Almost a decade since the release of their first effort, time and experience have softened Crosses' bite. On Goodnight, God Bless, I Love U, Delete., the pair (Far's Shaun Lopez and Deftones' Chino Moreno) dig deeper into their electronic sides, embracing synth pop, new wave, and goth influences. Less crunch, fewer guitars, and barely any screaming -- it's like Trent Reznor, Thom Yorke, and Sade formed a supergroup. Whereas their self-titled debut might be categorized as a "Deftones Lite" exercise, this sophomore set finally sounds like a truly separate entity. Moody as ever, the album is set to chilly synths and cold soundscapes, diving into an even darker chasm. Descending into shadowy club territory on opener "Pleasure," a skittering beat and jagged synth stabs are enveloped by a spacious, atmospheric bubble as Moreno intones a sultry "Pleasure, pleasure, pleasure." The sparse "Invisible Hand" sounds like it could be a sweet pop ditty with its melodic chorus, but with a repetitive vocal sample strung throughout the track, it ends up being anxiety-provoking and utterly unnerving. That interplay, between the sensual and discomfiting, makes for an engaging listen -- and the listener can't really predict what Lopez and Moreno will do next. In addition to highlights such as the ominous "Pulseplagg" and sprawling "Grace," Goodnight also features appearances by Run the Jewels' El-P on "Big Youth" and Cure frontman Robert Smith on "Girls Float † Boys Cry." Moving way beyond their debut, Goodnight, God Bless, I Love U, Delete. is the sound of artistic maturation and sonic expansion, a logical culmination of what they were trying to do in the first place.© Neil Z. Yeung /TiVo

This excellent Danish jazz trio—trumpeter Palle Mikkelborg, guitarist Jakob Bro, and percussionist Marilyn Mazur—creates whole worlds with relatively spare means. Strands captures the group in a live 2023 performance at the Danish Radio Concert Hall in Copenhagen; the room's resonance adds an important dimension to the group's finely crafted sound. On "Gefion," Mikkelborg's warm, breathy flugelhorn etches a melody that evokes the directness of folk music and the expressiveness of a love song. Mazur's artful rattles, bowed-metal tones, and chiming percussion, along with Bro's pianissimo electric guitar, nicely play off Mikkelborg's carefully shaped lines. Later, Bro's electronic effects tint a passage where Mikkelborg is using a mute. Throughout, each shift in texture is wonderfully calibrated. "Returnings," which was penned by Bro and Mikkelborg, has a dark vibe redolent of Bitches Brew and various Miles Davis recordings from the 1970s. Trumpet blasts, skronky guitar, and multifaceted drumming produce a sharp-edged tension. Mikkelborg surprisingly employs fluttering effects that harken back to Louis Armstrong, and somehow integrates them into this eerie setting. At one point the piece moves into a quiet zone where lovely electronics come to the fore.   The twelve-minute title track, a Bro original, is Strands's centerpiece. The guitarist's exquisite picking and Mazur's sensitive percussion set the scene here. When Mikkelborg's flugelhorn enters, the music blooms. Even when there are only a few elements at play, this threesome deftly conjures an intriguing environment. The color combinations are a study in how to paint vivid soundscapes with a handful of tones. © Fred Cisterna/Qobuz

Has DJ Shadow managed to free himself from the weight of his acclaimed 1996 debut album, Endtroducing...? The six subsequent records provide a resounding "yes" to that question. Joshua Paul Davis continues his electronic exploration, moving away from hip-hop conventions and heavy sampling, and presents Action Adventure, a collection of 14 luminous tracks where the obsession with atmosphere takes precedence over mere demonstration.With stripped-back synthesizer melodies, ominous pad-driven beats, and unrestrained hi-hats, songs like "All My, Friend and Foe," and especially the excellent "Craig, Ingels & Wrightson" share a common sonic mold. DJ Shadow doesn't stop there however. He ventures into rock-inspired experimentation with distorted guitars on "The Prophecy," showcasing his technological prowess. He then takes an experimental turn with "Forever Changed" and delves into a retro-futuristic vibe on "Time and Space”. The urge to call on traditional jazz piano samples is never too far away – evident on the track "Fleeting Youth (An Audible Life)”. Even so, DJ Shadow resists the temptation of dwelling on the nostalgia of his past successes. And it works. © Brice Miclet/Qobuz

