Featured New
Releases for
April 23, 2013
#willpower
Interscope
An all-star list of guest spots and big dumb production can't save this solo album from Black Eyed Peas' main man from sounding bored with itself.
Wait to Pleasure
Mexican Summer
On their second album, these Montreal feedback experts take a new look at the classic shoegaze template with wildly successful results.
Reincarnated
RCA
Neither an embarrassment nor a home run, Snoop's first reggae-only album is all heart and little fire.
Love Has Come for You
Rounder
Steve Martin and Edie Brickell deliver a precisely gentle folk album that grows more graceful and revealing with each listen.
To Be Loved
143 Records / Reprise
This follow-up to his 2011 holiday album features Bublé's swinging pop stylings alone and on duets with Reese Witherspoon and Bryan Adams.
Excavation
Tri Angle
The Haxan Cloak's Tri Angle debut takes the act's dread-inducing music in subtler, more complex but just as terrifying directions.
Side Effects of You
RCA
The American Idol winner's fine fourth album features seven songs she co-wrote, and extensive input from songwriter and producer Harmony Samuels.
Chants
ECM / Universal
Despite having played together for more than eight years, this adventurous, thought-provoking date marks this trio's recording debut.
A Bad Wind Blows in My Heart
Domino
Ex-Coral guitarist's sophomore outing suggests what Nick Drake might have sounded like had he emerged in the early aughts instead of the late '60s.
Bye Bye 17
Cult Records
Har Mar Superstar adopts a more soulful, less tongue-in-cheek approach on his retro-leaning fifth album.
Ultramarine
Paper Bag Records
The Canadian band's fourth studio album is an arch, hypnotic work of arty yet emotionally resonant synth pop.
BLack on BLonde
Nettwerk
It's divided into rap and rock discs, but the album works best if the concept is skipped and the music is shuffled.
Disconnect
Milan
Max Richter's score for the technological thriller Disconnect evokes and borrows from his breakthrough album The Blue Notebooks.
Tape Deck Heart
Polydor / Xtra Mile Recordings
Tape Deck Heart finds Turner dialing back the political fervor in favor of a more introspective brand of fiery indie folk.
Pass the Ringo
The Oakland band sounds like a member of Flying Nun's roster from 1985, full of great indie pop songs and wooly reverb.
Danish & Blue
Mexican Summer
Using samples from the soundtracks to B-movies and X-rated Scandinavian flicks, Lilacs & Champagne deliver some of their most sophisticated music.
Illumination Ritual
Graveface Records
On its seventh album, this emo/post-rock unit reaches the heights of unfettered creativity last found on its 2001 standout LP, Low Level Owl.
I Love You
Columbia
Sounding like Coldplay fronted by Adam Levine, the band fills its debut with stadium-ready ballads.
Raven
675 Records
Twenty years after her debut album, the songwriter issues her first self-produced, independently funded and released collection.
Frequency Unknown
Cleopatra
Geoff Tate's version of Queensrÿche enters the market first with a new band, guests, ten new tracks, and bonus cuts.
Quartets
ECM / Universal Distribution
This box compiles the first five ECM recordings by the saxophonist, and his extended partnership with pianist Bobo Stenson.
...And It Shook Me
+1 Records
The Postelles' second album is a lively, bright collection of sharp pop.
American Anthem: The Music of Samuel Barber & Howard Hanson
Sono Luminus
This collection of American 20th-century Romanticism hangs together beautifully and lives up to its title; a superior release of American chamber music.
Various Artists
Mohammed Fairouz: Native Informant
Naxos
Worthwhile for those interested in music encompassing elements and experiences from beyond the Western sphere.
Old & New Masters
ECM
This excellent box includes the great drummer's first six albums for ECM, as he comes into his own as a composer and bandleader.
Venomous Rat Regeneration Vendor
Universal / Zodiac Swan
Rob Zombie returns with a dense, muddled neo-concept album called Venomous Rat Regeneration Vendor.
Tate Stevens
Syco Music / RCA
X-Factor winner Tate Stevens delivers a contemporary country debut that's a shade too eager to please.
The Very Best of the Rolling Stones 1964-1971
ABKCO Records
A bare-bones collection of the Rolling Stones' biggest hits of the '60s and early '70s.
Raw Solutions
Software
Omnivorous aesthete switches between and fuses footwork, abstract hip-hop, house, and other styles on his album for Daniel Lopatin's Software.
Mozart: Requiem Realisations
King's College Choir
The Choir of King's College, Cambridge, presents Mozart's Requiem in Süssmayr's version and offers alternate movements realized by scholars.
Rodgers & Hammerstein at the Movies
EMI Classics / Warner Classics
John Wilson and his eponymous orchestra present reconstructed selections from the movie musicals of Rodgers and Hammerstein.
Johann Sebastian Bach: John Passion
Linn Records
The Dunedin Consort's performance here stands on its own; Nicholas Mulroy as the Evangelist gets across the involvement that's necessary for an experiment like this to work.
Stravinsky: Le Sacre du printemps; Symphonies of Wind Instruments; Apollon musagète
EMI Classics / Warner Classics
Rattle's Rite of Spring is not a sensational recording, but this performance has the inevitability that all great performances have.