roger Waters has been up against The Wall. Almost 40 years after the release of The Wall, the former Pink Floyd bassist has never fundamentally surpassed his great work, the double album that entered into rock legend but which also marked a turning point in the life of the group that he founded in 1965 with Syd Barrett, Nick Mason and Richard Wright. In his several solo albums, as well as in the great live performances that re-interpret The Wall, Waters has always worked on the same grandiloquent musical and ideological themes. With Is This The Life We Really Want?, his obsessions with the alienation of the individual by society and imminent apocalypse have not changed one iota. Madness like the excesses of our times naturally form a central part of this record, his first proper studio album since Amused To Death, which came out in 1992. Roger Waters, who surely knew that he needed to introduce a little novelty into his creative universe, had the good idea of entrusting the production to Nigel Godrich, who is mainly known for his work with Radiohead. And to amplify the winds of change, the British producer even roused some of the big names of his generation, like the guitarist Jonathan Wilson, the drummer Joey Waronker and keyboard player Roger Manning. But the Waters fundamentals are still very much audible. And his fans, as well as Floyd fans, will soon feel a sense of homecoming. Roger Waters has not revolutionised his art, his words, and even less his personal touch. Instead, he has set about developing the talent for which he is known. And in his register of rock that verges on the theatrical, he truly excels. © CM/Qobuz

Not even the Killers, the champions of retro new wave, think that synth rock is music to be taken seriously, and Lord knows that this Vegas quartet wants to be taken seriously -- it's a byproduct of being taken far too seriously in the first place, a phenomenon that happened to the Killers after their not-bad-at-all 2004 debut album, Hot Fuss, was dubbed as the beginning of the next big thing by legions of critics and bloggers, all searching for something to talk about in the aftermath of the White Stripes and the Strokes. The general gist of the statement was generally true, at least to the extent that they were a prominent part of the next wave, the wave where new wave revivalism truly caught hold. They were lighter than Interpol and far gaudier, plus they were fronted by a guy called Brandon Flowers, a name so ridiculous he had to be born with it (which he was). And although it was hailed to the heavens on various areas of the Net, Hot Fuss became a hit the old-fashioned way: listeners gravitated toward it, drawn in by "Mr. Brightside" and sticking around for the rest. Soon, they made the cover of everything from Spin to Q, earning accolades from rock stars and seeing their songs covered on Rock Star, too. Heady times, especially for a group with only one album to its name, and any band that receives so much attention is bound to be thought of as important, since there has to be a greater reason for all that exposure than because Flowers is pretty, right? One of the chief proponents of the belief that the Killers are important is the band itself, which has succumbed to that dreaded temptation for any promising band on its sophomore album: they've gone and grown beards. Naturally, this means they're serious adults now, so patterning themselves after Duran Duran will no longer do. No, they make serious music now, and who else makes serious music? Why, U2, of course, and Bruce Springsteen, whose presence looms large over the Killers' second album, Sam's Town. The ghosts of Bono and the Boss are everywhere on this album. They're there in the artful, grainy Anton Corbijn photographs on the sleeve, and they're there in the myth-making of the song titles themselves -- and in case you didn't get it, Flowers made sure nobody missed the point prior to the release of Sam's Town, hammering home that he's just discovered the glories of Springsteen every time he crossed paths with the press. Flowers' puppy love for Bruce fuels Sam's Town, as he extravagantly, endlessly, and blatantly apes the Springsteen of the '70s, mimicking the ragged convoluted poet of the street who mythologized mundane middle-class life, turning it into opera. The Killers sure try their hardest to do that here, marrying it to U2's own operatic take on America, inadvertently picking up on how the Dublin quartet never sounded more European than when they were trying to tell one and all how much they loved America. That covers the basic thematic outlook of the record, but there's another key piece of the puzzle of Sam's Town: it's named after a casino in the Killers' home town of Las Vegas, and it's not one of the gleeful, gaudy corporate monstrosities glutting the Strip, but rather one located miles away in whatever passes for regular, everyday Vegas -- in other words, it's the city that lies beneath the sparkling façade, the real city. Of course, there's no real city in Vegas -- it's all surface, it's a place that thinks that a miniature Eiffel Tower and a fake CBGB's are every bit as good as being there -- and that's the case with the Killers too: when it comes down to it, there's no "there" there -- it's all a grand act. Every time they try to dig deeper on Sam's Town -- when they bookend the album with "enterlude" and "exitlude," when Flowers mixes his young-hearts-on-the-run metaphors, when they graft Queen choirs and Bowie baritones onto bridges of songs -- they just prove how monumentally silly and shallow they are. Which isn't necessarily the same thing as bad, however. True, this album has little of the pop hooks of "Mr. Brightside," but in its own misguided way, it's utterly unique. Yes, it's cobbled together from elements shamelessly stolen from Springsteen, U2, Echo & the Bunnymen, Bowie, Queen, Duran Duran, and New Order, but nobody on earth would have thought of throwing these heroes of 1985 together, because they would have instinctively known that it wouldn't work. But not the Killers! They didn't let anything stop their monumental misconception; they were able to indulge to their hearts' content -- even hiring U2/Depeche Mode producers Alan Moulder and Flood to help construct their monstrosity, which gives their half-baked ideas a grandeur to which they aspire but don't deserve. But even if the music doesn't really work, it's hard not to listen to it in slack-jawed wonderment, since there's never been a record quite like it -- it's nothing but wrong-headed dreams, it's all pomp but no glamour, it's clichés sung as if they were myths. Every time it tries to get real, it only winds up sounding fake, which means it's the quintessential Vegas rock album from the quintessential Vegas rock band.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