After a strong run between 2010 and 2016, Idaho-bred musician Trevor Powers temporarily ceased making music as Youth Lagoon, the nostalgic and psychedelically tinged bedroom pop project with which he'd created three critically acclaimed albums. Heaven Is a Junkyard marks Powers' return to the Youth Lagoon moniker, continuing the clearer production he left off with on 2015's Savage Hills Ballroom, and leaning into gentler, almost Americana-styled instrumentals that seem to take root in grounded emotional states. Throughout the album, soft piano intermingles with found sounds, samples, laid-back drum grooves, and occasional unobtrusive electronic elements as Powers spins opaque lyrics about troubled families, open skies, and images that evoke the feeling of life in the heartland. This formula becomes its own kind of flyover pop on the album's best songs, with "Idaho Alien" and "Prizefighter" coming one after another and feeling like continuations of each other's affable hooks and softly melancholic melodic sensibilities. The stripped-down ballad "The Sling" consists mainly of piano and lonely vocals before a haunted chorus and stirring strings come in to push the song's wounded feel to its conclusion. There are still hints of the washed-out nostalgia of earlier Youth Lagoon material in the cloudy glow of ambient interlude "Lux Radio Theater" or the distant drum loops and wobbly lo-fi processing of "Mercury" but by and large, Heaven Is a Junkyard finds Powers in pastoral mode. Even in its most orchestrated moments, the album feels primarily reflective and still, like Powers is gazing out on a silent field of wheat and offering us a look into his brain as the thoughts, memories, and scattered hopes all float by.© TiVo Staff /TiVo

In the promotional materials that accompany Live in Brooklyn 2011, Sonic Youth guitarist Lee Ranaldo says "It was a pretty magical, if kinda weird day." As far as understatements go, that one's a pretty rich double whammy. When Sonic Youth took the stage at the Williamsburg Waterfront on August 12, it was not only their last U.S. show ever, but it was also a band that was imploding before the crowd's eyes. The marriage of Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore—a relationship which had been both a creative and personal fulcrum of the band's entire history—was ending in a spectacularly acrimonious way, and two months later, the two would announce their separation after 27 years of marriage. "Kinda weird" doesn't even begin to cover it. However, the tension and weirdness—and looming sense of finality—all combined to make this show one of the most magical in the band's storied history. As Moore says during the set, "it's been a while since we played some of these," and indeed, the setlist for this outdoor summer show was rich and deep, launching with early Bad Moon Rising classics "Brave Men Run" and "Death Valley '69," neither of which had been played in concert for years. Later in the set, more Bad Moon Rising songs make an appearance, in the form of the Thurston/Kim two-fer "I Love Her All The Time"/"Ghost Bitch,” and the dazzlingly intense (and just plain tense) energy in the performance makes a whole lot more sense now knowing what was going on behind the scenes. By the time "Flower" comes along, Gordon gets the last, cathartic word on the matter. A Sonic Youth set that features five cuts from the Bad Moon Rising era but only one each from EVOL/Sister/Daydream Nation, two from Dirty, and zero from Goo ... well, that's a weird one indeed, but it's also quite magical. Despite being at the literal end of their career as a band, Sonic Youth is completely on fire on Brooklyn 2011. Whether it's Gordon's gut-wrenching vocals on "Calming the Snake," the full-bodied staccato attack of "What We Know," or the explosive dissonance of "Kill Yr Idols," the band leaves it all on the stage, performing in a cohesive, propulsive fashion that serves as testament to their power, and the rich, dynamic sonics of this album presentation absolutely do their live legacy justice. This is a set that is as rewarding musically as it is important historically and is essential listening. © Jason Ferguson/Qobuz

Closing out their "World" series with The World EP.FIN: WILL, K-pop group Ateez shoot for the stars with their longest effort to date, cobbling together as many varied genres as possible in their continued goal of world domination. Monstrous bass booms rattle "Emergency," and some unexpected Latin flair lifts "Arriba" atop a slinky beat and island percussion. Meanwhile, shimmering synths shoot through the sci-fi epic "Silver Light" and bouncy pop production bubbles up in the feel-good "Dreamy Day" to round out the main group tracks. From there, the back half breaks into focused tracks by Hongjoong and Seonghwa (the explosive rap assault "Matz"); Yeosang, San, and Wooyoung (the smoothed-out "It's You"); Yunho and Mingi (the tender, jazz-infused ballad "Youth"); and the solo piano showcase by Jongho, "Everything." Wrapping things up, the octet reconvenes for the sparkling, intergalactic closer "Fin: Will," which soars into space atop powerful vocal harmony like something from a Coldplay album. While The World EP.FIN: WILL isn't as aggressive or pulse-pounding as The World EP.2: OUTLAW, the Japanese-language Paradigm, or The World EP.1: MOVEMENT, it's a fitting culmination of all the styles and genres they've dipped into, both in this era and across their first half-decade as a group, offering a little taste of everything that makes Ateez such standouts in their generation.© Neil Z. Yeung /TiVo

