It's a running joke that every album released by the Rolling Stones is the band's "best since X," where X represents a random release from their extensive back catalog. Unsurprisingly, Hackney Diamonds has already received similar plaudits and comparisons. But the Stones' first full-length of original songs since 2005's A Bigger Bang can't really be compared to anything they've done before—namely because it's the first Stones album recorded (for the most part) without drummer Charlie Watts, who died in 2021. Watts does add his trademark crisp, jazzy swing to a pair of highlights: the strutting "Mess It Up" and swaggering boogie-rocker "Live by the Sword." (On the latter, former bassist Bill Wyman also contributes a grimy low end and Elton John adds freewheeling piano.) Elsewhere on Hackney Diamonds, Watts' hand-picked drumming replacement Steve Jordan anchors the rhythm section with his looser approach—a perfect match for big-sky rockers like the saxophone-augmented, funk-tinted "Get Close."But even with the lineup change, Hackney Diamonds feels like classic Stones—no asterisk needed. The album brims with familiar signifiers: fiery guitar interplay between Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood; an abundance of Jagger-Richards songwriting credits; and Jagger's inimitable vocals, which veer between spitfire sleaze and tender balladeer. Musically, Hackney Diamonds also spans the entire Stones continuum. "Dreamy Skies" is the kind of laid-back country rocker the band excel at writing; the string-swept "Depending on You" occupies a more introspective space; and "Driving Me Too Hard" is 1970s-era honky-tonking. On "Tell Me Straight," Richards even takes a turn on lead vocals. So what's the secret to Hackney Diamonds? Avowed Stones superfan Andrew Watt produced the album, which was an inspired choice: Watt pushes the Stones to play to their strengths and not rely on cliches. Hackney Diamonds' guests are also a welcome presence. Paul McCartney contributes bass to the barnstorming "Bite My Head Off," while the torchy power ballad centerpiece "Sweet Sounds of Heaven" includes keyboards and piano from Stevie Wonder and towering vocals from Lady Gaga. Fittingly, Hackney Diamonds ends with a song that's long featured into the Stones' mythology: a cover of Muddy Waters' "Rollin' Stone" (here called "Rolling Stone Blues"). The Stones' performance is raw and unfiltered, with shuffling harmonica and unpolished Jagger vocals; it sounds more like a low-key jam session than a high-gloss studio work. "Rolling Stone Blues" also gets to the heart of why Hackney Diamonds works so well: On the album, the Stones aren't trying to repeat themselves or recapture any past glories—but they are remembering their roots, and channeling the passion, ambition and musical chemistry that initially propelled them to superstardom. © Annie Zaleski/Qobuz

With her tragic early death (though hardly surprising given Amy Winehouse's lifestyle) a truly unique voice of contemporary soul stopped singing on July 23, 2011. She has a voice that should never be overshadowed either by her chaotic life covering the pages of British tabloids, or by her struggles with alcohol and drugs, or even the hundreds of videos of failed concerts on YouTube... When the Winehouse phenomenon exploded with this second album, the sublime Back To Black being far superior to her first record Frank, soul music was going through a slump with hollow, syrupy R&B singers and sanitized productions flooding the scene. Few people tried to develop the path established by Aretha Franklin, Ann Peebles, Nina Simone, Tina Turner, Dinah Washington and Marlena Shaw. But then along came Amy Winehouse, with her incredible timbre, her genuine songs (which she wrote herself, unlike 90% of her peers), her vintage-tinged productions (which were never passé) and brass-filled instrumentation. To top it all off, even her image was distinctive: 50’s beehive, biker tattoos and a cheeky attitude. Back To Black topped the charts for months all over the world, and it's still a real masterpiece of soul music and R&B. When critical opinion meets popular opinion – something relatively rare that’s worth underlining - the enjoyment is only tenfold. © Marc Zisman/Qobuz

