Face to Face was a remarkable record, but its follow-up, Something Else, expands its accomplishments, offering 13 classic British pop songs. As Ray Davies' songwriting becomes more refined, he becomes more nostalgic and sentimental, retreating from the psychedelic and mod posturings that had dominated the rock world. Indeed, Something Else sounds like nothing else from 1967. The Kinks never rock very hard on the album, preferring acoustic ballads, music hall numbers, and tempered R&B to full-out guitar attacks. Part of the album's power lies in its calm music, since it provides an elegant support for Davies' character portraits and vignettes. From the martial stomp of "David Watts" to the lovely, shimmering "Waterloo Sunset," there's not a weak song on the record, and several - such as the allegorical "Two Sisters," the Noël Coward-esque "End of the Season," the rolling "Lazy Old Sun," and the wry "Situation Vacant" - are stunners…

During the 1970s, solo piano box sets were rare. When Keith Jarrett's monolithic, ten-LP solo box, Sun Bear Concerts, arrived from ECM in 1978, the only comparable collection was The Tatum Solo Masterpieces, a six-disc set of the pianist's '50s sides. Jarrett's five Japanese concerts from November of 1976 in Kyoto, Osaka, Nagoya, Tokyo, and Sapporo were completely improvised and gloriously recorded by engineer Okihiro Sugano. Most jazz critics greeted it as a seminal work that set Jarrett apart from his peers.
When he hits a mysterious minor ninth to open the first concert in Kyoto, all bets are off. For nearly 80 minutes he balances tension with release, the pastoral with the cosmopolitan…

This time around, Dawkins handed the majority of the vocal duties to Andrew "Big Voice" Odom and concentrated on his guitar (actually, he had some potent help in that department, too: Otis Rush was on second guitar). A generally solid but not overly enthralling set, with two bonus cuts and an alternate take of "Moon Man" added to the CD version.

Ekseption is a Dutch band that was famous during the late sixties/early seventies for the way it combined themes from classical composers with contemporary rock and jazz in a blend of dominating, virtuoso keys and trumpet plus sax(es).
The band came as close as any group from the European continent ever did to stealing the thunder of early classical rock outfits such as the Nice and rivaling the early work of Emerson, Lake & Palmer. In Holland, they charted singles based on classical compositions and released successful concept albums, and were - along with Focus - the top progressive rock band in the Dutch-speaking world.

In this performance of Handel's best-loved oratorio, conductor Christopher Hogwood returns to the original performance traditions. The choruses are sung by boy trebles and male altos, tenors and basses, and member of the Choir of Westminster Abbey. The soloists improvise embellishments in the arias and, in certain cases, join in the singing of the choruses - just as they would have done 240 years ago. In addition, Members of the Academy all play instruments of the period or accurate modern copies.

One has to give credit to an '80s new wave musician who can adapt and create contemporary-sounding music. There are icons from that era who continue to release new recordings - Depeche Mode and the Cure, for example - but don't evolve musically; the sound is unchanging as if they were still back in the decade. This is not a bad thing, however; core listeners are usually who buy these artists' newly released albums and they don't generate new fans. That said, hats off to '80s Brit popster Gary Numan, best known for the hit "Cars," who offers up a modernized industrial-goth set in Pure. The album can comfortably sit alongside Marilyn Manson and Nine Inch Nails on store shelves. Pure doesn't drive like the industrialized adrenaline rush that is, say, Orgy, but the tracks' lingering and creepy pace leaves behind a different kind of impact - it's more haunting than relentless…

More diverse than Vanessa Williams' two previous albums, Sweetest Days finds the singer exploring jazz-influenced songs without giving up the type of boring, radio-minded fluff that had enabled her to sell millions of albums. The CD's standout track is "Ellamental," an irresistible R&B/jazz/hip-hop tribute to Ella Fitzgerald. (Much to her credit, Williams was insightful enough to praise the jazz legend while she was still alive instead of waiting until after her death.) She's almost as appealing on "Sister Moon" (a torchy Sting gem) and the Babyface contributions "You Can't Run" (which has a Sade-ish quality) and the haunting "Betcha Never."

With the creation of her Lana Del Rey persona, singer/songwriter Lizzy Grant stitched together the iconography of a fading American dream with soaring but melancholic pop songwriting, becoming an icon unto herself in the process. Her distinctive approach blurred sadness and longing just as it did past and present, drawing on the influence of classic American pop while integrating modernized touches like trap beats and millennial cultural references. With sixth album Norman Fucking Rockwell!, Lana Del Rey expands her vision with the most daring and vulnerable work of her catalog.

It's almost a blessing that, for legal reasons, this four-piece can't call itself Black Sabbath. It only serves to hammer home the point that with Ronnie James Dio up front and Vinny Appice in back, Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler express a very different side of their musical personalities than they ever did with Ozzy Osbourne on vocals and Bill Ward on drums. Where the original lineup was an ultra-heavy blues band, with a rhythm section that never failed to swing (OK, they failed a little bit on "Sweet Leaf"), when Dio came on board in 1980 the group was reinvented as a heavy metal juggernaut.

Ronald Stevenson, unknown to many outside the British isles, is considered by several pianists as one of the most important pianist-composers of the 20th century. This new album by Peter Jablonski includes several world première recordings from the Scottish composer. Following the tradition of many great pianists, Stevenson created piano transcriptions from the works of other composers and also wrote music in a variety of styles. This album offers a compelling portrait of the Scottish piano master.

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is a double album produced by George Martin, featuring covers of songs by the Beatles. It was released in July 1978, as the soundtrack to the film Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, which starred the Bee Gees, Peter Frampton and Steve Martin.

Sergey Taneyev's music was acclaimed by some as a 'model of pure style and sublime art', but he was a loner whose supreme mastery of European Classical technique placed him outside the more nationalist trends of the day. The Violin Sonata in A minor is neo-Classical in its reserved and often song-like moods and expressions. It contrasts with the grand scale of the Piano Quintet in G minor in which the virtuoso nature of the piano writing reflects Taneyev's own prowess, and the brilliant integration of the works' themes cumulate into an overwhelming conclusion.