When MGMT were asked by their record label for a list of their dream producers, with low expectations they sarcastically replied: Prince, Nigel Godrich, Barack Obama, and "not Sheryl Crow." Columbia returned with Dave Fridmann, the producer extraordinaire best known for his work with Flaming Lips and Mercury Rev. In typical Fridmann fashion, Oracular Spectacular is a glamorous mega-production through and through. Drums are massively distorted and shimmering keyboards are articulately layered as he takes the reins, leading the duo through his daisy chain of onboard compressors, delay units, and whatever other mysterious studio gizmos and gadgets he uses to get his trademark sound. Expectedly, the 14-karat polish enhances MGMT's blend of psychedelic and indie-electro to a shiny sonic gleam, resulting in some of the catchiest pop songs to come from N.Y.C. since the turn of the millennium. The tunes sound classic and new all at once, paying homage to Bowie, the Kinks, and the Stones, while updating traditional progressions with flashes of Royal Trux, Ween, and LCD Soundsystem. It's a wonderful mess of musical ideas, ranging from the dancy disco thump and Bee Gees falsetto of "Electric Feel" to the gritty acoustic-based "Pieces of What," to the grimy synth groove on the anthemic "Time to Pretend." With tongues planted firmly in cheeks, sardonic wit is as abundant as Andrew Van Wyngarden and Ben Goldwasser spoof the stereotypical rock & roll lifestyle with lines like "Lets make some music, make some money, find some models for wives/I'll go to Paris take some heroin and fuck with the stars." Despite the ever-present irony, the songs never feel insincere and the record is inherently strong throughout, making it a solid start to their career.© Jason Lymangrover /TiVo

Youth says, "I can do it all." But years pass and suddenly, in music at least, the idea of collaborators, of stacking the deck in your favor while paying tribute to the past begins to have a canny appeal. There's no questioning Jenny Lewis' prodigious talents—Vegas-born successful child actor, onetime leader of the band Rilo Kiley and now, on her fourth solo album, a fan of old pros and the success of the California sound of the 70s. Using the piano on which Carole King recorded Tapestry, and with vocals recorded in Sinatra's Capitol Records Studio B, On The Line evinces a cool, effective nerve and perspective in both Lewis’ dynamic singing and her multi-faceted songwriting, which here serve bruised, reflective lyrics about rampant familial dysfunction, hot sex and the edge between self-discovery and self-destruction. The wonderful specificity of her words adds vivid flavors as she argues about Elliott Smith and grenadine, plays Candy Crush, cries like Meryl Streep and looks up "at the chemtrail haze." Where her last album The Voyager leaned towards an 80’s rock sound, this stronger set revels in a seductive musical homage to 70’s Fleetwood Mac-like L.A. decadence and hooky pop/rock. Lewis' sharp, imagistic originals are the star here. The album’s rocker, "Red Bull and Hennessy," complete with an abrupt ending, is appropriately intoxicating. Led by an acoustic piano, "Wasted Youth" examines one of Lewis favorite subjects. If there’s any controversy here it lies in the gleaming sound and glossy production choices which, centered on her voice, layers on the reverb, big drums and a booming ambience. And then there's that aforementioned supporting cast. Starting with heavyweights like Beck and Ryan Adams producing and playing on the album, the band here speaks volumes about Lewis’ reputation and talent and includes drummers Jim Keltner and Ringo Starr, guitarists Smokey Hormel and Jason Faulkner, bassist Don Was and keyboardist Benmont Tench. Simultaneously harrowing, irresistible and more than a little calculating, On The Line, with its accumulated experience and wisdom is a career milestone. © Robert Baird / Qobuz

