A decade after their last album and the inescapable "I Love It" (featuring Charli XCX)—a song that pop culture still can't quit—the Swedish electropop duo Icona Pop are back. Caroline Hjelt and Aino Jawo had coasted on the endless party circuit of festival and dance celeb gigs for years, until the pandemic actually brought the party to an end. "Initially, we were devastated to leave LA and the whole system we had built there. Suddenly, we were in Sweden, and we felt alone. In retrospect, I'm very happy we were there, but there was a lot of crying at first," the pair said in a statement. But they regrouped "and thought 'what the fuck are we going to do now?' Eclectic, fun, hard, pop, deep, mainstream, catchy, weird, late at night, early in the morning—always with a tear in the corner of the eye and a smile on our face." That freedom and time to explore led them in a wild variety of directions. Chill "Fall In Love," with its catchy "fa-la-la-la in love" line, fits with Dua Lipa's sophisticated modern disco sound. "Need You" mixes R&B influence with a hard, metallic edge and throbbing undercurrent. "Loving You Ain't Easy" relies on cool-breeze piano and a skittish rhythm for its expression of naked desire. Hjelt and Jawo play with burbling pop on "Stockholm at Night" and "Feels In My Body," while "Desire" packs in deep house beats and features Joel Corry and Rain Radio. It's just one of many collabs, along with "I Want You" with EDM duo Galantis, the fun-house vibe of "Off of My Mind" with Vize, and kinetic "Shit We Do for Love" featuring longtime writing partner Yaeger. The star turn, though, is "You're Free," a rework of Ultra Naté's 25-year-old "Free" whose super powered vocals and pleasure-seeking focus perfectly jibes with Icona Pop's MO: "Yeah, I just wanna dance right now till my heels wear out!" And while "Where Do We Go From Here" is not as explosive as "I Love It," it still fizzes and pops and delivers a glorious build. But the wildest moments come in the form of "Stick Your Tongue Out"—a pulsing Peaches-esque banger that orders "lick it, lick it"—and closer "Spa," with guest stars Sofi Tukker. With rocking guitar and goofball self-care lyrics, it is pure camp: "Put some cukes on my eyes/ Tell me, is this paradise?" Tucker Halpern deadpans, while the girls declare: "I'm done with the club/ Just take me to the spa/ 'Cause I wanna feel the sweat/ From the steam room and the sauna." Why not? © Shelly Ridenour/Qobuz

Human is the debut full-length release from British singer/songwriter and neo-soul/hip-hop artist Rag 'n' Bone Man. Composed of arresting and powerful vocal work anchored in gospel, pulsating hip-hop beats, and sweeping strings, the record features production work from Two-Inch Punch (Jessie Ware, Sam Smith), Mark Crew (the Wombats, Bastille), and Jonny Coffer (Beyoncé, Emeli Sandé). The album's title track leads as its main single.© Rob Wacey /TiVo

