Clapton is Eric Clapton’s first solo album in five years, but he hardly spent the back half of the 2000s in seclusion. After 2005’s Back Home, he went on a journey through the past, writing a 2007 autobiography – also titled Clapton, although that’s the only connection they shared – mending fences with Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker for a brief Cream reunion, establishing a lasting connection with his old Blind Faith bandmate Steve Winwood, and recording a duet album with his ‘70s inspiration JJ Cale. This embrace of history isn’t directly heard on Clapton but it’s certainly felt, extending to how EC relies on old tunes – blues and country, but also pop and R&B – for the bulk of this 14-track album.

Hooking up with regular Madonna collaborator Patrick Leonard as the co-producer of this album proved to be just the trick for Ferry. Bete Noire sparkles as the highlight of Ferry's post-Roxy solo career, adding enough energy to make it more than Boys and Girls part two. Here, his trademark well-polished heartache strikes a fine balance between mysterious moodiness and dancefloor energy, and Leonard adds more than a few tricks that keep the pep up. Five out of the nine songs are Ferry/Leonard collaborations; all succeed, from "Limbo"'s opening punch and flow to the cinematic (and unsurprisingly French-tinged) feeling of the title track.

If Day at the Races was a sleek, streamlined album, its 1977 successor, News of the World, was its polar opposite, an explosion of styles that didn't seem to hold to any particular center. It's front-loaded with two of Queen's biggest anthems – the stomping, stadium-filling chant "We Will Rock You" and its triumphant companion, "We Are the Champions" – which are quickly followed by the ferocious "Sheer Heart Attack," a frenzied rocker that hits harder than anything on the album that shares its name (a remarkable achievement in itself).

For this third instalment in his survey of orchestral works by Ruth Gipps, Rumon Gamba, conducting the BBC Philharmonic, is joined by the horn soloist Martin Owen. The album opens with Gipps's Coronation Procession. The piece depicts the journey of the Crown(s), perhaps as observed from the Royal Coach, culminating in the entry to Westminster Abbey. Written in January 1953, the piece was not used at the coronation, and instead first performed in September 1954 in Melbourne, Australia. Ambarvalia is a memorial tribute of 1988 by Gipps to the composer and colleague Adrian Cruft, who had died in February 1987. Gipps wrote the Horn Concerto in 1968 for her son, Lance Baker. The piece was later championed by Frank Lloyd, who gave a BBC broadcast in 1982.

Master of the Swedish royal chapel and a leading composer in Sweden in the first half of the 18th century, Johan Helmich Roman studied in England with Pepusch, compiler of the music of The Beggar’s Opera. His music shows distinct traces of his experience in England, where he also met composers such as Handel and Geminiani. He was a prolific composer in various genres. The best-known composition by Roman is his Drottingholm Music for the royal wedding of the Crown Prince of Sweden and his Prussian bride in 1744.

Two years after releasing her CD dedicated to Book I of J.S. Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, Céline Frisch now presents the second volume of this musical landmark. Bach compiled Book II in 1744, twenty-two years after Book I. It took until 1801 for both volumes to be printed: from then until the present day they have inspired countless composers. After a series of recordings with the Ensemble Zimmermann, an ensemble she cofounded with Pablo Valetti, Céline Frisch returns to her very favourite music, the harpsichord recital. Through these preludes and fugues, she reminds us that far from being technical exercises, the Well- Tempered Clavier is a work of pure pleasure and constant renewed discovery.

Released just as punk was taking hold on the public's imagination in America and making groups like Jethro Tull seem like dinosaurs on their way to extinction, Bursting Out became a seemingly perpetual denizen of the cutout bins for years afterward. However, it happened to be a good album, a more-than-decent capturing of a live Tull concert from Europe. The sound is remarkably good, given the group's arena rock status at the time, and the repertoire is a solid representation of the group's history, going all the way back to "A New Day Yesterday" from their second album and up through 1978's Heavy Horses, with stops along the way for "Bouree," "Aqualung," "Locomotive Breath," "Cross-Eyed Mary," and a compact reprise of Thick as a Brick. Some of these tracks work better than others – the tendency here is to play loud and hard, and sometimes that just doesn't translate well on record; seeing "Locomotive Breath" probably worked better than hearing it.

Highlighting Dionne Warwick's quiet and more contemplative moments, Love Songs is a solid overview covering not only her later years on Arista, but also material from various other labels and her collaborations with Burt Bacharach. Many of the moments remain untarnished with the passage of time, with the original recordings of "Walk On By," "Alfie," and "I Say a Little Prayer" cleaned up and sounding clearer than ever. While "Anyone Who Had a Heart" and other earlier performances would have been ideal for inclusion, later songs like "That's What Friends Are For" and "Heartbreaker" help to bring things into the later years nicely. And though the song sequencing is a bit erratic, that's something easily overlooked and can be manually corrected. Love Songs is not a collection for the die-hard fan, but casual listeners will find it immediately accessible and an enjoyable listen from start to finish.

Levee Town is the 5th studio album by Sonny Landreth. Released on Sugar Hill Records Oct. 17, 2000 and re-released in an Expanded Edition on Landreth’s own LandFall Records April 21, 2009. This is slide guitar wizard Sonny Landreth's most ambitious work, and true to form it comes with no glossy fanfare (even the packaging is sepia tinted), just straight-ahead, well-crafted songs played with his usual intelligent, heartfelt playing. Like the photos that are easily passed over due to the quiet subtly of the sepia tones, the intricacy of his guitar work can easily be overshadowed by the flash that is inherent in the slide guitar. He takes the time here to do a number of acoustic songs and shows that there is more to him than a loud flash.

This 40-song assortment will definitely appease those who want a hefty one-stop of Dr. Hook's best material, but it also makes for a worthy summation of the band's career. All but the last two of Dr. Hook's Top 40 singles appear here, led by "Sylvia's Mother," "The Cover of the Rolling Stone," and "Only Sixteen," while excluding later efforts like "Girls Can Get It" and "Baby Makes Her Blue Jeans Talk." All of their second-bests are also present, including fan favorites such as "More Like the Movies," "The Radio," "Jungle to the Zoo," and "On the Way to the Bottom."

Canadian thrash metal veterans Sacrifice return in 2025 with their first new album in more than sixteen years. Volume Six, the band’s sixth album overall and second since reforming in 2006, features ten new originals and a cover paying homage to the Toronto scene from which they originally emerged.
Working once again with engineer Darius Szczepaniak - who was also at the helm for Sacrifice’s 2009 effort The Ones I Condemn - Volume Six was recorded, mixed, and mastered at Phase One Studios in Scarborough, Ontario. Tracked over a period of sessions between September 2023 and May 2024, the eleven-song offering was produced by vocalist/guitarist Rob Urbinati and features the band’s original lineup, with lead guitarist Joe Rico, bassist Scott Watts, and drummer Gus Pynn as well as Urbinati…

A&M's 1977 collection The Best of Joan Baez doesn't chronicle her most influential work, but that doesn't mean it's not without merit. Far from it, actually. This is a concise recapping of her poppier recordings for A&M, which include such classic Baez moments as her original "Diamonds and Rust" and a definitive reading of Robbie Robertson's "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down." The rest of the album splits the difference between covers (including Stevie Wonder's lovely "I Never Dreamed You'd Leave in Summer" and Dylan's "Simple Twist of Fate") and originals, providing an entertaining, enlightening encapsulation of her '70s recordings.