In the year of his 90th birthday (which he would have celebrated on the 23rd of September 2020 had he not died in 2004), Ray Charles is honoured with a new 90-track compilation box set. Just another compilation like all the rest? Yes and no. Ray Charles is undoubtedly one of the most-compiled artists in the history of music. Published by Tangerine, the label that the musician set up at the end of the 50s to keep the rights to his songs, this box set starts out like all the others: with the post-Atlantic hits, Georgia On My Mind, Hit The Road Jack, One Mint Julep, Busted... These are timeless treasures of proto-soul, but there doesn't seem to be much novelty here. The rest is much more interesting, and much rarer: tracks recorded between the second half of the 1960s and the 2000s, many of which were only released on vinyl, never reissued on CD and until now unavailable on digital. This is the first time that Ray Charles' lesser-known years have been given the compilation treatment in this way, and it is a revelation. In the 90s and 2000s, the production of his songs had a synthetic feel, and they did not age too well. These rarer songs are often hidden gems of southern soul, flavoured with country and wrapped in sumptuous symphonic orchestrations. Whether he is singing the Muppets (It's Ain't Easy Being Green) or Gershwin (Summertime, a duet with Cleo Laine), Ray Charles is always deeply moving. Now, the dream is to hear reissues of all these albums in their entirety. © Stéphane Deschamps/Qobuz

It's a blessing and a curse that one half of Dead Man's Bones is Academy Award-nominated actor Ryan Gosling. It's a blessing because Gosling and his partner, Zach Shields, undoubtedly got more attention for their self-titled debut album than they would have otherwise, and something of a curse because it may not be seen for as genuine a project as it is. Shields and Gosling originally conceived of Dead Man's Bones as a horror-themed musical, but kept the songs they had written when they realized putting on a stage production would be too expensive. Despite the high concept, Dead Man's Bones are pretty far from a vanity project -- if anything, they're the opposite, with Gosling and Shields stretching far from their comfort zones at almost every turn. They played instruments they'd never touched before making the album, and brought in the Silverlake Conservatory of Music Children's Choir to add young voices to their virtually untrained ones. They also set rules for themselves while recording: no electric guitars or click tracks were allowed, and they could only do three takes for any given part. All of this gives Dead Man's Bones the feeling -- in the best possible way -- of a bootleg recording of an elaborate grade-school Halloween pageant. By embracing their amateurism so completely, Gosling and Shields turn any weaknesses into strengths, and while influences ranging from the Arcade Fire and Beirut to Roy Orbison to the Langley Schools Music Project to Disneyland's Haunted Mansion ride can be heard, the way Dead Man's Bones combine them is unique. Over the course of the album, the duo covers an array of moods and sounds that more experienced musicians would be glad to express. These songs range from gentle ("Dead Hearts"' spectral folk) to dark and driving ("Lose Your Soul") to fiery (the Nick Cave-esque "Dead Man's Bones"), and sometimes all at once. Some of the most striking tracks mix jubilant music with images of death -- or undeath, in the case of "My Body's a Zombie for You," where the kids can't help but shout out the chorus as Gosling croons like a zombie-fied '50s teen idol. Dead Man's Bones also do a fine job of balancing the campy and spiritual aspects of a concept album about love, death, and undeath. "In the Room Where You Sleep" is gleefully terrifying; "Young & Tragic," the only song the Silverlake Conservatory kids sing on their own, uses their delicate, flawed voices to express something deeper. Throughout it all, there is a "hey, kids, let's put on a show!" exuberance that makes the album all the more winning. Dead Man's Bones isn't perfect, but it's often fascinating and nearly always charming -- and Shields and Gosling wouldn't have it any other way.© Heather Phares /TiVo