For your consideration: a wildly successful indie rock band with a legion of followers on an equally successful, highly credible independent label makes the jump to major-label powerhouse Atlantic, leading to much chagrin and speculation among its fans as they awaited with bated breath for what would happen to the group. The result was For Your Own Special Sweetheart, inarguably the most polished and fully realized album of Dischord alumnus Jawbox's career. Fast forward ten years and you find Barsuk's Death Cab for Cutie in the same position, making the same move. A new label, a larger crowd (thanks to their repeated appearances on The OC), and a side project of Ben Gibbard (Postal Service) that very well overshadowed the success of his main project. All of the moves were perfectly aligned to take the little band that could into the rock stratosphere. But the difference between Jawbox and Death Cab for Cutie was that For Your Own Special Sweetheart went on to be the finest release of Jawbox's canon. Plans definitely comes close to that mark, but falls slightly short. In comparison to the dry, raw production of Transatlanticism, Plans is warm and polished, the kind of album expected from a band obsessed with the sound of Fleetwood Mac's Rumours. Chris Walla does an amazing job bringing the group's sound in a different direction than before without compromising too many of the things that made the group sound great to begin with. Thematically, Plans is the Death Cab for Cutie suitable for graduate students, world-weary and wiser from their experiences, realizing they can no longer be love-starved 20-somethings without a clue yet hopelessly cursed to face the same issues. And there's merit to be had in acknowledging that maturity, for even blink-182 figured out their age and released their "serious" album. Gibbard's wispy, poetic lyrics (which could easily have been stolen from Aimee Mann's dressing room while she wasn't looking) still remain an artery from which the rest of the band beats and are some of his finest ever, but this time around the band aligns itself more with a series of emotional murmurs rather than a heart attack. The album winds its way from one ballad to the next, with brief stopovers at moderately up-tempo numbers to help break things up a bit. And it's this sense of resignation that either makes or breaks the album, depending on which Death Cab for Cutie is your favorite: the melancholic, hopeless romantic or the one who wears its heart on its sleeve with unbridled energy and passion. If Transatlanticism was Gibbard's Pet Sounds and Postal Service was SMiLE, then this is definitely Wild Honey, loved by adoring new fans and those who enjoy the ballads. But those hoping for a bit more -- for the bar to be raised higher -- might find this a mildly predictable exercise in Gibbard exorcising the demons of Phil Collins that haunt him. Plans is both a destination and a transitional journey for the group, one that sees the fulfillment of years of toiling away to develop their ideas and sound. But it's with the completion of those ideas that band is faced with a new set of crossroads and challenges to tread upon: to stay the course and suffer stagnation or try something bold and daringly new with their future. Which road they'll take will make all the difference.© Rob Theakston /TiVo

Secondhand Daylight, the second Magazine album, sounds like it must have been made in the dead of winter. You can imagine the steam coming out of Howard Devoto's mouth as he projects lines like "I was cold at an equally cold place," "The voyeur will realize this is not a sight for his sore eyes," "It just came to pieces in our hands," and "Today I bumped into you again, I have no idea what you want." You can picture Dave Formula swiping frost off his keys and Barry Adamson blowing on his hands during the intro to "Feed the Enemy," as guitarist John McGeoch and drummer John Doyle zip their parkas. From start to finish, this is a showcase for Formula's chilling but expressive keyboard work. Given more freedom to stretch out and even dominate on occasion, Formula seems to release as many demons as Devoto, whether it is through low-end synthesizer drones or violent piano vamps. Detached tales of relationships damaged beyond repair fill the album, and the band isn't nearly as bouncy as it is on Real Life or The Correct Use of Soap -- it's almost as if they were instructed to play with as little physical motion as possible. The drums in particular sound brittle and on the brink of piercing the ears. Despite the sub-zero climate, the lack of dance numbers, and the shortage of snappy melodies, the album isn't entirely impenetrable. It lacks the immediate impact of Real Life and The Correct Use of Soap, but it deserves just as much recognition for its compellingly sustained petulance. Even if you can't get into it, you have to at least marvel at "Permafrost." The album's finale, it's an elegant five-minute sneer, and as far as late-'70s yearbook scribbles are concerned, "As the day stops dead, at the place where we're lost, I will drug you and f*ck you on the permafrost" is less innocuous than "All we are is dust in the wind."© Andy Kellman /TiVo

After making a small buzz with the Inside Wants Out EP, John Mayer hired veteran producer John Alagía (known for his work with the Dave Matthews Band) to beef up his full-length debut with commercial polish. Released in September 2001, Room for Squares proved to be a well-timed album, quietly heralding the end of teen pop's glory days with clever wordplay, savvy chord progressions, and mature songwriting. Songs like "No Such Thing" and "Neon" mixed jazz chords with digestible choruses, fashioning a sort of brainy, college-educated pop hybrid that appealed to discerning listeners and mainstream fans alike. Of course, it didn't hurt that Mayer also loaded the album with more straightforward numbers -- particularly "Your Body Is a Wonderland," a bubbling piece of bedroom pop that helped expand his female audience. Mayer's soon-to-be famous guitar solos and bluesy, Stevie Ray Vaughan-styled riffs were sorely absent from the mix, though, as he limited the bulk of his fretwork to the acoustic guitar. It would take a jam-friendly concert album -- 2003's Any Given Thursday -- to introduce the full range of Mayer's axeman skills to the public, but Room for Squares still provides a nice introduction to his catalog, highlighting his blend of collegiate pop/rock and sensitive acoustics while only hinting at the genre-hopping chameleon he'd later become.© Andrew Leahey /TiVo