After staking out new territory with the underrated South of Heaven, Slayer brought back some of the pounding speed of Reign in Blood for their third major-label album, Seasons in the Abyss. Essentially, Seasons fuses its two predecessors, periodically kicking up the mid-tempo grooves of South of Heaven with manic bursts of aggression. "War Ensemble" and the title track each represented opposite sides of the coin, and they both earned Slayer their heaviest MTV airplay to date. In fact, Seasons in the Abyss is probably their most accessible album, displaying the full range of their abilities all in one place, with sharp, clean production. Since the band is refining rather than progressing or experimenting, Seasons doesn't have quite the freshness of its predecessors, but aside from that drawback, it's strong almost all the way from top to bottom (with perhaps one or two exceptions). Lyrically, the band rarely turns to demonic visions of the afterlife anymore, preferring instead to find tangible horror in real life -- war, murder, human weakness. There's even full-fledged social criticism, which should convince any doubters that Slayer aren't trying to promote the subjects they sing about. Like Metallica's Master of Puppets or Megadeth's Peace Sells...but Who's Buying, Seasons in the Abyss paints Reagan-era America as a cesspool of corruption and cruelty, and the music is as devilishly effective as ever.© Steve Huey /TiVo

Once Nat King Cole gave up playing piano on a regular basis and instead focused on a series of easy listening vocal albums, jazz fans longed for him to return to his first love. These 1956 studio sessions made up Cole's last jazz-oriented disc, where he played piano and sang on every number, joined by several guest soloists. Cole's vocals are impeccable and swinging, while his piano alternates between providing subdued backgrounds and light solos that don't reveal his true potential on the instrument. Willie Smith's smooth alto sax buoys the singer in the brisk take of "Just You, Just Me." Harry "Sweets" Edison's muted trumpet complements the leader in his interpretation of "Sweet Lorraine." Composer Juan Tizol's valve trombone and former Cole sideman Jack Costanzo's bongos add just the right touch to the brisk take of "Caravan." Stuff Smith's humorous, unusually understated violin is a nice touch in "When I Grow Too Old to Dream." It's hard for any Nat King Cole fan to ignore these important sessions. [The original version of this release featured a dozen tracks, later expanded to 17 in the '80s with the discovery of some unreleased material. Yet another track, the alternate take of "You're Looking at Me," was also found and added to reissues beginning in the late '90s.]© Ken Dryden /TiVo

Jonas Kaufmann, it seems, is in search of an album that will make him, not just a great tenor but a household name, and The Sound of Movies represents his latest attempt. The album certainly has some pieces that deliver the compelling vocals that have made Kaufmann such a beloved figure. Sample his Edelweiss from The Sound of Music, one of a couple of tracks that benefit from the presence of guitarist Miloš Karadaglić. The album is quite a mixed bag of material, with a few film music favorites but other tunes that are quite obscure, and at times, it is hard to divine what the sequencing principles behind the program might be. There are songs in English, German, Italian, and Spanish, and Kaufmann may do well, or less so, with any of these. He generally has a German accent in English, and this may be preferable to tense efforts to avoid it. However, the effectiveness of the songs depends less on their language than on their degree of American rhythmic content. Kaufmann is a good deal more relaxed in Moon River, for instance, than in What a Wonderful World (which makes the cut due to its presence in the film Good Morning, Vietnam). Many listeners will find that the sheer beauty of Kaufmann's tenor will override any objections, while for others, he will be a fish out of water. Kaufmann gets clean support from the Czech National Symphony Orchestra under conductor Jochen Rieder. It is a safe bet that his fans will find this a satisfying release.© James Manheim /TiVo