Colder than a butcher’s floor, Criminal exudes dark and fleshy sensuality. Between liquid post-punk and metallic loops, Luis Vasquez violently launches into ten aggressive tracks. It’s beautiful and scary, dark and penetrating. Cathartic, this fourth album can be considered as an open heart surgery. After the noisy dark wave of The Soft Moon and Zeros, whose industrial minimalism was going further and further in the search of visual abstraction, Deeper gave a first glimpse of the Californian’s tortured mind. Returning to an obvious prison intensity in the style of Nine Inch Nails (Burn and Born Into This), Criminal dilutes the nuances, shakes gothic guitars, effects units and ambient units to better free a voice suffocated by the layers of mixing, exorcise the anguish and meet Depeche Mode and Soft Kill with distant pop residue reminding of Prince’s Cream (Choke). After the vaporous dissections of It Kills and The Päin, which expand this claustrophobic universe to a more supple esthetic, close to KVB, Criminal finishes in a blaze of glory. As evidenced by the cover, by verbalizing, Vasquez lightens his esthetic and transition to figuration. It was high time. © CS/Qobuz

Formed in 2012, St. Paul and the Broken Bones straight away started making a name for themselves. A first album in 2014, Half The City followed by Sea Of Noise in 2016, revealed to the world the brilliant singing of Paul Janeway and the talent of his faithful musicians. And the band keeps stepping up their game, doubling down 100% on their brand of vintage soul. Young Sick Camellia is once again a tribute to Muscle Shoals and soul revival. But they have already proved their worth. St. Paul and the Broken Bones are looking beyond, particularly in terms of production. That’s how Jack Splash took the baby under his wing. Mainly known as a hip-hop and R&B producer (Alicia Keys, Diplo, Kendrick Lamar…), he took on the challenge for this album. After their journey through various eras and retro culture, St. Paul and the Broken Bones are moving towards a more mature style of music, bathed in disco fumes. 1,2,3: Let’s Jive! Warming up the knees with Convex, wiggling like Travolta on GotItBad or throwing a languid slow with NASA. The first part will drag everyone on the dance floor, before launching the audience into space, as suggested by the cosmic soul of Apollo, Mr Invisible and Dissipating pt. 3. Mission accomplished once again for St. Paul and the Broken Bones! © Clara Bismuth/Qobuz

