Various Composers

In four albums, Worrisome Heart (2008), My One And Only Thrill (2009), The Absence (2012) and Currency Of Man (2015), Melody Gardot has managed to sneak in between Diana Krall and Norah Jones to also find her place in the selective club of the female singers that are “a bit jazzy but not too much”, this oneiric cast that was so popular during the 50s, and in which she soon made the singularity of her very sensual voice resonate. A voice that she ceaselessly took touring to locations all over the world, and multiple times over at that. And so, there are enough recordings in the cellar to release a live album. However, live discs are rarely a must. There is often something missing, this small impalpable thing, that only those present that night will have kept inside of them… This Live In Europe from Melody Gardot is lucky to have kept, precisely, this “small thing”… The American has probably meticulously built it (apparently, she has listened to more than 300 recordings before making her decision!) by avoiding the true-false best of. “Someday, someone told me, ‘never look back, because there’s no way you’re going back’, she says. It’s nicely said, but if you don’t look back sometimes, it’s hard to see that time is on the verge of catching up to you. We all need to quickly look back into the rear-view mirror from time to time in order to adjust our trajectory. This disc is precisely that, the rear-view mirror of a 1963 Corvette, a postcard of our touring all over Europe. We spent most of our time on the road these last few years, and we’ve taken advantage of this trip to not only get around and get some fresh air but also to try, as much as possible, to get rid of the rules and create something exciting. I’ve been dreaming for years of releasing a live album like this one.” This desire can be felt in every moment of this disc comprised of titles recorded in Paris, Vienna, Bergen, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Barcelona, Lisbon, Zurich and London. Whether she performs her hits Baby I'm A Fool and My One And Only Thrill or covers the classic Over The Rainbow, Melody Gardot offers up a different point of view, but it’s always an open performance. To help her in her introspective trip that is constantly shifting, she is surrounded by her impeccable musicians, discreet but decisive. Drummer Charles Staab, saxophonist Irwin Hall and bass player Sami Minaie are completely in tune with her singing, like some kind of thin hand that you take and only let go of after the last note. Finally, there is this album cover which will lead to extensive press coverage… or not. © MD/Qobuz

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"For Lilies I just wanted to retreat to a cave with my Pro-Tools, my computer, and my cheap, 100Euro Shure SM-58 microphone. I could have gone to a big studio, made a big production – but I wanted none of that. I wanted to go back to the seed of creativity, the simplest materials. I was in this room where there was no light, no night or day at all, no heat. Very uncomfortable. But I felt free. I was happy to have this feeling – ‘I don’t need more, I have everything I need here.’” The spirit and the context in which Melanie De Biasio created Lilies are certainly in keeping with this unique artist's life and work... A singer-musician who is always ready to question and challenge herself anew and push the boundary markers which are so often set down between musical genres. Released in 2013, her album No Deal excelled as an atmospheric meeting of jazz, electro and rock. The Belgian who worships Nina Simone and Abbey Lincoln took another departure from the beaten track with what is commonly called vocal jazz, and wandered towards soul, trip hop, blues: into the most impalpable of ethers. In these weightless sequences, Lilies is firmly stamped with the De Biasio hallmark. This is a way of doing away with labels and playing with light and dark, day and night. © MD/Qobuz

Elijah is Bono’s son. Sian is The Edge’s daughter. They hold hands on the cover of these Songs Of Experience. Two “children” to evoke the world of 2017 and above all the legacy their parents intend to leave them…Recorded over three years with the help of an XL casting of producers such as Jacknife Lee, Ryan Tedder, Steve Lillywhite, Andy Barlow and Jolyon Thomas, this fourteenth studio album had to be the loud hailer of a world that is running less and less smoothly. Unsurprisingly, Donald Trump’s presidency and the migrant crisis are a good fuel for the writing of Bono, who’s still an expert in revolts. U2’s leader has the merit of being rather gifted in this area. Except that here, his starting point is something else. He says he’s been influenced by a conversation with his compatriot, the poet Brendan Kennelly, who would have advised him to write as if he was dead! Therefore, Bono imagined these songs as letters sent to his relatives, family, friends, and fans but also to himself. As for sound, we unsurprisingly find the spectacular 80s guitars from The Edge, whose hand has entered the rock history of the end of the 20th century. With a touch of modernity (the Auto-Tune on Love Is All We Have Left and Kendrick Lamar’s voice on Get Out Of Your Own Way) and a true quality in the band’s fundamentals, Songs Of Experience possesses enough arguments to keep the early fans of the Irish quartet excited and charm the others. © CM/Qobuz

