If you like your Shostakovich quartets big, brawny, and a bit brutal, you'll like the Emerson Quartet's Shostakovich quartets. The Allegros are muscular, with sharp attacks, strong sforzandos, and relentless rhythms. The Passacaglias are powerful, with massive sonorities, monumental structures, and inexorable tempos. And the Allegrettos are aggressive, with ironic accents, sarcastic tones, and mordent tempos.

Alison Krauss & Union Station continue their winning streak on the aptly titled Lonely Runs Both Ways. While they have in some part grown away from their earthy, rollicking bluegrass roots, they've been able to craft a really polished and honest-sounding brand of mid-American adult contemporary that never dips into the schlockiness of mainstream AC or the formula-driven sound of young country. Instead, Krauss, co-songwriter Dan Tyminski, and the Station dig deep into the classic themes of rural American music, polishing them with terrific production, the finest instrumentation, and two of the best voices around.

Occasional Rain, originally released in 1972, is the first of three albums, Chicago singer/songwriter Terry Callier cut for Cadet in the 1970s with producer Charles Stepney. Eight years earlier Callier, then a soulful blues and folk singer, cut an album of covers (as was par for the course in 1964 at the end of the folk revival, Bob Dylan was just getting his momentum) for Prestige, but it was shelved until 1968 and went nowhere. Callier spent the intervening time touring coffeehouses and small clubs around the country until he signed with Cadet. While the voice is most certainly the same, the nearly alchemical transformation of his sound via his own songwriting - and the way those songs were treated by Stepney - is still mind-boggling…

Paradise Theatre is the tenth studio album by American rock band Styx, released on January 16, 1981, by A&M Records. It was the band's most commercially successful album, peaking at #1 for three weeks on the Billboard 200 in April and May 1981. It was also the band's fourth consecutive album to be certified triple-platinum. Four singles from the album charted on various charts, with two songs reaching the top 10 pop singles chart. The lead single "The Best of Times", written by Dennis DeYoung, went to #3 on the Billboard Hot 100. "Too Much Time on My Hands", written by Tommy Shaw, went to #9 on the Billboard Hot 100, Shaw's only top 10 hit for Styx. "Nothing Ever Goes as Planned", written by DeYoung, went to #54 on the US Pop Chart. "Rockin' the Paradise"—written by DeYoung, Shaw and James Young—went to #8 on the Top Rock Track Chart.

Another cinematic episode in the continuing Pirates of the Caribbean franchise means another Hans Zimmer soundtrack…right? Well, yes and no. It's true that Zimmer, with his trademarked European sense of flair, has scored Pirates of the Caribbean 4: On Stranger Tides with his usual orchestra and choir, but there are a couple of twists to make things a tad more interesting. Zimmer, a longtime fan of virtuoso acoustic guitar duo Rodrigo y Gabriela from Mexico, decided to incorporate them into his score, which is rich in Latin and flamenco themes. They are prominently featured on no less than five cues here. In fact, it's more like the selections that include Rodrigo y Gabriela - "Angelica," "The Pirate That Should Not Be," "South of Heaven's Chanting Mermaids," "Palm Tree Escape," and "Angry and Dead Again" - feature their flashy, soulful guitar work in the foreground adorned by Zimmer's strings, voices, brass, and woodwind sections…

Third time up for sightless guitar wunderkid Jeff Healey and gang; Feel This offers the power trio's meatiest and most satisfying outing. JHB's brand of roadhouse rock can be somewhat bland on disc; here the group captures much more of its trademark live intensity than in the past. The unobtrusive addition of keyboards adds a more expansive dimension to several tracks. Boogie fans will want to check out the ZZ Top-like "Cruel Little Number"; blues-rockers will come away satisfied with the likes of "House That Love Built." Hip-hop connoisseurs, on the other hand, will likely want to avoid JHB's rap spoof on "If You Can't Feel Anything Else."

Nearly two years after the release of their latest studio album, XVI, the mighty Blindside Blues Band returns with Live From Satyrblues 2, a blistering live album from the Satyrblues Festival in Poland. The set, recorded on September 16, 2023, features longtime BBB leader Mike Onesko along with Martin Jepsen Andersen (Blindstone, Meridian, Crossroad Overdrive) on lead guitar and the killer rhythm section of Eric Kennedy on bass and Holden Szalek on drums. Highlights include Better Days, Journey to the Stars and Out on the Streets.

Soul Finger, released on Limelight in 1965, marks Lee Morgan's and Freddie Hubbard's final studio appearances as members of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers. Morgan had been an on-again-off-again member since the 1950s, but his tenure with Blakey through the early 1960s remained fairly constant. The set also includes a young John Hicks on piano, bassist Victor Sproles, and veteran saxophonist Lucky Thompson. While this set may lack the sheer high-energy crackle of some of the Jazz Messengers Blue Note dates, there is quite a bit to enjoy here. The title track kicks the joint off in bluesy style with the three-horn front line in a slightly dissonant intro before moving in a fingerpopping groover with some killer wood by Sproles used as fills between lines. The spunky Latin groove of "Buh's Bossa" offers Blakey's consummate chops accenting the knotty, sometimes snaky melody line with some excellent comp work by Hicks…

Triana is the most legendary progressive rockband in Spain. Formed in 1974, the band were known for blending elements of progressive rock and flamenco music to make a style known as Andalusian rock or flamenco rock. "Quiero Contarte" is a triple album paying homage to Triana featuring, on the one hand a selection of the most emblematic songs from the 7 recorded albums by the legendary Andalusian rock band on two of the CDs. On the other, a CD featuring the album "Tributo a Jesús de la Rosa". This CD, produced by Gonzalo García-Pelayo, features 17 cover versions of their songs and played by famous modern spanish musicians (andaluz bands Alameda & Medina Azahara among them).