When Pink Floyd bassist-turned-solo artist Roger Waters announced plans to re-imagine the band's iconic Dark Side Of The Moon, puzzled looks rightly ensued.  He even said to Variety, "We all thought I was mad but the more we considered it, the more we thought 'isn't that the whole point?'" Waters, who wrote much of Dark Side and is no stranger to controversy, has offered that Redux's relation to the original is, "Not to supersede it or to replace it, but to remember it, and as an adjunct to it, and to progress the work of the original concept of the original record and all those original songs."  Opener "Speak to Me" now features spoken text that is actually the lyrics from "Free Four," which appears on Pink Floyd's 1972 album Obscured By Clouds: "The memories of a man in his old age, are the deeds of a man in his prime/ You shuffle in the gloom of the sick room and talk to yourself as you die/ For life is a short, warm moment and death is a long, cold rest." "On The Run" is prefaced with "Today, I awoke from a dream/ It was a revelation, almost Patmosian, whatever that means/ But that's evidently another story/ It began with some standard bullshit fight with evil/ In this case, an apparently all-powerful hooded and cloaked figure," which was something Waters wrote down after waking up from a dream in July, 2021.  A number of talented musicians join Waters, among them: Gus Seyffert on bass, guitar, backing vocals; Joey Waronker on drums; Jonathan Wilson on guitars and synth.  In the case of the original single "Money," once an indictment of capitalism, Waters slows the pace, adds cello accents and a menacing piano part, and switches into a whispery Tom Waits-Leonard Cohen conspiratorial growl. The new lyrics are about a heavyweight boxing match, the devil, and a Faustian deal. One of rock's enduring masterpieces has now become the backdrop for a spoken word piece where Waters imparts the perspective he's gained since the album's original release in 1973. © Robert Baird/Qobuz

Cat Power—Chan Marshall—wanted to mark the moment in 1966 that "informs everything …  this precipice of time that changed music forever": Bob Dylan's "Royal Albert Hall Concert" (actually played at the Manchester Free Trade Hall), the one when he switched from acoustic to electric midway through—prompting an incensed folk purist to yell out "Judas!" Fifty-six years after that concert, Marshall delivered a sublime song-for-song re-creation of the set, at the actual Royal Albert Hall. "I'm not being Bob … I'm just recreating it, that's all. But not making it mine," she has said. Inevitably, though, the songs do become hers. It's evident right away, from "She Belongs to Me" (and shortly after, "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue"), the influence Dylan has long had on Cat Power's music. But with her husky voice, so like Nico's now and far from Dylan's youthful reediness, revealing traces of her Georgia upbringing ("She don't look baaaaack") and contrasting the clean acoustic guitar and shiny harmonica, she owns it. "Desolation Row" is a twelve-and-a-half minute marvel. The guitar is not blindingly bright like Charlie McCoy's flamenco flavor, but that works well with Marshall's more serious/less jaunty air here. Without aping Dylan, she hits his inflections, putting exuberant emphasis on the ends of lines ("And the good Samaritan! He's dressing!"). Her "Visions of Johanna" underscores the prettiness of the melody, while the way she sings the name "Jo-hanna" make it feel so much more exotic than it is. She gets playful with the familiar phrasing on the chorus of "Mr. Tambourine Man" and sings "Just Like a Woman" beautifully, offering a softer, less angular version of Dylan's classic. At 50, she was twice the age of Dylan when he recorded the song for Blonde on Blonde, and you can hear—feel—the extra tread on her heart. When electrified "Tell Me Momma" kicks in like the Wizard of Oz Technicolor moment, it's as thrilling as it's supposed to be, the first word of the titular line bitingly crisp each time. "I Don't Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met)" plays up the soulful grooviness that always feels a little buried on Dylan's live recording, while "Baby, Let Me Follow You Down" expertly captures his wild-eyed edginess. Marshall's "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues" is more elegant, even with its raw edges, than Dylan's young-man machismo. She does not recreate things down to the between-song patter but there is a moment, just before "Ballad of a Thin Man" (so slinky, so powerful), when someone yells out "Judas!"—and Marshall, serenely, responds, "Jesus." "I wasn't expecting the audience to recreate their part of the original show as well, but then I wanted to set the record straight—in a way, Dylan is a deity to all of us who write songs," she has said. And, as it did in 1966, closer "Like a Rolling Stone" sounds like liberation; maybe even like Marshall knows some part of this is hers now. © Shelly Ridenour/Qobuz

