It is impossible to compile a single-disc greatest-hits compilation for Cat Stevens that will come close to satisfying all of his admirers. The Very Best of Cat Stevens is the fifth major attempt to do so and, like its predecessors, it is challenged by its subject's success. Remember Cat Stevens: The Ultimate Collection is the longest of the five (24 tracks) and may be the most comprehensive. But The Very Best of Cat Stevens, released just a year later, has several advantages that make it more appealing. To begin with, it is the only compilation to sequence chronologically songs from every one of Stevens' albums, including the experimental Foreigner.

50 St. Catherine's Drive is the address where Robin Gibb and his brothers grew up on the Isle of Man in the early '50s, so its selection as the title of his 2014 posthumous album is bittersweet. It is also appropriate, as this record does feel somewhat like a homecoming, with Gibb touching upon many of the sounds and styles he played and sang over the years. Gibb wrote and recorded the majority of these songs between 2006 and 2008, roughly three years before he was diagnosed with the colorectal cancer that took his life on May 20, 2012, so it can't quite be called a deliberate last statement but it almost plays that way as it alternates between sad ballads, gently insistent midtempo pop, and the occasional dance number.

Whitney is the second studio album by American R&B/pop singer Whitney Houston, released in the United States on June 2, 1987 by Arista Records as the follow-up to her best selling debut album, Whitney Houston. The album catapulted her to international fame. Whitney was certified 9× platinum on November 29, 1995. The album met the expectations of many people and was sensationally popular after its release. With this album, Houston set historic records on the charts. It debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 chart the issue of June 27, 1987, becoming the first album by a female artist, and only the fifth album by a solo artist to do so. The album remained at the top for eleven consecutive weeks, creating a record; the most cumulative weeks (25 weeks) at number one on the albums chart by a female artist during the 1980s. At the 30th Grammy Awards of 1988, the album received three nominations including Album of the Year, winning her second Grammy, "Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female" for "I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me)." It has been announced that it will be re-released as a special anniversary edition by Legacy Recordings alongside The Bodyguard: Original Soundtrack Album. The album has sold over 20 million copies worldwide.

Let's Walk is the ninth album by Madeleine Peyroux. On her previous outings, she recorded covers of jazz and Great American Songbook standards and works of contemporary songwriters. While she's often co-written songs with her collaborators, Let's Walk is entirely composed of her written originals, which offer excellent lyrics as she continues to mine jazz, blues, and folk. Longtime guitarist Jon Herrington wrote the charts. He plays several instruments, as does pianist Andy Ezrin; also in her band are bassist Paul Frazier and drummer/percussionist Graham Hawthorne. Peyroux also recruited a top-shelf backing chorus: Catherine Russell, Cindy Mizelle, and Keith Fluitt. Peyroux's writing here is often topical, clever, and thornily humorous. During the pandemic she read the writings of James Baldwin, W.E.B. Dubois, Cornel West, all of whom inspired her.

features various artists from the electronic music genre, specifically focusing on styles like club/dance, electronica, techno, and trance. The album spans two discs with a total runtime of around 2 hours and 27 minutes. The compilation includes tracks from artists such as the Flash Brothers, Minilogue, and Funk D'Void, offering a vibrant mix of original tracks and remixes that capture the energetic and eclectic atmosphere of Tokyo's club scene during that time. The album showcases a range of electronic sub-genres, making it a comprehensive collection for fans of early 2000s electronic music.

Go (1976) is a concept album in the truest sense of the term, fusing pop/rock with tinges of jazz and elements of classical all connected by a central motif of space travel. More specifically, according to Robin Denselow's liner essay, the theme deals with "change and polarity-fantasy and reality, death and re-birth, things changing to their opposites." Stomu Yamashta, Steve Winwood and Michael Shrieve lead an impressive ensemble through soundscapes, unveiled in a variety of perspectives. Perhaps it is the international cast of performers that allows for such an unfettered consortium of ideas that brought together former Spencer Davis Group, Traffic and Blind Faith member Steve Winwood, as well as Santana co-founder Michael Shrieve and mid-'70s era Santana percussionist Yamashta – the latter of whom were key benefactors to the criminally underrated Santana long-player Borboletta (1974).

A Verve Records release; Originally released in 1963 on Verve Records © 2023 UMG Recordings, Inc. Audiophile vinyl reissues from the world's greatest jazz labels. Mastered from the original analog tapes by top mastering engineers. Manufactured at Quality Record Pressings (QRP) on 180 gram vinyl. Tip-On gatefold sleeves printed on high-grade board.

Four CDs. Demon are proud to release Eddie Piller Presents British Mod Sounds Of the 1960s, the follow up the The Mod Revival. Featuring 100 original tracks, it's a deep dive into the Mod scene in '60s Britain. Including a selection of classic and rare tracks, tracing the scene from it's R&B roots to a soulful finale. Curated by Acid Jazz Records and Modcast founder Eddie Piller, and featuring new sleeve notes from respected author and broadcaster Paul 'Smiler' Anderson. As Eddie Piller points out in the forward to the extensive sleeve notes that accompany this collection, he chose the word 'Sounds' carefully, reflecting the variety of talent contained here, from uncool session musicians without an ounce of style in them, acts who saw an opportunity to jump on the Mod bandwagon and bands who whole heartedly embraced Mod way of life. And so this new collection mixes the Mod mainstays (Small Faces, The High Numbers, The Action, The Fleur de Lys), with a generous selection of future superstars (David Bowie, Rod Stewart, Elton John, Marc Bolan, Jeff Beck and Graham Gouldman of 10cc are all represented here), and a few artists so obscure, so rare, that they never got to release a record in the '60s, but Eddie has tracked down the tapes nonetheless. "Be in with the In Crowd once more."