After releasing their debut album ZABA, Glass Animals spent the better part of two years on tour, an experience that had a significant impact on their music. Not only did they translate ZABA's aloof ambient pop for ever-bigger audiences, the stories they heard from people they met on the road inspired How to Be a Human Being, a more ambitious, more engaged, and more engaging follow-up that makes a strong case for interacting with the world instead of hiding in a bedroom making beats. Written within weeks of finishing the tour, How to Be a Human Being sprung from an intensive creative process that involved imagining its characters, down to their favorite foods and hobbies, and recruiting photographer Neil Krug to bring its visuals to life. Despite this attention to detail, these character studies aren't especially literal. Only a handful of songs, like the wannabe-populated "The Other Side of Paradise," offer much in the way of narrative or world-building. Instead, Glass Animals focus on a very human mix of emotions, particularly on the album's bookends: "Life Itself"'s protagonist describes himself as "Northern Camden's own Flash Gordon," capturing the innocent swagger of starting out in a way that feels equally endearing and ridiculous, while "Agnes" records someone's final moments with bittersweet majesty.Though How to Be a Human Being' lyrics are more straightforward than ZABA's abstracts musings, Glass Animals' vivid music does more to convey their characters. They use their animated arrangements more purposefully than they did before, even though the rippling "Cane Shuga" feels like the bridge between this album and their debut. The different guises allow the band new nuances: "Take a Slice" and "Poplar St" are two of their sexiest songs, but the former exudes seductive femininity, the latter a masculine strut. Elsewhere, the R&B and hip-hop influences that percolated through ZABA finally bubble to the surface. "Pork Soda" plays like a distant cousin of Blackstreet's "No Diggity," while "Season 2, Episode 3," a love song to someone whiling her life away in front of the tube, is a mashup of R&B and chiptune that makes it one of the album's most adorably bittersweet moments. Indeed, despite its high-concept origins, the album doesn't take itself too seriously, and its vignettes are more cheerful than gritty: "Youth"'s tale of motherly nostalgia and loss is one of the album's most joyous-sounding songs. How to Be a Human Being's sense of wonder and joie de vivre feels as instructive to Glass Animals as their listeners, and their willingness to try anything results in some truly great moments.© Heather Phares /TiVo

The pressure was on Kiss for their fifth release, and the band knew it. Their breakthrough, Alive!, was going to be hard to top, so instead of trying to recreate a concert setting in the studio, they went the opposite route. Destroyer is one of Kiss' most experimental studio albums, but also one of their strongest and most interesting. Alice Cooper/Pink Floyd producer Bob Ezrin was on hand, and he strongly encouraged the band to experiment -- there's extensive use of sound effects (the album's untitled closing track), the appearance of a boy's choir ("Great Expectations"), and an orchestra-laden, heartfelt ballad ("Beth"). But there's plenty of Kiss' heavy thunder rock to go around, such as the demonic "God of Thunder" and the sing-along anthems "Flaming Youth," "Shout It Out Loud," "King of the Night Time World," and "Detroit Rock City" (the latter a tale of a doomed concert-goer, complete with violent car-crash sound effects). But it was the aforementioned Peter Criss ballad, "Beth," that made Destroyer such a success; the song was a surprise Top Ten hit (it was originally released as a B-side to "Detroit Rock City"). Also included is a song that Nirvana would later cover ("Do You Love Me?"), as well as an ode to the pleasures of S&M, "Sweet Pain." Destroyer also marked the first time that a comic-book illustration of the band appeared on the cover, confirming that the band was transforming from hard rockers to superheroes.© Greg Prato /TiVo

III's haunting cover photo of a Muslim woman protecting her son might seem initially like it was chosen just to get attention, but it's actually the perfect representation of the album's complex mix of bleakness and comfort. This is Crystal Castles' most serious set of songs yet, with a darker tone and streamlined sound that dovetails with its motifs of outsiders, injustices, and revolution. Ethan Kath and Alice Glass' second album showed the duo was expanding their 8-bit vocabulary, and that comes to fruition here, particularly on the album-opener "Plague" and "Wrath of God," where Glass' distant rage and Kath's shadowy, claustrophobic synths invert their previously fiery electro-punk into something colder and more lingering. II standouts "Baptism" and "Not in Love" provide the template for some of III's best moments: "Telepath" and "Affection," which temper their tear-stained whispers with some of the duo's most straightforward and danceable beats, could soundtrack the world's saddest rave; "Transgender" adds a dash of fury to the mix, and "Sad Eyes," the album's most immediate song, amps up the drama and heartbreak to levels guaranteed to cut a swath on the dancefloor. Melody plays a bigger role on III than it did in Crystal Castles' earlier music, from Glass' more refined and nuanced singing to the beautifully ominous feel of "Mercenary" and especially "Child I Will Hurt You," which closes the album with a sparkling sadness like a broken snow globe. And while the duo downplays the noisy chiptune freakouts that defined their first album and punctuated their second, they use their more extreme sounds with more purpose. "Insulin"'s distortion workout provides a palate cleanser from the album's more emotional tracks, while "Kerosene"'s helium-laced backing vocals add an eerie innocence that Glass does her best to protect from the harshness surrounding them. Artistic progress is as much about subtraction as it is about addition, and on III, Crystal Castles have made room to be sad, angry, pretty, and danceable at the same time. That's an unusual mix of emotions, and while it might be condescending to say that they've grown up, they've certainly outgrown many of the preconceptions about what their music can be.© Heather Phares /TiVo