Pablo Honey in no way was adequate preparation for its epic, sprawling follow-up, The Bends. Building from the sweeping, three-guitar attackRadiohead that punctuated the best moments of Pablo Honey, Radiohead create a grand and forceful sound that nevertheless resonates with anguish and despair – it's cerebral anthemic rock. Occasionally, the album displays its influences, whether it's U2, Pink Floyd, R.E.M., or the Pixies, but Radiohead turn clichés inside out, making each song sound bracingly fresh. Thom Yorke's tortured lyrics give the album a melancholy undercurrent, as does the surging, textured music. But what makes The Bends so remarkable is that it marries such ambitious, and often challenging, instrumental soundscapes to songs that are at their cores hauntingly melodic and accessible. It makes the record compelling upon first listen, but it reveals new details with each listen, and soon it becomes apparent that with The Bends, Radiohead have reinvented anthemic rock.

Lambchop have made a number of outstanding albums as they've evolved from "Nashville's most f–ked-up country band" to a singular chamber pop ensemble during a career that lasted nearly two decades, but one of their finest works is not really a Lambchop album at all. Vic Chesnutt recruited Lambchop to serve as his backing band on the 1998 album The Salesman and Bernadette, and the results were a marvelous fusion of the group's broad but emotionally intimate approach and Chesnutt's witty, skewed, and perceptive gifts as a songwriter. Chesnutt and Lambchop's Kurt Wagner seemed like kindred spirits, fellow Southerners who married oblique yet telling poetry to melodies that were strong yet fluidly graceful, and it should surprise no one that Wagner was hit hard by Chesnutt's death in late 2009. Lambchop's first studio project since Chesnutt's passing, 2012's Mr. M, is dedicated to Wagner's friend and collaborator, and though the songs don't deal explicitly with Chesnutt, there's a sense of sorrow in these songs that's deeper than what we've come to expect from Lambchop, infused with an air of reflection and regret that's impossible to miss.

The soundtrack for first-time director Jason Reitman's satire of Big Tobacco spin plays like an amiable, city slicker sequel to O Brother, Where Art Thou?. Tex Williams' western swing standard "Smoke, Smoke, Smoke That Cigarette!" kicks things off with a mischievous grin, laying the groundwork for classics from Patsy Cline ("Three Cigarettes in an Ashtray"), Otis Redding ("Cigarettes and Coffee"), the Mills Brothers ("Smoke Rings"), and the Platters ("Smoke Gets in Your Eyes"). The thread is obvious, but the selections sound handpicked rather than researched solely on the basis of their subject matter. Composer Rolfe Kent, who brought such an excellent sense of place to 2004's Sideways, manages to echo the hipster swing of the Mancini-era '60s without sounding regressive, providing Thank You for Smoking with a cheerful brevity that keeps the spin more balanced than fair.

Those familiar with The Lindsays’ recent Haydn recordings will need little encouragement to sample this set. Haydn demands close attention from his listeners; as with a wellconstructed story‚ each event has significance‚ and it’s a measure of The Lindsays’ knowledge and appreciation of the music that they are able to bring each episode to life in a way that illuminates its position in the overall plan.

The interpretative temperature of these performances is, as one would expect from The Lindsays, consistently high. So expressively alert, they bring a sense of purpose to every note: sforzandos are arresting and powerful, faster movements are high on adrenalin. Above all, The Lindsays are surely hard to surpass in their delivery of Haydn's slow movements. In the Adagio of No. 2 they sustain a rapturous atmosphere, and that of No. 3 is also wonderfully elevated. There is intense concentration, yet also a directness and warmth that will captivate every listener.

Procol's Ninth is the eighth studio album (ninth including Live) by Procol Harum, and was released in September 1975. Produced by songwriters Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, Procol's Ninth featured a slightly different direction from the previous album, with a much more stark sound than Chris Thomas's more elaborate productions. According to an interview with guitarist Mick Grabham, conducted by Roland Clare for the 2009 reissue, Leiber and Stoller focused less on the production sound and more on "the structure of the songs".

Zachow was active over a period of twenty-eight years and numbered among the most renowned church musicians of his epoch (J. S. Bach applied to succeed him in 1712). Just how much George Frideric Handel valued his teacher and his music is shown by his continual citing of compositions by Zachow in his own work even during his years in London.

Recorded over three nights in August 1972, Deep Purple's Made in Japan was the record that brought the band to headliner status in the U.S. and elsewhere, and it remains a landmark in the history of heavy metal music. Since reorganizing with singer Ian Gillan and bassist Roger Glover in 1969, Deep Purple had recorded three important albums – Deep Purple in Rock, Fireball, and Machine Head – and used the material to build a fierce live show. Made in Japan, its selections drawn from those albums, documented that show, in which songs were drawn out to ten and even nearly 20 minutes with no less intensity, as guitarist Ritchie Blackmore and organist Jon Lord soloed extensively and Gillan sang in a screech that became the envy of all metal bands to follow.

The veteran New Wave of American Heavy Metal architects deliver an antagonistic set of world-weary might on their ninth full-length effort. Flush with neck-snapping velocity and chunky, Pantera-worthy riffage, the ten-song set is a worthy successor to Lamb of God's eponymous, Billboard-topping 2020 offering. Produced by longtime co-conspirator Josh Wilbur (Korn, Megadeth), the reliably uncompromising Omens includes some of the band's heaviest and most apoplectic works to date, with highlights arriving via the pummeling "Nevermore" and "Greyscale," and the unrelenting title cut.

Though Andy Sheppard has a long relationship with ECM via his work in Carla Bley's various bands, Surrounded by Sea marks only his third date as a leader for the label. On this album, Sheppard once again employs double bassist Michel Benita and drummer Sebastian Rochford from 2012's Trio Libero, and adds guitarist/electronicist Eivind Aarset, who played on the saxophonist's ECM debut, Movements in Colour, in 2009. The guitarist, who almost never plays conventionally, provides the additional atmospheric element Sheppard sought to express in these tunes. The album's centerpiece is a reading of the Gaelic "Aoid, Na Dean Cadal Idir." It was initially intended to be part of a collaborative album with Hebridean folk singer Julie Fowlis, but the project never came to fruition…