= 1 is the twenty-third studio album by English rock band Deep Purple, released on 19 July 2024 by earMUSIC/Edel AG. It is their first album with guitarist Simon McBride, who replaced Steve Morse in 2022. It is also the band's fifth collaboration with producer Bob Ezrin, who has produced every Deep Purple album since 2013's Now What?!. The album has been described as having a loose concept around "(symbolising) the idea that in a world growing ever more complex, everything eventually simplifies down to a single, unified essence. Everything equals one". Music writer John Aizlewood described singer Ian Gillan's voice as "richer than it’s sounded in years".

The Silver Collection Review by Tomas Mureika
Men Without Hats were one of Canada's best – and quirkiest – new wave bands. Under the guidance of mysterious frontman Ivan and his brother Stefan Doroschuk, the Hats delivered some of the best synth pop of the early '80s. And much of that is on display in this collection – the hits from their Folk of the '80s EP, their smash Rhythm of Youth album and their enigmatic Folk of the '80s, Pt. 3 record. This includes unforgettable songs like "Living in China," "I Got the Message," "Antarctica," "I Like," "Ban the Game," and "Where Do the Boys Go?" This is a career retrospective, so it also features later hits, such as "Pop Goes the World," "Freeways," and a cover of Bryan Ferry's "Editions of You." Though the original albums are well worth seeking out to hear in their entirety, this is a strong collection, definitely weighted towards the beginning of the Hats' career, when they were at their most powerful and profound. Don't let "The Safety Dance" fool you – Ivan was writing about some pretty heavy stuff a lot of the time and the nifty little new wave dance nuggets in which he encapsulated his weighty lyrics just made the band's subversion all the more eloquent. This is the next best thing to the original albums. A formidable collection.

Part of the Chess 50th Anniversary Collection series, this digitally remastered set contains 20 of Howlin' Wolf's biggest and best Chess label recordings including "Spoonful", "The Red Rooster", "Killing Floor" and "Smokestack Lightning". Packaging features great new liner notes and graphics.

This double-disc is a very solid collection of Sally Oldfield's recordings for the CBS subsidiary Bronze (don't laugh, Uriah Heep was on there too). Before her brief resurgence in the '90s, Oldfield's recordings were new age before there was such a term. She brought not only a songwriter's sense of elegance to tape, but also an instrumentalist's sense of silence and dynamic. Brother Mike Oldfield helped out on "Waterbearer," perhaps he best-known offering here, as well as on some of the subsequent tracks on later records. Oldfied was the real precursor to people like Enya and Loreena McKennitt, marrying a classicist's sense of arrangement and dynamic to a mystic's heart and a Celtic woman's abiding folk history, myth, and legend. These two discs are impeccably remastered and offer a wonderful introduction to a talent who, at least on this side of the pond, never got her proper due.

BGO Records has released two early ‘70s albums by the legendary John Lee Hooker. While admittedly not his best albums, they both still show this man did more than play the blues, he lived them. On these offerings, Hooker pumped out a slow moving steam engine of blues music that never picks up too much speed, yet keeps things chooglin’ along just fine.

Of the Motown acts to have big hits in the 1960s, the Contours are one of the least known; it could be more people can rattle off the lyrics to "Do You Love Me?" than identify the group that sang the song. But like all Motown groups of consequence, they recorded a surprisingly voluminous amount of material for the label, much of which was unreleased at the time. It's still astonishing that there are enough unissued cuts from 1963 and 1964 alone to comprise the bulk of this 26-track CD. It does include a couple of official 1964 singles ("Can You Do It" and "Can You Jerk Like Me"), but the other two-dozen masters were previously unreleased before this 2011 compilation appeared. It's also impressive that these recordings aren't obvious throwaways. At the same time, however, there's not much in the way of obvious first-rate contenders for 45 release, and much of it sounds like decent album filler. (In fact, about half of it could have been planned for a late 1964/early 1965 LP that might have been titled Dance with the Contours, hence the title of this CD anthology.) More often than not, they're uptempo tunes that take advantage of the group's knack for danceable grooves paced by some of the grittiest lead vocals ever heard on Motown sides of the early to mid-'60s. Sometimes they specifically echo the "Do You Love Me?" formula, and might have been passed over for release by quality control for precisely that reason.

Santana Arriving at the twilight of the 1960s, Santana were psychedelic pioneers who ushered Latin rock into the mainstream with their first three albums: Santana, Abraxas, and Santana III. Thanks to their appearance at Woodstock, their eponymous album was a smash hit right out of the gate, with its single "Evil Ways" making it into the Billboard Top Ten in 1969. They remained at the top of the charts until 1973, when leader and namesake guitarist Carlos Santana began exploring esoteric, spiritual jazz fusion on his own. Carlos may have wandered away from the band who shared his name, but he always returned to the group, sustaining them through years both productive and fallow.