A quarter-century into their career, Three Days Grace are dab hands at making tight, visceral alt-rock for the arena rock crowd. Returning after a four-year gap, the veteran Canadians offer up the aptly named Explosions, their seventh studio set. Co-produced with longtime collaborator Howard Benson, the album was recorded during the COVID-19 pandemic with members tracking many of their parts in isolation at various different studios. While the enforced separation and global angst of the era may have fed into the album's bleak dynamic, Three Days Grace have their formula down pat to the extent that Explosions feels as durable and reliable as any of their previous releases. Thematically there is an overall tone of struggling to right one's ship amid overwhelming chaos, which speaks plainly of the period during which the music was created…

A 2LP set dedicated to the memory of folk and protest song pioneer Pete Seeger and the then young prodigy Bob Dylan. Separately, Pete s traditionalism and Bob s propensity to innovate can sound worlds apart but together they are quite clearly cut from the same cloth. Explore the influence Seeger had and the influence Dylan was preparing on this 40 track retrospective.

Bob Dylan’s First Solo Acoustic Album in Nearly 30 Years Remains an Overlooked Gem: Good As I Been to You Serves as a Prelude to His Celebrated Late-Career Arc.

On Songs of Bob Dylan, Joan Osborne unleashes her sizable gifts as a vocalist and interpreter upon The Bard's celebrated canon. With performances honed by the time Osborne spent polishing them during 'Joan Osborne Sings The Songs Of Bob Dylan' two critically acclaimed two-week residencies she performed at New York City's Café Carlyle in March 2016 and 2017, the seven-time Grammy-nominated, multi-platinum-selling singer and songwriter, whom The New York Times has called 'a fiercely intelligent, no-nonsense singer,' winds her supple, soulful voice around Dylan's poetic, evocative lyrics, etching gleaming new facets in them along the way.

Kirk's Work, Rahsaan Roland Kirk's third long-player, teams him up with organist "Brother" Jack McDuff for Kirk's most soulful post-bop set to date. His unorthodox performance style incorporates the polyphonies of a tenor sax, flute, manzello, and stritch. (The latter instrument is Kirk's own modification of a second-generation B-flat soprano sax.) This contributes to the unique sonic textures and overtones Kirk creates when playing two - and often three - of those lead instruments simultaneously. The loose and soulful nature of McDuff's Hammond organ lends itself to the swinging R&B vibe pervasive throughout the album. Completing the quartet is Joe Benjamin (bass) and Art Taylor (drums), both veteran jazzmen in their own right…

Legacy’s 2010 collection The Essential Highwaymen doesn’t merely cover recordings made by the supergroup of Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Johnny Cash, and Kris Kristofferson, it rounds up selections from their solo albums of the ‘70s, ‘80s, ’90s, and 2000s. Specifically, these selections are written by other members of the group, so the net effect is a generous 36-track collection of Highwaymen highlights in all forms, drawing a more detailed portrait of their crossed paths than any individual album by the supergroup.

For the compilers of Time-Life Music's Singers & Songwriters series, which – more or less – chronicles the 1970s singer/songwriter movement, the 24-month period 1970-1971 marked the real birth of that trend, with the popular emergence of such defining figures as James Taylor, Carole King, Carly Simon, John Denver, and Cat Stevens, all of whom had their first big hits in the style included here.

Berlin reached their commercial peak – and their creative low point – with "Take My Breath Away" in 1986. While it's really not a bad song, the Top Gun hit removed the group from their new romantic roots, straying into adult contemporary territory. Master Series is an enjoyable career summary that collects nearly every track from Berlin that is worth collecting. Like many American new wave groups, Berlin was a superb singles band, but their albums were somewhat inconsistent. And their earliest work is the best, especially MTV classics like "Masquerade," "Dancing in Berlin," and "The Metro." On the naughty "Sex (I'm A…)," singer Terri Nunn shocked pop radio years before Madonna with its pornographic moans and groans and racy lyrics. "The Metro" encapsulates Berlin's affection for European new wave music with its somber, swirling synthesizers and sad, cold-as-ice vocals. The spiteful "No More Words" rips away the saccharine layers of "Take My Breath Away".