In the 1980s and '90s, a lot of dance music spotlighted female singers with thin, weak voices who seem on the verge of death. But house music has often been a home to expressive, big-voiced divas who can truly wail -- a fine example being Paris Gray of the duo Inner City. Along with producer/composer Kevin Saunderson, Gray was responsible for some of the most rewarding dance music of the late '80s and early '90s. Inner City's debut album, Big Fun (titled Paradise in the U.K.), is full of house gems that enjoyed extensive dance club exposure, including "Good Life," "Do You Love What You Feel," "Ain't Nobody Better," and the title song. While Saunderson's production is decidedly high-tech, Gray's warm, passionate singing is mindful of dance music's heritage and underscores its soul and gospel roots in a delightful way. Unfortunately, Inner City never crossed over to the R&B or pop markets as Virgin Records hoped -- an irony considering that Big Fun is so much more individualistic and soulful than most of the generic efforts that dominated black radio in 1989.© Alex Henderson /TiVo

Beastie Boys Music is a compilation that arrives at the end of a period or self-reflection by the surviving Beastie Boys, an era kicked off by the 2018 publication of Beastie Boys Book, which was supported by a brief theatrical tour, which in turn was captured in Spike Jonze's 2020 film Beastie Boys Story. Beastie Boys Music arrived a few months after Beastie Boys Story, and it covers familiar territory, containing 13 of the 15 songs from 2005's Solid Gold Hits (everything you'd expect, from "[You Gotta] Fight for Your Right [To Party]" through "Sabotage" to "Intergalactic"), then adding five cuts to help round out the narrative. These additions and swaps make a big difference. Two cuts from To the 5 Boroughs, "An Open Letter to NYC" and "Triple Trouble," are dropped in favor of "Make Some Noise" and "Don't Play No Game That I Can't Win," both from 2011's Hot Sauce Committee Part Two, then "Paul Revere," "Hold It Now, Hit It," "Shadrach," "Get It Together," and "Jimmy James" are all necessary ingredients added to the mix. The result is the best Beastie Boys greatest hits yet assembled: it has all the major items, presented in a lively fashion.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

For the first time in history, a non-Armenian mixed choir has performed and recorded the entirety of Liturgy by the great composer and priest Komitas Vardapet. The performance by the extraordinary Latvian Radio Choir under the baton of conductor Sigvards Kļava, who are both now very familiar with Orthodox-inspired works (as demonstrated by their versions of Rachmaninov, Tchaikovski and Sviridov for Ondine), marked the 150th anniversary of Vardapet’s birth. The concert took place in a very solemn setting in Riga on September 20th, 2019, and the present recording required three years of preparation to mark the historic event – and it certainly does not disappoint! It features the full voices of the Latvian choir with their sensuality and extraordinary sense of harmonic progression, although it’s not as advanced here as it is in Rachmaninov’s works. This performance is incredibly beautiful and yet so simple and profound. Komitas completed his Divine Liturgy a few weeks before April 24th, 1915 – the date that marks the beginning of the rounding-up of Armenian intellectuals, including Komitas. It was a prelude to the large-scale genocide of Armenians by the Turks of the Ottoman Empire that ensued. While Komitas managed to survive the mass killings having been found and rescued, his soul had nonetheless been shattered and he spent the last twenty years of his life in a psychiatric hospital in Paris. This is an album to dive into head-first and return to multiple times to fully appreciate all its aesthetic energy, and some passages such as And the Mercy, Amen (track 21) and Lord, Have Mercy (track 25) are particularly poignant. The Divine Liturgy was originally composed for a male choir, however, Sigvards Kļava presents it here as an arrangement for mixed chorus (a practice that has been criticized in general so far and yet is incredibly impressive here) by Armenian Vache Sharafyan. Not to be missed! © Delos&Pierre-Yves Lascar/Qobuz