She loves Madeleine Peyroux and Melody Gardot and she doesn't care who knows it. But Hailey Tuck does have a little something of her own up her sleeve. It's a personal touch that makes this young Texan, who has made landfall in Paris, an attractive voice in its own right, and not a pale imitation of anyone else. Larry Klein, who produced her two idols, even agreed to put together the first album of this starlet who shares a hairdresser with Louise Brooks, and a wardrobe with Josephine Baker. Klein even put together a perfect and never over-produced backdrop, with the help of some five-star studio musicians like drummer Jay Bellerose (Elton John, Robert Plant) and guitarist Dean Parks (Joe Cocker, Steely Dan)… In terms of their repertoire, the eclecticism and quality of these covers also displays thoroughgoing good taste. And the fact that she revisits That Don't Make It Junk by Leonard Cohen, Cry To Me, made famous Solomon Burke, Cactus Tree by Joni Mitchell, Some Other Time by Leonard Bernstein, Underwear by Pulp, Alcohol by the Kinks, Junk by Paul McCartney, I Don’t Care Much from the soundtrack to Cabaret and indeed the wonderful Say You Don’t Mind by Colin Blunstone, Hailey Tuck deploys her voice intelligently and with a dash of retro in every word and every phrase. Let this beautiful and timeless Qobuzissime carry you away... © Max Dembo/Qobuz

An androgynous voice reminiscent of Anohni’s of Antony and the Johnsons. A very 80s hushed groove comparable to Everything But The Girl and Sade and an outline worthy of The XX. Rhye’s first album, Woman, released in 2013, came as a real surprise. The improbable LA-based duo, made up of Canadian Mike Milosh and Danish Robin Hannibal, unfolded their R&B with insane sensuality (sexuality?). Five years later, Blood also comes through as a troubling and erotic urban soundtrack. A weightless soul based on the principle of less is more. Unfortunately Hannibal left the project in 2017, leaving Milosh alone aboard this beautiful vessel. As a result, Rhye’s music became more organic, less sophisticated and, in a way, more real. Moreover the falsetto voice of the man in charge is a powerful magnet for the ears. A voice even more beautifully showcased than in Woman, making Blood the apex of refined groove. © MD/Qobuz

How to better a record like Revolver? Sign off another by the name of Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. For many, this is truly the greatest pop and rock music of all time, if not one of the most significant works of art in popular culture from the second half of the twentieth century... After discovering the endless possibilities offered to them in the recording studio, John, Paul, George and Ringo continue their crazy musical experiments. More than ever considered as the ‘fifth Beatle’, producer George Martin runs out a magic carpet of discoveries that would go on to influence the future of pop. When this eighth studio album is released in June 1967, the era is one that has embraced the all-out psychedelic, and this concept album is a true hallucinatory trip (not only for Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds). Like the patchwork of his mythical pocket, Sergeant Pepper's journeys through pure pop, manly rock'n'roll, totally trippy sequences (to near worldly scales), retro songs of nursery rhymes, animal noises and even classical music! On the composition side, the duo of Lennon/McCartney is at the top of its game, delivering new songs that are still influential today. © MZ/Qobuz, Translation/BM

It is important to realize that Norah Jones is not just a famous persona waving from the cover of a glossy magazine, or simply “a pretty face". The truth is far deeper... Day Breaks is further evidence of her undeniable talent, but also of a tangible artistic evolution. Mixing beautiful original compositions with a sprinkling of great classics (Horace Silver, Neil Young and Duke Ellington), the sixth album from the New Yorker who grew up in Texas brings her many and diverse passions together in one place.  Always lying within the realms of jazz, soul, pop and folk, it is her sincere and visceral love for the former that inhabits this stylish album, which doesn't dwell in the past for a single second. Over the years, the piano (much like her vocals) have toggled between nonchalance and pugnacity. Saxophonist Wayne Shorter, bassist John Patitucci and drummer Brian Blade are among the accomplices invited to the party here, and the experience of those involved is truly telling. Somehow, Day Breaks manages to see eye to eye with Come Away With Me, her first disc released back in 2002, and one that propelled her to the top of the charts. This 2016 vintage is even more structured than previous efforts. Mastered to perfection, the latest effort serves to epitomize the grace and beauty of this timeless artist. © MZ / Qobuz

