Editors' Choice for June 2015
Mack Avenue
Sophisticated, accomplished collection of straight-ahead acoustic jazz from the pianist, with guests including saxophonist Benny Golson.
Warner Bros.
Reuniting with Max Martin and Shellback, the glam-disco singer creates a canny modern pop record.
Dacapo
Nielsen's six symphonies and three concertos receive the audiophile treatment in this box set from Alan Gilbert and the New York Philharmonic.
Hyperion
The focus is on Coote, whose rich, almost smoky, mezzo grabs you from the first notes. A strong candidate for a French song collection cornerstone.
Hyperion
Alina Ibragimova's 2014 recording of Eugène Ysaÿe solo violin sonatas is concentrated in tone and polished in technique.
ATO
A vibrant, gorgeously produced orchestral showcase for the folk-soul singer recorded at the famed Colorado amphitheater.
![BABYMETAL [Bonus Tracks]](https://rovimusic.rovicorp.com/image.jpg?c=I3k8tvT2o1sGpgjWolJ96lWnbEN5fCjifro6xhIBuB4=&f=3)
Toy's Factory
Mixing pummeling heavy metal and bubblegummy J-pop, the band's debut should be a joke but turns out to be a work of genius instead.
eOne
The soul dynamo's most stimulating work yet, produced entirely by psychedelic soul specialist Adrian Younge.
God?
Chiming guitars, melancholic tunes, and loads of jingle-jangle '60s-inspired goodness on the band's second album.
Yep Roc
The power pop legend touches upon all the music he's ever played or loved on this vibrant, vital album.
Castle Face
Second album of synth exploration from Thee Oh Sees' Jon Dwyer, this time with more poppy hooks.
eOne / Greenleaf Music
A hallucinatory and surprisingly organic collaboration between the trumpeter and electronic musician Shigeto.
Concord
For the first time in his career, the pianist and composer cuts a full album with a collaborating vocalist, and it's a gem.
Hub Records
Literate, impeccably produced rumination on love, memory, and the music that moves our hearts.
Epitaph
Socio-political punk rock anthems shot through with enough pure '70s power pop acumen to ignite every lighter in the Nippon Budokan.
Thrill Jockey
The Barn Owl guitarist's new set of compositions were mainly written and performed on a Eurack modular synthesizer.
Domino
Veteran U.K. space rock project resurfaces after 15 years with an album of atmospheric guitar explorations.
Southern Lord Records
Fifteen years after its last album, this L.A. quartet returns to glory with monstrous riffs and new ideas.
Partisan
Erika Wennerstrom and her bandmates up their game in the studio on their fifth album, sounding especially authentic and powerful.
Entertainment One / eOne
After a three-year wait, the Bay Area trio come roaring back with an exquisite slab of power sludge.
Glassnote Entertainment Group
Bombastic pop-culture satire and funky-beats make for an infectious, thought-provoking debut from the Los Angeles duo.
Rounder
Semi-acoustic duo show off their strong skills as instrumentalists, songwriters, and vocalists on their third album.
Vanguard
Teaming with a new producer, the duo enters its fourth decade empowered and adventurous on this bracing set.
Naxos
Continuing its series on Naxos dedicated to Quincy Porter, the Ives Quartet presents his String Quartets, Nos. 5-8.
Channel Classics
Iván Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra add the Symphony No. 9 in D major to their audiophile series of Mahler's symphonies.
Avie
This should match the classical top-ten chart performance of its predecessor and continue to gain international attention for this forward-thinking group.
Hidden Beach
Smartly sequenced overview of the top-tier R&B artist's Hidden Beach albums, featuring all of her charting singles from the period.
Hungaroton
József Balog plays the 12 Transcendental Études, a piano collection that took Liszt almost 30 years to complete.
Decca / Mercury / Mercury Nashville / Nashville
Acclaimed country singer/songwriter digs deeper on her gorgeous second album.
Kranky
Chicago-based space rock guitarist expands his scope a bit, adding new techniques and sounds to his cosmic explorations.
Concord Jazz
A yearning, literate collection of songs from around the world held together by Elling's nuanced, lyrical vocals.
Red House / Red House Records
After nearly three decades of marriage, this professional couple delivers a righteous debut album.
Slumberland
Joe McAlinden's second solo effort is a delight of appealingly age-worn sunshine guitar pop.
Seattle Symphony
Ludovic Morlot and the Seattle Symphony pair Dvorák's "From the New World" with Varèse's Amériques in a thought-provoking match-up.
Marion Cotillard / Marc Soustrot / Barcelona Symphony and Catalonia National Orchestra / Xavier Gallais
Alpha
Cotillard's beautifully oracular statements put across the uncanny sense of how Joan lives entirely in her own world. A fine, fresh version of a 20th-century classic.
