A fiery aggression surrounds Universal Breakdown Blues, as Popa Chubby doesn’t lament the dangerous and uncertain era in which we live so much as rail against it with all of his might. You May Also Like: Chubby Tavares, “Gotta Get Back to You” (2018): One Track Mind Greg ‘Stackhouse’ PrevostRead More

Five songs plucked from before 1981, as Journey polished up a seminal fusion-y prog-rock sound and then went supernova.

Beth Hart, a raw and dynamic singer, has joined forces once again with guitarist Joe Bonamassa — and, as with 2011’s Don’t Explain, this collaboration brings out the best in both. You May Also Like: Beth Hart, “Might As Well Smile” from Better Than Home (2015): One Track Mind

It’s classical. No, wait. It’s contemporary jazz. Sure, but that’s not exactly it, either. Latin pop? That, too. In fact, Quattro’s deliciously uncategorizable forthcoming album Popzzical includes all of that, but ultimately fits somewhere in between. You May Also Like: Luca Crispino, Danilo Gallo, Luca Pighi + Roberto Zorzi –Read More

Maybe no song in this forthcoming live set so perfectly illustrates the contentment and joy that the now-married new mother Alanis Morissette seems to enjoy now as does “Thank U,” her set closer at Montreux last year. You May Also Like: Forget What You Heard About Alanis Morissette’s Flavors ofRead More

Having spent some of his earliest years just a mile down the road from where the Beach Boys grew up, the late Gordon Hauptfleish had a special way of capturing California’s flaxen past, always describing it with real force and wisdom. You May Also Like: ‘Drums & Demons: The TragicRead More

‘Raven’ probably won’t sell like Paula Cole’s moon-shot breakthrough ‘This Fire,’ but it should.

The appropriately named “Combustible,” part of an upcoming Wallace Roney project called Understanding, bursts out like a spit-shined hard-bop muscle car — and the trumpeter never takes his foot off the gas. You May Also Like: When Miles Davis Finally Looked Back on ‘Miles and Quincy: Live at Montreux’

Pat Metheny is such an accomplished figure that it’s easy to overlook his cohorts in the Metheny Group — making this new live document an endlessly instructive journey. You May Also Like: Pat Metheny, “You Are” from ‘From This Place’ (2019): One Track Mind Pat Metheny and Lyle Mays’ AsRead More

The soon-to-be-released Lifesigns single “Telephone” is perhaps the best example of how the group’s previous lives in prog and pop can coalesce into a listenable, yet still challenging, amalgam of both. You May Also Like: Steve Hackett, Rob Reed, Nick Beggs + others, “Spectral Mornings” (2015): One Track Mind