When Daft Punk announced they were releasing a new album eight years after 2005's Human After All, fans were starved for new material. The Tron: Legacy score indulged the seminal dance duo's sci-fi fantasies but didn't offer much in the way of catchy songs, so when Random Access Memories' extensive publicity campaign featured tantalizing clips of a new single, "Get Lucky," their fan base exploded. But when the album finally arrived, that hugely hyped single was buried far down its track list, emphasizing that most of these songs are very much not like "Get Lucky" -- or a lot of the pair's previous music, at least on the surface. The album isn't much like 2010s EDM, either. Instead, Daft Punk separate themselves from most contemporary electronic music and how it's made, enlisting some of their biggest influences to help them get the sounds they needed without samples. On Homework's "Teachers," they reverently name-checked a massive list of musicians and producers; here, they place themselves on equal footing with disco masterminds Giorgio Moroder and Nile Rodgers, referring to them as "collaborators." That could be self-aggrandizing, yet it's also strangely humble when they take a back seat to their co-stars, especially on one of RAM's definitive moments, "Giorgio by Moroder," where the producer shares his thoughts on making music with wild guitar and synth solos trailing behind him. Elsewhere, Daft Punk nod to their symbiotic relationship with indie on the lovely "Doin' It Right," which makes the most of Panda Bear's boyish vocals, and on the Julian Casablancas cameo "Instant Crush," which is only slightly more electronic than the Strokes' Comedown Machine. And of course, Pharrell Williams is the avatar of their dancefloor mastery on the sweaty disco of "Lose Yourself to Dance" as well as "Get Lucky," which is so suave that it couldn't help but be an instant classic, albeit a somewhat nostalgic one. Indeed, "memories" is the album's keyword: Daft Punk celebrate the late '70s and early '80s with lavish homages like "Give Life Back to Music" -- one of several terrific showcases for Rodgers -- and the spot-on soft rock of the Todd Edwards collaboration "Fragments of Time." More importantly, Random Access Memories taps into the wonder and excitement in that era's music. A particularly brilliant example is "Touch," where singer/songwriter Paul Williams conflates his work in Phantom of the Paradise and The Muppet Movie in the song's mystique, charm, and fragile yet unabashed emotions. Often, there's an almost gooey quality to the album; Daft Punk have never shied away from "uncool" influences or sentimentality, and both are on full display here. At first, it's hard to know what to make of all the fromage, but Random Access Memories reveals itself as the kind of grand, album rock statement that listeners of the '70s and '80s would have spent weeks or months dissecting and absorbing -- the ambition of Steely Dan, Alan Parsons, and Pink Floyd are as vital to the album as any of the duo's collaborators. For the casual Daft Punk fan, this album might be harder to love than "Get Lucky" hinted; it might be too nostalgic, too overblown, a shirking of the group's duty to rescue dance music from the Young Turks who cropped up in their absence. But Random Access Memories is also Daft Punk's most personal work, and richly rewarding for listeners willing to spend time with it. ~ Heather Phares

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Being a settled down, cherished and serene artist certainly doesn’t prevent certain works from bursting out into much more intense moments. With this in mind, Rest is not just another album for Charlotte Gainsbourg. Rest isn’t just for the dead, but the living too! And for siestas… And the rest as well… Four years after the death of her sister Kate, she lays down all her cards on the table from her 46 years in this world. At the heart of this record we find the weight of a heavily charismatic father (Lying With You) as well as the watch of others (I’m A Lie) and recent tragic deaths (Kate), giving birth to an album with a rare emotional force. Clearly, Charlotte Gainsbourg has the gift of manipulating all this internal nitroglycerine with care. And, at any moment, we’re tempted to call the pathos police… To accompany her on this work of cathartic cambers, she has invited along Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo from Daft Punk with whom she co-signed the single Rest but above all, for the rest of this fifth album, she is joined by Sébastien Akchoté a.k.a. SebastiAn, a virtuoso from the electro clan Ed Banger, who has tailored here a perfect array of instrumentals. A dress made from Gainsbourgian fabrics like never before, that Sebastian sews in his own way - modern, but not too modern… One track from a certain Paul McCartney (Songbird In A Cage) and two from Connan Mockasin (Dans vos airs and Les Crocodiles) come to complete this multifaceted work that is without a doubt the most personal by the author. © MZ/Qobuz

On Soul Power (a Qobuzissime record!), Curtis Harding confirmed that modern soul and groovy R&B suit him well. With his first album in January 2015, this flamboyant outsider came to join a family that already included Aloe Blacc, Mayer Hawthorne, Jamie Lidell, Myron & E, Nicole Willis, Lady and Nick Waterhouse, among others... A native of Atlanta, a former backing singer for Cee Lo Green and close to Cole Alexander from the Black Lips, Curtis Harding is striking, both for the eclecticism that he has to offer, and for the ease with which he moves from a love ballad to a funky up-tempo work that verges on Southern soul rock. With his Curtis Mayfield, Aloe Blacc and Shuggie Otis-like melodies, this second album is no less groovy, but a little smoother and with a little more by the way of guitar. Produced by Danger Mouse, Face Your Fear alternates between soul gorged on gospel, and more psychedelic ambiances. But despite this vintage atmosphere that brings a hefty whiff of the seventies, Harding has brought a touch of modernity to make this record an intoxicating cocktail of past and present. © MZ/Qobuz

With The Good Life, released in 2016 and for which he took a dip in the Great American Songbook, Till Brönner was at his zenith. The German trumpet player and singer penned an album of smooth classics, leaning toward love songs, which he revisited with elegance and sophistication. With Nightfall, Brönner joins forces with his old accomplice, double bass player Dieter Ilg, to revisit once again the music of great authors. Except that this time, the program couldn’t be more eclectic: from the Beatles’ Eleanor Rigby to Leonard Cohen’s A Thousand Kisses Deep, to Johann Sebastian Bach, Ornette Coleman and Jerome Kern, the duo has tackled a large repertoire. But the virtuosity shared by the two musicians allows them to make the whole project homogeneous. They most of all find a very sensual language. Each note is weighted and the silences and spaces are never forgotten. In short, this Nightfall is the incarnation of elegance. © CM/Qobuz