There are words that inevitably come to mind with a new Foo Fighters record: pummeling, shredded, heavy. But the band's 11th album, But Here We Are, also bears the weight of grief. The release date marks just over a year since the shocking death of the band's seminal drummer Taylor Hawkins while on tour. "Someone said I'll never see your face again/ Part of me just can't believe it's true/ Pictures of us sharing songs and cigarettes/ This is how I'll always picture you," leader Dave Grohl (who, no surprise, also handles drumming duty this time around) sings on "Under You," a glorious power-pop blast of anguish—the best kind of tribute to a musician who was unparalleled in his explosive joy. But there's more confusion than sentimentality on the album, which teams the band once again with producer Greg Kurstin and is dedicated to both Hawkins and Grohl's mother, who also died in 2022. "I've been hearing voices, none of them are you," Grohl sings on the slinky, mysterious "Hearing Voices," boasting a killer bass line from Nate Mendel. "Where are you now?/ Who'll show me how," he wonders on "Show Me How," moody in the vein of Mendel's old band Sunny Day Real Estate and featuring duet vocals by Grohl's teenage daughter Violet. "I'll take care of everything from now on," he resolves by the end. And then there is "The Teacher," an ambitious 10-minute toss-and-turn dream. "Who's at the door now?/ Wake up," Grohl sings, his drums pounding like someone at the door with bad news as he howls "wake up" over and over. There is excellently mercurial guitar work by Chris Shiflett and a haunted break—"You showed me how to grieve/ Will you show me how to say goodbye?"—before the whole thing breaks down into static. Kicking in with fury and working its way to a headbanging, heart-pumping build, opener "Rescued" is an instant classic along the lines of "Everlong" or "The Pretender." The band delves into power ballads with "The Glass" and  "Beyond Me." And "Nothing at All" is an intriguing surprise, the verses adorned with rocksteady two-tone guitar blasts and slippery-smooth bass before it all turns into raw screamo, its chorus a hair-pulling tantrum: "Everything or nothing at all!" It all ends with "Rest," a stripped-down heartbreaker about putting a loved one to rest: "Laying in your favorite clothes/ Chosen just for you," Grohl sings, sounding so vulnerable without the usual flash and squall. It's almost impossible to imagine how they'll get through playing these songs live, but with the release comes relief. © Shelly Ridenour/Qobuz

January is barely ending, and here we already have one of the finest albums of 2024. The triumvirate formed by the two geniuses of Radiohead, Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood, and Sons Of Kemet's drummer, Tom Skinner, under the banner of The Smile, wastes no time. Exactly one year after their surprise revelation on the Glastonbury livestream (thanks to the pandemic) in 2021, the trio released their first full-length album, A Light For Attracting Attention. With it, the complex and fascinating universe of the Oxford quintet is finally revisited—minus Colin Greenwood, Ed O’Brien, and Phil Selway—while gaining grandeur through the strings of the London Contemporary Orchestra, already at work in 2016 on Radiohead's A Moon Shaped Pool, as well as the most prominent brass and winds from the London jazz scene (including Chelsea Charmichael and Robert Stillman).More compact, Wall Of Eyes lets warmth in. Opening the way with only seven other tracks, the title track teleports us to the tropics with its bossa acoustic guitar and Yorke's reverberating vocals. The smooth synths of a nearly R&B "Teleharmonic" follow, leading to the riffs of "Read The Room" and "Under The Pillows," creating a trippy rock passage. We then enter the dreamy piano ballad "Friend Of A Friend" and almost drown in the synthetic layers of "I Quit" before the deluge of distortions in the eight-minute "Bendic Hectic" explodes after an anxiety-inducing violin ascent. "You Know Me!" draws the curtain with the gentle piano, providing a final that's as cinematic as ever. Recorded at the legendary Abbey Road studios, with Sam Petts-Davies taking the place of the faithful producer Nigel Godrich, this second album showcases a trio in full alchemy, increasingly inspired by Can rather than the Beatles, and completely seasoned by their live shows. A masterpiece. © Charlotte Saintoin/Qobuz