Alpha
Martin Haselböck and the Vienna Academy Orchestra perform Beethoven's First and Second symphonies at the locations where there were premiered.
Trouble in Mind
Chicago-based experimental musician Whitney Johnson expands her otherworldly, hypnotic sound on her second LP as Matchess.
Doghouse
Matt Pond and his crew crackle with a new energy on their pleasingly slick tenth album.
Drag City
On her third solo album the songwriter streamlines her process to ascend to a new creative level in both singing and composition.
Naxos
The shorter piano works of Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji are explored on this three-CD set by Michael Habermann.
Reference Recordings
Camille Saint-Saëns' Symphony No. 3 in C minor, "Organ," is increasingly programmed for sonic showcases, like this HDCD from Reference Recordings.
Returning to '70s-inspired pop, the singer/songwriter delivers some of his most personal and confident-sounding songs yet.
Sargent House
On their debut full-length, this outsider power trio blur the genres between extreme music and deliver a stone killer of an album.
Nimbus Alliance
Van Bloss' reading develops organically, both within individual variations and over the course of the whole set.
Foreign Exchange Music
Inspired by South Africa tour stops, another blissful travelogue from the Foreign Exchange's non-singing, one-man-band half.
Mexican Summer
Third album from shoegaze-friendly quartet is a high-watermark of inventive production and darkly blissful songwriting.
Warp
Exhilarating debut album from the architect of South Africa's hyperkinetic Shangaan electro sound.
Linn Records
Dreyfus catches the music's experimental, almost revolutionary quality. Highly recommended; listen to it in a dark room with all the shades pulled down.
Erato
Philippe Jordan and the Orchestra and Choirs of the Paris National Opera present Ravel's Daphnis et Chloé and La valse in sumptuous sound.
DFA
The duo returns with a finely pruned mini-album of stark emotional explorations.
Fantasy
The British folk-rock icon goes into the studio with Wilco's Jeff Tweedy, who helps him sound just like himself.
Blue Note
Reunited with his original acoustic trio, the pianist successfully grafts stylish pop and R&B song forms onto jazz.
Rhino
Excellent archival box containing all of Gibb's recordings from his two-year hiatus from the Bee Gees at the dawn of the '70s.
Pure Noise
The veteran post-hardcore act offers up one of its most diverse and emotionally resonant efforts yet.
Jagjaguwar
Like an unreleased side C of Are We There, this concise and angst-packed EP is delivered with emphasis in all the right places.
CPO
On this CPO release, Schumann's four symphonies are given focused performances by Simon Gaudenz and the Odense Symphony Orchestra.
Provogue / Provogue Music Productions
After 12 years, the guitarist and his longstanding trio deal out a back-to-basics hard blues album.
Strange Music
Kevin Gates, Tech N9ne, and Ces Cru help the St. Louis rapper deliver this excellent biographical effort.
East coast chamber pop maestro Bill Ricchini returns with a second set of lovely, '60s-indebted tunes.
Coro
The players' interpretation is so precisely done that there is an uncanny feeling of being close to how early audiences heard the work.
Canary Dwarf
A relentlessly likeable smorgasbord of hard rock posturing that manages to touch on nearly every iteration of the genre.
Cherry Red
Always the same, always different, the veteran band is in top form on the well-rounded and surprisingly busy album number 31.
Epitaph
On their first album in 18 years, the Swedish punks hit hard but sound as smart and imaginative as ever.
Kompakt
Paterson and Fehlmann return to the Kompakt label for four sprawling, easy-flowing tracks that offer first-rate dub techno and a little hip-hop.
![Sticky Fingers [Deluxe Edition]](https://rovimusic.rovicorp.com/image.jpg?c=EC9RXrkwb_gFt54FBy9UCh_TZlp6n_cq-Emr2zx15tU=&f=3)
Capitol / Polydor
Deluxe reissue of the 1971 classic is highlighted by an alternate "Brown Sugar" featuring Eric Clapton, and killer vintage live tracks.
Numero Group
Crucial round-up of San Antonio's premier Chicano soul group, something of a sequel to Numero's anthology of the Dynamic label.
Futurismo
Debut album from a San Francisco-based performance art rock group who were retroactively credited as innovators of synth-punk.
Universal
Sultry, noirish, jazz-influenced debut featuring vocalist Vanessa Bley and longtime Sade saxophonist/guitarist Stuart Matthewman.
Oehms Classics
Despite the countertenor version of the Vocalise, which traditionalists will dismiss, this release of Rachmaninov's Second Symphony is first-rate.
Not Not Fun
Vancouver-based musician and artist Crystal Dorval refines her "therapeutic pop" style with her second proper full-length as White Poppy.
Dine Alone
Platform boots and John Hughes films not included on this high-octane, glam-charged synth pop turn for the ever-catchy, driving indie poppers.