For the Alice Cooper fans who feel his output was spotty before and after the 1989 classic Trash on Epic, Brutal Planet is a cause to rejoice. It is a solid hard rock offering. Cooper is in great voice, and he sounds mean and spirited. The title track would be a blessing on radio today. It has great bottom, sizzling guitars, and wonderful backing vocalists. The most impressive thing about this album is Cooper's lyrics. "Sanctuary" could be Lou Reed meets Deep Purple in their heyday. Back in 1987 Cooper performed with an unruly band all over the map. It was very uncomfortable and a far cry from his heyday of "I'm 18" and "Under My Wheels": guitars too loud, and an artist obviously struggling with his personal demons. This disc rocks hard with hooks galore and is delivered with the intensity of a Mike Tyson punch, double entendre fully intended. "Wicked Young Men" continues the thump thump brigade of this fine album. Cooper is now being a bad boy with sophisticated lyrics. "I am a vicious young man" sounds like the soundtrack to A Clockwork Orange II: the aforementioned street lingo of Reed and Springsteen turned up a notch. "I've got every kind of chemical pumping through my head/I read Mein Kempf daily just to keep my hatred fed/I never ever sleep, I just lay in my bed/dreaming of the day when everyone is dead." Cooper is ready to exterminate everyone and everything. And though listeners who love Alice Cooper know it's all tongue in cheek, the bigger picture is that a known artist has created a very studied, very calculated, and very electric compact disc. It works on so many levels, and how many listeners had written Cooper off? There may be no song here that will brand itself into the consciousness as "School's Out" or "Elected" did, but those were different times. This is more powerful than most rap. It is direct. It is hard hitting. It is Alice Cooper at his most absolute sinister. Burt Reynolds said that "nothing plays as good as an old Stradivarius" and Alice Cooper proves that saying true. He has created a splash of cold water that could rip radio wide open if given the chance. In "Blow Me a Kiss," Alice sings "blow me away... I'm in my room... I'm Dr. Doom... I'm not me, I'm someone else." Where has Cooper been hiding these lyrics all these years? © Joe Viglione /TiVo

Maccabees' first album, Colour It In, was more than a little indebted to the Futureheads, Bloc Party, and the other U.K. acts who popularized urgent tempos and angular riffs in the mid-2000s, but the band drastically renovates their sound on Wall of Arms. However, it's still easy to hear where they get their inspiration. They've traded their formerly scrappy approach for a style that borrows the Arcade Fire's anthemic sweep -- it's no coincidence this album was produced by Arcade Fire collaborator Markus Dravs. On "Can You Give It," singer Orlando Weeks' previously marble-mouthed vocals have morphed into something closely resembling Win Butler's tremulous keen, and the rest of the song follows suit, with galloping drums and handclaps that lead the way to massive choruses with a dramatic ebb and flow. Even though the band shows its influences just as transparently as they did on Colour It In, they sound much more confident and comfortable -- in fact, they seem downright eager to display their newfound skills and polish: the brass on "Young Lions" and throughout the album underscores the majestic levels that Maccabees try to reach. Wall of Arms is bookended by "Love You Better" and "Bag of Bones," both of which are far slower and more patient about showing off their goods than any of Maccabees' earlier work; likewise, the band would have been too hyperactive to attempt "Seventeen Hands"' thoughtful-yet-jubilant reflections on love and marriage on Colour It In. However, they haven't totally abandoned their pop instincts. "One Hand Holding" and "Dinosaurs" boast sing and shout-along choruses, and "Kiss and Resolve" plays like a more grown-up take on their bouncy insistency. Crucially, despite the more sedate tempos and outlook, these songs feel truly purposeful. And even if Maccabees still aren't stunningly original, they've made a significant step forward with Wall of Arms.© Heather Phares /TiVo

The insecurity felt among Overkill fans by the departure of founding guitarist and key songwriter Bobby Gustafson in 1990 ultimately proved unfounded when the New York thrashers' expanded two-guitar lineup -- featuring Rob Cannavino and Merritt Gant -- arguably delivered the finest effort of the group's career in 1991's Horrorscope. Up until the preceding, also excellent Years of Decay album, Overkill had suffered from a somewhat narrow, one-dimensional style and often comical lyrics fit for naught but numbskull moshing, directly at odds and therefore easily overshadowed by the exceedingly cerebral East Coast thrash of Anthrax and Nuclear Assault. Hence the understandable concerns that the band might in fact regress following Gustafson's departure -- and then the collective sigh of relief that welcomed Horrorscope's astonishingly mature and expanded sonic palette, which was sharpened to a razor's edge by fast-rising heavy metal producer Terry Date. Indeed, short of Bobby "Blitz" Ellsworth's signature shrieks to lend them a familiar coarseness, impressive new offerings like the album's eye-opening melodic launch pad "Coma" and the incredibly violent and infectious "Blood for Money" virtually sparkled with clean but powerful instrumental separation that showcased the quintet's instrumental prowess like never before. Even the supremely sardonic "Thanx for Nothin'" and a head-scratching cover of Edgar Winter's instrumental "Frankenstein" clearly meant business, and when Ellsworth proceeded to really sing on the at times ballad-like closing statement, "Soulitude," well, the old prejudices and preconceptions cast at Overkill over the years were decisively invalidated. Sadly, the New Yorkers' triumph would go partly unheard due to grunge's deafening cultural belch, and ensuing albums honestly didn't live up to Horrorscope's standards, leaving it as the creative peak and career benchmark against which all Overkill records are measured still today.© Eduardo Rivadavia /TiVo