In the 20th century’s final decade, so-called alternative rock—an emphatic repudiation of arena rock and hair bands—was changing the definition of rock music forever. But did anyone in 1991 ever dream that Nirvana's Nevermind, which made alt-rock mainstream and immortalized the word "grunge" would become the last great rock record? With the music world too fragmented today to ever empower a Nevermind or even a Thriller, Nirvana's opus remains, along with Metallica's "Black Album" released the same year (and technically metal), the last rock album to sell somewhere over 20 million copies while becoming a widely beloved and influential landmark. But does all that mean a celebration with another multi-volume boxed set is needed every ten years? For Kurt Cobain fans the answer is obviously, yes please! And with the 30th anniversary set, they won't be disappointed; along with the remastered original album, four live shows have been officially released. Although they have a similar energy and nearly identical set lists that focus on Nevermind, the live shows, some of which have been famously bootlegged, do differ in sound quality. While the 1991 Amsterdam show has good depth and a natural resonance, a show from the same year in Del Mar, California has some speed issues, and while better than the original bootleg, is still dynamically limited. The 1992 Melbourne, Australia show has the best sound quality but a Tokyo show from the same year is clearly the worst sounding, obviously an audience tape that despite sonic restoration work has the familiar limited, recorded-in-a-jar fidelity of most cassette bootlegs. For fans of the original record—and also improved fidelity—this version of Nevermind, newly remastered from the original half-inch stereo analog tapes by Randy Merrill at Sterling Sound, can now be heard in high resolution 192kHz 24-bit sound. While the original Nevermind, produced by Butch Vig, recorded by Vig, Craig Doubet and Jeff Sheehan, and mixed by Andy Wallace was never a sonic disaster, the new high resolution is a noticeable improvement, though maybe one that Kurt Cobain wouldn't appreciate. Uncomfortable with the album's success and his subsequent celebrity, Cobain, who famously called the music on Nevermind, "the Knack and the Bay City Rollers getting molested by Black Flag and Black Sabbath," routinely criticized the original album as overproduced and not punk rock enough. The album's sonics have also been controversial with listeners, some of whom agreed with Cobain that compared to the band's 1989 debut Bleach, it was too accessible, too punchy, and ruined by what they perceived to be unnecessary gloss. Diametrically opposed though were the alt-rock haters for whom Nevermind was too sludgy, too loud, and disgustingly ill-defined. The crisper sound of the new high resolution transfer accentuates the clean pop production Wallace gave to the original album, and which despite Cobain's misgivings, played no small part in the album's massive success. Clarity, even when played loud, is where the high resolution is most obvious. And then there are the details. The swirling, side-to-side guitar part in "Come as You Are," for example, has never been clearer or more assertive. "Breed," the album's hit that never was, has been cleaned up in ways that Cobain would surely have thought were too pretty. His guitar part, which was repeatedly panned left and right, is more forward and defined. Dave Grohl's cymbals on the opening of "Lithium" have the edge of a jazz record. And in "On a Plain" Cobain's doubled vocals and the overdubs where he sings harmony with himself have never been clearer. Overall, the high resolution Nevermind has a lighter tone, an airier presence. Does a cleaner sounding Nevermind betray the band's punk rock intentions or subvert their grunge cred? A new Nevermind controversy is born. © Robert Baird/Qobuz

Jonathan Demme's creative direction and this group's brilliance make for an unusual live performance event. Starting solo with David Byrne, each song brings another band member to the stage until the full band kicks in. With Bernie Worrell on keyboards and a strong hit-filled set from the Speaking in Tongues tour, this is definitely worth checking out.© Scott Bultman /TiVo

If you’d told David Gahan and Martin Gore a year before the release of this latest album (which was still in the making at that time) that its title would be somewhat foreboding, the pair would likely have agreed, but for a rather different reason. Memento Mori roughly translates to ‘remember you’re going to die’—that’s what was on Gahan’s mind having just entered his sixties, whilst also remembering his stepfather, the man who raised and cared for him, who had died at just 61. But fate would prove both twisted and cruel when, without warning, it would take the life of Andy Fletcher on 26th May 2022. Depeche Mode’s third man was just 60 years old.However, this sudden death was not what primarily guided the somber, melancholic content of the record. Most of it was composed during the pandemic, which must have forced the band to ask themselves countless questions about their existence, their future and how these doubts would be manifested within their music (though Fletcher’s death would inevitably alter their approach to these same compositions). This all gives rise to a record which, whilst rejecting any semblance of ‘joie-de-vivre’, is a real return to more gothic, vintage and organic sounds. The album’s quasi-industrial opener, ‘My Cosmos is Mine’, sets the tone for the darker journey to come. The album takes a more stripped-back approach to the melodies, where Gahan’s sobering voice steers clear of all excess.In the midst of this darkness, the emphasis on synthesized sounds from a seemingly bygone era strikes a nostalgic chord without losing its edge (‘Wagging Tongue’, ‘Never Let Me Go’). These textures are accompanied by more saturated tones, taking us right back to their flirtations with rock in the 90s (‘My Favourite Stranger’). Memento Mori sounds like a kind of condensed version of the band’s more delicate songs without becoming a simple reconstruction of them. It has a subtle beauty which surely highlights the expertise of the musicians behind it, despite being somewhat overshadowed by the erratic nature of their discography over the last twenty years. Light filters through the cracks here and there on this album however, like the song ‘People are Good’, reminiscent of the classic ‘People are People’ released almost forty years ago. Remember that you’re meant to enjoy it… © Chief Brody/Qobuz