David Byrne & St. Vincent: Love This Giant

"'Our version of pop music is not everyone's version of pop music,' says Annie Clark with a laugh. On Love This Giant, the new record she made with David Byrne, rumbling rhythms, electronic gurgles and currents of brass circle around the duo's unmistakable voices. It's not Justin Bieber, but the first single,  'Who,' has a deep, irresistible R&B swagger, while the chanted hooks and call-and-response brass refrains of 'Weekend in the Dust' would make Parliament-Funkadelic proud. Love This Giant is a piece of cross-generational teamwork made in indie-rock Valhalla. ..." (Jesse Dorris, "Dream Team," Time, 9/17/12, p. 56).

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Bloc Party: Four

"Kele Okereke, the lead singer of Bloc Party, transmits at a steady frequency, making few distinctions between the mundane and the epic. The songs on 'Four,' the band’s new jolt of stylized catharsis, attempt to engage with issues both personal and sociopolitical. ... The band has managed to outlast the postpunk-revival boomlet from which it emerged, diversifying its sound (up to a point) and broadening its focus (likewise). 'Four,' produced by Alex Newport, still has the vertiginous pulse and snarling riffs that have been Bloc Party trademarks since the band’s breakout 2005 debut. At times, as on 'Octopus,' this album’s hyper-caffeinated lead single, it’s the surface details that seem to matter most. Then again, 'Four' opens with 'So He Begins to Lie,' a reflection on the fraudulent undertow of celebrity. ... And on 'Coliseum' Mr. Okereke yelps some kind of declaration — 'The empire never ended!' — at a pivotal moment, just before the volume cranks up, and the drums and distortion kick in. ... On 'V.A.L.I.S.,' apparently inspired by the philosophically minded Philip K. Dick novel of the same title, Mr. Okereke imagines a dystopian future version of himself. 'You gotta show me the way,' he implores, over a crisply propulsive new-wave beat" (Nate Chinen, "New Music," New York Times, 8/20/12).

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The Polyphonic Spree: Holidaydream

"Harps twinkle, strings quiver, horns swell, chimes peal and ghostly voices waft in and out as the Polyphonic Spree turns familiar Christmas songs into a suite of eerie orchestral ruminations, a meditation on the season. The words arrive almost diffidently in Tim DeLaughter’s quavery high tenor. Often, he jettisons the usual melody or harmonies for different ones (like 'Silent Night' as a minor-key instrumental), though he doesn’t mess with John Lennon’s 'Happy Christmas (War Is Over).' It’s Christmas in an introspective daze" (Jon Pareles, "New Music Releases of the Season," New York Times, 11/19/12).

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Titus Andronicus: Local Business

"Glen Rock, New Jersey's Titus Andronicus may be the most ambitious punk band in America. On 2010's The Monitor, they wrapped an epic breakup record around a Civil War conceit. Their third disc is a hilarious gut-wrenching mess that relocates the Replacements and Thin Lizzy at their most bracing and bighearted to the suburban skate-park diaspora -- all centered around Patrick Stickles' glass-half-smashed existentialism . . ." (Jon Dolan, "Reviews," Rolling Stone, 10/25/12, p. 74).

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Judith Berkson: Oylam

"More by accident than by design, Judith Berkson has followed a circuitous and genre-hopping musical path. Her introduction to the art form was through her father, a cantor in a conservative synagogue in Chicago who taught her Jewish sacred music. As a high school student, she got interested in opera and art song, and she earned a degree in voice from the New England Conservatory, in Boston, where she also studied composition and piano. ... [S]he developed a graceful, laid-back style as a jazz singer and pianist that is evident on 'Oylam,' her quirky 2010 CD (ECM), on which her interests collide: cabaret standards are juxtaposed with a Yiddish song, one of her own cantorial pieces and a jazzy take on a song from Schubert’s 'Winterreise'" (Allan Kozinn, "Mash-up of Schubert and Synagogue Tradition," New York Times, 11/1/12).