In 2014, Nick Mulvey launched his career with the album First Mind, after having dazzled as a part of the Portico Quartet, a bizarre jazz formation which was showered with awards between 2008 and 2014. This opus gave us a look at a fairly gifted songwriter, whose heart seems to hold a special place for folk. But this was a very singular folk, like that concocted by John Martyn or Nick Drake many years ago. And it was hardly a normal pop music - minimalist and repetitive (Glass?), sometimes risking bifurcations which are a long way from Western music (Mulvey studied music in Havana for a long time). The result was pretty bewildering, stunning and simply good... Three years later, we find a Nick Mulvey once again hungry for a diversity of sound. We traverse this Wake Up Now as if we were flicking through an atlas. The Latin American and African influences are never overpowering, but rather they subtly destabilise the structures of these compositions, be they pop or folk. They make a colourful fuel for these songs that deal with the refugee crisis as well as the simple joy of life. © MD/Qobuz

Seeing as how his come-up number was a trip-hop cover of "No Diggity" and his name is a Kurt Vile-like play on jazz great Chet Baker, Australian electronica producer Nick Murphy aka Chet Faker arrives with two overly clever strikes against him, at least on the surface. Tricky thing is, those who dig into that Blackstreet cover finds themselves enveloped in a warm, soulful slinker of the highest order, but the even better news is that Built on Glass is a rich debut, falling between the two hypotheticals of a James Blake record inspired by joy or a Beck album that should be filed under the category of "earnest." The lyrics offer a lazy fascination with subjects like love, loss, and afternoons off, while swaying tempos support sounds like bubbling house music, jazzy, Joe Pass-like guitar passages, and Faker's warm vocals, which are as if Eddie Vedder were born a slow soul man. The great "Talk Is Cheap" is broken beat house with a wonderful Boz Scaggs feel, while "Cigarettes & Loneliness" is a compositional triumph with interwoven guitars and Faker's lovelorn singing holding the listener's hand as a whirling dervish develops on a rainy Sunday. The volume is only pumped up to a Derrick May or Carl Craig level as highlight "1998" bubbles with that Detroit techno feel, and yet sticking with subdued suits the artist at this point. Built on Glass isn't so much limited as it is a wonderful mood piece, so think calm and cool with purpose, and then get hip to the restrained and resonating sound of Faker.© David Jeffries /TiVo

At first, Mike Hadreas aka Perfume Genius was likened to Anonhi/Antony Hegarty (Antony & The Johnsons). But as the American released more and more albums, it soon became clear that the universe he was building with his music was far too complex for such a superficial comparison. In 2014, his album Too Bright (co-produced by Adrian Utley from Portishead) gave us a kaleidoscope of sounds that went from Suicide-style electro that was sombre and minimalist to exuberant grandiosity and stopped off on the way for a R.E.M-style ballad. Three years later, No Shape also reflected that same personal eclecticism and Bowie-like musical androgyny. Now, Perfume Genius says his latest album, Set My Heart On Fire Immediately was influenced by his collaborative dance project with choreographer Kate Wallich, admitting, “It was dance that blew up this separation between my work and the world”. This realisation led him to reconsider his writing, which he now bases more on everyday life and real people, with influences from a wide range of artists from Townes Van Zandt and Enya to The Cocteau Twins! The album itself is just as diverse as it alternates unexpectedly between Baroque-style ballads and instrumental segments and his vocal palette paints all the colours of the rainbow as he moves from an angelic falsetto in one track to a guttural groan in the next. The soundscape is further enriched by the cello, glockenspiel, Wurlitzer, saxophone and harmonium in this rather elusive but sumptuous album. © Max Dembo/Qobuz