The group started 1968 by touring Australia and New Zealand with the Small Faces. The groups had trouble with the local authorities and the New Zealand Truth called them "unwashed, foul-smelling, booze-swilling no-hopers". After an incident that took place on a flight to Sydney, the band were briefly arrested in Melbourne and then forced to leave the country; Prime Minister John Gorton sent a telegram to The Who telling them never to return to Australia. The Who would not return to Australia again until 2004. They continued to tour across the US and Canada during the first half of the year.

Such an unimaginative title for such a imaginative boxful. Across four discs and 105 songs, Cliff Richard's earliest catalog comes in for precisely the kind of treatment every rock & roll star should have: an all-encompassing study of his most important period. Even more impressively, though the song titles all sound familiar, the performances rarely are. Thirty-seven tracks are bona fide unreleased (South African 78s notwithstanding), but several dozen more are culled from scarce EP-only mixes, rarely resurfacing B-sides, and unusual mixes.

Disco (1986). Released at the height of dance-pop in 1986, the Pet Shop Boys' remix album Disco defiantly asserted the roots of the current trend with the title. And with its long remixes, Disco is designed to be pumped at a dancefloor. As casual listening, it gets a bit tedious, but even at these extended lengths, the melodic craft of the Pet Shop Boys' material shines through.
Disco 2 (1994). On September 12, 1994, the Pet Shop Boys released Disco 2, a mid-priced sequel to their 1986 dance album Disco. Edited together by London DJ Danny Rampling, it is a continuous mix of dance versions of their six most recent singles (including “Absolutely fabulous”) and also incorporates “So hard” and the celebrated B-side of “Being boring”, “We all feel better in the dark”. “It’s really good for driving to, and getting ready to go out to,” says Neil…

Présent dans les hit-parades britanniques depuis six décennies, Cliff Richard est une institution du rock anglais. Né Harry Rodger Webb à Lucknow, en Inde, le 14 octobre 1940, il fait ses débuts dans le rock'n'roll seize ans plus tard avec son premier groupe The Drifters, qui devient The Shadows et collectionne les succès : « Move It », « Livin' Doll », « Bachelor Boy », entre autres. Après un passage en solo, l'idole des jeunes se convertit au christianisme en 1964 et poursuit une carrière multiple de chanteur, acteur et animateur de télévision extrêmement populaire au Royaume-Uni. Doyen du rock britannique en activité depuis 1958, Cliff Richard a logé quatorze chansons au sommet des classements de ventes, dont « We Don't Talk Anymore » (1979) et « Millenium Prayer » (1999). Il continue d'enregistrer des albums entre pop, rock et chansons de Noël. Anobli par la reine Elizabeth II en 2009, Sir Cliff Richard retrouve son groupe historique, The Shadows, pour l'album Reunited. Puis, après un album de blue-eyed soul, Soulicious (2011), le septuagénaire consacre deux volumes au rock'n'roll de sa jeunesse, The Fabulous Rock'N'Roll Songbook (2013) et Just…Fabulous Rock'N'Roll (2016). Ce dernier, son centième album, est suivi deux ans plus tard par Rise Up et en 2020 par Music… The Air That I Breathe, qui rassemble des duos avec Bonnie Tyler, Albert Hammond, The Bellamy Brothers, Sheila Walsh et The Piano Guys.

CLASSIC 1978 BROADCAST FROM GERMANY S THEN DIVIDED CITY After falling out with his long-time manager Herb Cohen, Frank Zappa spent much of the late 1970s in a legal battle with Cohen and later with Warner Brothers too. With the majority of his own recorded material thus tied up, Zappa concentrated on touring with a small, rock-oriented band. March 1978 witnessed the release of Zappa In New York, recorded live with a 13-strong band at the Palladium in late December 1976. Demonstrating in equal measure Zappa s extraordinary ability as a composer and fearless approach to controversial topics, the record reached a respectable No. 57 on the Billboard chart. Two standout numbers from In New York, Titties & Beer and The Black Page , would be a fixture of Zappa sets by the time his 1978 European tour rolled around, as the concert featured on this two CD set can attest.

If there is one group that embodies progressive rock, it is King Crimson. Led by guitar/Mellotron virtuoso Robert Fripp, during its first five years of existence the band stretched both the language and structure of rock into realms of jazz and classical music, all the while avoiding pop and psychedelic sensibilities. The absence of mainstream compromises and the lack of an overt sense of humor ultimately doomed the group to nothing more than a large cult following, but it made their albums some of the most enduring and respectable of the prog rock era.