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Joss Stone: Soul Sessions

"This weekend, when Joss Stone plays New Haven's Shubert Theater, it will be just a small step in her big dreams. 'I would like to play a gig in every country in the world,' she said matter-of-factly in a recent interview. 'That's my mission. That will be my next tour. Yep, it'll be fun. I'm excited about that.' The idea could seem rather far-fetched, but so do other aspects of Stone's life. She has several multi-platinum records, an acting career and a record label. It's just that Stone, who is barely old enough to rent a car, brings it all up with the same nonchalance others in their mid-20s use to talk about ordering tacos. ... At 15, Stone's debut album 'The Soul Sessions' launched her along the leading edge of the 2000's wave of British soul singers" (Nick Caito, "Shubert Just One Stop In British Soul Singer Joss Stone's Dream," Hartford Courant, 10/9/12).

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Arturo Sandoval: Dear Diz (Every Day I Think of You)

"Arturo Sandoval, a Cuban trumpeter who defected to the United States in 1990, won the awards for tango album, 'Tango Como Yo Te Siento' ('Tango, How I Feel You'), and Latin jazz album, 'Dear Diz (Every Day I Think of You)'; 'Dear Diz' was also named the best engineered album" (Jon Pareles, "For Latin Grammy Awards, a Giddy and Gaudy Whirl of Styles," New York Times, 11/16/12).

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Joyce DiDonato: Drama Queens

"There are singers who are secure in technique but cautious in expression, there are singers who deliver passion but damage the ears, and then there is Joyce DiDonato, who consistently finds the golden mean. The beloved Kansan mezzo is touring with a new Baroque-aria program called 'Drama Queens,' which she recorded for the Virgin Classics label and is bringing to Carnegie Hall on Nov. 18. The giggly title threatens kitsch, but the album, created in collaboration with the scholarly conductor Alan Curtis, is a meaty survey of queenly monologues both famous and obscure. 'Piangerò la sorte mia,' Cleopatra’s multifaceted lament from Handel’s 'Giulio Cesare,' is preceded by a chromatically slashing aria by Johann Adolf Hasse for the same doomed monarch. We also hear from Monteverdi’s Ottavia, Handel’s Alcina, and Haydn’s Armida, among others. DiDonato has a way of capturing extreme emotions without resorting to excess: she is a singer not only of flair and power but of intelligence and taste" (Alex Ross, "Critic's Notebook," New Yorker, 11/19/12).

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The Ambassadors: Soul Summit

"The Ambassadors were a signature soul outfit of late-'60s Philly. The group featured The Sound of Philadelphia co-founder and pianist Leon Huff (of trailblazing production/writing team Gamble & Huff) and drummer Earl Young. Huff also enlisted Herley Johnson Jr., Orlando Oliphant and Robert Todd, whom he'd played with since 1962. The coterie performed at the legendary Nixon Theatre in Philly and issued a bevy of 45s for Atlantic Records. Soon after, The Ambassadors released their highly collectable Soul Summit LP for Arctic Records" (Phil Ramone and Danielle Evin, "Dog Ears Music," Huffington Post, 11/9/12).

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Arvo Part: Adam's Lament

"Arvo Pärt’s music has such universal appeal that it is easy to lose sight of the specific spiritual traditions that feed it. On 'Adam’s Lament,' a CD of choral works, Mr. Pärt, an Estonian, displays his affinity for the mystics and saints of the Eastern Orthodox Church. The collection is anchored by the 25-minute work for choir and orchestra that lends its name to the recording. In it Mr. Pärt sets the poetic lamentations of St. Silouan, a Russian Orthodox monk on Mount Athos in Greece, which describe Adam’s anguish at finding himself expelled from paradise. There is a world-weary heaviness to the work, with lumbering chords in the strings, monumental outbursts and abrupt silences. ... Short choral works — including the celestial 'Salve Regina' and 'Statuit ei Dominus,' with its colorful woodwind writing — offer further glimpses of Mr. Pärt’s tender and ponderous sides" (Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim, "'Adam's Lament' and Other Choral Works," New York Times, 10/26/12).