Ensemble Marsyas’ debut recording on Linn features three of the extraordinary trio sonatas by the Bohemian composer Jan Dismas Zelenka (1679-1745) for violin, two oboes, bassoon and continuo on period instruments. These sonatas represent the most spectacularly challenging music ever written for wind instruments in terms of their utopian demands on the technique of the players, their musical integrity and their breathtaking scale. This repertoire saw the ensemble awarded both first prize and the audience prize at the 2007 Brugge International Competition. The Edinburgh based chamber group comprises the best of a new generation of musicians specialising in early music from across Europe. Ensemble Marsyas is Peter Whelan - bassoon, Josep Domènech Lafont - oboe, Molly Marsh - oboe, Thomas Dunford - theorbo, Philippe Grisvard - harpsichord/organ, Christine Sticher - violone. They are joined for this recording by Baroque violinist Monica Huggett who is a multiple Gramophone Award winner and Grammy nominee. The members of Ensemble Marsyas have been awarded accolades by both critics and the recording industry alike - the most recent including a 2010 Gramophone Award for a recording featuring Peter Whelan.

The last truly indispensable disc of the great guitar hero's career, and perhaps the most innately satisfying of all, these mid-'50s recordings boast magnificent presence, with T-Bone Walker's axe so crisp and clear it seems as though he's sitting right next to you as he delivers a luxurious remake of "Call It Stormy Monday." Atlantic took some chances with Walker, dispatching him to Chicago for a 1955 date with Junior Wells and Jimmy Rogers that produced "Why Not" and "Papa Ain't Salty." Even better were the 1956-1957 L.A. dates that produced the scalding instrumental "Two Bones and a Pick" (which finds Walker dueling it out with nephew R.S. Rankin and jazzman Barney Kessel).

If 1980's As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls was defined by Pat Metheny's charisma, its less accessible but certainly rewarding successor, Offramp, finds him leaning more toward the abstract. But as cerebral as Metheny gets on such atmospheric pieces as "Are You Going with Me?" and "Au Lait," his playing remains decidedly lyrical and melodic. Clearly influenced by Jim Hall, the thoughtful Metheny makes excellent use of space, choosing his notes wisely and reminding listeners that, while he has heavy-duty chops, he's not one to beat everybody over the head with them. Even when he picks up the tempo for the difficult and angular title song, he shuns empty musical acrobatics. Throughout the CD, Metheny enjoys a powerful rapport with keyboardist Lyle Mays, who also avoids exploiting his technique and opts for meaningful storytelling.

This collection of piano music is a welcome reminder of the many fascinating stylistic strands that colour George Enescu’s work. Seriously under-rated today, he exerted a powerful influence on all those who came under his spell, including Yehudi Menuhin, for whom Enescu remained ‘the greatest musician’. Pianist Matei Varga is a prizewinner of numerous international competitions, among them the Maria Canals Competition in Barcelona, the Porto International Piano Competition and the George Enescu Competition in Bucharest.

Camel packed up their bags and moved to California, with the dust of a seven-years span of quiet on their backs, and the dream of creative freedom through their own label, Camel Productions, ahead of them. Inspired by the John Steinbeck novel "The Grapes of Wrath" (and one can only hope that Camel's westward move went smoother), Dust and Dreams is exactly the sort of labor of love that makes a private label worth having. Elegiac, literate, largely instrumental in spots, this stuff would make most label executives' eyes glaze over. It's also the sort of finely wrought music that will delight Camel fans who still fondly imagine their band in the Nude. Despite the long absence since Stationary Traveller, many familiar faces return to Camel's ranks: Susan Hoover, Ton Scherpenzeel, Colin Bass, David Paton, and Paul Burgess…

The Analogue Space Years '69-'73 is a definitive overview of Tangerine Dream's early, formative years, collecting highlights from the group's first four albums (Electronic Meditation, Alpha Centauri, Zeit, and Atem). Though this wasn't their most consistent or effective period, and their mid- to late-'70s work is far more essential, it's a handy way for curious fans to discover essentially everything they need to know about Tangerine Dream's early career.

Ace's much acclaimed Songwriter Series rolls into 2021 with a long overdue overview of the work of one of the greatest writers of the 20th Century. Kris Kristofferson's catalogue has been visited and revisited on scores of occasions over the past half century, with almost 1000 covers alone of just three songs one of which For The Good Times gives this new 23-track collection its title.