Riding the crest of the British emo-rock wave, High Wycombe five-piece Young Guns' 2010 debut, All Our Kings Are Dead, offered little to differentiate the group from the likes of You Me at Six, Kids in Glass Houses, or the countless other bands that have cornered the Kerrang! market since the rise of Lostprophets. Despite frontman Gustav Wood's claims that their second album, Bones, recorded in locations as diverse as a luxury studio in Thailand and a shed in the small village of Little Marlow, is something of a rebirth, the majority of its 12 tracks encounter exactly the same indistinguishable problems as their first. Their ability to create full-throttle, ear-shattering stadium rock anthems is never in doubt, as evident on the rabble-rousing call-and-response nu metal title track, the aggressive glam-tinged punk of "Towers (On My Way)," and the propulsive Foo Fighters-esque opener, "I Was Born, I Have Lived, I Will Surely Die." But with previous producer Dan Weller (Enter Shikari, Rise to Remain) back on board and a continued reliance on the quiet verses/loud chorus formula and overblown angst-ridden lyrical themes, it's very much a case of business as usual, with only the blue-collar post-rock of "Brother in Arms" and the stripped-back melancholy of closer "Broadfields" fully living up to their rather bold statement of intent. Indeed, with the most uncharacteristic offerings appearing courtesy of the two brief interludes, the bandmembers only seem interested in dipping their toes in more experimental waters, which is a shame considering that the reflective balladry of "A Hymn for All I've Lost" and the chiming instrumental "Interlude" suggest they're more than capable of deviating from the norm. Bones is undeniably still a solid follow-up that should consolidate their second-tier status, but they'll have to change the record next time around if they want to move into U.K.'s alt-metal big league.© Jon O'Brien /TiVo

Riding the crest of the British emo-rock wave, High Wycombe five-piece Young Guns' 2010 debut, All Our Kings Are Dead, offered little to differentiate the group from the likes of You Me at Six, Kids in Glass Houses, or the countless other bands that have cornered the Kerrang! market since the rise of Lostprophets. Despite frontman Gustav Wood's claims that their second album, Bones, recorded in locations as diverse as a luxury studio in Thailand and a shed in the small village of Little Marlow, is something of a rebirth, the majority of its 12 tracks encounter exactly the same indistinguishable problems as their first. Their ability to create full-throttle, ear-shattering stadium rock anthems is never in doubt, as evident on the rabble-rousing call-and-response nu metal title track, the aggressive glam-tinged punk of "Towers (On My Way)," and the propulsive Foo Fighters-esque opener, "I Was Born, I Have Lived, I Will Surely Die." But with previous producer Dan Weller (Enter Shikari, Rise to Remain) back on board and a continued reliance on the quiet verses/loud chorus formula and overblown angst-ridden lyrical themes, it's very much a case of business as usual, with only the blue-collar post-rock of "Brother in Arms" and the stripped-back melancholy of closer "Broadfields" fully living up to their rather bold statement of intent. Indeed, with the most uncharacteristic offerings appearing courtesy of the two brief interludes, the bandmembers only seem interested in dipping their toes in more experimental waters, which is a shame considering that the reflective balladry of "A Hymn for All I've Lost" and the chiming instrumental "Interlude" suggest they're more than capable of deviating from the norm. Bones is undeniably still a solid follow-up that should consolidate their second-tier status, but they'll have to change the record next time around if they want to move into U.K.'s alt-metal big league.© Jon O'Brien /TiVo