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New Orleans Jazz Orchestra: Book One

"The New Orleans Jazz Orchestra first took shape as a formal institution in a city more accustomed to informal ones, which partly explains why it found greater traction and purpose after the deep trauma of Hurricane Katrina. ... And the orchestra’s 2010 Grammy — for 'Book One' (World Village), its debut album — was understood as righteous validation. ... Its agenda falls somewhere between the breadth and seriousness of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, which is led by another charismatic New Orleans trumpeter, Wynton Marsalis, and the rugged populism of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, which held its own anniversary party at Carnegie Hall this year. ...  [Founder and director Irvin] Mayfield ... has the clarion intonation and relaxed power of his city’s vaunted trumpet lineage" (Nate Chinen, "In Anguish of a Storm, an Identity Forged," New York Times, 10/9/12).

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Morton Feldman: Violin & Piano

"During his formative years in New York, Feldman's creative pole-stars were John Cage, Earle Brown and Christian Wolff, and a galaxy of painters including Jackson Pollock, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg and above all his close friend Philip Guston (even though they fell out when Guston's style changed from abstract to figurative; a perceived slight by Feldman at an exhibition of Guston's work meant they never spoke again). In the 50s and 60s, Feldman developed a kind of graphic notation, allowing the performers to choose the pitches and rhythms in pieces called Projections and Intersections. But Feldman never wanted to release an improvisational creativity from his musicians or to come up with scores-as-art as Cage did. Instead, he wanted to fix an idea as completely as possible. 'The new structure,' he wrote, 'required a concentration more demanding than if the technique were that of still photography, which for me is what precise notation has come to imply.' That concern for precision was one of the reasons Feldman could not go along with Cage's dictum that 'everything is music', and it was also one of the reasons he returned to conventional notation in the 60s" (Tom Service, "A Guide to Morton Feldman's Music," The Guardian, 11/12/12).

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SSION: Bent

"... First, an introduction to SSION (which is pronounced 'shun', as in mission, ambition, or shunning day jobs and making art for a living). SSION is Cody Critcheloe, and Cody is SSION. SSION is his project, his band, the label under which he makes music videos for artists like Santigold, the Liars, Peaches and MNDR, and cover art for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. It's also his livelihood. ... SSION's sound is sultry pop with a disco backbone, led by Cody's sincere, controlled vocals. ..." (Alex Jeffries, "Catching Up with SSION's Cody Critcheloe," Huffington Post, 10/30/12).

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Esa-Pekka Salonen: Out of Nowhere

"Salonen is a fiercely committed and very fine, though not terribly prolific, composer. A new CD contains two of his recent large-scale works, the orchestra piece Nyx and a violin concerto that won the prestigious Grawemeyer Award last year. Both display the high-speed bravura writing you might expect from an orchestra pilot who understands precisely how close to the edge he can take a fast-moving corps of musicians before it falls apart. As a conductor, he’s known as a specialist in acerbic, rhythmically complex twentieth-century music, and in his own works, the orchestra swivels, surges, and throws off sparks. But Salonen confesses he’s been studying the plush scores of Richard Strauss for clues on how to organize 100-plus players, all sawing, blowing, and pounding away in complex counterpoint, and at the same time keep the texture light and clear. He is a master of the long and lovely meditation. In the final movement of the concerto, the solo violin tumbles slowly through a soft orchestral haze to land on a stratospheric pianissimo. The score doesn’t conclude so much as gracefully vanish over the horizon" (Justin Davidson, "Classical Music: Beating Time," New York, 11/19/12).

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Metric: Fantasies

"Metric is a Canadian indie rock and New Wave band founded in 1998 in Toronto. The band has also at various times been based in Montreal, London, New York City and for a short time Los Angeles. Metric consists of vocalist Emily Haines (who also plays the synthesizer and guitar), guitarist James Shaw (who also plays the synthesizer and theremin), bassist Joshua Winstead and drummer Joules Scott-Key. Their first full-length album, Old World Underground, Where Are You Now?, was released in 2003 and earned a Juno Award nomination for Best Alternative Album. Live It Out was released on October 4, 2005 and was nominated for the 2006 Polaris Music Prize for the Canadian Album of The Year and once again the Juno Award nomination for Best Alternative Album. ... Haines and Shaw also perform with Broken Social Scene, and Haines has been a guest on albums by Stars, KC Accidental, The Stills, Jason Collett and Tiësto. ... Their fourth studio album Fantasies was released in Canada and the United States on April 7, 2009. It was shortlisted for the 2009 Polaris Music Prize for Canadian Album of the Year, and won the Alternative Album of the Year at the 2010 Juno Awards. Metric won as well in 2010 Group of the Year" (Wikipedia).

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Astrud Gilberto: Astrud for Lovers

"To a Brazilian mother and German father, Astrud Gilberto was born in Bahia, still Brazil's most Africanized state. With her two sisters, she grew up in Rio de Janeiro, where she met and married singer-guitarist-songwriter Joao Gilberto, one of bossa nova's originating stylists. In the early 1960s, when that Brazilian music, with its cooling melodies and hot, hip style, emigrated from Rio to the rest of the world, your heart and all the rest of you opened to its sound. Your whole body pulsed to its stretchable Africa-based beat ..." (CD notes by Al Young.)

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The Rolling Stones: England's Newest Hit Makers

"The Rolling Stones, subtitled England's Newest Hit Makers, is the American debut album by The Rolling Stones, released by London Records on 30 May 1964. The track 'Not Fade Away' (the A-side of the band's third UK single) [track 1 of the US release] replaced 'Mona (I Need You Baby)' [track 4 of the original UK release]. Upon its release, England's Newest Hitmakers reached #11 in the US, going gold in the process" (Wikipedia).

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Zac Brown Band: Uncaged

"In a slow week for music sales Zac Brown Band returned to No. 1 on Billboard’s album chart, and Carly Rae Jepsen’s 'Call Me Maybe' has been certified as one of the biggest hits of the year. The country-rock Zac Brown Band’s 'Uncaged' (Southern Ground/Atlantic), which opened at No. 1 two weeks ago and then fell to No. 2, made its way back to the top slot with 48,000 sales in its third week out, according to Nielsen SoundScan" (Ben Sisario, "Zac Brown Band Regains Top Spot on Chart," New York Times, 8/1/12).

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Norah Jones: Little Broken Hearts

"An invitation in 2010 to work on 'Rome,' an album inspired by soundtracks of spaghetti Westerns, brought Jones together with the musician Danger Mouse (Brian Burton), who ended up producing 'Little Broken Hearts.' ... On 'Hearts,' Burton and Jones played and wrote all the music together, swapping instruments, and then later filled in some of the songs with other musicians. It’s no more musically abrasive than any of her other albums—it’s just smarter, and Jones sounds angry. There was a breakup, and another woman. In fact, if your name is Miriam, Jones has some harsh words for you. ... 'Good Morning' sets up a theme and a sound—someone strums an acoustic guitar lazily, a keyboard chimes in the background, and cellos eventually round out the song. Jones sings, 'Good morning, my thoughts on leaving are back on the table, I thought you should know.' Moments later, the conditional becomes final: 'I’m folding my hand.' She’s a champion of breath control; on all her albums, she has placed her quiet vocals prominently in the mix. Burton understands, and as a producer he doesn’t deviate from this part of Jones’s aesthetic. ... It took a breakup to rattle Jones—and the selfish listener thanks the rake who caused it" (Sasha Frere-Jones, "Pop Music," New Yorker, 6/25/12, p. 76).

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